The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  Palace Barracks, Belfast. (Mark ‘C’)

  Tuesday 14 September was a day of UDA-inspired violence and disruption as they planted devices all over Belfast. The protest was against the alleged ill-treatment of Loyalist prisoners at the Maze. A spate of real bombs and an equal number of hoaxes stretched the Fire Brigade and the RUC to stretching point and the whole city was gripped by fear and tension. Targets ranged from business premises to Government buildings, such as Housing Offices, Libraries and masked men ordered the staff out of a food factory on the Shankill Road and then set fire to the building. During the day, prison officers from the Maze were seized at their homes by Loyalist paramilitaries and ordered not to report to work that day. They were later released unharmed.

  The ‘blanket protest’ was part of a five-year campaign during the Troubles carried out by PIRA/INLA prisoners held in the Maze. The prisoners’ status as ‘political,’ (known as ‘special category status’) had started to be phased out during 1976. Among other things, this meant that they would now be required to wear prison uniforms like ordinary convicts. The prisoners refused to accept that they were ordinary criminals and refused to wear the ordinary uniform. Convicted PIRA member, Kieran Nugent was the first prisoner to be sentenced under the new regime introduced on 1 March 1976 which meant that he would not receive special category status. Nugent was sent to the new ‘H-Blocks’ of the Maze where he refused to wear prison clothes, choosing instead to wrap a blanket around himself. This protest culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 when 10 PIRA/INLA prisoners died.

  UFF gang members then threw petrol bombs into buildings in East Belfast and at the same time other thugs attacked an RUC foot patrol as it passed the Protestant end of the Broadway. The UDA also torched a large clothing store in Sandy Row to complete a day of utter chaos. This disruption continued into a second day as Loyalist mobs hijacked and set alight buses on the Protestant Highfield estate. Eventually services were suspended all over the city as more and more bombing attacks – mingled with time-wasting hoax calls – broke out Belfast-wide. The Provisionals then destroyed a HM Customs post at Clontivern, Newtownbutler but there were no injuries.

  Just to add to the terror and confusion, the Provisionals bombed the much-respected Belfast Telegraph newspaper offices. A stolen Ford Transit van was driven into the loading bay of the newspaper just before the evening rush hour and the driver and accomplice then ran off. Due to some confusion, garbled warnings led the RUC to believe that the bomb was not in the building and certain people were allowed back in. The device exploded, causing extensive damage, and Joseph Paton (64) one of the printing staff, was fatally injured. He received a traumatic amputation of a leg and clung for life in the Mater Hospital before dying there on the 19th.

  On the 17th, the UFF turned their attention back to the grisly business of sectarian murder and struck in the Cavehill area of North Belfast. However, Peter Johnston (28) a Catholic lived in Cooldarragh Park in the North Belfast district of Cavehill, less than a mile from the Antrim Road, a main getaway route for Loyalist murder gangs to head over to Tigers Bay or north to Rathfern and Rathcoole. It is also no more difficult for Republican murder gangs to race back to the New Lodge or Oldpark or the Markets.

  Mr Johnston was not a Republican and nor did he have any paramilitary links, but he was a Catholic and he lived close enough to the sectarian interface to make him vulnerable. Around 07:00 hours on the morning of the 17th, UFF gunmen broke into his house and silently made their way to the bedroom where he lay asleep. At very close range, and possibly with a pillow to muffle the noise of the shots, they fired two rounds into his head and killed him instantly. At around 19:30 hours, his girlfriend visited the house and thought that he was still asleep in bed. To her shock, she found his cold, lifeless and blood-spattered body where the Loyalist murder gang had left him.

  The day after, the Provisionals killed another RUC officer, this time in Portadown, making him the eighteenth policeman to be killed in 1976 and with a quarter of the year yet to go. Sergeant Albert Craig (33) was directing traffic – a routine task which still had to be carried out even during the Troubles – with a male RUCR colleague at Brownstown Road. The officer who lived at Killybilly near Enniskillen was shot in the back four times by gunmen in a car which had driven up behind them. He slumped to the ground mortally wounded and his colleague was also shot. Sergeant Craig, the father of a two-year old son, died en-route for hospital. The shootings were claimed by PIRA who warned of more shootings to come.

  Earlier that same day, IRA gunmen had hijacked the Belfast-Bangor train at Sydenham, which had not been carrying passengers at that stage. They set alight several carriages before leaping off and making good their escape. There was a miraculous escape for staff of Menzies News Wholesalers, later that day in Academy Street, Belfast. A woman shopper observed two people – thought to be members of PIRA – carrying a bag and overheard their intentions of planting an explosive device in the building. She saw them leave the bag and bravely raced inside to warn the staff. All 60 members of staff were safely evacuated thanks to her prompt and courageous warning; the device exploded within minutes of this, causing extensive damage. The Provisionals later attacked a Post Office with petrol bombs and set off another device at a Tool Supply company in the HQNI town of Lisburn.

  Violence continued and a car bomb was left outside the Broadway entrance to the RVH in Belfast by an organisation unknown. The hospital was used by both sides of the community and it was also used to treat wounded soldiers. The location of the entrance – in the Nationalist Falls area – suggests that the device may have been planted by Loyalists. Another theory is that it was parked there by Provisionals intended to be taken to another location later. Whatever the reason, the explosives detonated as a Catholic family’s car passed it, wrecking the car and badly injuring an 18 month old child and causing shrapnel and blast injuries to a further nine people. The car had been hijacked in the Nationalist Springfield Road area, which suggests that the latter theory – a Republican attack – is more probable. On that same day, the Provisionals firebombed two prison officers’ homes in Lisburn, as they attempted to either kill them or to burn them out of their homes as part of their ongoing terror campaign against ‘agents of the Crown.’ In one incident, the officer and his wife and young child were asleep in bed when the house was set alight; fortunately they were awoken and escaped from the burning building. In the second, only minor damage was caused, and the officer concerned was able to beat out the flames.

  On the 21st, a PIRA gang planted a 500lb device in an HM Customs temporary site in Newtownbutler and the Army’s EOD was called out and managed to defuse the explosives. The temporary site – a caravan – was being used to replace the original building which had been wrecked by a PIRA bomb some time earlier. There was a lucky escape for soldiers at the Piggery Ridge base on the Creggan Estate in Londonderry when a mortar attack was foiled. Routine searching around suspected mortar base plate sites on the Creggan revealed a stash of primed high-explosive shells. An Army spokesman stated that the larger than normal devices had the potential to wipe out the entire base as well as wreck residential homes. One imagines that the Provisionals were happy to accept some ‘collateral damage’ to their supporters in order to pull off a spectacular against the ‘Brits.’ Forty-eight hours later, a car failed to stop at an Army VCP on the Turf Lodge Estate in Belfast and soldiers fired at the occupants. One man was hit and taken to hospital but the others ran off and the soldiers didn’t fire at them as they escaped. In the Maze prison, officers raided a hut containing UDA/UFF prisoners and found the following: several nail-studded clubs, a chain flail, a home-made sword and masks for an escape attempt. Some of the equipment would have been used for internal ‘discipline’ and others were designed to use in attacks on both fellow Loyalists (UVF/RHC) and on Republicans.

  The 24th was another black day as a UFF sectarian murder in Belfast’s Oldpark area was followed by two retaliatory sectarian murders slightly fur
ther north by the Provisionals. In the first incident, a Loyalist murder gang, having apparently wrongly chosen a house close to their intended victim, shot and killed a factory worker as she briefly baby-sat a neighbour’s children. Pauline Doherty (17), still almost a child herself, was shot half a dozen times inside the house in Oldpark Avenue and died at the scene.

  From the Oldpark Avenue where Miss Doherty was murdered to North Belfast’s Westland Estate is less than a mile or a couple of minutes’ drive away. Close to the Westlands is the protestant-frequented Cavehill Inn (also known as ‘Crangle’s Bar’) and it was to there that a PIRA unit, likely to be acting independently of the seven-man Army Council, sought their revenge. Two masked men, one of whom was armed with an American Armalite, walked into the bar and began spraying rounds indiscriminately. Between 15 and 20 shots were fired and two men were hit and died at the scene, and several more, including the wife of one of the dead men, were wounded. George Rankin (50) and Frederick McGlaughlin (27) were both killed; Mr McGlaughlin’s wife was one of those badly injured. The attack was purely sectarian and coming so soon and so close, geographically to the murder of the young girl can only be viewed as a reprisal. Whether or not the PIRA men were acting independently, without the consent of either the Army Council or North Belfast Brigade, is unknown.

  Shortly afterwards, a Loyalist gang, thought to be UVF, planted an explosive device at the Ardoyne Social Club close to the Crumlin Road. One drinker very bravely picked up the device and carried it outside and placed it close by on some waste ground. It exploded very shortly afterwards and although some minor structural damage was caused, there were no injuries. Further reprisals took place across the North and in the most significant, a UFF murder gang walked into Manor Street in North Belfast. A 15-year old girl, Anne Magee from the Nationalist Cliftonville area was working at a shop there, in the company of another woman. The Loyalists thugs blasted the two women with a shotgun and fatally wounded the young girl; the other female lost an eye and was terribly scarred. Miss Magee died in hospital on 11 October.

  On the 25th, yet another innocent Catholic – Michael Boothman (30) – was sacrificed on the ‘altar’ of sectarianism as the UDA/UFF was responsible for the death of an unemployed and very ill man. The man, who lived close to the Shore Road in North Belfast, was visiting the Wolfe Tone Club in Greencastle, just west of Belfast Lough.1

  A stolen car containing a UFF murder gang was cruising around the nationalist area where the club was located, on the look-out for Catholics. Mr Boothman was walking towards the club when the Loyalist opened fire with at least one automatic weapon. A total of nine shots were fired and the unfortunate Catholic was hit twice and slumped to the ground, mortally wounded. An ambulance was called but sadly he died en-route to hospital.

  On that same day, a young woman was killed and her father was fatally wounded, dying the following month. It would seem that the killing by INLA was a case of misunderstandings and poor Int by the Republican terror group. James Kyle was a Chief Inspector of Banks in Co Antrim and was listed as such in the telephone book; however, INLA Int interpreted ‘Chief Inspector’ as meaning RUC and set out to assassinate him. Masked gunmen burst into the house at Finaghy, Belfast and opened fire, hitting Rosaleen Kyle (19) and her father, the aforementioned James, as they stood in the hallway of their home. The young student died instantly and her father died on 28 October.

  On the following day – the 28th – the Army was forced to admit that they had accidentally shot two civilians who were unconnected with paramilitary activity. They further announced investigations into the shootings at Silverbridge, Co Armagh and Aughnacloy. Both were a result of ‘… fatigue and a lack of internal communications.’ In one of the incidents – at Aughnacloy – a lorry driver was accidentally shot at a VCP and in the other, two men were game hunting and soldiers opened fire in the mistaken belief that they were being fired upon; the thin gossamer thread of fate raising its capricious head again? Loyalists attempted to bomb the Catholic-frequented Brown Trout Inn in Aghadowey, Co Londonderry and left an explosive device in the kitchen and sprinkled petrol everywhere before setting light to it. One customer was burned as he escaped and an 82-year old woman in a wheelchair also suffered burns. The building exploded and was completely gutted. Further south, PIRA bombed a car showroom in Newry, Co Down and a woman was injured in the explosion; the bombers scurried back into the Nationalist Derrybeg Estate.

  On the 29th, a former British soldier who, like others before him had left the Army and returned to Northern Ireland to marry his sweetheart, was shot and fatally wounded by Republicans because of his past associations. Victor Dormer, formerly of the Royal Corps of Transport, had returned to Belfast and had set up home in the Shore Road in the north of the city. He was paying a visit to his wife’s house and must have been seen by dickers who reported him to a local gunman. The man burst into the house and shot Mr Dormer several times; he died two days later in hospital.

  September had ended with 14 people dead and for the first time since the early days of the Troubles, no soldiers died. The RUC lost one officer and 11 civilians were killed; seven Catholics and four Protestants. No Republicans were killed, and two Loyalist paramilitaries died in feuds. Nine of the civilian deaths were in overtly sectarian murders. Republicans were responsible for six deaths and the Loyalists for the other eight.

  1 Theobald Wolfe Tone, or Wolfe Tone, 20 June 1763–19 November 1798, was a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the United Irishmen, and is regarded as the father of Irish Republicanism. Interestingly enough, he was a Presbyterian Protestant.

  22

  October

  Killings would double this month and another child would be killed to add to the toll of the innocent; PIRA began killing soldiers again as well as former soldiers and another prison officer was deliberately targeted. In all, five serving soldiers would die, two of them to ‘causes unknown.’ Marie Drumm, a prominent Republican, was assassinated this month.

  On the first of the month, Victor Dormer (30) a former RCT Driver who had been shot by Republicans 48 hours later, died of his wounds. He lived in Copperfield Street and was wounded close to the New Lodge Road (see previous chapter). On the same day, the IRA targeted an off-duty UDR soldier in Londonderry and badly wounded him. The 45-year old part-time UDR man was walking to work on a building site in the Nationalist Shantallow Estate when masked men shot him in the neck and chest; the married man from the Waterside survived his wounds. Before the day was out, Republican youths hijacked a bus in the Falls Road and forced the driver to take a primed bomb to Andersonstown Citybus Depot opposite Milltown Cemetery and just yards from the RUC station there. The device exploded and wrecked eight buses; there were no injuries.

  On the 3rd, a UFF murder gang called to a house in Londonderry’s Waterside area and shot dead a Catholic man. The motive – given the build-up to the attack – was probably a case of mistaken identity. They telephoned anonymously during mid-evening and then visited the house later the same night. When Kevin Mulhern (33) went to answer a knock at the front door, he was hit by automatic fire, multiple times by shots fired through the door. If this had been purely sectarian, the Loyalists would have not risked announcing their presence and one is led to the conclusion that they mistook Mr Mulhern for a Republican paramilitary. There is no evidence to conclude that he was connected with Sinn Fein or with the IRA or INLA.

  On the following day, the Provisionals attacked Andersonstown RUC station with a 100lb bomb and caused major damage to the building and security compound. The station lost most of its windows and several doors were blown off their hinges; no SF personnel were badly injured in the blast.

  Not long afterwards, on the nearby Turf Lodge Estate, another child was killed, a further innocent victim of the Troubles. An Army foot patrol was progressing in the Norglens on the Turf Lodge Estate in West Belfast, when local youths began throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers. The riot, as they were wont to do
, began to escalate and spiral out of control. On occasion, PIRA gunmen would be sent for, once dickers and rabble-rousers had agitated and orchestrated the mobs and shots, sometimes fatal, would be fired under cover of the chaos. Soldiers opened fire with baton rounds, colloquially referred to as ‘rubber bullets’, and in the mayhem a round struck Brian Stewart (13) in the head. The soldier who fired the fatal round was making an aimed shot at a rioter when he was hit by missiles but the shot was fired at a clumsy angle and tragically struck the boy. The soldier has always maintained that it was accidental and I am inclined to believe that this was a dreadful accident.

  Young rioters in the Ardoyne express their dissatisfaction as soldiers refuse to hand out their chocolate rations. (Mark ‘C’)

  Rubber bullets are rubber or rubber-coated projectiles which can be fired from either standard firearms or dedicated riot guns, and are intended to be a non-lethal alternative to metal projectiles. These types of projectiles are more correctly called baton rounds. Rubber projectiles have largely been replaced by other materials as rubber tends to bounce uncontrollably. Such kinetic impact munitions are meant to cause pain but not serious injury; they are expected to produce contusions, and abrasions. However, they may cause bone fractures, injuries to internal organs, or on some extreme cases, occasions, fatalities. The death of little Brian Stewart was one of these occasions.

  During the evening, the Provisionals bombed the Embassy ballroom in Londonderry and over 300 dancers and customers were forced to evacuate as three bombs exploded on the middle dance floors. On the Antrim Road, in Belfast the same organisation fire-bombed several large residential houses, labelling them ‘capitalist’ homes and citing the attack as retaliation for the Army searching Catholic homes in the area.