by Ken Wharton
Sandy Kelly later said, ‘The expression on his face was committed to my memory. I made eye contact with him, then the shooting began again. I will never forget his face.’ Convinced that Kelly was dead, Magee fired another round into the injured Goodman, mortally wounding him; he died later in hospital in Leeds. The Sierra then raced in the direction of Leeds, being pursued by another police car that had been alerted by Kelly’s distress call. The pursuit reached speeds of more than 100mph before one of the PIRA men opened fire from the car windows with an automatic weapon; the chasing police car was hit nine times before it crashed. The gunmen also stopped, approaching the officers trapped inside with the clear intention of finishing them off.
At this point, another vehicle approached, which caused the two terrorists to jump back into their vehicle to escape what they thought were more police officers arriving; in actual fact, it was a civilian who was trying to help in what he thought was a road traffic accident. The pair was pursued towards Burton Salmon, around 9 miles from the scene of the shooting, where they abandoned their vehicle before escaping into the countryside.
For the next ninety-six hours, as police helicopters, armed police and dog handlers searched the area, the fugitives hid in ditches, eating raw vegetables and drinking stream water to keep up their strength. On the 11th, Magee, by now filthy, stinking and with a five-day growth of beard, walked into the town of Pontefract to buy shoes as well as other clothing. A shop assistant who served him immediately called the police. Following a chase through the Horsefair area of the town, Magee was tackled to the ground and arrested. Two days later, O’Brien also walked into the town, where he too was arrested. Magee was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment and O’Brien to a shorter sentence, although both men were released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Glen Goodman was the last mainland police officer to die at the hands of the Provisionals. His death probably saved the lives of both soldiers and civilians in York as a routine stop and check in a small brewery town ultimately netted two terrorists. The capture of Paul ‘Dingus’ Magee was somewhat of a coup, given that he was part of the M60 machine gun team that had shot and killed SAS Captain Herbert Westmacott in May 1980 at Antrim Road, Belfast; he was also one of the escapers from Crumlin Road gaol the same year.
There were, of course, many other attacks on the mainland, notably the bombing of the Royal Marine barracks at Deal in Kent on 22 September 1982 that killed eleven young bandsmen; additionally, the IRA’s England team bombed London’s Victoria train station, killing one and maiming many others. The same team assassinated several leading politicians and celebrities, as well as indiscriminately planting around 1,000 explosive devices. They bombed pubs in Guildford and Woolwich that were known to be frequented by off-duty soldiers, as well as injuring more than seventy people in a no-warning bomb at London’s Olympia in 1976. The trail of carnage that led from Deal to Guildford, to Woolwich, to Aldershot, to Eastbourne, to London, to Birmingham, to Derby, to Tadcaster, and finally to the M62 motorway over the course of twenty-one years was cold and calculated. The atrocities included the cold-blooded murder of a young Army recruit going home on leave and unarmed soldiers working in Army information offices.
The memorial stone in Tadcaster to policeman Glen Goodman, killed by the IRA.
The Provisionals’ Army Council developed the England team to cause disruption on the mainland, targeting soldiers and civilians alike with a great deal of cynicism. Part of their raison d’etre was to deliberately mislead the police as to the location and timing of the bombs that they had planted. This inevitably led to civilian casualties as well as allowing them to present themselves as ‘caring terrorists’ as they continued the black work of propaganda by blaming the SF for the severity of the dead and injured. It was, of course, cynical, but it was nonetheless effective; moreover, it meant that the mainland authorities had no time to rest and recoup their energy, being on constant standby for the next misleading or vague call from the Provisionals. There was also the economic effect of their campaign: the so-called ‘billion-pound bombs’ that caused massive financial damage to London – Baltic Exchange, Stock Exchange, Bishopsgate – as well as Manchester. It was this type of explosion, both costly as well as highly disruptive to business life, that caused the British Government to consider and ultimately agree to discuss a ceasefire with the Provisional IRA. Militarily, the Republicans could never hope to win, but they knew that if they kept up their attacks in Britain’s financial heartland, the ‘men in the City’ would keep up the pressure on the Major, later Blair, governments. In the end, a compromise had to be made by both parties to the conflict, so as to bring an end to the Troubles.
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* A fourteenth person died later that year from wounds received.
* See Sir, They’re Taking the Kids Indoors, Ken Wharton (Helion Books, 2012).
* www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40553803.
** www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40559943.
* Neave was a senior member of MI9, a covert wartime military organisation that helped run the evasion and escape lines in occupied Europe.
CHAPTER 11
MARCH 1988: A MONTH OF INFAMY
Collins English Dictionary defines the word ‘seminal’ thus: ‘... used to describe things such as books, works, events, and experiences that have a great influence in a particular field.’
If seminal is correctly defined, then there truly were some seminal moments witnessed during the Troubles: Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, La Mon, the Royal Parks bombings, the corporals killings and the Shankill bomb were certainly seminal moments in the near-thirty years of violence. In March 1988, the world witnessed not one, but three incidents that fit neatly into the fullest definition of seminal. In the space of just thirteen days, ten people would die in three separate incidents, one of which was one of the most graphic moments of violence ever witnessed live on British television.
The first seminal moment took place on Sunday, 6 March; in what was a well-planned and equally well-executed operation, undercover soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) shot dead three known PIRA members. Together with a fourth member who escaped, they had planned to detonate a massive car bomb on the British protectorate of Gibraltar. Their plan had been to stage an explosion close to where the Royal Anglian Regiment were performing a ceremonial changing of the guard, with many dozens of tourists spectating. Had their plan succeeded, it would have likely dwarfed the carnage at the Royal Parks in London on 20 July 1982, when soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets and the Blues & Royals were killed in separate explosions. The undercover plan was christened ‘Operation Flavius’, and was designed to give the Provisionals a very bloody nose; in this, it achieved its objectives, but set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in some appalling incidents on 16 and 19 March.
The British Government, then led by Margaret Thatcher, had learned through MI5 contacts within PIRA that a gang of four, possibly five, known players intended to set off a bomb on the peninsula known as ‘the Rock’. It was known that the outrage was designed to revenge the deaths of eight terrorists at Loughgall the previous year. Thatcher knew that the terrorists could simply be arrested and deported back to the UK before being tried for conspiracy to murder, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; this, however, was too easy. Instead, it was decided to send a message to Irish Republicanism: if the IRA wished to play a big boys’ game, in the words of author Mark Urban, it would have to abide by ‘big boys’ rules’.
A combination of undercover operatives from MI5, as well as SAS officers on the ground, had observed Eibhlin (Evelyn) Glenholmes* arrive on ‘the Rock’ before almost immediately departing for the Irish Republic. She was then a PIRA member and is now part of the Sinn Féin leadership, the party’s Ard Chomhairle,** working with a Republican ex-prisoners’ project. However, Sean Savage (23), Daniel ‘Danny’ McCann (30) and Mairead Farrell (31), all members of the Provisional IRA, arrive
d on the island shortly afterwards. Savage and McCann were strongly suspected of the murder of a UDR soldier, John Tracey, on 26 June 1987, at a building site on the Lisburn Road in Belfast. McCann was known in SF circles as ‘the butcher’ and was linked by RUC Special Branch to a staggering twenty-six murders; he was also a butcher by occupation, so that this epithet could have been used in both a figurative and in a literal way. It is alleged that he was part of the PIRA team that shot and killed two undercover RUC officers while they were on surveillance duty at Belfast Docks.*** He was described by the RUC as ‘... the IRA expert in close quarter killings ... addicted to the violence ...’ Savage was a bomb-making expert, whose main task was the assembly of the explosives and the timing of the detonation.
Debris in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Napoleon suite bathroom on the first floor of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, after the IRA bombing on 14 October 1984.
On 4 March, the three Volunteers flew to Malaga under false passports, before hiring two cars in Torremolinos; they stayed overnight before driving to Marbella. On the afternoon of the 6th, at approximately 12.45, Savage drove a white Renault across the border, parking close by the site of the planned military ceremony, Inces Hall. It is thought that he intended to ‘reserve’ the parking space before returning with the other car, found later in Marbella with 140lb (64kg) of Semtex. Soon afterwards, McCann and Farrell – described as ‘a bitch’ by soldiers who encountered her in Belfast – walked across the border, eventually meeting with Savage. They were observed paying close attention to the Renault; shortly afterwards they walked off as a group, returning shortly afterwards to the same car park. The surveillance team again saw them paying close attention to their car, leading them to believe that there were explosives inside it. Only the day before, a spokesman for the Provisionals had warned: ‘We intend to leave something more than a calling card for Mrs Thatcher’s forces shortly.’ If they thought that she would be intimidated, they were very wrong, as the demise of three of their number had already been set in motion.
At 15.42, armed SAS Troopers wearing baseball caps with the peaks reversed moved into position to intercept the gang. However, at this moment, Savage turned southwards, whilst the other two began walking along Winston Churchill Avenue in the direction of the border with Spain. Two SAS men jogged after Savage, while another group approached McCann and Farrell. It is then alleged that the undercover soldiers felt that the man and woman had made ‘threatening movements’, which caused them to open fire with their Browning 9mm Hi-Power pistols. McCann was first to be hit, sustaining wounds to the back and head; Farrell unwisely reached for her shoulder bag and she was then hit five times in rapid succession.
Meanwhile, the other two undercover soldiers had caught up with Savage as he neared the Landport Tunnel; he had quickened his pace as he heard multiple gunshots from the direction of where he had left his two comrades. He foolishly reached for his jacket pocket, leaving the soldiers no choice but to open fire. He was hit six times in the head and chest; in addition, he was hit a further nine times by the other SAS man. He was given exactly the same mercy that he had shown to Detectives Malone and Carson at Donegall Quay and UDR Private John Tracey on Lisburn Road: none.
The Daily Express led with ‘IRA squad killed in Gibraltar’, whilst the Daily Mirror screamed: ‘IRA Gang Shot Dead in Gib Raid; Bomb girl killed as gun cops swoop.’
A former Royal Anglian told the author: ‘Had they not been slotted by the SAS lads, and had their bombs gone off at the parade, we are talking scores of dead; soldiers, tourists, women and kids would have been bloody messes in the street. Personally, I don’t give a fuck about 3 dead terrorists.’
Once again, however, the spectre of a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy was raised by the British left, with more than sixty Labour MPs condemning the deaths on the Rock, while NORAID collectors in the USA were able to urge their donors to dig deep for the martyrs and for the people back home. The question on many lips was: ‘Could they have not been taken prisoner?’ ‘Was this a summary execution?’ These indeed were the questions that Sinn Féin representatives were asking and demanding that their Irish Lobby representatives in the USA were also asking.
It is entirely possible that the undercover soldiers could have arrested the three terrorists, who would have been unwise to display any resistance to being taken into custody. Possible, yes, but highly unlikely. If the versions given by the SAS are correct, then McCann, Savage and Farrell signed their own death sentences by making threatening movements as the soldiers confronted them. Had they been arrested, they would have been sent to the ‘terrorist academy’, which was HMP Maze, where although incarcerated, they would have been among like-minded people. Even though it was not known at the time, they would have served only nine years before being released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. It was this author’s opinion, both now and at the time of the shooting, that the instructions were clear and implacable: ‘Take them out; no prisoners.’ Eight years earlier at the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington, when Khuzestan separatists from the DRFLA* held diplomatic staff and a London policeman hostage, the SAS were sent in. Five of the hostage-takers were killed, with one only escaping because he had mingled with the freed staff, giving the pretence that he was a hostage. It is this author’s belief that the troops were instructed ‘from the highest levels’ to eradicate the DRFLA members on the basis of ‘there must be no Court appearances’. He further believes that Mrs Thatcher decreed that there would be no safe passage from the Embassy for the kidnappers.
One believes that identical instructions to those issued for the Embassy siege were passed down from the British Cabinet, insisting that an example was to be made of the IRA gang, with no trials or loose ends. It was imperative that the British Government displayed continued resistance to violent change in Northern Ireland and that if the Provisionals had the audacity to issue threats to the Prime Minister, they would be very publicly made to eat their own words. The deaths of McCann, Savage and Farrell were perhaps inevitable once they had crossed the Spanish border; for almost two decades until Loughgall and Gibraltar, the Republican paramilitaries had set the agenda; they had made the British look weak and indecisive. Successive PMs had conspired to tie the soldiers’ hands behind their backs and effectively ‘play the game’ even if their terrorist foes were not adhering to Marquis of Queensbury rules. The kid gloves were off, and Loughgall, Gibraltar, Lone Bog Road, among many other examples, were designed to demonstrate to the IRA and other terrorist groups that the British had had enough and that the time had come to not only play dirty but do it in the open with no apologies.
Ten days later, a sectarian murderer and UFF member, Michael Stone, would make the trip to Milltown Cemetery in Belfast as the next sequence of events in this bloody chain produced more victims.
On Wednesday, 16 March, Northern Ireland braced itself for the paramilitary funerals of the three dead PIRA members, now returned home from Gibraltar. At three separate houses in Andersonstown (Savage), Stewartstown (Farrell) and the Falls Road (McCann), family and friends were paying their respects at the respective homes. Three local funeral services followed, before three huge cortèges converged in a giant procession close to Milltown Cemetery, slowly moving towards the Republican plot. Milltown is an almost perfect mirror image of sectarian Belfast, where even the dead are segregated by their religion.
We need to go back a few hours in order to be able to understand Michael Stone’s state of mind that day. He lived with his wife and family close to the Shankill Road, making his way by bus towards West Belfast, managing to conceal a Ruger pistol, a 9mm Browning and five RGD hand grenades. Despite attracting the attention of an RUC constable standing guard outside Hastings Street police station, he walked past the Divis Street flats and down towards the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls Road. It was there that he again drew the attention of the SF, as he foolishly gave a friendly nod towards an eight-man Army/RUC patrol; in that part of Belfast such a gesture was
totally out of ordinary and would have immediately raised suspicions. However, he went unmolested before catching a taxi to the Milltown area, going on to St Agnes church where one of the funerals was taking place. It was there that he found himself sitting close to three leading Sinn Féin/PIRA members: Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Danny Morrison. Despite the presence of armed PIRA men outside the church, he had managed to sneak his mini-armoury into the heart of Republicanism.
Stone was a ruthless killer and foolhardy in the extreme, but sensible enough to realise that if he made his attack in the church, there would be little chance of escape, so he bided his time. Shortly afterwards, he joined in a huge procession that was threading its way towards Milltown. On arrival, he simply allowed the throng to gather him up as it slowly reached the ‘special’ area. The author has twice visited the cemetery and wrote in an earlier book of the atmosphere of that place. It is very clear, judging by the flags, insignia and emotive language that Republicans view this as a hallowed ground, vital to the education of its followers: bring our Catholic young through this hallowed ground and let them learn early of our hated for the English and their deeds against the people of Ireland.