by Peter Taylor
Mason took a black-and-white view of the conflict. Those who were not with him were against him, foreshadowing similar views expressed with equal, if not even greater, force by Callaghan’s Conservative successor as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The sentiment applied to the media, too. Mason did not make any secret of his views, especially on the BBC’s coverage of the conflict. Early in January 1977, he told its Governors what he felt during a private dinner at the Culloden Hotel. ‘There was no point in mincing words,’ he said. ‘I suggested that by giving publicity to the IRA, television was making things easier for terrorism and worsening the plight of the province. By filming Provisional gangs in secret and flashing pictures all around the world, the BBC was effectively encouraging violence and undermining democracy. What it was doing was irresponsible if not disloyal.’11
Mason’s outspoken attack on the BBC became known as the ‘Second Battle of Culloden’. He did not regret a word he said and hoped that the media in general, and television in particular, ‘would at last wake up to the dangers of being exploited by murderers’.12 His attack was directed at people like myself and some of my colleagues who tried to depict the nature of the conflict as it was and not as the Government would like the world to see it. In the process, to Mason’s displeasure, we exposed practices employed to defeat ‘terrorism’ that were questionable in a liberal democracy, in particular in relation to the interrogation of terrorist suspects by the RUC. Ironically, eight days before Roy Mason became Secretary of State in September 1976, the European Commission on Human Rights (ECHR) delivered its verdict on the use of the Five Techniques in 1971, declaring that they constituted not only ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ but ‘torture’.13 I was therefore surprised, when working in the province in the early summer of 1977, barely a year after the ECHR’s verdict, to hear so many reports of suspects being ill-treated whilst being detained for questioning at the RUC’s euphemistically named ‘Holding Centre’ at Castlereagh in Belfast.14
Castlereagh and its sister operation at Gough Barracks, Armagh, which were in fact special interrogation centres, were beginning to have spectacular results in getting statements of admission from suspects that were sufficient to convict them before the non-jury ‘Diplock’ courts (named after Lord Diplock, who in 1972 headed a Commission that recommended that trial by jury for terrorist offences should be abolished in Northern Ireland as juries and witnesses were subject to widespread intimidation by paramilitaries from both sides). The Castlereagh interrogation centre was able to operate as successfully as it did because the Government changed the law on the admissibility of confessions. Again this was done on the recommendation of Lord Diplock who believed that terrorist suspects were getting away with their crimes because the test for the admissibility of any confession was that it had been made on an entirely voluntary basis. Accordingly, to make it easier to get convictions, the Government changed the law so that confessions could be accepted as evidence provided the Diplock judge was convinced that they had not been obtained as a result of ‘torture, inhuman or degrading treatment’. This critical change in the legal definition gave RUC interrogators a latitude they had not previously enjoyed. In one landmark case, ‘a certain roughness of treatment’ was not ruled out as a means of getting a suspect to confess. The temptation by interrogators to overstep the mark to get results was great, and the temptation was not always resisted. Castlereagh now became the engine room of the Government’s ‘criminalization’ policy, churning out the confessions that put scores of IRA men (and loyalists) behind bars.
The results soon became evident as more and more paramilitary suspects were carried along what republicans called the ‘conveyor belt’ that took them from interrogation at Castlereagh to trial by the non-jury Diplock courts, to incarceration in the H Blocks and no special category status. By the summer of 1977, the RUC, having been buffeted and criticized for so many years, now felt it was getting on top. ‘Tails were up, the scent was clear and we were heading for home,’ I have a note of one of its senior officers telling me in 1979. ‘Terrorists were vomiting confessions all over the place.’ He said that when detectives were debriefed after interrogations, it was ‘like emptying buckets’.15 Once a suspect started talking, there was no telling where he would stop. Detectives called it ‘laxity of tongue control’. Crimes going back years were now being cleared up. In 1977, 1,308 suspects were charged with terrorist offences, almost a thousand of them by members of the four Regional Crime Squads that the new Chief Constable, Kenneth Newman, had set up to cover the province.16
Newman, who had arrived in Northern Ireland on 1 May 1976 to implement the new policy of police primacy, was Roy Mason’s soul mate. Both shared an undisguised contempt for the ‘terrorists’, regardless of the side from which they came. Both were determined to beat them. Neither had any time for defeatist talk. Like Mason, Newman was an Englishman, but of the more reserved and clinical type. He came to Northern Ireland after distinguished service with the Metropolitan Police and was determined to make the RUC the most effective anti-terrorist police force in the world. In that he and subsequent Chief Constables – Hermon, Annesley and Flanagan – succeeded. From the outset, Newman made his objectives clear to the people of Northern Ireland. ‘Terrorism continues to bring death and destruction,’ he said. ‘I will not be satisfied until the shooting and the whole squalid catalogue of criminality is brought to a finish. Our purpose is to put behind bars those criminals who up to now have perhaps regarded themselves as being beyond the reach of the law.’17 Newman and Mason both spoke the same language. Castlereagh became the most potent weapon of the ‘Brits’ against the IRA. Mason graphically described the inroads the security forces were making.
We are squeezing the terrorists like rolling up a toothpaste tube. We are squeezing them out of their safe havens. We are squeezing them away from their money supplies. We are squeezing them out of society and into prison.18
A secret document found by the Irish police during the search of a flat outside Dublin where Seamus Twomey had been staying prior to his arrest on 3 December 1977, confirmed the damage that the interrogation centres at Castlereagh and Gough Barracks, filled by the Emergency Provisions and Prevention of Terrorism Acts, were inflicting on the IRA. ‘The three- and seven-day detention orders are breaking Volunteers and it is the Republican Army’s fault for not indoctrinating Volunteers with the psychological strength to resist interrogation … [this factor] is contributing to our defeat.’19 It could not have been put blunter than that.
By this time, ‘Mike’, Special Branch’s experienced agent-handler, was based with the Regional Crime Squad at Castlereagh. The interrogation centre was not only a means of getting convictions but the perfect environment for ‘turning’ suspects and recruiting agents. It was certainly more effective and less dangerous than walking up to someone in the street. ‘Obviously it was an intimidating place to be for any of the people arrested there,’ he said. ‘The intelligence we had was very specific in relation to all the people arrested. Those who were being interviewed by the Regional Crime Squads were not just pulled out of a hat. They were people on which there was good intelligence that they had been involved or were on the periphery of serious terrorist criminal offences. So, it was an ideal place and we did recruit from there, yes.’ ‘Mike’ was delighted with Newman and Mason’s approach and the support both gave to those at the sharp end.
To my mind, it showed a willingness to actually defeat the problem of terrorism as opposed to appease it or deal with it in any other way. Roy Mason encouraged the work that was being done and on many occasions spoke to lads that were involved and congratulated them. He showed a positive interest and we felt, on a personal basis, that we were actually achieving something. We were arresting, interviewing and charging people for terrorist crimes. They went to court and were convicted and to my mind this was the only way to deal with it. We were fighting a war, but it seemed up until then that only one side was fighting a war. We were now being much more p
ositive about it. We were going after them, and it was working.
And what effect did that have on the IRA?
I think it brought them to their knees at that particular period. Reports that I had knowledge of certainly said they were in disarray.
Were you concerned that some of the methods used at Castlereagh in, as you say, fighting that war, were methods that shouldn’t have been used, that some people were ill-treated?
It’s alleged that people were ill-treated and I can’t deny in the light of events [i.e. subsequent inquiries] that some people were abused. But the bottom line was, we were dealing with murderers, we were dealing with people who were quite prepared to shoot and kill innocent civilians. I accepted as a policeman, and soldiers accepted it too, that we were ‘legitimate’ targets for terrorists. That was part of the job. But we were arresting and charging and convicting people who were putting bombs in shops, and killing innocent civilians, killing children. I’ve sat across the table from people who I know have murdered colleagues of mine and we’ve had to look into the eyes of people that we know are murderers and killers. I had no compunction about making them uncomfortable. But it’s your job and you just get on with it.
How did you make them uncomfortable?
Oh, through interviews, through long interviews, through letting them know how we felt about them in no uncertain terms. But there certainly was no institutionalized ill-treatment of prisoners.
That did not mean that it did not happen: ‘institutionalized’ was the key word.
By the late summer of 1977, I had no doubt that there were grounds for many of the allegations of ill-treatment that I had heard, having spoken to many – both republicans and loyalists – who had been interrogated and released, either because they had not made admissions or because there was no other evidence against them. In addition to descriptions of general beating and of suspects being made to stand in various stress positions as practised after internment in 1971 and replicated in the ‘Det’ anti-interrogation training, a clear pattern of abuse seemed to emerge with descriptions of fingers being bent backwards over the wrist and ears being banged with cupped hands. It was always possible these were carefully rehearsed and fabricated stories, but somehow I doubted it.
Even more critically, I had spoken to Dr ‘Bertie’ Irwin, the police surgeon who examined prisoners in Belfast after interrogation at Castlereagh, and to Dr Denis Elliott, the Senior Medical Officer who examined them at Gough Barracks. Irwin and Elliot were both remarkable and courageous men. Neither had any sympathy for the IRA or the UVF and the UDA. But their concern about the pattern of injuries they were seeing ultimately ensured the treatment of suspects became a political issue once again and not something that was simply brushed aside as ‘terrorist propaganda’. At the Northern Ireland Office, the Permanent Under Secretary, Brian Cubbon, now recovered from the injuries he had received when Christopher Ewart-Biggs’s car was bombed, was also becoming aware of the potential problems. ‘I think we became conscious of the pressure on the RUC officers to deliver results,’ he told me. ‘I was concerned at what was being said. I was concerned at some of the rumours. I was particularly concerned at some of the medical evidence. Kenneth Newman knew about the rumours and what was said and gave assurances that he’d no reason to think that there was widespread malpractice happening.’ ‘Widespread’, like ‘institutionalized’, was a convenient piece of casuistry. I had never believed the ill-treatment was widespread in the sense that it had been authorized from on high but I had no doubt it was happening on a sufficient scale to merit further investigation. The authorities argued that the injuries Irwin and Elliott had drawn attention to were self-inflicted.
In October 1977, I made a programme for Thames Television’s This Week called ‘Inhuman and Degrading Treatment’ that examined ten cases in which there was strong medical evidence of ill-treatment. It was one of several controversial programmes I had made that summer, each one dealing with aspects of government security policy. In August, a This Week programme on the Queen’s Jubilee visit to Belfast called ‘In Friendship and Forgiveness’ was banned by ITV’s regulatory body, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), because it showed, amongst other things, masked IRA men manning a checkpoint. A few weeks later, in a programme about conditions inside the Maze prison called ‘Life Behind the Wire’, the Secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA), Desmond Irvine, gave a brave interview and was then shot dead by the IRA.20 After ‘Inhuman and Degrading Treatment’, the NIO launched an unprecedented personal attack.
It is significant that the producers and reporter of this programme have produced three programmes in quick succession which have concentrated on presenting the blackest possible picture of events in Northern Ireland. After the last programme on prisons, a prison officer who appeared on the programme was murdered, and last night’s programme may well place police officers, who deserve all support, at even further risk. That is not what one expects of responsible commentators.21
Roy Mason charged the programme with being ‘irresponsible and insensitive’ and ‘riddled with unsubstantiated allegations’.22 The IBA felt the heat and told This Week to lay off Northern Ireland for a while and suggested it might find another reporter to cover it. This Week did give the issue a break but did not replace its reporter.
In the wake of the intense controversy surrounding Castlereagh, Amnesty International sent a team to Northern Ireland at the end of November 1977 to investigate the allegations. Mason facilitated their visit although he had no doubt why the issue had gathered such momentum. ‘We were without question hurting the IRA and hindering its ability to conduct operations. The reports I saw daily established that; so it didn’t surprise me that the terrorists were squealing. Still, it was disappointing to see their complaints taken so seriously, when by definition any evidence from the IRA had to be tainted.’23
Amnesty sent its report to Mason on 2 May 1978. After its investigation of seventy-eight cases of alleged ill-treatment, its conclusion was damning.
Amnesty International believes that maltreatment of suspected terrorists by the RUC has taken place with sufficient frequency to warrant the establishment of a public inquiry to investigate it.24
Mason consoled himself with the observation that ‘At least none of Amnesty’s findings amounted to outright torture.’25
The Government had given the Amnesty team every facility and was taken aback at the result. The report was dynamite and difficult to dismiss. The NIO sat on it for over a month, no doubt working out how it was going to deal with it. It was finally leaked and, having got hold of a copy, we planned a follow-up programme for This Week that vindicated the claims of maltreatment made in ‘Inhuman and Degrading Treatment’ the previous October. Again, the IBA intervened and the programme was banned on the grounds that the contents of the Amnesty report should not be discussed until it was presented to parliament and made public. Thames Television planned to transmit an alternative programme in the This Week slot but members of the television technicians’ union, with the support of the National Union of Journalists, blanked the screen. The viewing figures were surprisingly good. I noted in my diary ‘Blank screen ensued and rumpus’.
And still the controversy was not over. Amnesty’s demand for a public inquiry was out of the question and Mason appointed Judge Harry Bennett QC, an English Crown Court judge, to head a Committee significantly not to investigate the allegations but to examine procedures and ways of improving the system. The Government was not going to grace the issue by appointing a Lord Gardiner or Lord Diplock. ‘The fact that Bennett was a circuit court judge was a measure of how much importance they attached to it,’ one civil servant of the time told me. The Committee was also circumscribed by its specific remit. Its report was finally published on 16 March 1979. Judge Bennett had strayed, however gingerly, outside his remit. Under the circumstances, he could hardly have done otherwise. He concluded that there had been ‘cases in which injuries, whatever their precise caus
e, were not self-inflicted and were sustained in police custody.’26 When Mason studied their conclusions – and he had plenty of time to do so – he had to admit that ‘some of the allegations against the RUC seemed to gain weight’.27 As a result of Bennett’s recommendations, closed-circuit television was installed in the interrogation rooms, and suspects were given improved access to solicitors and doctors. With rare exceptions, allegations of physical ill-treatment at Castlereagh ceased. A disturbing chapter had ended. The ‘Brits’ had come very close to defeating the IRA but ‘criminalization’, and the methods used to enforce it, had provided IRA prisoners in the H Blocks of the Maze with the weapon to fight back.
On 28 March 1979, less than a fortnight after the Bennett report was published, the Labour Government fell, brought down on a vote of no confidence. It had been living on a knife-edge for months. Ironically, Castlereagh was the issue that brought it down. On their hair-line mathematics, the party whips calculated that they needed two votes to survive and both of them rested in the hands of Northern Irish MPs. One was Frank Maguire, an Irish republican and the Independent MP for Tyrone and Fermanagh, who, as an abstentionist, seldom came to Westminster. The other was Gerry Fitt, the SDLP member for West Belfast. Whenever he did turn up at Westminister, Maguire was as unpredictable in his voting as Fitt was reliable. On this occasion, having had his arm twisted to attend, he abstained. The Government’s survival now depended on Fitt. In an impassioned speech to the House, he explained how he had reached his decisions on the way he would cast his deciding vote. ‘I made up my mind when I read the Bennett report on police brutality in Northern Ireland,’ he said. ‘When the true story emerges of what has been happening in the interrogation centres, the people in the United Kingdom will receive it with shock, horror and resentment. That is why I take this stand.’ Fitt abstained too and the Government fell, losing the vote of confidence by 311 votes to 310.28 Castlereagh had returned to haunt its defenders.