by Mark Urban
A decision to confront armed terrorists can be implemented as an ambush. If the terrorist decides to mount an attack, and the security forces to pre-empt them then, the officer adds, ‘the outcome is pretty obvious’. The change in late 1983 is therefore a shift – on some occasions at least – to the second of his options, the shooting option. There had been many occasions during the previous few years which demonstrated a preference for the other approach – for example the arrest of Seamus McElwaine and his gang in March 1981.
The general or senior police officer who wants to arrest terrorists must create the right circumstances to do so. In the McElwaine case this involved ensuring, through surveillance, that the men were surrounded in a house on an isolated farm. Had it been necessary, the soldiers could have sat outside the farmhouse for hours or days until those inside had surrendered.
On the other hand, confronting terrorists during an actual attack is likely to produce a shoot-out. The paramilitaries will be armed and may be in a state of mind where they are ready to use their weapons. Failing to intercept them carries a risk for the soldiers that the terrorists may escape. And, most importantly in terms of the law of minimum force as outlined by the Yellow Card, a party of terrorists approaching their target may well represent that immediate danger to life which justifies the security forces opening fire.
Besides the Yellow Card’s general rules of conduct concerning firearms, the specific nature of soldiers’ orders can have a bearing on the use of force in a particular operation. Army officers and NCOs are trained to give orders in a standard format. Orders normally involve groups of soldiers gathered around an officer or NCO as he explains the plan. They move through various headings, for example ‘friendly forces’ or ‘outline plan’. The most important, in seeking to understand whether such operations are within the law of minimum force, is the one headed ‘mission’. The use of the word ‘ambush’ in this section will carry a particular meaning to most soldiers.
The only published example of SAS orders for a mission in Northern Ireland concerns an operation in May 1976, following the discovery of what appeared to be a command wire for an IRA bomb near a border crossing in south Armagh. The SAS were operating under the aegis of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, that night and the Commanding Officer decided to refer his plan to higher authorities for approval. His orders were reproduced in a book covering that tour. He told his brigadier that his aim was ‘to insert that evening (23 May) a covert patrol to try to ambush [author’s emphasis] the terrorists who would have to man a chosen firing point and probably lay out more wire’.
It is standard for the oral orders to SAS troops for operations in which they intend to confront the IRA to refer to the Yellow Card restrictions on the use of firearms, according to someone who has been present at such briefings. However, the soldier’s understanding of his task, if the word ‘ambush’ is used, appears to be clear even if the Yellow Card guidelines are mentioned, as emerges from this interview with an SAS soldier:
URBAN: What is the mission on an ambush?
SAS MAN: You know what the mission is on an ambush, everybody knows what the mission is in an ambush.
URBAN: Tell me what you think it is.
SAS MAN: I know that when you do an ambush you kill people.
During the 1980s the term ‘ambush’ was replaced in SAS orders in Northern Ireland by ‘OP/React’, short for ‘Observation Post/Reactive’, according to an SAS man who served there. He says an OP/React order is ‘to all intents and purposes an ambush’ and believes it was a cosmetic change prompted by RUC sensitivity over the word ‘ambush’. It is apparent that the soldiers concerned still believe they are involved in precisely that, so I will continue to use the term in accounts of actions which may have been officially described as OP/React missions. The key point is that when the intention is to apprehend armed terrorists, SAS men say their orders usually refer to a ‘hard arrest’.
There is no shoot-to-kill policy in the sense of a blanket order to shoot IRA terrorists on sight. Rather the knack is to get IRA terrorists, armed and carrying out an operation, to walk into a trap. Killing an unarmed IRA member may create a martyr, but if the same person were carrying a gun, even committed republicans may feel the operation was, in some sense, fair. Peter Morton, the Parachute Regiment CO who later wrote about his 1976 tour in Northern Ireland, says of the death of Peter Cleary, ‘it was certainly a pity that the first occasion on which a terrorist was killed by the SAS was not more clear-cut; the ideal would have been to shoot an armed terrorist.’ Some of those who have carried out covert operations in Ulster refer to lethal force being used in such a way as to appear fair and within the law as the ‘clean kill’.
The idea that it is the appearance of what has happened that may, in terms of undermining support for the IRA, be more important than the reality is not confined to members of the SAS or Special Branch. The Northern Ireland Office said, in a letter to Amnesty International in 1985 on the subject of disputed killings by the Army and police, ‘The Government and the security forces themselves recognize that it is in their interest to avoid controversies over the use of lethal force by members of the security forces.’ The Freudian slip, if it may be termed such, is that the civil servant chose to emphasize the avoidance of controversy rather than the needless use of lethal force itself.
Army commanders understand that incidents in which special forces have been involved may be subjected to intense scrutiny by the media and by republican propagandists. Someone who held a key post in the security forces recognizes that in SAS ambush-type operations against the IRA the public perception of what happened is all important and that there is no room for error: ‘If we don’t get them and destroy them totally or get them with the cleanest of cuts, then it is always assumed that it was not done properly. If it is not perceived to be an immaculately clean kill, it is automatically assumed to be wrong.’
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Between December 1983 and February 1985, a period of just over one year, the Intelligence and Security Group was to shoot dead ten people in Northern Ireland, eight of them IRA members, following a period of five years in which the SAS had killed nobody. Why, then, did security chiefs choose the shooting option?
The answer lies partly in the activities of the IRA and the ways which security chiefs felt were open to counter them. In 1980 the number of terrorist incidents was at its lowest for many years. With the public disorder provoked by the hunger strike campaign in 1981, incidents began to climb again. The trend was not a marked one, but security chiefs were alarmed at the improved efficiency of the attacks, say those involved in policy-making at the time. The IRA was, in effect, able to kill more people in each of its attacks.
More importantly, the summer of 1983, which saw successful appeals against many of the convictions obtained from supergrass evidence, represented a depressing setback for those who believed that the courtroom was the best arena for cutting back the IRA, rather than the shoot-out. The supergrasses Sean Mallon and Jackie Goodman had withdrawn their evidence in 1982. Patrick McGurk, the Dungannon man, had dropped his evidence against eight people in October. And Robert Lean, claimed by the RUC to be a senior Belfast Provisional, had not only withdrawn his evidence during the same month, but had gone on to appear at a press conference deriding the way the police sought to incriminate people. Although the government continued with its supergrass prosecutions, the IRA had succeeded in checking them.
However, the most bitter blow had come on 25 September 1983, when prisoners in H-Block 7 at the Maze succeeded in overpowering their prison officers. One of them, who was stabbed, subsequently died of a heart attack. They had then commandeered a kitchen lorry and escaped from the prison. During the dragnet which followed, the security forces quickly re-captured sixteen prisoners. Another twenty-two escaped, among them some of the most ruthless terrorists imprisoned during previous years. The Chief Inspector of Prisons later described the incident as ‘the most serious escape in the recent history
of the United Kingdom prison services.’
The IRA exploited the incident fully, organizing a press conference in which several escapees took part. Some of the fugitives went abroad – the organization accepting that they wanted no further active role in the fight – but others returned to the forefront of the campaign. Among the escape’s ringleaders was Seamus McElwaine, captured by the SAS in 1981, who soon returned to bring death to the countryside of south Fermanagh. Another was Gerard McDonnell who was later to be convicted of belonging to the IRA cell which attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister with a bomb which killed five people at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984. Two escapees, Brendan McFarlane and Gerard Kelly, were later run to ground in the Netherlands by the Secret Intelligence Service and were eventually extradited by the Dutch authorities.
Those who served in Ulster at this time reject a specific link between the resumption of aggressive special force operations and the Maze escape, preferring instead to talk of a general change in mood at Lisburn and Knock. The new mood may have taken root independently among the security chiefs, rather than being the result of a political directive. James Prior, later Lord Prior, was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at this time. In a 1988 interview with Tom Mangold of the BBC’s Panorama programme, he denied ever having foreknowledge of SAS operations:
MANGOLD: Were you personally involved in the decision to use the SAS?
PRIOR: No, not at any time.
MANGOLD: Did you ever ask to be told?
PRIOR: No, I am not aware that I ever asked specifically to be told when the SAS were going to be used.
However, some senior security figures say that they did sometimes tell ministers of forthcoming operations. I have been able to establish, by interviewing several people who held senior positions at Stormont and in the security forces, that plans for ambush-type operations are not submitted in writing to ministers. Rather the chief constable or GOC may mention the possibility of such an operation verbally to the Secretary of State – the senior minister at Stormont. It is apparently not the practice for the minister of state responsible for security matters to be informed. Much depends on there being a cordial relationship between the Northern Ireland Secretary and his security chiefs. An informal hint in conversation of a forthcoming operation is regarded by senior police and Army officers more as a privilege than a right, says someone who has been party to such discussions. But it has also been suggested to me that senior politicians at the Ministry of Defence in London may sometimes be told in advance of a forthcoming special forces operation in Northern Ireland.
By the mid 1980s a regular system for the approval of special operations had been devised at Lisburn. The GOC would be briefed on forthcoming operations of this kind by the CLF. The commanding officer of the Intelligence and Security Group is often present in case the CLF, who has many other operational responsibilities, cannot answer all of the GOC’s questions. The fact that the briefings took place once a week indicates both the scale of covert operations and that a great many of those planned as ambushes do not achieve their intended result.
The chief constable of the RUC is also regularly briefed by his intelligence chiefs on RUC aspects of forthcoming special operations. Any remarks to the Secretary of State about forthcoming special operations are usually based on the formal briefings which the GOC and chief constable have been given by their subordinates.
Talking to people who have served in senior positions at Stormont it becomes apparent that, during the 1980s at least, they did not consider themselves to be in real control either of the RUC’s or of the Army’s special operations. The chief constable, as overall director of security operations, succeeded in ruling specific discussion of undercover units and their activities off the agenda. A senior Stormont figure recalls, ‘We just tended to hide behind the operational independence of the RUC. We couldn’t be responsible for detailed operational matters, only for broad policy.’
Politicians and civil servants at the Northern Ireland Office had the responsibility to Parliament for security forces actions but little actual influence over them. One explains: ‘I think why I can justify it to myself is that ministers, on the whole, spend half their time in London and half their time in Northern Ireland. Their pattern is irregular, they have other political responsibilities, whereas the soldiers – at least the ones who have to take the decisions – have to be there twenty-four hours a day.’ The result was one of those compromises, typical of British government, in which real power is exercised by those who are not responsible to Parliament or the electorate who, in return, shield those who are responsible from painful decisions.
Another factor affecting the situation was the important changes among senior officers at Lisburn and at Knock. By 1983 Lieutenant General Richard Lawson had been replaced by a new GOC, Lieutenant General Francis Richardson. People serving at Lisburn say that Lieutenant General Richardson took a more direct role in the direction of everyday operations, leaving less latitude to his Commander Land Forces. In addition, the CLF, Major General Huxtable had in 1982 been replaced by Major General Peter Chiswell. The new CLF bore the visceral hatred of the IRA common among officers of his parent unit, the Parachute Regiment. However, Major General Chiswell was also a man of strong religious convictions who understood the harm which would come to the security forces if they became embroiled in disputes over the use of lethal force. And by late 1983 he had himself been replaced by another officer, Major General Pank. The new CLF was an infantry officer who had served in Borneo and Malaya before going on to command an armoured brigade in West Germany. From the events which followed (see chapter eighteen), it is clear that there must have been a consensus between Lieutenant General Richardson and Major General Pank about the use of special forces during the period 1983 to 1985.
Whatever was going on at Lisburn, the attitude of Chief Constable Jack Hermon must have been critical. After his Enniskillen speech in 1980, Chief Constable Hermon had attained something of a doveish reputation. Many in the force had considered his vision of an unarmed force to be foolishly, if harmlessly, utopian. After the Ballysillan operation in 1978, Hermon – then still Kenneth Newman’s deputy – had apparently voiced a distaste for SAS operations, particularly in inner city areas.
Some of those who worked with the Chief Constable, however, believe his views may have hardened and changed over the years. Initially, he had taken it upon himself to be present at the funeral of every police officer killed by terrorists. In doing so, he had put himself squarely in the path of the torrent of grief which flowed from distraught spouses and children. Eventually he stopped going to all of them, sending one of his senior deputies instead. After his retirement the Chief Constable told the BBC TV’s Everyman programme, ‘I had a concern that it was eroding my capacity to perform my duty as Chief Constable with the objectivity and professionalism which was necessary.’
Whether or not Hermon’s personal attitudes had altered under this pressure from the pacific idealism of his 1980 speech, as overall director of security operations he was theoretically responsible for the ambush tactics to which the Army was returning. But Hermon also presided over another change of note in the form of Assistant Chief Constable Trevor Forbes’ promotion to Head of Special Branch. This office is so important for the direction of covert operations that the views of its incumbent could play a key role in the process of planning ambushes.
Perhaps the most compelling explanation for what the security forces sought to achieve when they returned to a policy of occasional ambushes is provided by a senior figure at Stormont. He says that the idea of mounting such operations ‘is to give the IRA an occasional rap across the knuckles, something which may deter them from carrying out more attacks’. It would appear, from the interviews I have been able to carry out, that the initiative for that change came not from ministers who might have more qualms about the political repercussions of such ‘raps’, but from within the security edifice itself.
Another explanati
on for the use of ambushes is given by a one-time senior officer at Lisburn. He acknowledges that such operations may provide the IRA with martyrs, but believes they can offer the chance to deal with specific individuals, saying, ‘The balance of advantage to us or them may be very questionable. There comes a time when we say, “We need a kill” – such and such a person is a thorn in our side and we’ve got to do something about him.’
Most officers involved in intelligence work in Northern Ireland tend to believe that ambushes are effective in removing particular players or units. They realize, though, that such measures may buy them limited breathing space. One RUC officer told me at a briefing, ‘We give them a bloody nose but they wipe it and come back. Sometimes we hit them hard and take out an entire Active Service Unit. There’s a lull, new faces appear and the whole thing starts up again.’
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It is apparent, talking to those who have been present during discussions of special forces operations in Ulster, that the security chiefs and ministers themselves to some extent fall prey to the mentality of the ‘clean kill’. Given that explicit discussion of eliminating IRA members was anathema to most of these people, it is worth discussing here how a typical SAS operation evolved in Ulster during the mid 1980s – a process pieced together from people who have played various parts in such dramas.
The idea of mounting a pre-emptive special forces operation against terrorists can emerge in a number of places. The initiative most often comes from a Regional Head of Special Branch or sometimes the Head of Special Branch himself, following the receipt of informer intelligence about the location of an arms cache or the target of a forthcoming attack. Information from a ‘national asset’ informer is often given by the Security Service to the SB, because it is they – through the TCG – who have the ability to do something about it. The SB may suggest a pre-emptive operation or may simply relay the information in neutral terms to the Army. It may be the brigade commander, the CLF or the commanding officer of the Intelligence and Security Group – a man selected for his experience of covert operations – who may then suggest that the tip is suitable for ‘executive action’.