by Peter Taylor
Ford also suggested that consideration should be given to using less lethal ammunition to minimize the danger to those being aimed at. He said such an approach would be reverting to the Internal Security methods ‘found successful on many occasions overseas’. He concluded with the startling observation that he was ‘convinced that our duty to restore law and order requires us to consider this step.’ (He later made it clear that it was not an instruction to kill and pointed out that ‘shoot’ and ‘kill’ were obviously different words.) Ford wrote his memo to Tuzo as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was considering an anti-internment march in Derry from the Creggan to the Guildhall Square on Sunday afternoon, 16 January. He asked Brigadier MacLellan for a plan in case the march took place, ‘taking into account the likelihood of some form of battle’, and sent the army’s Director of Intelligence to Derry to make an assessment of the possible strength of the march and its real intentions. His senior commanders had already told him that, however good NICRA’s intentions, ‘the DYH backed up by the gunmen will undoubtedly take over control at an early stage’. Amongst the Battalions Ford notified was 1 Para. The scene was set for ‘Bloody Sunday’.
Since the summer of 1971, all marches had been declared illegal by the Stormont Government as a quid pro quo for internment. The Heath Government hoped that by banning the parades the temperature in the highly volatile summer season would be lowered. But in the charged climate of the time, banning marches did not mean they would not go ahead. A ban might even be an added incentive. On 11 January, five days before the proposed NICRA march, the Cabinet’s Northern Ireland Policy Committee, known as GEN 47, met in London to consider, presumably amongst other issues, the situation in Derry. Certainly there is no hint of imminent crisis in the minutes of the meeting. ‘A military operation to re-impose law and order in Londonderry might in time [author’s emphasis] become inevitable, but should not be undertaken while there still remained some prospect of a successful political initiative.’13 In GEN 47, hope sprang eternal. The wording suggests that the Cabinet had accepted General Ford’s first option. There is no indication that Ministers were aware of his alarming memo to Lieutenant-General Tuzo written only four days before GEN 47 met. Either Ministers were being kept in the dark or they were not sufficiently concerned to find out what the military thinking really was. Ministers had not been aware of the Five Techniques. Perhaps a plausible explanation is that Ford’s memorandum was merely contemplating the worst-case scenario. We do not know what Tuzo’s reaction was.
In the event, NICRA postponed the anti-internment march contemplated for 16 January but its Derry supporters were not to be denied the opportunity to make their point. On Saturday 22 January, around 3,000 people, mainly from the Derry area, marched to the new internment camp that had just opened at Magilligan Point, a headland about twenty miles from Derry on the eastern shore of Lough Foyle, which had been used as a weekend training base for the Territorial Army.
The mood was relaxed and friendly. The commanding officer of the Second Battalion, The Royal Green Jackets who had the responsibility of guarding the camp offered the marchers tea and buns if they followed an agreed route.14 The marchers, however, declined and made their way onto the long, sandy beach only to find their way barred by coils of barbed wire that stretched along the strand but stopped short of the sea as it was a very low tide. Behind stood not only the Green Jackets but 1 Para’s C company (around a hundred soldiers) who had been brought in from Belfast in case of trouble. The Battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilford, was not with them at the time and the Paras were under Green Jacket command. Their Adjutant, however, was there and he feared ‘the security of the Internment Centre could be breached’.
The protesters, seeing the gap between the wire and the water and with the internment camp in their sights, made for the opening to find their progress blocked. A fierce battle on the beach ensued, with baton-wielding Paras at the forefront backed by a hail of ‘rubber bullets’ – the black, hard baton rounds that can be lethal if fired at close quarters.
The violent confrontation was captured by the television cameras and the image was clear: peaceful demonstrators being clubbed to the ground by brutal paratroopers. John Hume was present and looked on in horror but his pleas for calm went unheeded. One paratrooper was subsequently disciplined for repeatedly beating a marcher on the ground. When the Green Jackets told the Paras that they had been too hard, a Para officer replied that if they had not, there would have been 2,000 demonstrators in their internment camp.
The protesters returned to Derry, bloodied and bruised but determined to march again. The following Tuesday, the Derry branch of NICRA issued a statement calling on its supporters to gather for a huge anti-internment march in the city the following Sunday, 30 January 1972. It was to start at Bishop’s Field in the Creggan at 2 p.m. and make its way to the Guildhall Square in the city centre. Stormont, in consultation with the Joint Security Committee, had just extended the ban on marches for another year. The same day, to add to the tension, Paisleyites in Derry issued a rallying call. ‘We call upon all the loyalists of Derry for their support at this time,’ they said. ‘The Queen’s writ must run in every part of the city and the law must be administered fairly to all sections of the community.’15
On Thursday morning, 27 January, the temperature was raised even higher when the IRA ambushed and shot dead two policemen in their patrol car near the Creggan, Sergeant Peter Gilgunn (26) and Constable David Montgomery (20). They were the first members of the RUC to be killed in the city since the outbreak of violence. Sergeant Gilgunn was a Catholic.16 That afternoon, the IRA sent a message to the Paras by exploding two bombs inside the perimenter fence of Palace Barracks, Holywood, where the First Battalion was based. The same day in London, GEN 47 met to discuss Sunday’s NICRA march. Former Prime Minister Heath recollected that ‘the possibility of using firearms was not discussed and no specific political authority was sought or given for the use of firearms’.17
At Army Headquarters at Lisburn that Thursday morning there had already been a meeting of the Director of Operations Committee (‘D. Ops’) which assembled every Thursday at 10 a.m. It was run by the GOC, Lieutenant-General Tuzo, and consisted of the Chief Constable, an Assistant Chief Constable, the Head of RUC Special Branch, the Head of Army Intelligence and the UK Representative. The Secretary to the Committee was Gavin, the young Major in army planning who had first suggested Long Kesh as a suitable place for an internment camp. He gave me his recollection of the meeting’s agenda that morning.
I believe that there was some discussion about how to handle this march – where to allow it to proceed and where to encourage it to stop or redirect it. The Chief Constable gave his views and I believe that there was a plan in principle. The idea was that the march should be prevented from getting to the centre of Londonderry and it was left to local military and police commanders to work out those sort of general arrangements.
Was there any plan to take on the IRA that day? Any discussion about it?
Oh no, no, no, not at all. Not at all. This was one of several marches that was probably discussed at the time and there was no intention to use this march to make a military or security force point.
Not at all. And indeed the people round the room, they wouldn’t have discussed that. That would not be an issue.
But might they have discussed it elsewhere, privately?
I can’t say, but I doubt it. I very much doubt it. This is not something that would have been encouraged at all. In hindsight very obviously not. There’s no way that those sort of people at that level were considering anything other than containment and avoiding casualties and keeping things played down as much as possible.
The military plan was to prevent the illegal march from reaching its destination in the Guildhall Square by stopping it at the bottom of William Street and diverting it along Rossville Street past the flats and into the Bogside where the marchers could hold their ral
ly at ‘Free Derry’ corner. Barricades manned by the Green Jackets were to be placed across the approaches to the Guildhall Square and the city centre. The army knew that at this point, barring a miracle, there would be a riot and the Derry Young Hooligans would go into action, no doubt fired up by the television images of Paras beating up Catholics at Magilligan the weekend before. It seemed a perfect opportunity to confront the DYH and take the firm action against them that Derry’s Protestant business community had long been demanding. Major-General Ford, it is believed with the approval of higher authority, had ordered 1 Para to be brought in from Belfast to ‘scoop up’ the rioters. Ministers in London were informed of the plan and gave it their approval. The operation, therefore, had political sanction at the highest level, which is not surprising given the sensitivity of the operation and the climate of the time.18
When army commanders in Derry were notified that 1 Para was to be given this ‘scoop-up’ role, they were not happy. The Paras knew Belfast but had never served in Derry. The Colonel of the Royal Anglians protested to Brigadier MacLellan and argued that his men, who knew the city, should do the ‘scooping up’ and that if the Paras were to be used, they should be manning the barricades, not chasing rioters. Another senior officer in Derry, who thought the plan to use the Paras was ‘mad’, told me that he rang up MacLellan and said that he ‘must not allow the Paras into Derry’. MacLellan replied that he had his orders.
Chief Superintendent Lagan was not only against the use of the Paras but opposed to diverting the march. He argued that in terms of keeping the peace, it would be far better to let the demonstrators through to the Guildhall Square as the consequences would be far less than stopping the march at the bottom of William Street with the inevitable confrontation with the ‘hooligans’. Once the marchers were inside the relatively narrow confines of the Guildhall Square, Lagan argued, they could be photographed and, if necessary, action taken against them later for participating in an illegal march.
Furthermore, Lagan knew from his intelligence reports and through his own personal contacts in the Bogside and Creggan that neither wing of the IRA had any intention of taking on the army that day because of the risk to civilians, and they had been prevailed upon by local community leaders to take their weapons out of the Bogside and store them in the Creggan estate. Dr Raymond McClean, a Derry general practitioner, was one of those who made the plea, fearing the consequences of any possible IRA action. ‘We said we would like to have a massive demonstration against internment,’ he told me. ‘The message came back that if we wanted the demonstration, the IRA would leave that day to us and leave us alone. They weren’t using us. We believed what they said.’19
Nevertheless, despite Lagan’s intimate knowledge of Derry and its Catholic community, his advice was ignored. He contacted the Chief Constable, Sir Graham Shillington, but there was nothing Sir Graham could do. The march was to be stopped and the rioters ‘scooped up’. It was seen as a political decision taken way above the heads of Lagan and MacLellan. The plan was put in place and code-named ‘Operation Forecast’. The forecast was grim.
On Friday afternoon, 28 January, MacLellan held his final briefing at Ebrington Barracks in Derry for his commanders, including Lieutenant-Colonel Derek Wilford, the commanding officer of 1 Para. The 8 Infantry Brigade Operation Order no 2/72, classified ‘Secret’ and written by MacLellan the previous day, was discussed line by line. It stressed that the march should be dealt with in as low a key as possible for as long as possible, and if the march were contained peacefully within the Bogside and Creggan areas, then no action should be taken against it.20 The army was only to respond if the marchers tried to breach the security barriers blocking the route to the city centre or used violence against the security forces. Under those circumstances, water cannon and baton rounds were to be used, and, as a last resort if troops were about to be overrun, CS gas. The section of the Operation Order that applied to 1 Para was headed ‘Hooliganism’.
An arrest force is to be held centrally behind the check points and launched in a ‘scoop-up’ operation to arrest as many hooligans and rioters as possible … This operation will only be launched either in whole or in part on the orders of the Brigade Commander … It is expected that the arrest operation will be conducted on foot.21
The plan was to wait until the hooligans had become separated from the march and then scoop them up as quickly as possible. The plan did not envisage the army getting sucked into the Bogside. In all the secret security and political minutes and memoranda that were subsequently uncovered and revealed in connection with ‘Bloody Sunday’, there is no suggestion of any ‘secret’ plan for the army to draw out the IRA, take on its gunmen and then take over the Bogside and Creggan.22 As one senior officer closely involved told me, ‘I can think of better ways of thumping the IRA than doing it with all the media in the world watching and thousands on the streets.’ To date, although no evidence has been found of any ‘smoking gun’ that would indicate a plan to entrap the IRA, Major-General Ford’s memorandum to Lieutenant-General Tuzo of 7 January 1972, in which he concludes ‘the minimum force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ring leaders amongst the DYH’, is a gun that may not be smoking but might be seen as dangerously loaded.
Lieutenant-Colonel Wilford remembers asking MacLellan at the Brigade briefing what would happen if the IRA started shooting.
I got really what was a very sparse reply to the effect that, ‘Oh well, we’ll deal with that when it comes.’ It’s my greatest regret that I didn’t pursue that question and say, ‘What do you want us to do if we’re shot at?’
But why didn’t you pursue the question, given its critical importance?
We were the Belfast Battalion. There we behaved in a recognized way. It was never necessary to ask that question. I asked it there in Derry because we were on new ground. But when I got the reply that I did, I accepted that we’d deal with it when it comes, assuming that there’d be specific orders. But I regret now, of course, that I didn’t pursue it.
So if shooting did break out, how were your men trained to react?
If someone starts shooting at you, you can behave in a variety of ways. You can run away – which, of course, on the whole soldiers don’t. You could take cover behind your shields and just sit in an area until it all passed over. Or you could do what my Battalion was trained to do – move forward, seek out the enemy and engage them.23
Most of Wilford’s men probably relished the thought of going into Derry and scooping up its ‘Young Hooligans’. They too, like their commanding officer, had watched television pictures of the daily ritual at ‘aggro corner’ and were appalled that the rioters were allowed to get away with it. They knew that Kitson would never have tolerated it in Belfast and saw no reason why it should be tolerated in Derry. ‘It had got totally out of control,’ Support Company’s Sergeant-Major told me. ‘I think it was about time somebody went across there and did something about it – somebody with a bit more “go” than the resident Battalions in Londonderry. It was time it was stopped.’24 Although the men of Support Company, which was to be in the front line of the arrest operation, had no personal knowledge of Derry and the Bogside area in which they would be operating, they had been well briefed on its geography and on what to expect. They were certainly familiar with the black dots on the map, the ‘containment line’ they knew they would have to breach. When Wilford briefed his men, he left them in no doubt what might be in store.
I pointed out they were going into a situation that was totally alien to them. The Bogside was a ‘no-go’ area and the army was peripheral. In the arrest operation, we were likely to step over the ‘containment line’ which would then take us into territory which had previously been declared ‘no-go’. That was potentially very, very dangerous because the IRA for the first time would be faced with something they had not come up against. This was bound to make them behave aggressively.25
The soldiers of Support Company,
who were detailed to cross the line in their armoured personnel carriers and ‘de-bus’ in the vicinity of the nine-storey-high Rossville Flats, knew what they were likely to face. The Company Sergeant-Major vividly remembers what his men were told to expect.
The one thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that we were warned about sniper fire, possibly from the Rossville Flats. Sniper fire is very, very accurate and pinpointed. It’s feared by soldiers. A sniper can fire through a window from ten feet inside a bedroom and you can’t see him at all. It’s something to be very, very wary of. The majority of soldiers up to that period killed in Belfast and Derry had been killed by very, very accurate sniper fire and none of the people in my Company wanted to be killed by a sniper26
What the soldiers were not told was that, of the nearly 2,000 shots fired at the army in Derry over the preceding three months, only nine came from Rossville Flats.27 The Paras were conditioned to expect the worst.
Chapter Eight
‘Bloody Sunday’ – The Killing Zone
30 January 1972
The morning of Sunday 30 January dawned clear and bright, a perfect day for a march. A huge crowd assembled at about 2 p.m. at Bishop’s Field, an area of well-trodden grass by the shops atop the Creggan. The organizers estimated the numbers to be around 20,000. The security forces’ estimate was a good deal less, but still one that recognized that a huge number had turned out, many no doubt galvanized by the scenes at Magilligan the previous weekend. There was a carnival atmosphere in the late January cold sunshine. It was so relaxed that Dr Raymond McClean decided to leave his first aid kit at home rather than lug it around on the march. He also believed that the atmosphere was likely to stay relaxed after both wings of the IRA had agreed to take their weapons out of the Bogside. IRA members were present but as stewards on the march, minus masks and guns, which was common practice. As the procession led by a coal lorry wound its way from Bishop’s Field around the Creggan and Bogside and finally towards the city centre, the Green Jackets manning the barricades received the news from Army Headquarters in Lisburn that one of their officers, Major Robin Alers-Hankey, had just died in hospital in London. He had been shot in the stomach four months earlier by a sniper in Derry as he deployed his troops to protect firemen fighting a blaze.1