As I walked back home that night, I felt elated. I would be earning £400 a month tax free from the Special Branch on top of my dole money. And I was still dealing in stolen goods, earning between £100 and £200 a week. And I wasn’t yet 18!
The following week, Dean produced a large A4 sheet of paper covered with perhaps thirty photographs, all of different men. I glanced through them but didn’t recognise anyone.
Dean said, ‘Take a good look at these photographs. Tell me if you recognise anyone.’
I checked the sheet of paper again, ‘No, no one,’ I said.
‘That’s OK,’ he said, and took back the sheet of paper.
Then he produced a detailed map showing the individual houses in a block of streets, giving the numbers of the houses and the names of the people who lived in some of them. He then showed me five photographs and told me where each man lived, giving me the exact address and the number of the house.
‘Keep an eye open for any of these, will you?’ he asked. ‘And next time we meet let me know if you’ve seen any of them.’
I had no idea at this stage who these men were, whether they were criminals or gangsters. The thought that they were active members of the IRA or any other paramilitary organisation hadn’t crossed my mind.
During the following week, I made sure that I walked down the various streets where the five men lived in the hope of seeing them. I would glance at the houses as I passed and sometimes fool around in the streets with my mates, while keeping an eye open in case they showed up. During the first few weeks I never recognised a soul.
Each week I reported back to Dean and Jimmy, feeling that I had let them down, that I was taking money for doing nothing and wondering how long they would go on paying me if I never identified anyone from the photos they showed me. Each week they told me not to worry but to keep my eyes open.
Then one day, outside Raffo’s chip shop in Whiterock, I saw a man I recognised from the five pictures. He was with two other men whom I couldn’t identify and all three were getting into a silver Nissan saloon before driving off. I wrote down the registration number.
Thrilled at finally identifying one of the men I went to a telephone box, called my number and asked for Bonzo as usual. I told Jimmy what had happened and gave him the car’s number.
‘Good man.’ He said. ‘Well done.’
The next time we met Dean produced a photograph of a man.
‘Is that one of the men you saw?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he was the driver of the car.’
A few weeks later, after I had successfully identified another three men, I was sitting in the car talking to Dean and Jimmy when I finally learned of the work I had, in fact, been doing.
‘Listen Marty,’ Dean said, ‘these men that you have been asked to identify are the hard men of the IRA and the INLA (the Irish National Liberation Army). These are the men that are deeply involved with killing and maiming Protestants. But remember they also deal in the same way with any Catholics that cross them. They are highly dangerous men.’
Since the start of 1987, the two factions of the INLA had been carrying out an internecine feud in republican areas of Belfast. A breakaway group, the IPLO (Irish People’s Liberation Organisation) believed that every type of criminal activity, including organising the drugs trade, was permissible in building funds to buy more sophisticated arms to tackle the British Army and the RUC. The INLA leadership believed that they should have nothing whatsoever to do with crime or drugs. One reason for this was that they were convinced that the IPLO leaders were using the money from crime to line their own pockets.
In the first few months of 1987, a dozen members of the two factions were shot dead in gun battles and assassinations as the feud raged across the republican areas where I lived. Barely a week would pass without another body being discovered. Most were killed as they returned home, shot down by their rivals who were lying in wait.
Sometime later, when the leaders of the IPLO believed they had become so strong they were untouchable, they would be taught a harsh lesson by the IRA. A dozen IPLO members, whom the IRA believed were involved in serious criminal activity, included drug-running, were kneecapped by IRA punishment squads. Eventually the IPLO capitulated and disbanded.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 197, I continued to supply the Special Branch with information they requested, identifying the hard men and reporting their movements. Once a week I would meet my two controllers, varying the places we met and, once a month they would hand over £400 in cash which I would stuff into my trouser pocket before walking home.
One evening, I jumped into the back of the car as usual to find a strange face in the driver’s seat.
‘Marty,’ said Dean, ‘I want you to meet Coco. He will be joining our team because Jimmy has been detailed to work somewhere else.’
I was sorry that Jimmy had been taken off my case because I had come to respect and, more importantly, to trust him.
Coco, too, was a tall, well-built man but younger, in his late 30s, and he also looked capable of taking care of himself. Later, when alone with Dean, I asked why the new man was named ‘Coco’.
Dean laughed. ‘It goes back a few years,’ he said. ‘He had been away on holiday overseas and returned as brown as a berry and wearing the most garish, wild-coloured shirt imaginable. When he walked into the office that first day back he almost blinded people with the colours. Someone walked in and said, “My God, I didn’t know Coco the Clown’s joined the outfit!” From that day he has been called Coco.’
Dean and Coco continued to show me photographs of various men they wanted me to look out for and, sometimes, I would see them and phone, informing my handlers – my Special Branch bosses – whom I had seen, where I had seen them and what had happened. I would sometimes wonder what use my information was to the SB, but Dean kept telling me that I was doing a ‘great job’.
Nearly every time we met, Dean would tell me, ‘Marty, you don’t fully understand everything yet but you are doing vital work. One day I will explain everything but for now, keep up the good work.’
To me, a teenager with little prospects of finding a proper job, the work offered good pay and excitement; it was more fun than selling stolen goods around the estate. But I would continue those activities because it gave me a reason to be out and about the entire Ballymurphy and Turf Lodge estates, keeping my eyes open for the men they wanted me to spot.
One night in the autumn of 1987, I was walking along Moyard Parade in Ballymurphy when I saw a young man whom my controllers had asked me to look out for. He was standing on his own on the corner of the street smoking a cigarette, a boxer dog sitting at his feet. I wondered why he would be there alone.
The following night I walked along the same street and again I saw the same man, at the same spot, this time sitting on the garden wall. Again he was alone but without the dog. Instinctively I knew he was involved in some nefarious activity, either working as a lookout or waiting for someone else to join him. I walked on and decided I should keep an eye on him. Further down the road I saw an opportunity to duck down behind a wall, where I could watch him without being seen.
I stayed in that position for about an hour, the adrenalin flowing, believing that I was now working as a proper agent, checking and watching dangerous men. Eventually, as if from nowhere, another man appeared. I realised he must have used the short-cut from the Catholic Church nearby, from an area called ‘The Farm’ because many years ago it had in fact been a small farm. I also recognised the second man for he was a well-known trouble-maker on the estate. I knew the second man had once been kneecapped by the IRA for selling fake charity tickets and keeping the money. Extraordinary as it may seem, however, many young men who had fallen foul of the IRA disciplinarians and had been punished would later join the organisation, some becoming its most fervent members.
The second man disappeared back into The Farm while the first stayed sitting on the garden wall, obviously keeping lookout. I b
ecame convinced that something was about to happen but I had no idea what. I knew I should tell my controllers and walked nearly three miles to find a public phone box that worked. There was another reason I walked well away from that area. If I had been seen making calls from a public phone box in the area where I lived, people would have become deeply suspicious.
‘This is Bonzo,’ I said, when the voice answered the phone.
‘Wait a minute,’ he replied.
After perhaps 60 seconds or more, far longer than I usually had to wait, the voice came back, ‘There’s no one here. Is it urgent? Can I take a message?’
‘Yes,’ I said, it’s urgent.
‘Give me the number of your phone box and someone will call you straight back.’
Within 15 seconds the phone rang. Immediately, I recognised Dean’s voice. ‘What’s up?’
I told him everything I had seen that night and the previous evening.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Go straight home and don’t return to that place. Leave everything to us. I know what they’re planning. They’re going to lay a trap, a bomb for an RUC foot patrol.’
Dean told me that he would now phone the RUC telling them to put the area out of bounds to patrols until further notice. ‘We’ll check it tomorrow. Well done.’
I was flattered that Dean should have taken me into his confidence, telling me everything that would happen as a result of my intelligence work. As I walked back home I also hoped that I may have helped to save the lives of two or more innocent peelers and their army escorts.
The following morning there were far more police and army personnel in the area than usual and later I would see army disposal teams searching The Farm. Later that day, I heard on the news that a command wire more than 400 yards long had been discovered, buried in the earth and hidden from view. I phoned Dean.
‘You’ve done a real good job,’ he said, sounding very happy. ‘You were right. An IRA active service unit was planning to plant a bomb at that point to catch a police and army foot patrol as they walked through the short cut. Your work last night may well have saved some lives.’
Encouraged with that success, I re-doubled my efforts, spending more time on the streets, watching everything that moved at the same time as keeping an eye open for the men whose photographs Dean and Coco showed me at our weekly meetings.
Sometime later I was walking my new girlfriend Carol back home late one night when I noticed three or four suspicious looking characters carrying bags and holdalls from a car into a nearby house. After leaving my girlfriend at her home I retraced my steps and recognised two of them as men the SB had asked me to look out for. The following morning I phoned, spoke to Coco, and gave him all the details I could remember including the names of the two men, the exact address and details of the car.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Leave it to us.’
Within minutes of returning home, I heard a number of Land Rovers, vehicles belonging to the DMSUs (Divisional Mobile Support Units), as well as army Land Rovers, racing up the street. I wondered what was going on and went out to investigate. When I saw all the vehicles come to a screeching halt outside the house I had targeted, I was surprised that the SB had acted so fast.
I walked to a cousin’s house directly opposite where the police and Army had stopped and watched, fascinated.
My cousin had come out and we were standing on the pavement, chatting, while watching the activity across the road. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, as though totally unaware of what was going on.
‘God knows,’ he said. ‘The peelers have just kicked the door in and loads of them have piled in.’
Thirty minutes later we were still watching and having a drink of tea, when an RUC man came over to us. ‘What are you doing, lads?’
‘Just talking,’ I replied.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘What do you want my name for?’ I replied.
He asked for my name again, and this time I told him. He asked where I lived and told him I lived down the street.
‘You’re going to have to move on,’ the officer said
‘I’m not going to move anywhere,’ I told him. This is my cousin’s house and we’re talking.
The officer decided not to press the matter and walked back to his vehicle. I smiled as he walked away. I wondered how we would have behaved towards me if he had any idea that the peelers were searching the house because I had provided the intelligence. Later, Dean told me that the police had discovered a sawn-off shotgun and arrested a man, a known terrorist, who would later be jailed for possession.
On another occasion, I was walking to the local chippy when I noticed a man I recognised from the SB files. He was walking out of a house where I knew a man with a drink problem lived alone. I phoned Dean and told him that I thought it was suspicious that this particular man would be walking away from that house.
The following morning the house was raided and police discovered a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight hidden in the roof space above the bedrooms. Later, Dean told me that after interviewing this man, they learned that his house had been used regularly as a secret arms dump by the INLA.
The INLA was formed in 1974, becoming the military wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, an organisation whose members included disenchanted Republicans and socialists allied to the official IRA. The founder of the INLA was Seamus Costello, a committed Republican, who had joined the IRA as a teenager and fought in the campaign of the 1950s earning for himself the nickname ‘The Boy General’. Three years later, however, Costello would be shot dead during internecine strife which racked the INLA during its formative years.
But Costello had left a valuable legacy, having established a link with the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), whose leaders were happy to provide low-cost weapons and explosives to a socialist revolutionary army like the INLA.
The INLA exploded onto the stage of international terror in March 1979, when it assassinated Airey Neave MP, the Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland and a close friend and political advisor to Margaret Thatcher.
But Airey Neave had been only one name, just another murder, which I had heard of as I was growing up. To me, his death seemed less dramatic, less important than the killings and beatings in Belfast. To me, there were many more atrocities, which had occurred closer to home and which had meant far more.
I had grown up in a staunch republican, Catholic family on a strong republican estate in Belfast and my teenage years had been spent taunting the RUC and the British Army as they stamped their presence and their brutal authority on the Catholic families of Belfast.
I supported the IRA in their efforts to defend the Catholic community against the hardline Loyalists, the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters), who would terrorise republican areas, killing innocent people at random, many of them having had no involvement with the IRA. And yet in my youth and immaturity I could not understand why it was necessary for the IRA, who protested that they were the guardians of the Catholic community, to use such strong-arm tactics against their own people through their disciplinary committees, their anonymous punishment gangs and their penchant for kneecapping young, so-called ‘hoods’.
The slaughter of 11 innocent people at Enniskillen on Sunday, 8 November 1987, when 63 other men, women and children were injured, shattered my faith in the IRA once and for all. Without warning and for no reason whatsoever, the IRA triggered a bomb during the Remembrance Day parade that Sunday.
The television film of that bombing when the cenotaph collapsed, bringing tons of rubble down on the 70 people attending the Poppy Day parade, and the words of Gordon Wilson, the father of Marie, one of the victims’, have become one of my lasting memories of the troubles.
Marie Wilson, 20, a student nurse in her third year at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, played the violin, sang in the hospital choir and was known as a keen horsewoman who enjoyed badminton, squash and tennis.
‘All through the noise that followed the blast there were these urgent questions racing through my mind – Where’s Marie?... Is she hurt?... Is she trapped?...Is she alive?
‘Then, almost by magic, I found my hand being squeezed and I knew it was Marie. She asked, “Is that you, Dad?”
‘I shouted, “How are you, Marie?” she replied, “I’m fine.” But then, suddenly and terribly, she screamed. Again I asked her, “Are you alright?” And again she replied, “Yes.” But there seemed a little hesitation.
‘A little later she shouted to me, “Dad, let’s get out of here.” I replied, but then she screamed again. It must have been four or five times I shouted, asking if she was alright. But then, suddenly, her voice changed. She held my hand tightly and gripped as hard as she could. She said, “Daddy, I love you very much.” After that her hand slipped away.’
Marie Wilson died nine hours later in hospital after undergoing surgery to her brain and pelvis, which had been crushed when the bomb ripped through the cenotaph.
Stunned by the worldwide outcry to the Remembrance Day bombing the IRA issued an official statement saying that the leadership’ deeply regretted the catastrophic consequences’ of the bombing and claimed that there had been a deadly blunder. The IRA statement declared that one of their units had planted the bomb which was targeting Crown Forces rather than civilians. It could also have been detonated early by army experts trying to block the terrorists’ remote-controlled attack. They claimed that the bomb blew up without being triggered by the IRA’s radio signal. No one believed the IRAs version of events.
Gordon Wilson’s emotive description of the blast and his daughter’s death would never be forgotten. He publicly forgave the IRA for murdering his daughter. He became a campaigner for peace and later a Senator of the Irish Parliament in Dublin. A Methodist who spoke with a soft, gentle voice, Gordon Wilson went from being a small-town draper to an international speaker, telling the world in simple language why the fighting in Northern Ireland had to stop. He died in June 1995, aged 67.
Fifty Dead Men Walking Page 7