The next victim was Miriam Daly. No longer active in the IRSP, she nonetheless remained an ardent republican who campaigned against conditions in the Maze. She had long been known to the security authorities, having worked with the Irish community in Camden Town in north London in the sixties, before returning to Belfast when the civil rights movement took off. Initially attracted to the politics of John Hume’s SDLP, she soon turned to militant republicanism. She was ‘a new breed of radical, ideally suited to INLA/IRSP politics. Like [Seamus] Costello, she dreamed of uniting all “anti-imperialist groupings in Ireland and was also prepared to sanction the use of terror”.’17 On the afternoon of 26 June, Mrs Daly went to the baker near her home in Andersonstown Road, Belfast, and bought a teatime treat for her ten-year-old adopted twins, Marie and Donal. Coming home from school later that afternoon, Marie found her mother, bound hand and foot, lying face down in a pool of blood. Nearby lay a bloodstained cushion with bullet holes. It had been used to deaden the sound of the six bullets fired into her head from a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. The telephone lines had also been cut. It was a ‘professional’ job. A scene of crime officer commented: ‘It seemed to me that an execution had taken place.’ Her killers had evidently entered the house by the front door, evading the constant army and RUC patrols in this strongly Catholic area of Belfast. It was later suggested that the killers’ original target was Jim Daly, but they tired of waiting for him to come home and settled on his wife as a high-profile ‘political hit’. Nobody was ever charged with Mrs Daly’s murder, though it was subsequently claimed by the UDA, whose ‘strong connection’ with British intelligence has been amply documented by Father Murray and others.
The third victim was Ronnie Bunting. A former internee hated by Protestant paramilitaries, he was arrested for the last time on 8 August 1980 and interrogated in Castlereagh for several days. During this inquisition, Bunting alleged that detectives said they could ‘arrange’ for him to get three slugs in the head. In the early hours of 15 October, Bunting was at home in bed with his wife Suzanne. Fellow IRSP member Noel Lyttle was asleep in the front bedroom along with the Buntings’ infant son Ronan. They were woken up by the sound of banging downstairs as masked men with sledgehammers broke down the front door of their home in Downfine Gardens, a quiet cul-de-sac in Andersonstown. Bunting and his wife leaped out of bed but the gunmen forced the door open and began firing. ‘They wore those green, ribbed pullovers with suede patches on the shoulders and ski-type masks which covered their whole faces with only holes for the eyes,’ Suzanne Bunting later recollected. ‘They knew which room to find Ronnie and Noel in. They were cool and calm – like animals, without fear – they had no smell of fear.’ Bunting fell dead on the landing. His wife was wounded in the shoulder and under her right arm, and as he left one of the gunmen shot her in the mouth. It was a miracle that she survived. Noel Lyttle had also been shot and lay dying on the bed, the baby screaming in his cot alongside.
No mainstream paramilitary organisation ever claimed responsibility for the double murder. And, unusually, the killers’ car was never found. The obscure Protestant Task Force, heard of only once in 1974 and professing to be made up of former British soldiers, said it carried out the killings. But most expert opinion agrees that responsibility lies with the UDA, which used the same squad that murdered Miriam Daly and acted on ‘intelligence provided’. Suzanne Bunting told the Irish News that RUC detectives suspected a loyalist gang. ‘I told the police that I believe and know, with all my heart, that it was the SAS. The attack was too well planned by men who were cool and calm and knew what they were doing.’ The layout of the house, which had five bedrooms, was well known to the police, who had raided it often. And Suzanne Bunting remembered that when Neave had been assassinated the previous year, Ronnie had warned, in a pointed reference to Margaret Thatcher, ‘She’ll want her pound of flesh.’
The attempt on Bernadette McAliskey’s life followed three months later. In the early morning of 16 January 1981, three gunmen drove up to the remote family home in Derryloughan, Coalisland, and smashed in the front door with sledgehammers. Mrs McAliskey and her husband Michael were preparing breakfast for their three children. Mr McAliskey was shot four times as the would-be killers forced their way in and pursued his wife into the bedroom, where they shot her eight times. The gang leader, Andrew Watson, a twenty-five-year-old ex-member of the UDR and son of a former H-Block prison officer, stopped shooting only when the magazine of his 9 mm Browning pistol was exhausted. It seemed inconceivable that the McAliskeys could survive. However, unbeknown to the family, an undercover team of paratroopers was dug in around the house. They made no attempt to halt the break-in but arrested the gunmen as they left. For twenty minutes the McAliskeys were close to death. Their phone line had been cut by the would-be assassins, and the paratroopers – believed to be SAS – claimed that their radios were not working, before leaving the scene. Accounts of their conduct vary, one version suggesting that a member of the SAS team gave Mrs McAliskey medical help before the arrival of soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stationed locally. Their prompt action saved the lives of the McAliskeys. The three gunmen were sentenced to terms ranging from fifteen years to life but the episode left many unanswered questions. Why did the undercover soldiers not act to avert the murder bid? Were they in situ because the security services had been tipped off that the McAliskeys were a target that day? It was later established that the murder attempt had been planned in a room above a pub in Lisburn owned by John McMichael, the UDA commander with links to the security services.
A clear pattern emerges from these assassinations and attempted killings. The murderers were skilled, perhaps professional killers, equipped with sophisticated intelligence knowledge about their quarry. They knew the layout of the houses they attacked, and the movements of their victims. They were not random sectarian shootings on the streets of Belfast. What motive links these events? It is unlikely to be proven – or, for that matter, disproved – in the lifetime of the combatants in Ireland’s dirty war, but it is at least possible that, baulked of their main prize – Airey Neave’s killers – the security services exacted retribution in the way they knew best. By killing the nearest thing the IRSP had to an intellectual leadership, and eliminating the important figure of Ronnie Bunting, the secret state badly disabled one dangerous arm of republicanism. And it is true that neither INLA nor the IRSP was ever the same again. The killings seriously weakened their ability to fight militarily or politically.
The intention was not lost on those who survived the whirlwind of death and it reverberates today. Paul Lyttle, spokesman for the IRSP, is unequivocal. ‘We believe that Mrs Thatcher set about revenge for Airey Neave,’ he insisted in an interview. ‘They were very close friends. Four of the political leadership were assassinated, and there was an attempted assassination on Bernadette McAliskey. That type of operation was almost unheard of in Ireland prior to that. It signalled a change of strategy. These were political assassinations to make this organisation leaderless. We have been hit harder than any other republican organisation by the British. There has always been a vicious intent to crush this organisation. It has taken us ten years, even more, to sort out our act.’
The IRSP want an independent public enquiry, on the lines of the Savile Enquiry investigating the events on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry. ‘We wish to see these executions investigated,’ said Lyttle. ‘We believe they were political assassinations.’18
His call was aired earlier by the independent intelligence magazine Lobster, which in 1985 pieced together the story of the secret state’s retribution on the INLA and its supporters. Its investigation concluded that there was not enough evidence to sustain the idea that Thatcher called for a ‘blood revenge’. ‘Only an official enquiry could achieve that and we are not going to get one. In the end it comes down to our perception of Thatcher, sections of the British state and the intelligence empire. The question is: does the shoe fit?
INLA s
ources remain convinced that the killings were carried out by what they like to term ‘the securocrats’: the British intelligence and special armed services. ‘We demand that there should be an enquiry,’ insisted my masked informant. Citing the more recent deaths of lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, he added: ‘It is still [British] policy as far as we can see.’
18
The End of the Trail
The murder of Ian Gow by the Provisional IRA in July 1990 bore great similarities to the assassination of Airey Neave. Once again, a bomb was placed beneath an unsuspecting politician’s car which exploded, killing him instantly. Gow had been very much Airey Neave Mark Two: a fervent supporter of Margaret Thatcher in her bid to unseat Edward Heath and an uncompromising Unionist who resigned ministerial office at the Treasury in protest at Thatcher’s signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in late 1985. He felt it gave the Irish government undue influence in the affairs of the province. Gow continued to fight the Agreement, taking the campaign outside parliament with the creation, with his ally (and Neave’s close colleague) Sir John Biggs-Davidson, of the organisation Friends of the Union. This body continued to propagate Neave’s policies for a decade after his death.
Gow’s murder was ‘as brutal, and as shameful’ as that of Airey Neave, said their mutual friend Patrick Cosgrave. Gow shared Neave’s unyielding nature and would never give up in any fight he judged necessary. ‘The Prime Minister was right when she said even if Ian knew what was going to happen to him he would never have counselled appeasement. He would want the fight against terrorists to continue unabated, and that would be his final testament,’ Cosgrave wrote. ‘Ian Gow would never give in.’1 Gow’s death also robbed Thatcher of the man she trusted most after Neave. Alan Clark confided to his diary on 30 July: ‘Now they’ve got her two closest confidants, Airey and Ian.’ After the second blow, Thatcher’s grip on reality diminished. Republican terrorism may not have succeeded in killing her but it robbed her of the two people on whom she had most relied.
Another factor united the two in death: their killers were never found. There is something deeply suspicious about the failure of the authorities to track down the assassins. The security forces had informers working within the republican terror machine. INLA, in particular, was riddled with moles. Colin Wallace says: ‘It was strange that INLA did it. Of all the terrorist groups, it was the one most heavily infiltrated. It was very small. Virtually everything they did was known about by Special Branch.’ So why was there no arrest? ‘There were very few terrorist incidents that we didn’t know who did it. Certainly, by 1973 every morning we used to get intelligence over the last twenty-four hours. It would list every single incident, and most days you would have the names of the organisations and of the people. Sometimes forty-eight hours would elapse, but within a very short time you knew who was responsible. We had literally the whole of the IRA listed. In Belfast we had them all on one board. From an intelligence point of view, they were all informing on each other. The Provos gave information to people not knowing they were part of the British system.’2
Wallace finds it odd that nobody was detained, bearing in mind the significance of Neave, who was not just a British politician but very close to Thatcher. ‘It could be argued that because INLA was so heavily infiltrated, the danger of having someone charged may well have brought about a confusion that the system did not want’ (author’s italics). Wallace raised the prospect of embarrassment for the security services, based on the fact that the identity of the loyalists who bombed Dublin in May 1974 and who killed the Miami Showband in July 1975 was ‘extremely well known’ to the authorities. Four of the key players were working for Special Branch and the intelligence services, he claims. ‘They were never touched, and the great danger was that if they had been arrested and turned Queen’s evidence, the security authorities would probably have found it very embarrassing.’
Wallace insists: ‘I have no doubt that they know who did it. Why they didn’t actually proceed with something I just don’t know. That is the biggest question of the whole lot. There is no doubt that they – the security authorities – knew. The amount of detail known from 1974 onwards was enormous. That’s why I don’t accept that we didn’t have chapter and verse about who did it and how it was done. I don’t think it is credible. I think we do know. But for some reason – it may have been a very good reason – the system didn’t move against them. It had to be a very powerful reason, because to say we have arrested and charged these people would have been a tremendous boost to the government at that time. Anybody who achieved that result, their career would have been made.’3
But no arrests were made. Nobody was charged. IRSP activists believe that the British government’s thirst for revenge was slaked by the murders of the IRSP’s top people. Wallace concedes that the security services could make a point by taking out prominent people in the organisation, but argues that in terms of psychological impact it would have been better for the British public to know who planted the bomb, and see them brought to justice. The official file is now closed.
Attempts to open the file since the government’s announcement that no one would be prosecuted for Neave’s murder have met with stiff official opposition. On 7 July 1987, Ken Livingstone, the new Labour MP for Brent East, broke with parliamentary tradition to make a controversial maiden speech in the Commons. He accused the Thatcher government of being ‘ideal recruiting agents for the IRA’ and demanded a united Ireland. He denounced the RUC’s ‘shoot to kill’ policy and attacked the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Having thus established his political credentials, and speaking from the safe vantage point of parliamentary privilege, Livingstone unleashed a tirade on the activities of the security services, arraigning the British government for covering up ‘acts of treason by MI5 officers’ of which ministers were the beneficiaries. He accused the security services of working with the UDF in at least one cross-border raid to assassinate an active member of the IRA. He accused the SAS of acting in cahoots with loyalist terrorists in the killing of the Miami Showband, in order to end a ceasefire negotiated between the IRA and a Labour government because the secret state had rival objectives.
Finally, he turned to Neave. ‘It looks increasingly likely that Mr Airey Neave was in touch with some of these officers, and it is certainly the case that Airey Neave delivered a speech that had been—’ Here, he was interrupted by a furious Ian Gow, who described the references to Neave as ‘deeply offensive’. Maiden speeches are traditionally heard in silence, and the Deputy Speaker, Harold Walker, ruled that Livingstone’s remarks were in order. Livingstone continued: ‘If Conservative Members are shocked that allegations are made about Airey Neave, they should join with me in demanding a full investigation so that Airey Neave’s name can be cleared.’ Needless to say, no investigation took place.
What, as Wallace hints, has the establishment got to hide? What is the ‘powerful reason’ for more than two decades of official silence? It cannot be argued that the trail had gone completely cold. The author was able to make contact with the killers, through intermediaries, with relative ease. There are those in the know still living and working for the republican cause in Ireland. If it is possible to gain, as the author did, fresh insight into the methodology and identity of Airey Neave’s assassins, then why have the authorities refused to do so? It looks suspiciously like a cover-up. Colin Wallace believes this to be so. Neave’s daughter Marigold is similarly convinced. The inescapable conclusion is that, for reasons of their own, the security services and their political allies do not want the full story of Airey Neave and his co-conspirators ever to become public knowledge. Even at this distance, it would be too damaging. Perhaps the truth about the retributive killings is the cause. More likely, the involvement of the security services in the plot against Wilson, and their continuing links with people like Neave for at least two years into the Thatcher government, constitute the real reason for closing down the key period of post-war history.
Followin
g approaches in Belfast by the author over a protracted period, contact was made with the IRSP and the INLA which shows that the killers are alive and kicking, but their identity will never be voluntarily surrendered. There has been no amnesty for their crime.
It became clear from the authentic narrative of events from sources in the INLA to the author in March 2001 that Neave had been under close but discreet observation for some time before his assassination. A source described how ‘a sympathiser, a professional man’, not a member of an Irish republican terrorist cell, but an Englishman ‘doing it out of his own resources’, had stalked Neave for weeks in early 1979. The INLA, which had broken away from the Official IRA in late 1974, shortly before Neave took the Ulster portfolio, claimed that its operation was a mixture of preparation and opportunism. ‘Neave was chosen because of his public pronouncements,’ said the masked INLA operative involved in the assassination.4 ‘Our source perceived him as a very, very dangerous person who would inflict hurt and pain on the nationalists of the six counties. He would carry out what he threatened to do. He was deemed to be an ideal target for the INLA to assassinate, to establish itself as a force to be reckoned with.’ The paramilitaries boasted that they ‘knew everything about him’: his pattern of behaviour, how often he went down to his constituency in Abingdon, his social life and his family background. This intelligence had come into their hands soon after the organisation had received considerable shipments of Soviet bloc guns and explosives from Middle East sources.
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