The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  The fourth death that day occurred when the UVF set up a roadblock by positioning a stolen car across a street in Ligoniel, north-west of Belfast. A bus containing mainly Catholic workers who worked for a company in Belfast approached the roadblock and was forced to screech to a halt. The quick-thinking driver tried to reverse away from the danger, but gunmen opened fire and the workers dived off the bus to run for cover. However, John Morrow (36) – ironically a Protestant – was shot and killed instantly as he tried to seek shelter.

  As the day closed, two members of the RUC were killed by a booby-trap bomb in Donegal Pass RUC base, Belfast. Acting on a tip-off from a ‘member of the public’ a shotgun had been retrieved from a ruined building in Benburb Street and was taken back to the police station for examination. Quite unbelievably, for whilst this author is blessed by hindsight, this was the seventh year of the Troubles and over 1,600 people were already dead, an Army ATO was not sent for. The shotgun was booby-trapped and it exploded, killing Inspector George Bell (54) and Constable Neville Cummings (37) absolutely instantly. Several other officers were injured and one policeman lost limbs in the blast. Six children were left fatherless and whilst this author has the utmost respect for the courage and professionalism of the RUC, this was a serious breach of security and all counterterrorist procedures appeared to have been forgotten in this instance.

  The day after, the UDA/UFF, in what was described as an absolutely random encounter, shot and killed a Catholic shortly after he had left an RAF club and indulged in a good-natured snowball fight with friends and family members. Patrick Quail (37) was walking along Clifton Street towards his house in Carlisle Circus, north of Belfast city centre. The area he lived in was very near where Loyalists had shot a Catholic businessman the previous October and as such, a dangerous sectarian interface. A car containing a Loyalist murder gang noticed Mr Quail and shot him twice, leaving him mortally wounded. He was found shortly afterwards by a passing Army foot patrol but he died shortly afterwards.

  On that same day, PIRA’s truce was officially brought to an end, although indirect contact between the British Government and the IRA was maintained for a period after the ending of the truce. To the reader, one might ask ‘what truce?’ PIRA had blatantly ignored the so-called ceasefire and had continued with sectarian killings, shooting and bombing the security forces and continuing with its ‘economic warfare’ campaign.

  BLOODY SUNDAY 4TH ANNIVERSARY

  Jock 2413, Royal Artillery

  It was about 10 days after the murder of Gunner Ashford at the checkpoint in Great James Street, and the anniversary of what was called Bloody Sunday was approaching. We were expecting a busy time as a big march was planned for the coming Sunday, but the task I got lumbered with was not exactly what I had bargained for. Officially, troops and police were to keep a low profile, but word came from on high that several covert Ops were to be inserted on the route of the march. They would be given the task of photographing as many participants as possible, especially the stewards; it was thought that they would be either auxiliary or Fianna members. Not my problem thinks me, as I was not one of the trained photographers; wrong!

  I was ‘asked’ if I’d be one of the various pairs to carry out the task. When a young JNCO gets asked to do something, suspicions are rife and I was no exception. I pointed out that I had no specialist camera training but that was no problem I was told. Next thing, I’m being given a crash course on the finer points of photography like focus, light, speed etc. I was to use two cameras; a Pentax with a 200mm lens for the stewards and a Konica, which had a built in wide angle lens, for the marchers. Armed with spools of out of date film, I wondered around camp taking photos of everything in sight and getting them developed to see if I had the hang of it. In my room, which was always dim with the light out, I practiced loading film into the cameras. Finally I thought it wasn’t going to get any better so went on to the next task; location.

  The area we were given was William Street near the junction with Rossville Street. I did a quick map appreciation and looked at the street photos. All the buildings on the right-hand side of William Street were burnt out derelicts but accessing them without being seen was the problem. A small street called Patrick Street, which ran off The Strand, looked the best option. All the buildings were derelict, and street access to Little James Street was blocked off, but there was a good chance that once inside the derelicts, you could make your way up to the end. I arranged to be buttoned on to a foot patrol early next morning to check it out.

  Rab Hutton, Jimmy Morrison and Alec Weir. (Robert Hutton)

  On the pretext of checking the security of the corrugated iron used to block the doors of the derelicts, we ripped one open far enough for me to fit my then slim body through. Sure enough, all the internal walls were smashed through and pretty soon I was on the second floor looking out through a large hole in the outer wall which gave a nice view of the William Street/Rossville Street junction. Perfect; I made my way back out to Patrick Street, leaving a couple of ‘tells’ behind just in case I’d been seen and an unwanted surprise was left for me. [A method of ensuring that the covert soldier’s position had not been compromised.]

  When I got back, I put it all in writing as per SOP and drew a rough map and handed it in. I then got surprise number two. Instead of being accompanied by one of my partners in crime, the local unit IO was to come with me. Now I’ve got nothing against an officer wanting to get involved in something like this, but I had a lingering memory from a couple of years back of the Strand local unit’s IO walking about Waterloo Place in mufti toting a Karstadt’s carrier bag. (Karstadt was/is a large supermarket chain seen, only at that time, in West Germany) Ah well, orders are orders, as they say.

  On the Sunday, the weather was dull but dry and by lunchtime, me and my happy companion were in position ready for the off. I had the Konica set up on a small tripod aimed at the junction, so it was just a matter of pressing the button, and operating the lever to move the film on every five seconds or so. Each spool had 36 frames so I had film for about three minutes before having to reload; Lord Lichfield, eat your heart out. About 15:00 hours, word came over the comms that the march was on the way and it was estimated that they were about 3,000 strong. Regular position reports were coming in and pretty soon they were heading our way. I had a quick look up William Street and it was like a Saturday football crowd heading our way with lots of banners and placards in view and they weren’t hanging about either. I managed a few shots of the stewards at the front before they reached us then started snapping away with both cameras. Pretty soon, I was like a one legged man in an arse kicking contest and getting in a right mess. The last straw was when I tried to change the film in the Konica and ended up knocking over the tripod and smacking myself in the face with the Pentax’s tele lens. The Rupert was pissing himself laughing at me cursing and swearing like a good one. In the end, I ditched the Pentax and with the tripod dangling from the bottom, just concentrated on using the Konica.

  Soon enough, the march had passed us so we picked up our gear and bugged out. The two lads who had been positioned by our exit point were happy to see us, and we all went back to Victoria base for a hot brew. I had taken one full spool with the Pentax and four spools with the Konica so I hoped that something decent came about. I also hoped that I had taken the lens cap off.

  It turned that I wasn’t as bad a photographer as I thought and several of the photos that I had taken of the stewards ended up on ops room walls and in the booklets that patrol commanders carried, and the secret squirrels had a bit of fun picking out known ‘faces’ amongst the marchers. I got a ‘job well done’ from the man, although I’m sure he would have said something else if he’d been a fly on the derelict wall.

  One thing soured the whole thing. It was SOPs that when covert ops were being carried out in an area, the various checkpoints and overt Ops were warned in advance and the area put out of bounds to any mobiles or footsies. Some useless bastard had forgotten to pa
ss the word. With people like that looking after your welfare, it is small wonder there not more blue on blues during Op Banner. As a PS, my prowess with the camera was noted and my services were called upon at a later date. But as they say, that’s another story.

  Someone once described a blue on blue or a death by ‘friendly fire’ (surely the greatest oxymoron in the English language) as an American invention: ‘We’re sorry that we killed your men, but we had some weapons to test.’ The truth is perhaps somewhat more prosaic and soldiers have been killing their own, accidentally since Biblical times. On the 25th – another black day with four people killed – Private David McDowell (26) a part-time soldier in the UDR and a bus driver was accidentally killed at a VCP at Middletown, Co Armagh on the border with the Republic. A soldier in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards who had earlier been involved in a firefight with PIRA gunman had neglected to make his SLR safe. Private McDowell was talking to fellow soldiers when he was hit by a round which had been negligently discharged and died at the scene.

  (L-R) George Gallagher, Jimmy Morrison, Rab Hutton and Rab McPherson. (Robert Hutton)

  Just south of picturesque Lough Neagh sits the market town of Lurgan; picturesque it might be, but it was also a dangerous place to be in the Troubles. The UVF were particularly strong there, and were convinced that a local Protestant – Samuel Neill (29), the father of three small children had been passing on information about the UVF to the RUC. In all likelihood, this information was entirely erroneous, but suspicion was considered just cause and Robin ‘the Jackal’ Jackson (see Chapter 3) was allegedly involved in the shooting of the, probably, innocent man. Mr Neill had just left the Golden Hind bar in Lurgan centre when he was approached by UVF gunmen and shot dead on Union Street, a long thoroughfare which dissects the town. He was hit five times in the head and died instantly.

  The Ancient Order of Hibernians is an Irish Catholic fraternal organisation, and members must be Catholic or of Irish descent. Its largest membership is now in the United States, where it was founded in New York City in 1836. Its name was adopted by groups of Irish immigrants in the United States and its purpose was to protect Catholic churches from anti-Catholic forces in the mid-1900s, and to assist Irish Catholic immigrants, especially those who faced discrimination or harsh coal mining working conditions. The AOH had a hall in the centre of the Army garrison town of Lisburn, Co Antrim. John Tennyson (25), father of three very young children, was a member of the club and was drinking there on the same day as the two other killings. A bombing team from the UDA/UFF left an explosive device outside the hall and it exploded within seconds; the resultant blast partly demolished the drinking area and killed two men, including Mr Tennyson and Joseph Moyes (33) also a father of three. Many more were injured and six more children would grow up without a father. January was turning into one of the bloodiest months of the Troubles, although it was still short of the appallingly high number of dead in July, 1972, when 97 people were killed in a single month.

  Republicans – thought to have been PIRA or an independent unit – targeted the Protestant-frequented Farmers’ Inn in Dunmurry, South Belfast. Dunmurry is close to the Republican Poleglass and Twinbrook estates; it is also close to Andersonstown and easy escape routes for Republican gangs. As the drinkers enjoyed their beers and a chat, masked gunmen entered the bar and began indiscriminately spraying the interior with automatic weapons. Drinkers dived in panic to the floor and one survivor said ‘the shooting seemed to go on forever.’ When the gunmen had finished they ran outside to a waiting stolen car and escaped. David McGilton (22) and William Armstrong (also 22) died at the scene and several others were injured. On the same day, John McCready, a North Belfast businessman, was walking home from a club in Salisbury Avenue in Belfast, midway between the Antrim Road and Cavehill Road. A stolen car pulled alongside him and the gunmen inside opened fire, shooting him six times; he was mortally wounded and died the following month. He was a Protestant in a Protestant area and it is likely that he was killed either by PIRA or another ‘independent’ Republican unit.

  There was a UDA/UFF unit in north Belfast which specialised in breaking into people’s homes and murdering them in their beds. Whilst a few of the victims were either PIRA or known Republicans, many were innocents, targeted mistakenly. This gang of nocturnal killers was known as the ‘window cleaners’ because they frequently used stolen window cleaners’ ladders to break into the houses. Their activities – like those of the Shankill Butchers – struck terror into the hearts of Catholics in the north of the city, many suffering nightmares for years afterwards. After the RUC broke up the gang, arresting most of its members, the UDA/UFF in north Belfast became less and less capable of targeting and killing Republicans, instead increasingly killing innocent Catholics. Because of their frequent mistakes in killing the wrong people, there was a joke among Loyalists at the time was that if the north Belfast UDA had you on its target list, your next door neighbour was in deadly danger.

  One such victim of ‘the window cleaners’ was Joseph McAlinden (40) who was targeted by the gang. He was an entirely innocent Catholic, running a pub in Howard Street, Belfast. In the early hours of the 29th, he was wakened by a noise at his bedroom window at his house in the Cavehill area. As he looked through the window, a UDA/UFF gunman fired at him three times, more or less killing him instantly. Later that day, a UVF murder gang attacked a Catholic-owned off-licence in Belfast’s Antrim Road and shot two members of staff, including one man who was only helping out during a busy period. The man Martin Crossan (26) a painter and decorator was shot in the chest and died almost immediately; another staff member was also shot but survived the murderous attack. The gang then left an explosive device and fired further shots before they ran outside to a waiting car. The device – in a holdall – was taken outside where it exploded without further loss of life.

  As the month drew to an end, Anthony Reavey (17) who had been badly wounded during the slaughter of several family members by the UVF, died of those wounds. On that penultimate day of January, a UDA/UFF member was involved in a drunken argument with two UVF members in a Loyalist drinking den in North Queen Street, close to Belfast city centre. He was stabbed twice and bled to death outside in the street.

  On the same evening, PIRA attacked the Protestant-owned Klondyke Bar in the Loyalist heartland of Sandy Row, Belfast. A bombing team in a stolen car left the device in a doorway and raced off. The bar was on the corner of McAdam Street and was full of drinkers at the time. John Smiley (55) was killed outright in the blast. Many people inside the pub suffered serious injuries and several had traumatic amputations; a barmaid lost an eye.

  On the final day of the month, a three-man British Army patrol stopped at the Long Bar on the Loyalist Shankill Road and, leaving one soldier outside, an officer and one man went inside the bar. Minutes later, the soldier outside was alerted by a call for help from one of his comrades as well as the angry shouts of confrontation from within. He ran inside and saw that his officer was being badly beaten by a crowd of drinkers who were trying to wrestle his SLR from his grasp. He saw that one man had a broken beer bottle in his hand and was about to stab the restrained officer in the face. The soldier fired one round which hit the assailant but at such close range, it passed through his body and hit a man standing behind him. Although the assailant was wounded, the man whom the round hit was not so lucky and he died at the scene. Hugh Woodside (52) was thought to have been merely watching the fracas when he was hit by the soldier’s bullet. Severe rioting broke out and an RUC officer was hit when shots were fired by Loyalist paramilitaries; a round actually lodged itself in his flak jacket.

  In what was one of the bloodiest months of the Troubles, a total of 51 people had been killed or died from their injuries. The Army lost six including a ‘blue on blue’ and three RUC officers were killed. A total of 39 innocent civilians were killed; 31 Catholic and eight Protestant. Additionally the Army was responsible for the death of a Protestant. Two Republicans were killed in
own goal explosions and the Loyalist paramilitaries lost one. In total, Loyalists were responsible for 30 deaths that month and Republicans for 15.

  14

  February

  On Tuesday 3 February the much-maligned Constitutional Convention was reconvened in an attempt to reach agreement on a constitutional arrangement for Northern Ireland. A series of inter-party talks were held over the next three weeks and these were chaired by Robert Lowry. Sir Robert Lynd Erskine Lowry, Baron Lowry, often known as Robbie Lowry, was a Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and a Lord of Appeal. The Convention was in terminal decline and simply didn’t enjoy enough support from either community; it would appear that the political will for reconciliation just wasn’t there. Shortly afterwards, talks between the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) broke down after only an hour. The UUUC would not agree on SDLP involvement in any future Northern Ireland cabinet. This was a key element as far as Merlyn Rees was concerned. The final meeting of the Convention took place on 3 March 1976. The British Government brought the Convention to an end on 5 March 1976.

  On the following Friday, two RUC officers were shot by the IRA near Carlisle Circus, Belfast. The two officers were on a routine foot patrol, en-route to Oldpark RUC station when two IRA killers came up behind them and shot both in the attack. Constable James Blakely (42) who had spent over half of his life as a policeman died immediately and his colleague, Inspector Henry Murtagh (31) was mortally wounded in the cowardly attack and died in the RVH the following day. The attack took place at Carlisle Circus, close to the Crumlin Road and had previously been the scene of two recent sectarian murders. The killers fled into the easily accessible Ardoyne area. John McCready (58) who was shot on 27 December (see Chapter 12) died from the wounds he received in a sectarian attack in North Belfast.