by Ken Wharton
The forty-eight hours of the operation saw nineteen deaths, both directly and indirectly related to Demetrius. Three soldiers were killed by the IRA – both wings – including the first UDR soldier to die at the hands of the Provisionals. A total of sixteen civilians were killed – twelve Catholics and four Protestants; of these civilian deaths, thirteen were at the hands of the Army or Loyalist paramilitaries, two were killed by the Provisionals with a further death at the hand of persons unknown. Included in the death toll was the first Catholic priest to be killed by the British Army during the Troubles. We will deal with the fatalities shortly.
Internment day: a man is taken away by troops in the Markets area, Belfast, as searches followed vicious shooting battles between gunmen and the British Army.
The Army raided in the main Catholic areas, striking in the very early hours of the Monday morning, long before workers would be stirring in their beds. The working week lay ahead of adults fortunate enough to have a job, while the children were enjoying the British school holidays. Armed with hopelessly out-of-date lists, soldiers moved into Catholic areas such as the Creggan, Bogside and Gobnascale in Londonderry; the Ardoyne and New Lodge in North Belfast; Falls Road, Ballymurphy, Whiterock, New Barnsley, Poleglass and Twinbrook in West Belfast. Raids were also made on the Derrybeg in Newry and heads of the Town in Strabane. There were very few if any raids in Protestant areas such as the Shankill, Crumlin and Tiger’s Bay in Belfast and the Fountains in Londonderry. In total, 342 people were arrested and taken to holding centres; all but a tiny handful were Catholics, even though the Loyalist UVF had already been responsible for several sectarian deaths. In addition to the 342 arrests, it is estimated that about 7,000 people – from both the major religions – fled their homes, either through fear or by intimidation, as thugs from both sides used the chaos and confusion as an excuse for score-settling, forcing Catholics to flee predominantly Protestant areas and, of course, vice versa. The policy lasted until 1975, during which time 1,981 people were arrested, with major raids on Loyalists commencing in February 1973; the latter raids netted 107 Protestant paramilitaries.
Working into the early hours of the mornings that preceded Demetrius, the ‘spooks’ of MI5 in tandem with the RUC’s Special Branch drew up a list of 450 ‘players’. Quite how those lists were drawn up as MI5 operatives ran up the electric bills, their lights blazing in their then HQ, Leconfield House,* is not known. However, among the list of terrorists were NICRA leaders Michael Farrell and Ivan Barr, men who, although they held the unpopular view of a united Ireland, could never be described in the same breath as known terrorists such as Martin McGuinness, Ivor Bell, Seán Mac Stíofáin, Jim Bryson and Seamus Twomey, to name but a few. Some of the named – and probably ‘real’ – terrorists had been warned, it is thought by Republican sympathisers working within the RUC. They had naturally flown the coop and were probably on the Irish side of the porous border, enjoying a sound sleep as soldiers were waking up the families that the escapees they had left behind in their haste to flee the country. As soon as the dust had settled, however, these OTRs would re-cross the border and continue their previous roles with the Provisional IRA.
The first wave of arrests presented the authorities with 342 people to detain, but also to provide with accommodation as well as food and drink. Many of the Belfast detainees were taken to the Army Barracks at Girdwood on the Antrim Road, with the Co. Armagh arrestees being taken to Abercorn Barracks at Ballykinler in Co. Down, as well as local RUC barracks. Other Belfast men were sent to Crumlin Road Gaol and to the prison ship HMS Maidstone, which was moored in Belfast Lough. Some of the Londonderry men were sent to a barracks at Magilligan. There were numerous reports that soldiers had ill-treated some of the internees, with claims of beating, verbal abuse, threats of being attacked by dogs, sleep deprivation and having their heads forcibly shaved. This type of maltreatment is, of course, unacceptable in any civilised society, and it is inevitable that some resentment would emerge from the soldiers at the verbal abuse to which they had been subjected, both during the pre-operation period as well as during the internment raids.
This author was not present during Operation Demetrius and cannot add veracity to claim or counter-claim, but it is worth noting that the Republican leaders knew that accusations of torture and violence might well strike a chord among their international supporters, particularly the Irish American communities in places such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. There is nothing that galvanises an Irish American like the cry of ‘Help stop the torture of Ireland by the Brits’. In myriad ‘Paddy’s bars’ in South Boston, or North Riverdale in New York’s Bronx district, NORAID collecting tins were never fuller than after internment and Bloody Sunday. Irish émigrés were clearly programmed to believe everything they heard from Sinn Féin and their supporters in both the US Senate as well as the House of Representatives. This author concedes that not everything done by his comrades adhered to the Geneva Convention, but the truth, however innocent and prosaic, did not sell An Phoblacht on the streets of Philadelphia, nor did it swell NORAID’s coffers.
Critics of the policy have pointed out that among those arrested through flawed intelligence were People’s Democracy (PD) and NICRA members, old retired IRA ex-internees, militant trade unionists, public speakers, and, in some cases, people held on mistaken identity. In his muddled thinking, Faulkner thought that he could emasculate the old enemy through a series of dawn raids, covert movement of soldiers and police; what he did was underestimate the growing strength and professionalism of the Provisionals. They were starting to win support from Irishmen abroad and among politicians of both east and west, influential organisations from behind the Iron Curtain as well as the respectable, rabble-rousing men from Massachusetts with long memories – certainly among their constituents – of potato famines and ‘British oppression’. Stories were passed down, however fanciful, by generation after generation of Irishmen who had crossed the pond and found new lives in the USA, of English bogeymen who came in the night and stole their lands, their cattle, and if they weren’t careful, their children also.
However, armed – literally – with US-manufactured and -supplied arms, with ‘Moscow Gold’ and with growing offers of support from international terror groups, the Provisionals were nobody’s mugs. Faulkner, to his discredit, in his naïvety and fear, had grossly underestimated their militant leadership; men such as Seán Mac Stíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Paddy Mulcahy, Sean Tracey, Leo Martin and Joe Cahill were not going to be the pushovers that he had persuaded Heath they would be. During his tenancy of Number Ten, Heath who became known as ‘Edward the Brief’, made a whole series of mistakes: he took on the National Union of Mineworkers twice, losing twice, he brought about a disaster for British Industry with the infamous ‘three-day week’ and he backed the Ulster Prime Minister over the fiasco of internment.
On the first morning of the raids, Faulkner told the BBC:
Northern Ireland was quite simply at war with the terrorist. The terrorists’ campaign continues at an unacceptable level and I have had to conclude that the ordinary law cannot deal comprehensively or quickly enough with such ruthless violence. I have therefore decided ... to exercise where necessary the powers of detention and internment vested in me as Minister of Home Affairs.
On the Opposition benches, Shadow Home Secretary James Callaghan (later to serve as Labour Prime Minister in 1976–79) said:
Quite obviously the government must act against gunmen shooting in the main streets of Belfast, especially as the shootings are growing. Internment, however, is only a short-term measure. And although it worked before in temporarily removing the leadership of the IRA, it proved to be no long-term solution to the problem.
At around 04.00, Nationalist areas awoke to the engines of Humber Pigs, Bedford lorries and Saracen armoured vehicles, as troops and police arrived on the doorsteps of the Falls Road, Springfield Road, the Ardoyne and the New Lodge in the north-west of Belfast, while further w
est the same scenes were taking place in the Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge and Andersonstown areas. In the north, the residents of the Creggan and the Bogside in Londonderry were witnessing the similar sights and sounds. It would be historically wrong at this juncture not to mention the death of Noel Phillips (20), a Catholic resident of the Ballymurphy Estate. He was shot by either soldiers or Loyalist paramilitaries firing from inside or close to the Henry Taggart base. His body was found in a stream the following day, once the firing had died down. He is regarded as the first victim of Internment Day.
If the idea had been to pick up some of the ‘big fish’ and even some minor players, the operation failed; among the day’s notable arrest list was Des O’Hagan, a small-time IRA Volunteer during the border campaign. He was prominent in the Republican movement, being a leading member of NICRA, before siding with the OIRA, later playing a prominent role within the Workers’ Party, effectively Official Sinn Féin. Like many others, he was taken to Long Kesh, which later became the ‘H’ Blocks or Her Majesty’s Prison, Long Kesh.
The killings started less than an hour after troops had moved into the Ardoyne area to begin their allotted arrests in the fiercely Nationalist enclave. Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, Green Howards had deployed into the area around Brompton Park from their base at Flax Street Mill. Private Malcom Hatton (19) from Middlesbrough was running to find cover on the corner of Crumlin Road when a single shot rang out, causing him to fall to the ground, mortally wounded. The gunman – reputed to be PIRA ‘Staff Captain’ Patrick McAdorey* – had fired from the roof of a nearby shop. He was seen by another soldier, who fired twice in his direction; his shots missed, however, and the gunman escaped. It is very likely that McAdorey, who was himself killed shortly afterwards, was one of the three PIRA gunmen who had murdered the three off-duty Scottish soldiers at Ligoniel in March of the same year. Kevin Myers, Belfast journalist and author of the excellent Watching the Door: Cheating Death in Seventies Belfast, writes of the major gun battle between PIRA and British soldiers: ‘Insanity seized the city. Hundreds of vehicles were hijacked, and factories burnt. Loyalist and IRA gunmen were everywhere.’ Indeed, it was Kevin who was one of the first to chance upon the body of the PIRA gunman, lying in the street close to Brompton Park. It is unclear if he was killed by a soldier or by a Loyalist sniper, as there were also shots passing over the heads of troops, aimed at the Catholic crowds from the Loyalist Crumlin Road area; the shots rang out for hours. Private Hatton, whose death had been foreseen by a spiritualist, died on the pavement from a massive wound to his head.
Just after the death of PIRA man McAdorey, troops from the Green Howards came under further attack in Estoril Park on the Ardoyne, with gunmen firing from the rear of a house. The troops fired in the direction of the shots, accidentally hitting Leo McGuigan (16) along with another teenager and a 12-year-old boy who was standing with them. Young McGuigan was probably throwing stones at the soldiers – a very dangerous pastime at this stage of the Troubles. Journalist Kevin Myers was walking between Roseleigh Street and Estoril Park, when a gunman – almost certainly a Provisional IRA Volunteer – aimed a rifle at him. However, before he could shoot at the young journalist, a soldier opened fire at the gunman, who ducked out of sight. Mr Myers moved on to Estoril Park, where he saw Leo McGuigan and two other boys; he warned them that there were gunmen around. The next second, a soldier from the Green Howards – the same one who had helped save his life moments earlier – fired at what he thought was the same sniper. However, the 7.62mm round – with a muzzle velocity of about 2,800ft (850m) per second – impacted against a wall adjacent to the three boys and split into tiny but deadly pieces of shrapnel, only marginally slowed down by the wall. Young McGuigan was hit in the face, the fragment penetrating his brain.
Kevin Myers:
The next second they were all down, shot. The soldier who, moments before had saved my life had fired again at what he thought was a sniper. His shot ricocheted off a wall and fragments of the one bullet hit the three boys he couldn’t even see; one lost the fingers of one hand, another lost the back of his head but survived; the third was 13-year-old Leo McGuigan. I crouched besides him, but he was dead to my fingers, and no blood came from the tiny hole in his cheek. We put his lifeless, lolling body in a car and Ardoyne proceeded with its holocaust.
The wounded boys were rushed to the Mater Hospital on Crumlin Road; the dreadfully wounded boy survived after life-saving surgery from the staff there. This author acknowledges and regrets the death of an innocent child but attaches no blame to the soldier who fired the fateful shot. He felt that his life and the lives of his comrades around him were under threat, and he took the action appropriate to the situation.
The next death was not long in following, as soldiers fired into the home of one of the few Protestant families still living in an uneasy alliance with their Catholic neighbours in Velsheda Park. A ‘Good Samaritan’ neighbour was helping Mrs Sarah Worthington (50), mother of nine children, remove her possessions from the house when a soldier mistakenly fired at her, hitting her from just a few feet away with a 7.62mm round from his SLR. Regretfully, she died at the scene, a victim of confusion and possible panic on the part of soldiers who were under heavy fire and constant pressure. The next to die on that day of debacle and violence was a Catholic priest, one of only two priests to be killed in the Troubles. Father Hugh Mullan (40) had been attempting to defuse sectarian tensions close to his home in the interface area between the Loyalist Springmartin and the Nationalist Springfield Park, close to the Ballymurphy Estate in West Belfast. The world of the Ardoyne to the north was a very dangerous place for everyone either resident or deployed there, as was the area between Springmartin and the Ballymurphy Estate, with the Springfield Road being a deadly no-man’s-land.
A soldier in a rooftop sangar on the Springmartin flats was aware that shots had been fired from the direction of the Springfield Estate, presumably by Republican gunmen retaliating to Loyalist shots. One man was wounded, and a local Catholic man, Frank Quinn (19), ran over to help him, but he too was shot and mortally wounded in the throat; it was a high-velocity round, meaning that life was probably extinct before his limp body even hit ground. Father Mullan pulled out a piece of white material and ran towards the wounded man, intending to give him the final rites of contrition. At this stage, the confusion of warfare takes over, and although the priest was shot and killed, there was savage crossfire taking place at that time. Shots were being fired by the Army, by Loyalists and by Republicans – a sure recipe for disaster as this day would result in repercussions that would echo over the next twenty-six years. What is certain is that the priest and Mr Quinn both died at the scene; which side’s bullets hit them is unclear. The Irish Government blamed the British Army; the British Government in turn blamed Republicans. This author has always maintained that while the Army may have been responsible for some of the deaths on the days of internment, it is highly likely that perhaps more than half of the Catholic deaths came at the hands of UVF gunmen. One must ask oneself: just how difficult would it have been for Loyalist gunmen to situate themselves close to where troops were already in action and firing in retaliation? Conversely, to those under fire in the Ballymurphy, they would have no way of knowing whether the incoming rounds were being fired by soldiers or by paramilitaries. If those fatal rounds were indeed fired by the UVF, it suited well their purpose, which was to kill Catholics while escaping responsibility. This author learned from a well-regarded but unsubstantiated source that some of the wounded that day inside the Springmartin were in civilian clothes, which suggests that they were paramilitaries.
One can only begin to imagine Prime Minister Heath, sitting in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, squirming inwardly as the news of the consequences of his follies were relayed to him by an overworked secretary. Each successive update can only have served to heighten his regret at having been so easily led by the pleas of the Ulster PM.
At around 19.15 hours on that terrible da
y, another innocent wandered into the three-way crossfire as she searched for her missing children aged from three upwards, who had been caught up in the rioting around Springfield Park. Joan Connolly (50), a mother of eight who lived on Ballymurphy Road, had walked in the direction of the Army base at Henry Taggart hall, close to New Barnsley RUC station. As she passed in front of the base, soldiers in the hall and at the nearby Vere Foster School opened fire at suspected gunmen at both Moyard (Republicans) and Springfield Park (Loyalists). Mrs Connolly was hit in the chest and fell wounded to the ground; eyewitnesses saw her attempt to rise but she was then hit in the head and catapulted into a nearby field; she was found the following morning and could only be identified by her red hair. The Republicans claim that it was the Army, while the Army state that they did not kill the mother of eight. It is a moot point but, given the IRA’s propensity to fabricate stories when it suited them, one cannot say with any certainty who was responsible for this tragic and highly regrettable death.
There was a further death shortly afterwards, when it is alleged that soldiers, again in the Henry Taggart, opened fire on gunmen in the locality of the Springfield Road. Daniel Teggart (44), father of ten, was crossing the road when he was caught in the crossfire between soldiers and the IRA. He was hit multiple times and died where he fell; it is entirely likely that it was Army-issue 7.62mm bullets that killed him and, equally, there is no evidence to suggest that he was involved with Republican paramilitaries.
The 9th was still not over; the ‘Grim Reaper’ still had souls to collect; clearly there were others awaiting collection. It is recorded that lighting up time in the UK on that August night was 20.34; what is not recorded is if the artificial lights in the Cabinet Room were switched on and continued to burn as that terrible day deteriorated even further. Francis McGuinness (17) was among a gang of youths who attacked soldiers as they dismantled a barricade across the street where Finaghy Road North meets Ladybrook Park, south of the Nationalist Andersonstown estate. The young man from Riverdale Gardens, some 300 yards away, was said by soldiers to be throwing petrol bombs, whereas others claimed that he was unarmed at the time. Under Rules of Engagement (ROE) it was perfectly legal for soldiers to open fire on petrol bombers after the requisite shouted three warnings. After shouted warnings, a single shot was fired at the teenager, believed to have been from a 9mm Sterling SMG. He was taken to the nearby Holy Cross School, where he died as he was being given the last rites. His family have always maintained that he was not a petrol bomber, while the soldiers at the scene claimed to the contrary. Shortly afterwards, there was another petrol bomb-related death, again in the Andersonstown area when soldiers from the Parachute Regiment came under attack at Stewartstown Road, less than a mile away. Desmond Healey (14) was seen with a bottle in his hand; this author is satisfied it was not a petrol bomb, and furthermore was of no threat to the soldiers. However, one must remember that already that day a soldier and ten civilians had been killed, with scores of soldiers and civilians injured in the shooting and rioting. This was, in the IRA’s own words, a war – a war that would not only increase in intensity and hatred but claim, ultimately, 4,000 more lives. It was a dangerous time to confront soldiers with loaded weapons, soldiers who, despite their training were tired and tense and whose adrenaline had reached boiling point. The boy was hit once by a 7.62mm round, dying en route to hospital.