INLA simply describes the killing as ‘an opportunity that came up’, but more than events conspired to bring about the death. The INLA had a strategy of recruiting one-off ‘volunteers’. They were often middle-class professional men, more mature than the run-of-the-mill foot soldiers who had been active in the Troubles since their early teens. They would not engage in street protests or risky operations, and therefore they would not come to the notice of the security forces. ‘The tradition in the south has been that there was a significant minority of middle-class people who support a physical force campaign,’ said INLA. ‘They would enter and leave the struggle on different occasions. We are basically talking about people like that.’
Three of these ‘sleepers’ were approached to carry out the Neave action. ‘They were only marginally involved at the time, and they have never been involved since,’ said INLA. ‘A conscious decision was made at the time that the people would never be involved in any other operation. They were only known to a few people in the organisation. They were not activists as such. They were different because they offered stability. It was always something that the organisation was looking for.’ The trio was drawn from both north and south of the border. One of them was ‘a college graduate’, and they were in their thirties. ‘From the normal lives they were living, they were in an ideal position to execute the operation, and were asked to do. They also had the ability to travel internationally, without attracting attention.’ This was critical to the success of the operation. At the time, INLA did not have active service units in situ on the British mainland. The assassins would enter via a third country – presumed to be on the near Continent – with the explosives, carry out the operation and then melt back by the same route into anonymity in Ireland.
According to the INLA source, this is exactly what happened. In the days before the Neave operation, the trio journeyed to London through a third country. The explosives, cut from a larger chunk like a bar of soap, were carried in a perspex container. ‘These devices are very straightforward,’ INLA added. ‘They are very simple things. They had access to more than one. They are a very easy thing to put together.’ Prior surveillance had established where Neave’s car was normally parked outside his block of flats in Westminster Gardens. A derring-do account of the operation, involving penetration of security at the MPs’ underground car park at Westminster, originally put out by INLA, was dismissed to the author as ‘a colourful story for the media’. The source continued: ‘The device was fitted in the locality of the flat, yes. The car was easily identifiable and it was placed underneath the car on the driver’s side with a magnet.’ Inside the perspex box was a timer and a phial of mercury with two wires connected to the charge. When the timer expired, the bomb was live, but it would not detonate until the mercury surged down the tube and completed a circuit. ‘When the car went up a ramp, it made contact and the explosive went off.’
Neave drove to the Commons as usual that Friday, though it was an unusual day. Parliament was on the point of being dissolved after the Labour government had lost a vote of confidence the night before. The timer was set to expire before Neave’s normal time to leave Westminster for his constituency. It was live when he drove up the ramp from the car park; the result was fatal. By then, the bombers had gone. ‘They would have been well gone, hours before that,’ said INLA. Accounts of the trio returning to Dublin for a back-slapping, huggy party are also incorrect. ‘They didn’t come straight back to Ireland,’ insisted INLA. Even had they done so, no one would have known who to congratulate. However, they did return to resume the conventional lives they had briefly quit. And that, says INLA, is what they are still doing, though they are now in their fifties. ‘They had no choice, just to lead a normal life,’ asserted the masked source. ‘You can lose your life as a result of it [becoming known]. Anonymity was the only safety they had and that was the only reason they could live normal lives.’
But even today, though the prospect of a successful criminal trial is remote, the bombers are not safe from retribution, either at the hands of loyalist paramilitaries or (INLA fears) from covert action by the security services. ‘The state would get very little out of it, but the military securocrat establishment would get a lot out of it,’ the source continued. ‘They would have had retribution for one of theirs being taken out. They have already got some of that but they would get the kudos for getting the people who actually did the operation because Airey Neave was one of them. For that reason, there is no contact any more.’ This arrangement is not simply dictated by a desire for secrecy. ‘Physical events’ would almost certainly follow any disclosure of their identity or whereabouts. Given the passage of time and the very small number of people who know the killers, it is most unlikely that they will be brought to justice. Ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s government publicly admitted there is no prospect of a successful prosecution, and Tony Blair’s New Labour has not shown the slightest interest in reopening the case.
Yet the Neave affair continues to exercise a fascination, not solely because of the manner of his death but because he represents a bridge between the world of politics and the secret services whence he came. Perhaps the most revealing tribute to his life came from John Biggs-Davidson. ‘The Nazis could not kill him,’ he has said. ‘The Nazis could not break him. The Nazis could not hold him. Now he has fallen to another tyranny, one of terror.’ Like Neave, Biggs-Davidson identified militant republicanism with international Communism, in a dark global conspiracy to destroy the British way of life: a tyranny as despicable as Fascism, which manifested itself not only in Irish terrorism but in strikes and the perceived rise of left-wing Labour.
In June 1978, Neave made a speech in which he compared the return of a Labour government with the rise of the Nazis. Both Neave and Biggs-Davidson became involved in the right-wing movements of the 1970s, set up by people like themselves who feared a breakdown of civil order. They saw the authority of the Crown as superior to that of elected politicians like Harold Wilson and even Edward Heath, their own party leader. According to Northern Ireland security sources, Neave never severed his ties with MI6. And like most intelligence officers he saw his first loyalty as to the Crown. Conveniently, in such circles, this loyalty took whatever form the secret state wished it to take.
None of this double life featured in the obituaries to Neave. In the state of shock engendered by the first murder in the Palace of Westminster since 1812, the tributes were fulsome. The Daily Telegraph described him as ‘that best type of public man who is inspired by duty rather than ambition to undertake the most difficult tasks’ whose death was a tragic loss to his family, friends and country. Mistakenly blaming the Provisional IRA as his killers, the paper said he was murdered because they saw him as their most clear-sighted and formidable opponent.
Margaret Thatcher expressed her grief in her parliamentary tribute on 2 April. Still apparently stunned, she disclosed to the House that Neave had asked for the Northern Ireland portfolio: ‘He loved it, felt that he was beginning to understand the sensitivities of the people, felt he had a contribution to make, and wanted to continue with it,’ she insisted.
Neave visited Ulster regularly during his four years as Shadow Secretary of State, and occasionally on a social basis, as he did with his wife Diana in May 1976 to attend the wedding of Louise, daughter of Sir Robin and Lady Kinahan, at Templepatrick. He fitted naturally into the circles of the Unionist hegemony that had ruled the province since the partition of Ireland. Viewing Irish politics from that vantage point, it was not surprising that he took Conservative policy away from Edward Heath’s cautious acceptance of power-sharing between nationalists and Unionists and towards closer integration of Ulster into the United Kingdom, underpinned by a militarist attitude towards republican terrorism. Equally unsurprisingly, this strategy brought him into direct conflict with successive Irish governments, who found his thinking on the great issue of the day shallow and badly informed. Relations between Dublin and Thatcher and her Shadow
Ulster Secretary soured as time went by, culminating in Neave’s outspoken remark in the Commons in January 1978 that ‘the actions of a neighbouring state are becoming intolerable’.
Some commentators believed that Neave might not have been appointed Northern Ireland Secretary. His health had been weakened by his heart attack in 1959, and it was noted that he moved slowly and deliberately, as if wary of his condition. Neave was a quiet spoken, reserved man, who rarely shared his thoughts. The seasoned observer Conor O’Clery of the Irish Times commented: ‘In the House of Commons, where attitudes towards Ireland do not form the basis for judgements of character, he was considered to have the dignity and manners – and the intellectual limitations – of an old-style Conservative.’5 Neave was also sensitive, and felt deeply hurt by the sharp attacks on his policy towards Ulster, particularly from politicians in the south. But he was also steadfast, obstinate even, in the pursuit of what he believed to be right. In a policy arena where there was no shortage of stubbornness among the competing interests, obstinacy was not the quality most in demand. As much as the office he held, it marked him out as a potential target. Republican paramilitaries, particularly the INLA, whose active service unit killed him, also feared that, uniquely among British politicians ruling Northern Ireland, Neave understood the mentality of ‘the men behind the wire’ and their critical importance in the armed struggle.
Though he did not live to implement his twin-track approach of political integration and military defeat of the IRA, Neave’s influence continued to be felt after his assassination. The failure of the authorities to find his assassins frustrated Thatcher, and her thwarted wrath has been identified as the moving force behind British intransigence in the face of the 1981 hunger strikes. Ironically, her attitude propelled militant republicanism into orthodox politics, with results that have undermined moderate Unionism and thrust Sinn Fein into the corridors of power. On a more controversial level, the establishment’s determination to punish Neave’s killers is widely held among nationalists to have prompted a campaign of secret service counter-assassinations of this operation still rankles today as the scandal of the ‘forgotten victims’ of the Troubles. Neave’s guiding philosophy throughout his career informed his political views, and his policy towards Northern Ireland that eventually claimed his life. He saw the people of Eastern Europe as imprisoned in an evil Soviet Empire, and the British population of Ulster threatened with a similar regime. His was not an unusual view of the world. He grew up in a generation of boys who devoured John Buchan, whose characters, like the country doctor Tom Greenslade, a veteran of the First World War and Central Asian intrigue, could denounce the new generation of hard, untameable ‘moral imbeciles’ found among ‘young Bolshevik Jews, among the young entry of the wilder Communist sects, and very notably among the sullen murderous hobbledehoys in Ireland.’6
Unlike Buchan, Neave lived out the boyhood fantasy. At Eton and Oxford he learned to fight for King and Country, when others preferred to wallow in what he saw as half-baked, self-indulgent Marxism. He experienced the vile, ruinous nature of Fascism at first hand, before the war, and fought it for six years across Occupied Europe and in the court room of Nuremberg. And when the struggle took a different, if long expected turn, against Communist expansionism, he was a ready volunteer. It may be argued that he valued his own liberty so much that he was prepared to take extreme measures to ensure the freedom of others.
But why did he imagine that he knew better than the rest? Neave was not a particularly gifted politician. It is difficult to believe that he would have risen to a post in a Conservative Cabinet. In the Commons of the late 1950s, Tory MPs with a good war behind them were still the norm, rather than the exception. Yet among that generation, he has left the greatest indelible mark on political history by riding an inner conviction that his grasp was somehow superior. Furthermore, he felt he understood human nature better than others, and should turn that comprehension to advantage. In short, he was a spook who knew, and acted on his beliefs and loyalties. He was not alone in this self-assurance. It is the stock in trade of the spy. Although he was not an orthodox MI6 officer, he remained close to the security services all his life. He may have been an elected politician in a democracy, but he shared the misgivings about the world around him that were expressed most clearly by George Kennedy Young, who talked of the spy as the ‘main guardian of intellectual integrity’ in a world threatened by lawlessness, disregard of international contract, cruelty and corruption.
Neave never fitted into any simple category. John Ranelagh thought him a ‘very intelligent, hard-headed man’ with a great deal of charm and capable of a high degree of personal loyalty. ‘He was much tougher than he looked, and was often underestimated.’ He was in the party’s mainstream, not involved in ideological battles. ‘He was loved by many, and liked by most who met him. He had a reputation for operating secretly and put this trait to full use.’7 This was most clearly evident in his campaign to supplant Edward Heath and ensure the succession of a right-minded leader in the shape of Margaret Thatcher. He could scarcely have foreseen that her impact on domestic and international politics should be so far-reaching, or that she (despite being ‘a Unionist at heart’) would negotiate the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement that reopened the road to power-sharing in Ulster. Such a step would have been anathema to Neave, as it was to his friend Ian Gow.
However, it could also be argued that Neave’s belief in the paramountcy of liberty did not extend to the fundamental freedoms of employment, housing and votes denied to many people in the minority Catholic community in Northern Ireland before the social upheavals of the late 1960s. Coming late to the crisis, six bloody years into a near civil war, he took a profoundly militarist view, one based on the inner conviction of a lifelong involvement with the security services and their self-appointed guardianship of the Crown’s interests, that armed republicanism had to be crushed and the Union retained. INLA sources confirmed their fear that he might have succeeded in this enterprise, admitting: ‘He would have been very successful at that job. He would have brought the armed struggle to its knees.’8 But there are limits to the military containment of nationalism. The same sources pointed out: ‘It has also been proved that there is a resilience to resist these things. If he did take draconian measures there would have been a reaction. If they [the security forces] had moved to close them [Provisional IRA and INLA] down in a military sense, they could do that.’ It was never done, they argue, because of the political reaction at home and abroad. And today, power-sharing is broadly accepted as the key to Northern Ireland’s future.
Therefore, did Neave’s political career end in failure, in accordance with Enoch Powell’s famous dictum? The province has enjoyed years of ceasefire by the Provos and, more reluctantly, by the INLA. In September 2001 the Provisional IRA began the process of decommissioning its armoury. This step was sufficient to revive the stalled peace process in Northern Ireland and restore the power-sharing executive at Stormont. However, Unionist opinion remained deeply divided about republican motives and an uneasy stand-off ensued. It is unclear what INLA intend to do with its weaponry, but unlikely that its much smaller arsenal will be ‘put beyond use’.
But Neave’s killers are still in the shadows. ‘INLA has not gone away. It still exists and is still capable of carrying out operations like that [the Neave assassination] if it chooses. But obviously people will weigh up the consequences because of past experience,’ said my INLA sources. The INLA ‘believes that the circumstances for armed struggle no longer exist at the present moment. But things could change in the future.’
Does that ambivalent, and rather ominous, assessment negate Neave’s career? Only on the most casual reading of Powell’s oft-misunderstood axiom. Powell actually argued that ‘all political lives, unless they are cut off in mid-stream at a happy juncture, end in failure because that is the nature of politics and human affairs’. Judged by that precept, Neave’s life was a success. It was violently cut short, not in
mid-stream and certainly not felicitously, but after an outstanding intervention that permanently changed the political landscape: the inauguration of Thatcherism. No final judgement can be reached on his Ulster strategy, for the obvious reason that he did not live to put it into effect. It is an index of his significance, however, that he had to be murdered to ensure that he did not. Less attractive is the ‘spook’ side to Neave’s life. He loved the clandestine life and it tainted his politics. It also robbed him of a soldier’s death.
Apart from his political legacy, Neave also bequeathed a compassionate endowment. Friends rushed to set up the Airey Neave Memorial Trust, which attracted wide, cross-party support. For more than twenty years, it has dispensed scholarships for the study of issues dear to his heart, including the problems of terrorism. Neave himself left only £55,000 in his will, published the month after his beloved Diana was made a life peer. Lady Airey died on 27 November 1992, aged seventy-three, almost forty years after her marriage to the quiet young officer whose life changed so many others. She had continued his work for more than a decade, evoking widespread admiration for her commitment. They are buried together beneath a modest headstone in the cemetery at Hinton Waldrist, bearing the Neave family motto: Sola Proba Quae Honesta.
References
Chapter 1
1. Interview with David Healy, 25 June 1996.
2. Belfast Telegraph, 31 March 1979.
3. Dedication in Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, Arrow Books, 1979.
4. Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, HarperCollins, 1995, p. 289.
5. Donald Hamilton-Hill, SOE Assignment, New English Library, 1975, pp. 13–14.
6. Interview with Stephen Dorril, 24 August 2000.
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