Perhaps his brave words to McNee were a flourish of the spirit that had sustained Britain through the war, a declaration that he was still a soldier at heart and prepared to accept the mortal danger that went with service. Whatever was behind it, it made the killers’ job less complicated. According to a detective involved in the subsequent investigation, ‘He was the perfect target,’ and killing him ‘was a pretty basic event’.
Within a few hours of the bombing, the INLA had acknowledged it was their operation. The male caller to the Irish Independent newspaper in Dublin provided details not yet in the public domain to give credence to the claim, which was soon accepted by the authorities.9 Five days later, the facts known to the security services were laid out in a report to the outgoing Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan. It stated:
1. It now appears almost certain that the Irish National Liberation Army were responsible for the murder of Airey Neave on 30 March. The results of forensic tests seem to confirm the details given by the Irish National Liberation Army when they claimed responsibility for the attack. They claim that the bomb comprised a mercury detonator device attached to one kilo of TNT. Later intelligence reports also indicated that the bomb had been attached to the car using a magnet. Forensic science tests have now revealed traces of mercury and pieces of magnet in the debris but have failed to find traces of residual explosive, which tends to confirm the claim that TNT was used, rather than any other explosive.
2. The bomb is thought to have been attached to Mr Neave’s car while it was parked outside his home. This view is supported by the fact that Mr Neave did not normally attend the House on a Friday: a carefully planned attempt to assassinate him is unlikely, therefore, to have relied upon a chance visit. The device would probably not have been visible to the porter at the block of flats where Mr Neave lived who claims to have checked the car. Indeed had he seen it it is unlikely he would have recognised [it] for what it was. Rocking the car, as he claims to have done, would not necessarily have activated the device since the remains of a watch found amongst the debris suggest that a device was fitted with a delayed arming mechanism.
3. It seems unlikely that the attack was carried out by a team permanently based in Great Britain. There is a small Irish Republican Socialist Party ‘support group’ in this country but its members are not thought to have been involved in the attack. They have, however, been interviewed and have provided the police with useful information about the organisation of the IRSP.
4. Intelligence reports received after Mr Neave’s murder have suggested that a team of 6 INLA members was sent to Great Britain to carry out attacks. The names of the six men are known and the identity of four of them has been established. They have not yet been located.
5. The police are pursuing their enquiries and are following up any leads provided by the public. It seems likely, however, that intelligence reports will prove to be the most fruitful source of information.10
As was almost always the case, the intelligence the police were working on had come from the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s Special Branch, who were in constant contact with the Special Branch of the Met. According to one of the investigating officers, it was they who provided the names and identities of the suspects. The strong likelihood is that these were supplied by an informant or informants.11 The officer revealed that the RUC were also able to provide the address of a terraced house in Hampstead which had been rented on a short-term lease by two of the team, one of whom, despite the information in the report, was a woman. When the house was raided soon after the bombing, it was empty and ‘clean. They’d disappeared.’ A check of airports and seaports showed the couple had flown from Heathrow to Dublin on the early evening of the previous day. The detectives leading the inquiry concluded that all the perpetrators had left the country within a few days of the attack. The Irish police, the Garda Siochana, were alerted. Despite claims from sections of the media and some politicians to the contrary, relations between the Met and the Irish police were good. The investigating team ‘did at one time consider extradition’, but with no evidence on which the Irish could act, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to proceed, as although the suspects were known, there was no chance of a conviction. The detective involved in the inquiry ‘agreed with him’.
However, the enormity of the crime demanded that the investigation was seen to be being pursued with the utmost vigour. Over the coming weeks left-wing supporters of the IRSP were arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act but subsequently released. The appeal for witnesses resulted in the issue of photofit images of four suspects on 10 April, ten days after the murder. Suspect number one (‘aged 25–26 and 6 ft 1 in tall’) had been noticed in the Westminster Arms, a pub near the Neaves’ flat, on the evening before the attack.12 The second (‘age 36–42, about 5 ft 9 in’) had been seen in the Westminster Gardens service road where Airey usually left his car, at 6.45 the following morning, having parked a yellow Fiat in Marsham Street, on which the block stood. The third (‘about 34, 5 ft 7 in–5 ft 8 in’) and fourth (‘age about 28, 6 ft–6 ft 1 in’) had also been spotted waiting near the service road at 11.30 the previous evening. All had been heard speaking with Irish accents. The head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, Commander Peter Duffy, who had returned from the United States to lead the inquiry, told a press conference, ‘I believe one of these men to be the bomber.’ Despite the fact that his team were sure the team had long gone, Duffy maintained that the bombers could still be in Britain.
With the murder, the INLA had achieved the notoriety it longed for. In Belfast, Ronnie Bunting was ecstatic when he heard the news. Arriving at a fund-raising social event in the IRSP’s Falls Road offices in West Belfast, he threw his arms around Sean Flynn, brother of Harry, shouting, ‘We did it!’ That night the drinks were on the house.13 A statement dated the day after the murder which appeared in the Starry Plough offered a different version of events to the police narrative. It read:
The INLA successfully breached intense security at the House of Commons to plant the device, consisting of one kilo of explosive. After taking stringent precautions to ensure that no civilians would be injured the ASU [Active Service Unit] returned to base … Airey Neave was specially targeted for assassination. He was well known for his rabid militarist calls for more repression against the Irish people and for the strengthening of the SAS murder gang, a group which has no qualms about murdering Irish people.
In April, the Dublin magazine Magill carried an interview with the INLA’s ‘chief of staff and director or intelligence’. This stated that the decision to kill Neave had been taken by the ‘Army Council several weeks ago and was reaffirmed more recently by the Headquarters Staff’. The final go-ahead was given following the no-confidence vote that brought down the government. It was again claimed that the ‘active service unit which placed the bomb breached the security of the House of Commons on the day of the assassination. The bomb was placed under the driver’s seat. The kind of device used was previously used twice in Northern Ireland, once in the killing of a UDR member and the other in the injuring of an RUC reservist.’ Their intention was to ‘mark time on the British front for the time being’. However, the team that carried out the attack ‘was and is based in England’ and could ‘carry out any operation it is asked to undertake’.
In contacts with the media in the years that followed, spokesmen for the INLA would add further touches to their story. The basic account, though, remained the same. The police also stuck to their initial version of events. The point where the two versions diverge is on the question of where the bomb was planted. The Royal Arsenal bomb expert who examined the debris of the car, George Berryman, concluded that ‘The device consisted of a charge of a high-performance explosive which had been initiated by an electric detonator, and incorporated a battery, a wristwatch and a mercury tilt switch.’ The bomb had been ‘attached under the car with the aid of a magnet’. The wristwatch ‘was used as a delayed arming mechanism and the mercury tilt switch
to activate the device when the car was accelerating and/or going up a gradient’.14
The mercury tilt switch was an INLA innovation – its great contribution to terrorism technology. According to a military bomb expert, ‘Basically, it’s a little perspex tube fitted with two little wires at one end and filled with a quantity of mercury. If the mercury touches the wires, it completes an electrical circuit and, if the device is armed, triggers the bomb.’15 It was invented by a scientifically minded operative from North Armagh by modifying a switch available in radio spares catalogues.16 In December 1978, a prison officer at the Maze was injured when a prototype of the device went off under his car. On 15 March, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, Robert McNally, died of injuries sustained in a similar bomb attack six days earlier.
The wristwatch timing device gave the bomber flexibility and reduced the chances of detection and arrest. According to the bomb expert, it could be set for periods of up to an hour, or twelve hours depending on whether the minute or the hour hand was used to arm the bomb. Once activated, as Berryman stated, the act of ‘accelerating and/or going up a gradient’ would set it off.
Neave would have had to accelerate away from traffic lights at least three times on the short journey from the flat to the Palace of Westminster. Thus, if the police version was correct, the very earliest the bomb could have been planted under the car at Westminster Gardens would have been 2.45 a.m. on Friday 30 March. Their story would thus be feasible if the planter was suspect number two, seen in the service road at 6.45 that morning.
It was, of course, in the propaganda interests of the INLA to claim that the bomb was planted inside the Palace of Westminster. It would demonstrate their ingenuity and magnify the joy of their supporters at having put one over on the British. In a later version, given to Jack Holland, an Irish journalist, by Ronnie Bunting in 1979, it was claimed that as the Callaghan government fell, ‘information unexpectedly came to the INLA from a political source in England.’ Holland and his co-author Henry McDonald wrote that ‘The source feared that Neave was preparing a right-wing backlash, with Thatcher as his chosen “front”.’ Thanks to their informant, ‘the INLA had the access and the information necessary to launch one of the most daring assassinations in British political history.’17
The team, whose size Bunting did not disclose, ‘penetrated the House of Commons underground car park posing as workers, carrying the device in a tool kit.’ The bomb charge was a sixteen-ounce chunk of Soviet-made penthrite-tolite (TNT) explosive, part of a second batch obtained from their PLO contacts in Lebanon the year before. Their source had told them that ‘the security cameras inside the car park … were not monitored very strictly.’ Conforming to movie cliché, there was a last-minute hitch. They discovered the timing device was not working properly. They replaced it with a wristwatch timer, scraping the plastic coating off the hands with sandpaper to ensure a proper connection to activate the countdown.
The claim of inside assistance generated a wave of rumours about the identity of the accomplice. According to one story, the intelligence was provided by someone who went on to become a prominent Labour party figure. The charge was repeated by provincial police officers who had been involved in investigating Republican terror attacks, when they were being questioned over corruption allegations, but was apparently not taken seriously.18 It seems that although security at Westminster had been tightened up after the start of the IRA mainland campaign, it was still inefficient. Nonetheless, the INLA version seems implausible. Why would the team multiply their chances of being caught by targeting Neave in the Commons – attractive though the propaganda benefits might be – when they could plant the bomb virtually risk-free at Westminster Gardens? The story of inside help that reduced the hazard serves to make the INLA account more credible.
What is clear is that the assassins’ task was far easier as a result of Neave’s decision to decline police protection. The INLA team had clearly watched their target for some time before they struck. Any competent officer would surely have noticed that Neave was under surveillance. Nowadays, the killers’ movements would have been tracked every inch of the way by CCTV. Then, the technology was in its infancy, and when the team disappeared, the chances of them ever being brought to justice soon became vanishingly small.
Neave’s killers remain at liberty to this day. The identities of the suspects were never revealed and, if official policy is maintained, will not be for many years to come. The Metropolitan Police files are closed until 2079, under a rule that keeps the details of unsolved cases secret for a century after they occurred. The justification is that the emergence of new information might result in the investigation being reopened. Any interim examination of the papers would create the possibility of the file being tampered with. Access is also denied to the Home Office material covering the murder. Both this author and family members have made a number of requests under the Freedom of Information Act to examine the relevant files. Each one has been rejected on several grounds. A characteristic response was that given by the Metropolitan Police Service official dealing with the request: ‘Whilst I acknowledge the importance of transparency with the general public, particularly as this request concerns the murder of a public figure, I have found that the public interest lies in favour of refusing your request. In view of the fact that the investigation into Mr Neave’s murder remains unsolved and the release of the police file would prejudice the ability of police to conduct any further investigation, I have found that release is not in the public interest. Furthermore, I have also found that the release of the information within the file that was provided in confidence to police, would have an adverse effect upon the ability of the MPS, and the Police Service as a whole, to obtain information in connection with future investigations. For these reasons, I have found that the public interest lies in refusing your request. I have accordingly refused your request in its entirety.’19 A further reason given for maintaining silence is that allowing access to the files would be ‘harmful to the ability of those inolved in safeguarding national security’.
Information from Republican sources has revealed the identity of one of the team: Patsy O’Hara, from Londonderry, who subsequently was the fourth man to die in the 1981 hunger strikes launched in a futile attempt to restore ‘political status’ for Republican prisoners. It was O’Hara who smuggled the bomb materials into Britain, arriving via France.
Although the police were aware almost immediately of the identities of the perpetrators, in the absence of evidence, a confession or the testimony of a ‘supergrass’, there was no realistic hope of obtaining a conviction. In 1986, however, events in France raised official hopes that the police might lay hands on a member of the INLA who may have helped with their investigation. Two years earlier, INLA had forged a relationship with representatives of the PLO based in Prague. Through them they arranged a shipment of anti-tank rockets, rifles, machine guns and mortars. The consignment was due to be delivered to them in France. In July, an INLA man, William ‘Boot’ Browning, was identified by French police when he arrived and followed to Paris, where Harry Flynn (the Belfast-born founder member of the INLA who escaped from the Maze in 1976), George McCann and John Gormley were waiting for him. On 25 July, they were arrested near the Cité Universitaire, a campus housing foreign students in the south of Paris, and charged with illegal possession of arms and explosives.20
The development caused a flurry of excitement in London and Belfast. The memos and letters that sped back and forth between the Home Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Paris showed that the arrest of Harry ‘Basher’ Flynn – as he was often now referred to in official documents – was seen as an event of the highest importance.21 The Northern Ireland Office urged the Paris embassy ‘to keep us in the closest touch possible with developments’. Officials were little interested in the fate of the other defendants and, as one document put it, ‘in all of this the NIO’s principal target is Flynn.’
He was remanded in Fresnes prison near Paris while the French authorities took their leisurely time to prepare their case. The British Embassy appears to have given them every assistance. The documents reveal that at some point ‘highly classified intelligence information’ supplied by the RUC was handed over to the state prosecutor. The inference is that the material was intended to emphasise the importance of at least one of the defendants. It had been handed over on a confidential basis and the RUC was horrified to learn that it had been shown to both the prosecution and defence lawyers.
Flynn’s arrest opened the way to a possible extradition to Britain. A formal request was drawn up, to be issued in the event of the French court acquitting him or delivering a light sentence that meant that, given the time he had spent in custody, he would be freed immediately. The wording and procedure for delivering it were combed over by legal experts and even run past the French authorities to iron out possible glitches.
The charges it contained hardly seemed to justify the extraordinary effort. They dated back to the April 1975 Belfast bank robbery for which he was being held when he made his escape from the Crumlin Road courthouse. He was charged with stealing £3,339.91 from the Northern Bank Ltd and possession of a Luger pistol, a sawn-off shotgun and four cartridges. A similar extradition request had been made to the Republic in 1978 and been rejected by the High Court in Dublin on the grounds that the crime was ‘political’.
On 16 September 1987, three weeks before the trial, a meeting was convened in Belfast to review ‘the possible extradition of Harry Flynn’. The list of those present makes it clear that what was at stake was far more important than the clearing-up of a minor bank heist twelve years previously. The attendees included the Crown Prosecutor, senior intelligence and Home Office officials, and, most significantly, a detective superintendent and sergeant from the Metropolitan Police.
The Man Who Was Saturday Page 29