On Saturday 15 June 1974, a 22 year-old man, John Pat Cunningham from my parish, really a retarded boy who had the mentality of a 10 year-old child was shot dead by the British army. He was afraid of the soldiers, having been beaten up by them on a previous occasion. The army said they called on him to halt before they fired. There was no independent inquiry into his death. He was shot at 120 yards. The officer said he had his hand in his pocket. If he was a gunman, what use would a pistol be at that distance?
Fr Faul and I documented the cases of Leo Norney aged 17 years gunned down by the Black Watch Regiment 13 September 1975, Majella O’Hare aged 12 years gunned down by the Third Parachute Regiment 14 August 1976 on her way to church, Brian Stewart killed by a rubber bullet October 1976.
By their actions in killing 60 innocent civilians, the British army have violated human rights spelled out in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of the person’ (Article 3 of The Universal Declaration).
‘Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life’ (Article 6 (1) of the Covenant).
Not only were these innocents – people like Patrick McElhone, Pomeroy, County Tyrone, taken out and gunned down in the field in front of his aged parents’ house and Brian Smith gunned down by the paratroopers while he stood chatting to friends in Ardoyne – deprived of their lives, but they were slandered by malicious lies promulgated by dishonourable officers that they were gunmen.
Why can agents of the British government kill people manifestly innocent in very suspicious circumstances and never pay any penalty? Are they really operating under the law if they are never effectively made amenable to law? Are they above the law? Is there a conspiracy to make them immune from effective prosecution?
On 7 January 1976, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced the use of the SAS, the Special Air Service Regiment, in Northern Ireland plainclothes irregular units. What the real motive of the British authorities was can only be guessed at but the general idea seems to have been to terrorise the people by assassination, by highly unorthodox and criminal methods contrary to Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions. Fr Faul and I chronicled the shooting of Peter Cleary taken out from the house of his girlfriend and her relatives and killed in a nearby field. So far in the past year the SAS have gunned down 8 people in cold blood – Colm McNutt and Denis Heaney in Derry, Paul Duffy in Cookstown, John Boyle in County Antrim, Jim Mulvenna, Dennis Brown, William John Mailey and a Protestant, William Hanna, in Belfast. This is known as the ‘kill, don’t question’ security policy and is a massive breach of the rule of law.
This is part of a speech delivered by me to Congressmen in Washington DC, 3 October 1978, and to the Ad Hoc Committee for Human Rights in Northern Ireland, Philadelphia, 7 October 1978.
The Death of Patrick McElhone, 7 August 1974
On 7 August 1974 Patrick McElhone spent the whole day from early morning working with his tractor in a field of his farm at Limehill near Pomeroy, County Tyrone. He was disturbed at his work before five o’ clock by a soldier with blackened face, armed with an SLR rifle and pistol, who asked him his name. There was some cross-difficulty due to the accents of the men. But Patrick gave his name and when asked about some man in the area he said he did not see him. Patrick McElhone himself aroused no suspicion. He was just an ordinary farm labourer going about his ordinary work, dressed in old farm clothes, a pair of wellington boots and old hat. The soldier who had left his section and come into the field was Lance Corporal Roy Alun Jones.
Roy Alun Jones had been ten years a soldier. He had been two and a half years at an infantry junior leaders’ establishment, had gone to Hong Kong with the South Wales Borderers, then served in Kent and in Aden in 1967 where he carried out service in an urban guerrilla war situation. Lance Corporal Jones first came to the north of Ireland in 1969. He served on the Falls Road and about a year later served again there. His final tour in Ireland was a long one of more than eight months.
On 6 August, Major C. B. Jones of the Royal Regiment of Wales, stationed in the Pomeroy area, detailed operations to a platoon to operate there. He had in his possession the information folders from the previous regiment there, the Life Guards. He instructed Sergeant Harrye to search out-buildings and farms and to talk to local people regarding information they might have regarding ‘terrorist’ activity. As guide lines, they were given a briefing by Major Jones on previous ‘terrorist’ activity, a list of names provided by the Life Guards of ‘terrorists’ in the area and of those wanted for criminal charges by the RUC. There was no information at all on the McElhone family. Patrick McElhone was above suspicion. This was the first time the platoon operated in a country area.
At 3.40pm the day before the killing of Patrick McElhone, the operation in the countryside began. Sergeant William Harrye was in charge of the platoon. He briefed the platoon sections. He explained to them the area they were to cover. He told them that within this area they were to search cars and vehicles, do spot checks on people and on out-buildings but not to enter dwelling houses. He had a folder with a history of activities in the area.
On 7 August, Lance Corporal Jones was in a section under the command of Corporal Bridgeman. After he had questioned Patrick McElhone, his section moved to join the other section who had been at another farm. The two sections formed into one platoon and proceeded to the McElhone farm. That was in the late afternoon. Three people lived on the farm, the aged couple, Peter McElhone and his wife Margaret and their son Patrick. Corporal Wood and his section went to the road junction below the farm, while Jones’ section remained in the vicinity of the farm. The NCOs deployed the private soldiers. They themselves, along with one or two of the members, continued to search the farmyard area and the out-buildings. Sergeant Harrye was in command. Corporal Bridgeman was second-in-command. Lance Corporal Jones acted as a senior soldier. Sergeant Harrye asked Mr Peter McElhone’s permission to look around the out-buildings of the farm. He agreed to the request. There was no disagreement with the elderly McElhones.
Mrs Margaret McElhone, mother of Patrick, had lived on the farm since her marriage. She had two sons. Michael was in England. Patrick worked on the farm at home and looked after his old parents. It was a mountain farm. The family was not well off. Patrick’s interest was playing Irish music.
Mrs McElhone remembers the soldiers arriving at the farm with blackened faces. She was in the house with her husband when they came to ask permission to search. At 6.10pm, Patrick came in. He was very hungry after working all day. He was anxious to get his tea and go out again to finish his work. His mother was in the kitchen, the middle room, when he came in. He sat down at the table in a gesture to hurry her up. She put on the kettle to boil while he was waiting. The kettle was just coming to the boil, the kitchen door lay wide open, she looked out. Two soldiers came to the door. A soldier waved his finger at Paddy. He got up at once and went out.
The soldiers closed the door when they got Patrick on the steps. Father and mother were left in the house. Mrs McElhone went down to the lower room. The top part of the window was open. She looked out. She saw the soldiers with Paddy on the road at the gap of the house. Two took him out on the road and began to question him. Paddy was standing in the middle. The soldier on the right was shaking him. She never heard his voice. She thought Paddy must not have answered him. She heard a soldier say that he was not helping the British army very much. With that they ran up the road out of her sight.
Mrs McElhone then came down to the kitchen where her husband was sitting. After Paddy had gone out of her sight she heard very loud talk. She told her husband that he would have to go out and see what they were doing with Paddy. When he was out a few minutes, as she was crossing the kitchen floor, she heard one shot. She was ready to faint. She said, ‘Surely they didn’t shoot Paddy’. She went out on
to the street. She could hear her husband coming screaming and crying down the road. ‘Maggie,’ he cried, ‘poor Paddy is after being shot dead.’
Peter McElhone said that when he went out he saw two soldiers with Paddy. One of them had him by the collar of the coat. He could not understand the soldiers’ accent but he noticed that Paddy didn’t answer them. They made Paddy run and followed him up the road into the hay field. Peter McElhone was not expecting his son to be shot. He did not see the soldier raise his rifle and shoot him. The second soldier turned and ran up past him. The other soldier shoved Paddy into the field. Peter at this time was standing on the road looking down into the hay field. He heard the shot and saw his son falling. He said to the soldier on the road, ‘What did you shoot my son for?’ The soldiers told him they would shoot him too if he didn’t go into the house. They wouldn’t allow him into the field.
According to Lance Corporal Jones, he went to the door on his own initiative to ask McElhone to come out and talk to Sergeant Harrye. He brought him to the sergeant and went off about his business, taking no further notice. According to Harrye, McElhone gave his name as Michael. None of the soldiers heard raised voices. Harrye says he let him go. At that stage Jones came back and asked, ‘Have you not run a “P” check on McElhone?’ Harrye said he hadn’t. He asked Jones to go and fetch McElhone again.
Jones said that McElhone walked up the road away from the house and went into the field. He shouted something like, ‘Will you halt,’ or ‘Halt a minute’. He said that McElhone did not react; he may not have been able to hear him because of the wind. McElhone walked on and entered the field. Jones was catching up on him. When Jones got to the gate, he said he shouted ‘Halt’. He said McElhone looked over his shoulder. He was six to seven yards away. He said McElhone made a break to run. Jones already had his rifle up. He said he fired from a distance of ten to twelve metres, a snap shot, and that it was the only way to stop him.
The weapon used in the shooting of Patrick McElhone was an SLR rifle. It has an effective range of 600 metres. One normally engages an enemy at 300 metres. To discharge at 25 yards would probably be fatal. Patrick McElhone was shot through the right scapula. There was a large exit wound over the heart. There was a very big pool of blood underneath the body. He lay face down on the field dead.
On 24 March 1975, Roy Alun Jones, on a Bill of Indictment 748/ 74 was charged with murder. It was alleged that on 7 August 1974 in the County of Tyrone that he murdered Patrick Anthony McElhone. He pleaded not-guilty to the charge. On 27 March 1977 he was found not guilty.
My account of Patrick McElhone’s death first appeared in Malairt, No. 1, Winter 1977, an Irish language magazine, Queen’s University, Belfast. It also appeared in English in a pamphlet The British Dimension published by Fr Denis Faul and myself in 1980.
A Paratrooper Shot Majella O’Hare, 14 August 1976
The 14 August 1976 was a day of special remembrance for Nurse Alice Campbell of Crossmaglen, for it was on that day she was to be married to Brian Reavey of Whitecross. Alas Brian Reavey and his two brothers John Martin and Anthony were assassinated in January 1976. On the fourteenth morning of August 1976 Séamus Reavey, Brian’s brother, collected her from her work at Daisy Hill Hospital, Newry, at 9am. They bought a wreath and went to pick up the father, James Reavey, and little Colleen his eight-year old daughter. They cut roses from the garden at the old Reavey home at Greyhilla, Whitecross, where Brian was assassinated. They arrived at Ballymoyer graveyard about 11am. Séamus noticed a group of soldiers in the hay-cut field beside the graveyard. By the time they were half-way down the path of the cemetery, the same soldiers had entered at the bottom left of the cemetery and met them on the path. The paratrooper in charge told Séamus Reavey that he wanted to see him when he was finished.
Artistic impression of the shooting.
They delayed in the graveyard some twenty minutes, thinking the soldiers might move off and leave them alone. But when they came out and Séamus unlocked the car door for the others, the paratrooper called Séamus in the foulest of language. This was witnessed by Hugh Kennon who had been stopped on the road by the British army. He remarked on it. The paratrooper kept Séamus about half-an-hour at a telegraph pole some thirty yards above the graveyard. There he put Séamus through deep agony, insulting the memory of his dead brothers. To the stranger this inhumanity is incredible but it is a common attitude of the British army to the oppressed Catholic community.
While they were talking, a group of children went by. Séamus Reavey says they looked happy. They were a group of ten children who were heading for their sodality Confessions at Ballymoyer chapel, some five hundred yards down the road. Mrs Murphy of the Orlitt Cottages, from where most of the children had come, had warned the bigger ones before they left not to pass any remarks to the British army. The four soldiers at the gate of the cut hay field, about forty-five yards below the graveyard gate, shouted some taunts, to which the children hardly replied. One of these soldiers lay on his stomach manning a machine-gun. This was the gun that killed Majella O’Hare.
At this stage two little girls aged eight and seven were some distance in front. They were followed by a boy of thirteen and the girl of sixteen. The rest of the eight children were stretched across the road, two of these lagging a little behind. Majella was second from the left-hand side of the road. She had the youngest child (three and a half) by the hand. There was a loud bang and Majella fell.
All the civilian witnesses are agreed that there was one single bang. They describe it as ‘loud’, like an ‘explosion’. Mrs Teresa Murphy says, ‘I heard the shot, a bang with a tail on it, not a sharp clear sound, but very loud.’ This is an accurate description of a firing from a machine-gun which can fire 800 rounds a minute. The lightest touch will discharge 3 shots. And this is what happened. The paratrooper discharged 3 shots. Two of the bullets penetrated Majella’s back and came out through her stomach. The bullets ploughed up the heap of gravel in front of the trailer which was parked on the road verge.
On the day before, Friday, Majella and some friends had spent the day at Gyles Quay, a favourite seaside spot near Dundalk. She intended going back to spend the weekend there with neighbours. So she refused the offer of a day’s shopping with her mother and her brother Michael in Newry. She had waved goodbye to them at 10.30 that morning. Before she set out for Confessions, she left a note for her mother saying that she would be back from Gyles Quay on Sunday night.
James O’Hare, Majella’s father, had gone to do some work at St Malachy’s school which is beside the chapel at 10.00am. There were no soldiers then. But some time later six soldiers came out of the Rectory Lane opposite the chapel gate. They went up the road towards the graveyard. He had seen the Reaveys up the road and was worried for them when they were stopped by the soldiers coming out of the graveyard. He was keeping an eye out as he worked on the grass verge in front of St Malachy’s school. He saw the children coming down the road to Confessions. Below the height he was able to make them out and he recognised Majella among them.
Then he heard a bang and saw a child fall. He ran towards them and found the little girl dying. Majella was the darling of her parents’ heart. She had been born some years after the other members of the family, Michael, Marie and Margarita. She was the love of their home. While comforting the child he was badly abused by some of the paratroopers.
When the gun was fired there was a lot of confusion on the road. The children were screaming. The soldiers were shouting. One of the paratroopers ran down the road. Another soldier, a marine, came out of the bushes near where the child lay. The Reaveys and Alice Campbell took cover with the rest. Una Murphy, the sixteen-year old girl who was the eldest in the party of girls described the incident, ‘When we crossed the brow of the hill, the soldiers were lying at the gate of Hugh Kennon’s field on our right, three maybe four, two on their stomachs, two sitting back. They had guns – one was black with a thick barrel, then thin. We did not speak but they spoke to us. One
asked were we going for Communion – to visit our God. This man had very brown eyes and black hair. He was sweating a lot. We ignored them and then they said, “You don’t speak to the likes of us”. We pretended to be speaking among ourselves.
‘We walked down the road. Then there was this big bang. Stones started to fly up from up in front of us. The young ones started to scream and Majella gave a scream and fell. She fell on her stomach. She was wearing a nylon blouse and skirt. A hole appeared in the blouse on the right hand side of her back. We all stood there looking at her. We did not know what to do. A paratrooper came running down the hill and Jim O’Hare came running up the road from the Chapel. He knelt on the road and put his arms around her. The soldiers told Jim to take his fucking hands off her. Jim said, “This is the only wee girl I have left”. The soldier said, “I don’t give a fuck” and he told us to get up the road.’
When there was no more firing, the Reaveys finally persuaded the soldiers to let Alice Campbell, a nurse, attend Majella. She did all she could for her. Fr Peter Hughes had arrived just before twelve for Confessions. When he heard from a soldier that a little girl was shot, he rushed to spiritually attend her.
Alice Campbell describes the rough treatment towards Majella in throwing her into the helicopter with her legs dangling out, and indeed she was almost falling out when the helicopter lifted. Here is part of Alice Cambell’s statement:
‘As Séamus was putting his keys into the door of the car, a paratrooper roared at him, “Come up here Séamus Reavey or I’ll knock the fucking head off you.” Séamus said, “No need to shout, I’m not going away.” I put Colleen into the back and I got into the passenger seat. Séamus went over to the paratrooper who was standing at the pole at the right hand side of the road in the direction of the chapel. I was crying in the front of the car after coming up from the grave. The car was pointing away from the chapel. Mr Reavey was standing at the passenger door.
State Violence Page 17