The statement was signed Seamus Clancy, the customary codename for the Army Council spokesman. Alongside was a portrait of Neave, inset in a picture of the devastated car on the Commons ramp. That night in the IRSP’s headquarters in the Falls Road, Belfast, there was an impromptu party. As the drink flowed, Ronnie Bunting exulted: ‘We did it!’ In their euphoria, INLA gave away more details of their organisation. A spokesman told the Irish Times that ninety of their number were in gaol, but in Belfast they had not lost a man on operations for over a year. He claimed responsibility for a number of bank robberies in Belfast and sniping at soldiers with Kalashnikov rifles. The organisation also gave intensive anti-lectures ‘so they can stand up to what goes on in Castlereagh’.
An Phoblacht, the Provisional Sinn Fein newspaper, reported the murder with malicious glee, under the headline ‘Election Campaign Gets Off To A Bang’. The front-page story described Neave as ‘extremely right wing’ and an advocate of immigrant papers for Irish people living or working in Britain. It heaped scorn on British leaders and the media for condemning the assassination, arguing: ‘The hypocrites don’t appreciate the charity between a discriminate political execution of an oppressor; was it as “cowardly” as dropping from half a mile up in the air thousands of tons of bombs on defenceless citizens?’ This reference to British wartime bombing of Germany was followed by the revelation of a remarkable personal story. ‘The eccentricity of the Neaves,’ said An Phoblacht, ‘was in evidence during a Radio 4 interview on Good Morning Ulster. His sister, who claimed to be clairvoyant, said she knew of his impending, violent death. Asked why she didn’t inform him, she replied she didn’t want to upset him and his wife as well!!!’ (sic).
Reaction closer to home was one of shock and grief. The Queen sent her condolences to Neave’s widow, praising his record in war and peace. Margaret Thatcher heard of the outrage from her aide Derek Howe as she was greeting well-wishers at a fund-raising event organised by Motability in her north London constituency of New Barnet. Initially, there were no details. Her first thought was, ‘Please God, don’t let it be Airey.’ She went on to the BBC studios in Portland Place to record a Party Election Broadcast where her worst fears were confirmed. One of the producers took her into a private room: he told her it was Airey Neave and that he was critically injured. It was very unlikely that he would survive – indeed he might be dead already. ‘There was no way I could bring myself to broadcast after that,’ she recollected later. Cancelling her planned riposte to James Callaghan, she telephoned the Prime Minister to explain and then drove to the Commons. ‘I felt only stunned,’ she remembered. ‘The full grief would come later. With it also came the anger that this man – my friend – who had shrugged off so much danger in his life should be murdered by someone worse than a common criminal.’6
In her office, Thatcher sat down to compose a tribute to the man who had made her leader. She was, according to her biographer Patrick Cosgrave, ‘utterly shattered and yet composed’, completing a draft in twenty minutes. Her speechwriter, the playwright Ronnie Millar, took out only one word, ‘hero’, arguing that a soldier would not like to be called that. Her testimony scarcely did justice to the scale of Neave’s contribution. ‘The assassination of Airey Neave has left his friends and colleagues as stunned and grief-stricken as his family. He was one of freedom’s warriors. Courageous, staunch, true, he lived for his beliefs and now he has died for them. A gentle, brave and unassuming man, he was a loyal and very dear friend. He had a wonderful family who supported him in everything he did. Now, there is a gap in our lives which cannot be filled.’ In private, she was more positive. ‘We must win now,’ she insisted. ‘We’ll win for Airey.’ Thatcher also urged Neave’s widow Diana to keep up his political work, and she surprised friends by turning up at Central Office, volunteering for even the most menial tasks during the election campaign.
Parliament met again on 2 April, when tributes were paid by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Thatcher said feelingly: ‘In peacetime Airey was a very gentle and unassuming man, but absolutely tenacious in pursuit of everything he believed in and strong to root out injustice. In wartime his valour and courage were unsurpassed. It was partly because of men like him that we meet to assemble in this place in free debate.’
The Speaker also announced his approval of recommendations by the Joint Committee on Security. Westminster Hall, the thousand-year-old edifice that had seen royal trials and the lying-in-state of kings and queens, was closed to the public. Public access was restricted to a single point, the St Stephen’s entrance opposite the Abbey, and remains so more than thirty years later. Only MPs in their cars or cabs could use other gates. More security instructions for MPs would follow. The Home Secretary Merlyn Rees reminded MPs of reports that the IRA was planning an offensive campaign in mainland Britain to coincide with the general election, and announced new measures to protect ‘those who may be particularly at risk’. He added that Neave had been in regular contact with the police over his own safety and had been satisfied with the steps they were taking for his protection. Rees further promised MPs that the General Election campaign would not be ‘distorted’ by terrorist threats.
The security authorities were closing Parliament’s stable door rather belatedly. For the price of £5.12, the cost of the explosives smuggled into England via a third party in a chocolate box, the Tories had lost their Ulster strategist and Margaret Thatcher the man who had given her power and to whom she had given her trust. The assassination also left the Conservatives without a policy on Northern Ireland. Neave had kept his cards pretty close to his chest. Insofar as he had a political strategy, it was a twin-track approach continuing direct rule, with some devolution of powers to local councils, backed up by a ruthless suppression of the IRA. Thatcher supported his ideas, but without him there to put them into practice a political vacuum ensued. After the Tories’ success in the May election, Humphrey Atkins, a genial ex-naval officer, was appointed Northern Ireland Secretary. His first act, on 2 July, was to ban the INLA.
17
Pursuit and Retribution
How could it have happened? How could a group of ruthless terrorists assassinate a leading political figure in the holy of holies, the Palace of Westminster? And would not there be the biggest manhunt in the history of policing to bring the perpetrators to book? James Callaghan promised within hours that ‘no effort would be spared to bring his murderers to justice and to rid the United Kingdom of the scourge of terrorism’. The entire resources of Scotland Yard and the security services were mobilised to capture the gang and it was confidently expected that they would be swiftly arraigned.
Yet, in April 1987, more than eight years after the atrocity, Home Office minister Douglas Hogg told MPs: ‘I very much regret to say that nobody has been charged with this matter, and I think it would be misleading for me to say that a charge is likely now, or in the immediate future.’ Today, twenty-three years after the murder, not one of the INLA executioners has ever been brought before a court; nor is it now likely that they could be. Events in Northern Ireland have moved on so far that a prosecution would not only be legally difficult but politically divisive. Republican and loyalist terrorists found guilty of crimes even more heinous have been released as part of the peace process designed to end Ulster’s nightmare.
At the time, however, Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad were sure they would get their men. The hue and cry began before Neave’s body was cold. Police flooded the area with enquiries, and initially it seemed that they would be successful. On 5 April, Scotland Yard said it was ready to publish a photofit of a suspect, based on interviews with people who were near the Commons at the time of the blast and close to Neave’s flat in Westminster Gardens. The man was described by journalist Deric Henderson as ‘a top republican bomber and master of disguise’ who had been on the run in Ireland since being freed from his cell in a Dublin gaol by the IRA in 1976. He was in prison for running an IRA arms factory and had once worked
as an electrician and later as a lab technician. The features of the Dublin escaper figured prominently in the photofit and ‘according to police sources, he is the chief suspect’. Sources in the Gardai, the Irish police, who were cooperating closely in the enquiry, believed he had fled from England, having made the bomb in such a way as to leave him plenty of time to get out.1 This wealth of substantial detail indicates that someone in the Gardai was talking off the record, while Scotland Yard played a more discreet game.
INLA’s ‘chief of staff’ also appeared in semi-public briefly to tell the Dublin magazine Magill that Neave’s murder was a one-off terror attack on British politicians. ‘We felt it was time the Westminster armchair terrorists suffered directly the consequences of their policies,’ he said, adding that it was INLA’s intention to ‘mark time on the British front’. There would be no more attacks on politicians before the 3 May General Election. No such inhibitions held back the Provisionals, who gave notice of a campaign to ‘demonstrate capability’ and remind politicians that Ireland was still a political issue. The IRA also claimed that they, too, had been stalking Neave and that INLA had beaten them to the target by a matter of hours. They further admitted killing Sir Christopher Sykes, British ambassador to The Hague, and a Belgian banker, shot dead in mistake for Sir John Killick, British ambassador to NATO.
On 10 April, Commander Peter Duffy, head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, released mugshots of four men being sought for interview. They were artists’ impressions, rather than photofit pictures. ‘I think it likely that at least two of these men could have been involved,’ Duffy told a press conference. The first man, aged around twenty-five, with long, unkempt hair and a pitiless face, had been seen in the Westminster Arms pub near to the Neave family flat, on the night before the murder. He was thought to be a stranger to the area and his actions had aroused suspicions. The second man was much older, aged between thirty-eight and forty-two. He was also long-haired and was pictured hunched into a high collar. He had been seen early on the day of the killing, in a service road beside the flats. The other two men were aged about twenty-four and twenty-nine. One had short, curly hair and a baby face; the other had long hair, eyes a little too far apart and thin lips. It would have been difficult to draw four more villainous-looking faces. Commander Duffy said it was possible that all four men had Irish accents. One of them could have been the bomber, or there could have been more than one. He appealed to hotel and guest-house owners in Victoria and Pimlico to rack their brains.
The evidence was not much to go on. It transpired that the first man had drawn attention to himself by drinking Guinness mixed with Coke in the Westminster Arms. The landlord remembered: ‘We simply don’t get many strangers here in the evening. This is mainly a lunchtime pub. People stand out.’ The two men seen in the slip road had talked in Irish accents, according to a witness, but their conversation was innocuous. The last suspect had been seen on the slip road at 6.45 on the morning of the murder, and was thought to have driven away in a yellow Fiat, which may have been hired.
However, after detailed forensic tests, the Anti-Terrorist Squad were able to be more specific about the bomb. Commander Duffy said the explosive charge weighed about 1 lb. and it was of ‘military’ rather than industrial origin. It was a professional device and could not have been constructed in a backstreet workshop. Police speculated that it might have been supplied to INLA (now accepted as the perpetrators) by an agency or a country with access to such technology. Scotland Yard accurately identified it as a mercury-tilt bomb of the kind used to kill Robert McAnally just over three weeks earlier. Duffy said it was probably planted the night before Neave’s death, when his car was parked in the service road. It would have gone off when the car went up a ramp or when the brakes were applied. These two statements do not tally. If the bomb had been planted the night before, and was susceptible to braking, it would have gone off before Neave got to the House. Even though it is a short distance, traffic is often heavy and it would have been impossible to drive to Westminster and then down an incline into the Commons car park without using the brakes.
On 14 April, the Daily Mail announced that the Neave hunt was closing in on a marked man. He was the familiar ‘master of disguise’, with one mark he could not hide – he was missing the little finger on his left hand, shot off in a gun battle with British troops in 1972. He had been identified by callers to Belfast police who claimed to have recognised him from the artist’s impression. The suspect was from the republican stronghold of Ballymurphy, and he was wanted for questioning about bank raids, shootings and bombings north and south of the border.
Ten days later, the Yard swooped on a number of addresses in north London and arrested three men and a woman, all Irish, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. They were taken to the top-security Paddington Green police station, the one normally used for interrogating terrorist suspects. By the evening, one man and the woman, together with another woman who had been arrested several days previously, were released without charge. By the next day, only one man remained in custody and a Scotland Yard spokesman said, somewhat sheepishly: ‘It must be remembered that people will be detained from time to time in connection with this case.’ An unnamed anti-terrorist detective was also quoted as saying: ‘We believe we know how the killers got in and out of the country. What we now need to know is who they are.’ The outcome of such intensive detective work still did not add up to very much. The last suspect, James Scanlon, a twenty-six-year-old labourer described as a founder member of the IRSP, was not released but served with an exclusion order from Britain. The London-based IRSP support group protested that it was subjected to ‘systematic harassment and surveillance’ by the police. Such close scrutiny would have been normal, despite INLA and the IRSP being thoroughly infiltrated by the RUC Special Branch and the security services, usually MI5. Seven of the support group’s members had already been questioned, and four – the Paddington Green four – detained under the terrorism law. It looked very much a case of ‘round up the usual suspects’. Police also detained a twenty-one-year-old man, Billy Dunlop, at Heathrow on his way from Ireland to a job in Germany, but he turned out to have no connections with the IRSP.
The search was going cold and getting more bizarre. In mid-May, Paris Match published an interview with two hooded men claiming to be the killers with connections with various liberation movements including the Palestinians This somehow gave rise to charges that Neave’s assassins had been trained by the Russians in South Yemen, accusations that were promptly denied. In fact, the two ‘men’ were fakes: one was actually a woman and the other a French journalist persuaded to take part in the macabre mock-up.
In June the grim manhunt briefly took second place to more welcome news when Diana Neave was created a life peer in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List on the personal recommendation of the new Prime Minister. As a tribute to her husband and his constituency, she took the title of Lady Airey Neave of Abingdon. She also disclosed that friends had urged her to take her husband’s place as MP for the constituency. ‘I did think about it very seriously,’ she said. ‘I think if there had been time to consider it more deeply I might have done so. I know Airey would have liked it. I realise now that would really have been too much to cope with so quickly.’2 Lady Airey took up public life vigorously. The causes that he espoused, she also pursued, serving on the North Atlantic Assembly and the Lords’ Select Committee on the European Communities.
The speculation about her husband’s killers continued, with the Sun repeating the false Paris Match claims in a splash story on 18 June. It was not until July that further leads turned up, unexpectedly in a television programme. BBC’s Tonight, casting round for a story on Northern Ireland, was offered an interview with an INLA representative. A team headed by experienced reporter David Lomax went to Dublin, where a man calling himself Dr Gray gave telephone instructions to go to a series of hotels. The trail eventually led to a room on the outskirts of the city booked in Lomax’s name. T
here, he met two men wearing wigs, dark glasses and false moustaches. They also wore surgical gloves and had ‘strange bulges’ in the pockets of their anoraks.
Outlandish as their garb might have appeared, it was clear in the interview that followed that they represented themselves as the real thing. Their authenticity is debatable. Asked by Lomax why they had murdered Neave, one of the men replied: ‘Well, I murdered Airey Neave because he was a militarist. He was in fact Margaret Thatcher’s principal adviser on security. He was an advocate of order and increased repression against a nationalist people in the six counties. And we find it a surprising question why people wonder why we executed Neave. The same questions weren’t asked when ordinary British soldiers are shot.
‘Neave was to be the head of the military apparatus in the north. We had done serious intelligence work on Roy Mason and obviously during the period of the Labour government, Roy Mason was also a prime target for the Irish National Liberation Army. We took the decision what to do, to switch our emphasis to Mr Neave when it became obvious that there would be a Tory government.’
Lomax asked how the act was carried out. The INLA man said it was an active cell of INLA, but would not say whether it was based in Britain or Ireland. ‘That is a matter of security for us and it’s up to the British intelligence agencies to puzzle out how, and who it was carried out by, for themselves.’ In response to repeated questions, he insisted that the cell had breached security at Westminster, but would not say how. What, Lomax asked, had the murder achieved except widespread revulsion in Britain and a determination that force would not triumph over democracy? ‘We didn’t see any examples of that revulsion except from the ruling interests in Britain. We didn’t see thousands of British workers marching in the streets mourning for Mr Neave, we saw no obvious reaction against Neave’s assassination. Neave had a record of consistent anti-working-class attitudes towards the British people themselves,’ said the INLA man.
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