APART FROM THE two bungled attempts to steal arms in 1955, the IRA refrained from terrorist activities on the mainland from the end of their short, sharp campaign of 1939–40 until the beginning of the 1970s, but there were now ominous signs that they were again spoiling for a fight. Northern Ireland had once more become a theatre for their aggression as the Roman Catholics strove to assert their claims for equality and civil rights. However, not all republicans believed that they should completely abandon constitutional politics in this struggle and, at the movement’s 1969 Ard Fheis (annual conference), the hardliners split from their more politically orientated Marxist colleagues to form the Provisional IRA (PIRA). The remainder became the Official IRA.
This, in itself, posed no problems to the security forces; but there were other factors that were to make the job of predicting the IRA’s intentions on the mainland more difficult. There is no doubt that they had become more sophisticated and their Active Service Units (ASUs) more disciplined, but then, so had the police. The PIRA hierarchy realised at the start of their proposed new campaign, which was to plague England intermittently into the next century, that their operatives based on the mainland were too well known to Special Branch, which regularly monitored their movements and haunts, and were not considered capable of carrying out well-planned, military-style operations. The solution was to send over a succession of experienced and well-trained teams to carry out missions and return without delay to Ireland.
The IRA high command was justified in its assumption that MPSB was too well-informed about their supporters in the metropolis. In fact, there were very few members of the IRA based in London and they had no organisation here. It is true that their political wing, Sinn Féin, had organised groups (cumainn) named after Irish ‘martyrs’ (e.g. Wolfe Tone, Roger Casement, Kevin Barry etc.), which held regular meetings, but their activities were closely monitored by means of surveillance, technical resources and informants. Two agents in particular were well placed in the movement and supplied excellent information, but they began to quarrel with each other at meetings, for they were both anxious to be elected to office in order to have better access to intelligence and impress their handlers. At times they nearly came to blows, so it was decided, with some misgivings, that they should each be made aware of the other’s role. The move was so successful that, far from arguing, they began to praise each other at meetings, with the result that they both became office holders; the downside was that they became drinking mates and would turn up for meetings drunk. The situation was resolved when one developed an ulcer and faded from the scene.
The IRA’s lack of confidence in their colleagues on this side of the water was justified, as was illustrated in an abortive attempt by a group of London-based IRA members to bomb a factory just outside London in 1970. Through informants, the MPSB became aware of the group’s intentions and was able to set up an observation post in a house opposite the Irishmen’s address in Drakefield Road, Tooting, which enabled the surveillance officers to witness bombs being made and, with technical assistance, listen to their conversations. The team of six terrorists, led by a man well known to Special Branch, Brendan Magill, were all charged with offences under the Explosives Substances Act 1883. Magill was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for possession of explosives; James McGarrigle and James Monaghan each received sentences of three years for conspiracy to cause an explosion.1
In May 1971, MPSB received information that an IRA group led by Jack, aka ‘Danny’, McElduff, a defrocked priest, were planning a bank raid to finance the IRA activities of their compatriots in Northern Ireland. McElduff, who came from a family of dedicated republicans in County Tyrone, was based in Wellington Street, Colchester; the other three members of the group, Michael Gaughan, James Joseph Moore and Frank Golden, all lived in Mountview Road, Hornsey, London, but were temporarily staying with McElduff. Essex Special Branch was informed and established an observation post in a block of offices opposite the suspects’ address, while surveillance of the rear entrance to the building was covered from a van; the flat had also been successfully bugged, enabling some of the conspirators’ conversations to be heard. The surveillance extended over several days, during which time adrenalin ran high when the armed bank raiders did a dummy run to a bank in Hornsey but decided, for some reason known only to themselves, to abandon the venture for that day and return to Colchester, much to the chagrin of the waiting Flying Squad officers. The Special Branch surveillance team, which included John Bullard, Andy Patterson, Kevin Kindleysides, Nick Charles and Gary Atkinson, continued to watch the premises, although clear sight of the door was occasionally impaired by parked vehicles. It was apparent that during one of these periods the Irishmen had slipped out unobserved, for one afternoon they were seen returning to the house, carrying a case. Later that day the hidden listeners were surprised to hear snatches of conversation which made it apparent that the IRA team had successfully carried out their mission, as they could be heard counting out the proceeds of their raid, which turned out to be a paltry £530. Shortly afterwards, the four Irishmen left the flat and were followed to the station, where they caught a train to London and were arrested at Liverpool Street by Special Branch officers waiting with transport.
On 23 December 1971, at the Central Criminal Court, Moore and Gaughan were both convicted of armed robbery and of conspiracy to rob the Midland Bank and were each sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment; Golden was acquitted of the robbery and conspiracy charges but sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for illegal possession of a firearm without a certificate; Jack McElduff, who did not take part in the raid, was acquitted of conspiracy but was found guilty of dishonestly handling some of the stolen money and sent to prison for three years. Gaughan made the headlines again when he went on hunger strike while incarcerated in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight and died on 3 June 1974. On 8 June, thousands of mourners lined the streets of Kilburn as his coffin, flanked by a ‘guard of honour’, was borne to the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for a requiem mass. Special Branch officers were present to identify members of the colour party and others and, as usual, a telephone message was sent to the Special Branch reserve room after the proceedings to report that everything had passed off peacefully. It caused some amusement, despite the gravity of the circumstances, when the officer taking the message recorded: ‘The colour party all had blackberries on their heads’ (instead of black berets)!
Ironically, it was the Official IRA (OIRA), those who purported to seek a more constitutional path to their goal, who were to strike the first blow in the republicans’ new assault on mainland Britain. Early in 1972, Special Branch had received intelligence that an OIRA ASU was on its way to carry out some form of atrocity in England; the intended location was not known. It was soon revealed as, on 22 February 1972, a powerful car bomb (200 lbs of gelignite) exploded at Aldershot army barracks outside the officers’ mess of the Parachute Regiment, apparently in retaliation for the part played by that regiment in the so-called ‘Bloody Sunday’ demonstration three weeks earlier. The regiment was currently serving abroad, but the assassins succeeded in killing a Roman Catholic padre, five female cleaners and a civilian gardener as well as injuring eighteen other civilians.
The Hampshire Constabulary was in charge of the subsequent investigation but massive support was provided by adjacent forces, including Surrey, Thames Valley and members of the Bomb Squad from the Metropolitan Police. MPSB sent a sizeable contingent of officers experienced in dealing with Irish republican extremism, including DCI Des Winslow, DIs Brice and Graham Ison, DSs Peter Langley and Pat Thomas, DCs John Pascoe and Tom Robson. DS Geoff Battye played a tiring but vital role in taking shorthand notes of many of the interviews.2 The day after the incident, two uniformed Metropolitan Police officers, PS Laidlaw and PC Pitches, stopped a man in the street for no other reason than that he was carrying a holdall and that their professional instinct prompted them to do so (policemen used to do that kind of thing). The holdall contained a gun, 280 rounds of ammunition and a quantity of IRA literature. At the police station he gave his name as Michael Duignan and his address a flat in nearby Amity Grove, Raynes Park. A search of the premises by a Special Branch sergeant, John Barnett, revealed nothing particularly significant. A more interesting development was the discovery by Hampshire CID of the cylinder block of the car used to conceal the bomb. From the serial number stamped on this it was a comparatively simple job for Special Branch to establish the last recorded owner of the vehicle as a car hire firm in north London, who had rented the car out to Francis Kissane of Victoria Rd, N4. Needless to say, Kissane was soon in custody. It must have been doubly satisfying to the police that Duignan admitted knowing him.3
However, Kissane and Duignan had played only minor parts in the ASU’s murderous scheme and police were employed round the clock interviewing hundreds of witnesses before, on 3 March, they finally confronted the leader of the team, Phillip Noel Jenkinson. Initially he was interviewed at his flat in St James’s Lane, Muswell Hill, in north London by DCI Edwin Smith of the Hampshire Constabulary and DI Derek Brice MPSB, but he was noncommittal and it was the keen observation of another SB officer engaged in searching the premises that detected a vital clue, a rate demand from the local authority relating to a lock-up garage in the vicinity. This contained two sizeable gelignite bombs and a number of paratroopers’ uniforms. Armed with this damning evidence, the police wheeled out the big guns in the shape of Commander Matthew Rodger MPSB, and Detective Chief Superintendent Cyril ‘Tanky’ Holdaway, head of Hampshire CID, who grilled Jenkinson in a more intimidating police environment.
The three men, the only members of the team ever arrested, were subsequently charged and convicted. Jenkinson faced seven counts of murder, for which he received a life sentence with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of thirty years, a qualification that proved unnecessary as he died four years later in Leicester Prison; Kissane was acquitted of murder but sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice; Duignan was also convicted on the conspiracy charge and, additionally, illegal possession of a firearm; he was sentenced to three and a half years in jail.
The Provisional IRA started their own campaign shortly afterwards. Towards the end of 1972, a nineteen-year-old IRA Volunteer from Londonderry, Shane Paul O’Doherty, whom the IRA regarded as one of their leading explosives experts, was sent to London to organise a series of letter bomb attacks on personalities and organisations whom the republicans bore a grudge against, such as prominent figures in the government, the military and the judiciary.4 It was later learned that he returned to Londonderry the following year, constructed his vicious missiles there and had them posted in England by friendly messengers.
His final missive was delivered in September 1974, by which time he had sent twenty-four letter bombs (of which only ten exploded) and five parcel bombs and planted three time bombs. Although mercifully nobody had been killed, a number of people, principally secretaries and security guards, had been injured, some seriously. One of those receiving superficial injuries was Reginald Maudling MP, who was responsible for security arrangements for the ‘Bloody Sunday’ demonstration; other recipients included the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defence, the Central Office of Information and the Conservative and Unionist Association. Compared with the tragic consequences of the Aldershot explosion, this letter bomb campaign was minor, but it involved Special Branch in a lot of work assisting the Bomb Squad in seeing witnesses, taking statements and, most importantly, liaising with the RUC. O’Doherty was originally arrested by the RUC in May 1975 for sending a letter bomb to a Londonderry solicitor and was kept in custody in Northern Ireland until the date of his trial; no evidence was offered by the prosecution and on his release he was rearrested on the steps of the court by Bomb Squad officers, who were not there by chance, and escorted back to England to face trial for the offences referred to above. On 10 September 1976, at the Central Criminal Court, O’Doherty was sentenced to life imprisonment; he was released in 1989.5
This was an extremely busy period for Special Branch’s ‘B’ Squad (responsible for Irish matters). In 1973, information was received that a team of three Sinn Féin members in Luton (Sean Campbell, Phillip Sheridan and Jeremiah Mealy) was planning to carry out an armed robbery; unusually, the name of the informant, Kenneth Joseph Lennon, was later made public through most unfortunate circumstances which will be unfolded later. Officers from the Branch maintained contact with Lennon and the force concerned, Luton and Bedfordshire, was informed. After one or two false starts, the Branch surveillance team, supplemented by local officers and a unit of No. 5 Regional Crime Squad, sighted the team of robbers on 9 August and monitored their movements for some hours until it became obvious that they were preparing their weapons for imminent action. This was the signal for the Branch, who were also armed, to move in and arrest them.
Even the tensest situations have their lighter moments, and this was no exception. The SB team, with prisoners on board, but on this occasion without local back-up, lost their way to the police station and had to stop a member of the public to ask for directions. Fortunately their weapons were out of sight. Once at the station, the local police went out to pick up a car that the prisoners had stolen and parked near the railway station to serve as a getaway vehicle. They would not have got very far, however, as it ran out of petrol within a few hundred yards. The case did not have a humorous ending, though, as far as ‘the Luton Three’ were concerned, for at St Albans Crown Court on 6 December they were each sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.6 Although the result was a success for the Branch, it underlined once again the need for a permanent Special Branch team of dedicated surveillance officers with proper equipment. The team were still using their own cars and some of the officers involved had to be drawn from other duties, such as naturalisation enquiries, where expertise in the use of firearms was not a prime requirement! The officers concerned in this operation were: Tony Greenslade, Roger Williams, Jim Francke, Ken Carthew, Brian Woollard, John Daniels, Claude Jeal, Paul Croyden, Mick Couch, Keith Picken, and David McCarthy, of whom the last four named were required to give evidence in Court.7
Lennon’s recruitment as a Special Branch informant began on 27 July 1973 when he telephoned Scotland Yard anonymously asking to speak to a Special Branch officer. In response, DCs Dwyer and Turner met the caller at St Pancras Station, where he revealed his identity and gave details of a PIRA plan to commit a robbery in the Luton area to finance the abduction and murder of a high-ranking British Army officer. Further contact was maintained between Lennon, Dwyer and DI Ron Wickens and, with the promise of financial reward for more detailed information, the Irishman provided the names of the three-man team, subsequently dubbed ‘the Luton Three’ and details of the premises they intended to rob – the Chrysler Working Men’s Club.
Largely as a result of Lennon’s cooperation with the police, the members of the gang were arrested and sentenced as described above, but the saga still had a long way to run. Having proved his reliability to the police, he was rewarded by the Luton and Bedfordshire Constabulary and authority was given for him to be paid £20 a month from the MPSB informants’ fund. He continued to be seen on a weekly basis by DI Wickens and provided useful information on Irish republican extremist activities in Ireland and elsewhere. He became friendly with a republican named Patrick Joseph O’Brien to such an extent that the pair of them were arrested in suspicious circumstances and in possession of a legally held shotgun in the vicinity of Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, where ‘the Luton Three’ were being held on remand. At their subsequent trial on 8 April 1974, Lennon was acquitted and O’Brien found guilty, though the verdict on O’Brien was subsequently overturned on appeal, when the judge was told that Lennon was a police informant.
The day following the trial, Wickens and DS Harper debriefed Lennon at Euston and paid him some of the money owing to him. Shortly afterwards, the Ulsterman called at the offices of the National Council of Civil Liberties and made a seventeen-page statement giving his version of his dealings with the police and expressing his fear that he might be murdered. Much of what he is alleged to have said tallies with the police account of their relationship. However, he stated that the police made the first move in recruiting him as an informant and thereafter exerted pressure on him; he also claimed that the police fixed the Birmingham trial so that he would be cleared.9 Three days after his contact with the NCCL, his body was found face down in a ditch on Banstead Common; a single bullet had entered the back of his head.
As a result of the furore created by the case, the Police Commissioner Sir Robert Mark undertook to have a speedy report prepared concerning the involvement of SB officers in the Lennon affair. A team composed of three Metropolitan CID officers and three Special Branch officers, directed by the Deputy Commissioner James Starritt, was employed full-time producing this report, which was finally made public on 28 November 1974, although it had been completed in July. It concluded that the Special Branch officers involved had acted correctly throughout their dealings with Lennon; the Home Secretary endorsed these conclusions, adding, ‘I see no grounds for further investigation into the actions of the police officers concerned.’10 Apart from the SB officers engaged on the Starritt report, many others were kept busy assisting in the murder inquiry, which was never resolved.
O’Doherty’s letter-bomb campaign and the failed assassination plan of ‘the Luton Three’ were merely a foretaste of what was to come. Traditionally, the IRA has regarded publicity reaped from any successful operation on the mainland as many times more valuable than a similar act carried out in Ireland. Terrorist acts here are calculated to strike fear into the hearts of the public and to create a general feeling of insecurity, which in turn will translate into pressure on the government. It will be recalled that not until Fenian violence crossed the Irish Sea towards the end of the nineteenth century did the British government begin to take the threat posed by Irish nationalism seriously. The first blow in a fresh campaign was struck on the morning of 8 March 1973, not very successfully, thanks to the vigilance and prompt reaction of two members of the Special Patrol Group, PCs George Burrows and Stanley Conley. The two officers were on duty near New Scotland Yard when their suspicions were aroused by a Ford Corsair parked in Broadway; their professional instincts had not let them down, for the registration mark on the car proved to be false and closer examination revealed nearly 200 lbs of gelignite concealed under the seats. The Bomb Squad were very quickly summoned from their office across the road, Special Branch was alerted and a Metropolitan Police explosives officer successfully defused the bomb. The discovery had been made at 8.30 a.m. and within the hour SB officers at ports were aware of the situation.
It was as well that they were, for passengers at Heathrow Airport preparing for departure on the 10.45 flight to Belfast had not yet boarded the aircraft. SB officers subjected them all to close scrutiny and questioned those who could possibly be construed as likely terrorists. DS Nigel Somers became highly suspicious when he observed that one passenger, travelling under the name of Hugh Feeney, was carrying a substantial wad of five-pound notes. He was obviously friendly with two girls, who later turned out to be the infamous Price sisters, Dolours and Marian; they also were questioned closely and another officer, DC Alan Mallett, noticed that their tickets all bore the same lettering. Examination of the other passengers’ tickets by DS Denis Welch revealed that three others had tickets bearing similar markings. Enquiries of the airline revealed that all these tickets were part of a block booking. Seven potential travellers in total found their travel plans abruptly changed and, instead of flying to Belfast courtesy of BEA, they found themselves at Ealing Police Station courtesy of the Metropolitan Police. They were later reunited there with three more of their team, who became known collectively as ‘the Belfast Ten’. The arrest of this hardened team of PIRA murderers, whose actions on that day led to the death of one elderly man and injuries to 228 other individuals, highlights the value of the unsung heroes of Special Branch, who every day unobtrusively cast their perceptive eyes over thousands of passengers at seaports and airports throughout the country.
In total, four bombs had been planted by the team during the morning; two were defused, including the one opposite New Scotland Yard, but two others, outside the Old Bailey and an Army Recruiting Office in Great Scotland Yard, caused extensive damage and injuries, including one fatality. Anonymous telephone calls giving imprecise details of the numbers and locations of the cars holding the bombs were made to the Times newspaper but, in the case of the Old Bailey and Army Recruiting Office, too late for the areas to be properly evacuated or the bombs rendered harmless.11
Preparing the case for presentation at court involved both the Bomb Squad and Special Branch in a tremendous amount of work, interrogating other suspects, interviewing witnesses and taking statements, preparing exhibits and a hundred and one other tasks. Among these other tasks, liaison with the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland and An Garda Síochána in the south was of paramount importance, and over the years the three services came respectively to appreciate the particular problems faced by their colleagues across the water. The police in Northern Ireland were particularly helpful and the Branch was frequently the beneficiary of vital information leading to the arrest of Irish terrorists or, even more importantly, of forewarnings of impending attacks in this country. There was also close cooperation with An Garda Síochána Special Branch, who were always anxious to help but whose hands were tied by their political masters. Even so, by the time the Branch had been deprived of their lead role against Irish republican extremism in 1992, the cooperation that existed between the two departments had never been closer.
In the case of ‘the Belfast Ten’, the RUC had warned the Branch that an ASU was on its way to England but were unable to provide specific details. While regretting the injuries inflicted by the gang, they were as delighted as MPSB over the loss of nine of their residents, who were sentenced at Winchester Assizes on 14 November to life imprisonment (later commuted to twenty years); they were Dolours and Marian Price, Martin Brady, Gerald Kelly, Hugh Feeney, Paul Holmes, William McLarnon, Robert Walsh, William Armstrong and Roisin McNearney. The last named, who had assisted police in their investigations, was acquitted.
Over the next three decades England was subjected to a series of PIRA bombings and shootings targeted at military personnel and establishments, the judiciary, politicians, high-profile events, shopping malls and any place where people gathered together in large numbers. In the course of these operations, the terrorists claimed the lives of 175 human beings, including a number of women and children, and injured thousands more; they also slaughtered large numbers of animals. But they had lost many of their own personnel too, mainly to imprisonment for long periods, but also a few to defection or ‘misadventure’.
During this period, the establishment of the Branch’s ‘B’ Squad grew to over eighty, although double this number would have been required to cope with the demands made of it. Like all the other operational squads in MPSB, it was not exempt from the requirement to provide personnel for Official Secret Acts prosecutions; reserve duties; training courses; summer relief duty at ports and lines of route on state and other vulnerable occasions. Personal protection of visiting heads of state and politicians and of other personalities assessed to be ‘high risk’ was a continual drain on resources. However, when PIRA activity in London was particularly rampant, the Irish section would be temporarily boosted with officers drafted in from other squads.
There follow details of the most publicised incidents, but scores of other acts of terrorism, less newsworthy but equally traumatic to the victims, were perpetrated. According to The Times, the IRA had planted forty-three time bombs, mostly in London, in the first year of the campaign.12 In many cases, telephoned warnings, identified as genuine by the use of a code, were given, but frequently information about the location was incorrect or misleading or allowed insufficient time to clear the area of people before the bomb detonated. Special Branch officers played an active part in the investigation of those incidents that took place in London and provided liaison and assistance where requested in other areas. The reception of information from and dissemination to provincial forces and other relevant organisations was a particularly important part of their function.
1974 was only a few weeks old when five bombs were planted during one weekend at high-profile targets in the London area, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage but fortunately no injuries. Three exploded – at Madame Tussauds; at the International Boat Show at Earl’s Court; and at the home of the general officer commanding London district. Two others, at the premises of a manufacturer of anti-terrorist devices and at the home of another high-ranking soldier, were defused by one of the extremely courageous police explosives experts, Major Biddle, who yet again saved lives, prevented crippling injuries, avoided serious damage to property and preserved valuable evidence. A year later, one of his colleagues, Roger Goad, was killed while defusing a device in Kensington, and in 1981 Kenneth Howorth gave his own life while saving others in Oxford Street.
Shortly afterwards, a coach travelling on the M62 near Batley was ripped apart when a bomb that had been secreted in the luggage compartment exploded. On 4 February 1974, servicemen and their families returning to married quarters at military bases in the north were devastated by the blast, which killed twelve of the occupants, including women and two children. The solitary claim for the atrocity was made by an anonymous male with an Irish accent, who acknowledged that it was the work of Saor Eire (Free Ireland), a little-known militant Irish republican group with pronounced left-wing views. This is highly improbable, although no other group admitted responsibility.
The hunt for the killers was led by Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldfield of West Yorkshire Police, who arrested Judith Ward, aged twenty-four. She apparently belonged to no Irish extremist group, although professing pronounced republican sympathies. In the light of her confession and other incriminating evidence, she was convicted and sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment, although she was known to be suffering from a severe mental disorder. She was released in 1992 after the Court of Appeal found her conviction to be unsafe. DI Graham Ison and others from MPSB played an active role in the investigation, taking statements, assisting with their extensive knowledge of the Irish political scene, particularly of the IRA and its members, and liaising with the RUC.
Later in the year, the IRA hit two prestigious targets, the Houses of Parliament on 17 June, slightly injuring eleven people and causing considerable damage, and the Tower of London a month later, when they succeeded in killing one person and injuring forty-one. They also created an explosion at Brooks’s Club, a favourite resort of many establishment figures and retired army officers; nobody was seriously injured. But the two most shocking atrocities of 1974 were staged in the closing months of the year, in Guildford (5 October) and Birmingham (21 November).
Two public houses in Guildford popular with soldiers from neighbouring army bases were attacked on the same evening. The first bomb, at the Horse and Groom, resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and a civilian and injuries to sixty-five others. Nearly an hour later a second explosion severely damaged the Seven Stars public house; mercifully no deaths resulted, but eleven people were injured. A massive police investigation followed, involving 170 officers from the Surrey Constabulary, backed up by officers from the Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad and Special Branch, who were not there merely ‘to make up the numbers’ but carried out interrogation of suspects and, among other things, provided invaluable liaison with the RUC. On 16 December 1974, four persons – Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong, Gerard Conlon and Carole Richardson (the ‘Guildford Four’) – were charged with murder and possession of explosives; they were similarly charged in relation to another incident that had taken place on 7 November 1974 in Woolwich. On that occasion, a bomb, packed with nails calculated to cause widespread injuries, was thrown into the bar of the King’s Arms public house adjacent to the Royal Artillery Barracks. As this was situated in the Metropolitan Police District, the Bomb Squad and Special Branch led the investigation, which soon revealed that those responsible had also bombed the Guildford pubs. In a separate trial, a group who became known as the ‘Maguire Seven’ were charged with handling explosives used in making the bombs – they were the Maguire family, Anne, Patrick (her husband), Patrick and Vincent (their sons), Sean Smyth (Anne’s brother), Patrick Conlon (Anne’s brother-in-law) and Patrick O’Neill (a family friend).
In the trial of the ‘Guildford Four’, which took place at the Old Bailey in September 1975, all four defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment. Sentences on the ‘Maguire Seven’ were announced on the same day – Anne Maguire and her husband received fourteen years’ imprisonment; Sean Smyth, Patrick O’Neill and Patrick Conlon, twelve years; Vincent Maguire, five years’ imprisonment; his brother Patrick, four years. In every case the convictions were quashed on appeal, in 1989 and 1991 respectively. Three Surrey police officers were subsequently charged with ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’ by allegedly tampering with statements. They were each found not guilty.
The bombing of the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town public houses in Birmingham was not directed at military targets but against civilian members of the public. A total of twenty-one, mainly young, people were killed and nearly 200 injured in distressing circumstances. Fewer than thirty minutes before the two explosions, a coded warning was telephoned to two Birmingham newspaper offices, but there was insufficient time for the police to clear the buildings. The Serious Crimes Squad of the newly created West Midlands Police conducted the ensuing investigation with extensive support from the Bomb Squad and MPSB.
On 15 August 1975, six men (the ‘Birmingham Six’) were sentenced to life for murder and for conspiracy to cause eleven other explosions in the Midlands; they were Patrick Hill, Gerry Hunter, William Power, John Walker, Hugh Callaghan and Richard McIlkenny. They had been arrested by Special Branch officers on 24 November when about to board the Heysham ferry to return to Ireland. Charged with them were James Kelly, who received a nominal sentence for possession of explosives, Michael Sheehan, who received a total of nine years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to cause explosions and possession of explosives, and Michael Murray, who was jailed for nine years for conspiracy. As in the cases of the Guilford Four and the Maguire Seven, their convictions were squashed.
The government’s response to this callous act was to introduce the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 (PoT Act), in effect a revision of the Prevention of Violence Act 1939, which had been allowed to relapse in 1953. Among other things, it provided the police with wider powers of arrest in relation to persons suspected of being involved with Irish terrorism, and extended the period for which such a person could be detained before being charged with an offence. It was replaced by the Terrorism Act of 2000, which gave way to the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2005. At the same time, an office, the National Joint Unit, staffed by a mix of MPSB and provincial police officers under the administration of a Special Branch chief inspector, was set up within the Special Branch complex at New Scotland Yard to provide a 24-hour service to port officers requesting advice about procedures under the PoT Act, for searches in records on persons detained under the Act and to provide the Home Office with statistics and other intelligence concerning the day-to-day operation of the Act.
Another pub frequented by soldiers from a neighbouring army base was the Caterham Arms in Caterham, which was devastated by an IRA bomb on 27 August 1975. It had all the hallmarks of the Guildford bombs, with the potentially lethal package having been left under a seat in the public bar. Thirty-three persons, mostly soldiers, were injured, eight of them seriously. Detective Chief Superintendent Simmonds, head of Surrey CID, with the recently formed Surrey Bomb Squad at his disposal and the Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad and Special Branch to assist, took charge of the investigation. Those responsible for the attack were convicted at the Old Bailey in February 1977 of this and nineteen other atrocities (see below).
The IRA’s bloodthirsty campaign of terror that had gripped London and the suburbs for over fourteen months finally came to an end on 6 December 1975, when four members of an ASU were cornered in a Marylebone cul-de-sac and held an elderly couple hostage in their first-floor flat in a siege lasting six days, while they bargained with police for their release. The men, Harry Duggan, Joe O’Connell, Eddie Butler and Hugh Doherty, were convicted at the Old Bailey in February 1977 of seven murders, conspiring to cause explosions and falsely imprisoning Mr and Mrs Matthews. They each received multiple life sentences with whole-life tariffs but were released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. Other members of the gang, Brendan Dowd and Liam Quinn, were later arrested for other offences, imprisoned and, like their confederates, were released under the Good Friday Agreement.
Although the Balcombe Street gang were only charged with seven murders, they undoubtedly committed many more during the forty or more bomb attacks and shootings that had taken place in London and its environs during 1974 and 1975. The most recent of these, on 27 November, was the cold-blooded assassination of Ross McWhirter, co-founder of The Guinness Book of Records, Conservative Party activist and outspoken critic of the IRA. They also claimed, although they were never charged, to have carried out the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings, which resulted in the controversial convictions and subsequent acquittals of seventeen individuals.
The events leading up to the siege were dramatic in the extreme. Towards the end of 1975, the IRA had been bombing, with increasing frequency, top-class restaurants in Mayfair and the West End of London to such an extent that celebrity diners were tending to stay away from these establishments. Places such as Scott’s and Trattoria Fiori in Mount Street, the Hilton Hotel and the Ritz all became targets and then the terrorists turned from bombs to firearms, when they murdered Ross McWhirter on his own doorstep.
At this time, David Waghorn, a detective sergeant who had been serving in the Bomb Squad since February and was employed full time in the operations room, realised that the attacks fell into a predictable pattern based on timing, weather, location and a number of other factors. He reasoned that if a sufficient number of officers were stationed at appropriate points to form a rough cordon round the terrorists’ hunting ground at a time when they usually struck, then, with luck, they might fall into the ambush. He prepared a report based on his observations and submitted it to his line managers, Detective Chief Inspector Graham Ison and Detective Superintendent Peter Imbert, Special Branch officers on attachment to the Bomb Squad, who were suitably impressed and recommended that nothing was to be lost by implementing it. Approval was given by the senior management team for the go-ahead and plans were put in place for the scheme, codenamed ‘Operation Combo’, to begin in the week commencing 22 November. But it was not to be, for shortly after the final briefing took place the Evening Standard devoted its front page to exposing details of the secret plan. Everyone privy to the operation was furious, not only that a colleague had leaked the information and the newspaper had been irresponsible enough to publish it, but that hopes of trapping the murderers and ending the carnage had been shattered. Understandably, it was decided to postpone Combo – some thought it should be cancelled – and it was decided to try again at the beginning of December, though with diminished expectations of success. Nevertheless, on the evening of 6 December, some 250 pairs of officers in plain clothes took up their freezing evening vigil in the West End. They were unarmed to avoid the possibility of officers opening fire on their colleagues but armed back-up was provided by units of the Special Patrol Group stationed in their vehicles outside the cordon.
Just after 9 p.m., Duggan and his cronies drove slowly past Scott’s in Mount Street in a stolen Ford Cortina and fired shots into the restaurant. Two patrolling police officers who witnessed the attack immediately radioed the information to the Yard and within minutes the bored and frozen players in the Combo drama were galvanised into action. DI John Purnell and DS Phil McVeigh in Portman Street were the next to spot the stolen Cortina; they commandeered a taxi and pursued it towards Regent’s Park, but the car chase finished abruptly when the Irishmen found themselves in a dead-end, Alpha Close, and abandoned the vehicle. The action continued on foot and the gunmen opened fire, but the police officers continued following them. By this time more police had joined their two colleagues, three Flying Squad officers led by DI Henry Dowsell and a unit of armed Special Patrol Group (SPG) officers who exchanged fire with their quarry. The chase finally reached its conclusion in Balcombe Street, when the four terrorists broke into a council flat occupied by an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Matthews; they were held as hostages for the next six days, during which time Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Nevill, deputy head of the Bomb Squad, and Peter Imbert skilfully led negotiations which concluded with the two hostages released, shaken but otherwise unharmed, and the four PIRA operatives, prisoners of the police.
Jim Nevill was shortly afterwards promoted to Commander and assumed command of the Bomb Squad; Peter Imbert later became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and subsequently Lord Lieutenant of Greater London. John Purnell was awarded the George Medal for bravery and most of the other officers involved and shot at in the pursuit to Balcombe Street received decorations. David Waghorn received £250 from the Bow Street Fund and was highly commended by the Commissioner for devising the plan leading to Operation Combo (it is ironic that Ross McWhirter, just before his murder, had offered £50,000 for information leading to the arrest of the London bombers). David’s other reward was to be transferred shortly afterwards to Special Branch.
The PIRA were intent on keeping their name on the front pages of British newspapers. In the year following the trial of the Balcombe Street gang, the streets of London were again reverberating with the sound of IRA bombs exploding. During the night of 17/18 December 1978, a bomb went off in a car left in the underground car park of the YMCA building in Great Russell Street, Holborn; one man was slightly injured. About the same time, another car bomb was detonated outside the Oasis swimming pool and sports complex in Holborn, causing a number of minor injuries to members of staff and shattering windows on most of the eight floors of the building. There were a number of small bombs planted in shops in London and four other cities during the same night but no serious injuries were reported. In the New Year unsuccessful attempts were made to blow up a gas works in Greenwich and an oil depot on Canvey Island. One of the main suspects for this mini-campaign was Gerard (Gerry) Tuite, whose name was to become familiar to most Special Branch officers over the course of the next few years.
During the 1970s, the Provisional IRA organised many bombing attacks on the British mainland, which resulted in multiple deaths. Brian Pascal Keenan, a very senior member of the PIRA, was suspected of organising many of these attacks and, on 20 March 1979, he was arrested by the RUC in Belfast for his involvement in the 1974 and 1975 bombing campaigns on the mainland, which included the ‘Balcombe Street Siege’. He was transported to London and appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on 26 March 1979, charged with conspiring to cause explosions. He was remanded in custody in Brixton Prison, where he remained until June 1980, when he was sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment at the Old Bailey.
Keenan is without doubt the most important member of the PIRA ever to have been arrested and convicted of terrorist offences in this country. He had been a leading and active terrorist throughout the 1970s and at the time of his arrest he was almost certainly ‘PIRA Director of Operations’. His value to the PIRA hierarchy was such that, late in the summer of 1979, the PIRA embarked on a plan to enable his escape from Brixton Prison – a plan that was not only audacious in its conception but one that, had it succeeded, would have boosted the PIRA’s morale immeasurably and would have been a source of embarrassment to the British authorities equal only to the escape of spy George Blake in 1966.
The PIRA plan was to deploy a four-man ASU, comprising Robert Campbell, Richard Glenholmes and later Robert Storey and Gerry Tuite, to effect the escape of Keenan from Brixton Prison, by lifting him out of the exercise yard, known as ‘The Cage’, using a helicopter. In the event, all the persons actively involved in the plot were arrested on the day before the first trial helicopter flight was due to take place.
The PIRA team had no reason to suspect that the British Police would closely monitor their activities for over eight weeks – virtually from the outset of their scheme until the mass arrests. In fact, Campbell and Glenholmes arrived in London in the September of 1979 but police were not aware of their presence here until early October. Initially the two men stayed with Campbell’s cousin, Margaret Parratt in Southgate and later with two girls in Notting Hill. It was later discovered that the route in and out of England was via the Belfast–Liverpool ferry, when, with the assistance of a crew member, they were enabled to use the crew gangway using a crew-pass, subsequently staying at the address of a relative of Campbell’s in Liverpool.
Prior to police becoming aware of their movements, both Campbell and Glenholmes returned to Dublin to liaise with the PIRA hierarchy and discuss details of their plans, including selection of the two additional members of the team. While in Dublin, the two men took the opportunity to have their wives join them – just as well, seeing that it would be some considerable time before they could once more enjoy the pleasures of conjugal bliss. However, it can only be presumed that neither of the men disclosed to their wives their extra-marital activities with their lady friends in London.
On 12 October 1979, the RUC informed MPSB of Campbell’s return to England. They had learned that Campbell’s wife had telephoned the Liverpool relatives and told them to ‘expect a visitor’. The Liverpool surveillance team spotted him and the next morning followed him on to the train to Euston. The MPSB surveillance team then took over and heard Campbell purchasing a Tube ticket to New Southgate. The surveillance team had a difficult time following their suspect, as the walk to Campbell’s destination in Woodland Way led through open ground and round a boating lake at Grovelands Park. Campbell felt he was safely ensconced in Woodland Way, which was the address of his cousin, Margaret Parratt, secretary to the manager of Barclays bank, Dalston, in east London, a position she used to provide the ASU with references when renting premises and booking the helicopter. The same evening, Parratt drove Campbell to the Underground station to pick up Glenholmes; it was obvious to the surveillance team that Parratt was employing basic anti-surveillance moves during the journey.
An OP was soon set up in a suitable premises near to Parratt’s address and the observation continued smoothly for just over a week, during which time the two men made frequent trips into central London, seeking suitable flats to rent and also meeting Christine ‘Chrissie’ Keenan after prison visits to her husband.
On 20 October, they moved in with one Jackie O’Malley and a female friend in her flat in Wilsham Street, Notting Hill, and a week later drove to Liverpool in a car hired by O’Malley. Travelling as crew members, they sailed on the night ferry to Belfast for further discussions with the PIRA’s top officials. An unforeseen problem had arisen, as Keenan had been switched to a different wing of the prison with a different exercise yard. However, the conspirators had extensive knowledge of the prison system and layout as information was being passed from Keenan to his wife during her frequent visits to him. While enjoying a welcoming passionate kiss, the prisoner would deliver into her mouth a tightly rolled piece of paper (known as ‘The Dog’) containing the necessary information. The farewell kiss enabled Chrissie Keenan to return the compliment with further instructions from the PIRA. Once this stratagem was discovered by the prison authorities, they stopped visitors from having physical contact with those they had come to see.
On Campbell’s return to Liverpool he spotted a man he suspected was a police surveillance officer. He panicked and spent the night at the safe house in Merseyside, but the following morning, obviously rattled, he contacted O’Malley, who then took charge of the situation, hired another car and directed him to take a taxi and meet her at a pre-selected hotel in Knutsford, Cheshire. Surveillance was virtually withdrawn but the pair were seen to enter O’Malley’s address at about midnight.
Up until now, MPSB were in the dark about the aim of the conspiracy, but about this time they received information that in fact the object was to spring Keenan from captivity. Immediate and extensive checks were made at the prison for signs of tunnelling and the RAF agreed to over-fly the site at very high level with sophisticated equipment capable of detecting soil disturbance many metres down. This involved closing Heathrow Airport for an hour while the RAF was carrying out this operation. No evidence of tunnelling was discovered.
For the next three weeks Campbell and O’Malley busied themselves enquiring about radio-controlled equipment and negotiating for flats to rent. On 3 December, using references from Margaret Parratt, they entered into an agreement to rent a top-floor flat in Holland Park. At the same time, they chartered a helicopter from Alan Mann Helicopters of Chobham, Surrey, to fly a party from Battersea Heliport to the Great Danes Hotel, near Maidstone, on 13 December at a cost of £251.
On the evening of Saturday 8 December, Campbell, Glenholmes and a third man, later identified as Gerry Tuite, a PIRA explosives expert already wanted by police for his part in the 1978 ‘Christmas campaign’ (see p. 287), moved into the Holland Park flat. The following morning they were joined by Robert Storey, a known PIRA gunman who had apparently stayed overnight with O’Malley in her Wilsham Street flat nearby.
It was apparent that the ASU was now in place and ready to strike; senior Metropolitan Police officers were fully aware of the situation and decided that to let the operation continue would represent a serious threat to the public, prison staff at Brixton, the helicopter pilot and police themselves. So it was that, at 4 a.m. on Wednesday 12 December, a large contingent of armed police stormed the Holland Park flat, although no shots were fired. Inside were found the four members of the ASU, two Browning pistols and ammunition, a map of the interior of Brixton Prison, about £3,000 in cash and a quantity of other incriminating evidence.
As with all such long-running operations, the difficulties encountered, especially with setting up and maintaining OPs and mobile surveillance, were considerable. Support provided by the Home Office in the form of CCTV, installed by the Metropolitan Police C7 Department, was of inestimable value as it enabled staff and senior officers to view the three main sites of interest – Woodland Way, Wilsham Street and the conspirators’ base in Holland Park – in the Operations Room at New Scotland Yard. This facility was particularly helpful to the surveillance teams as they could position themselves at a discreet distance from the target addresses in the knowledge that any imminent move on the part of the terrorists would be reported to them from the Operations Room. Campbell and his confederates would invariably check that the coast was clear before venturing into the street.
Unwittingly the suspects themselves and their contacts assisted police knowledge of their activities by lax discipline on the telephone. It was also a bonus to the watchers that the main players normally went out together, so that only one team of surveillance personnel was needed at a time. Nevertheless, a minimum of twenty-four officers was required to provide full-time mobile cover, with a further thirty personnel employed in manning the Operations Room, OPs and on follow-up enquiries.
Operation ‘Otis’ was undoubtedly one of success, a triumph of team work – without the long-term intelligence-gathering operations carried out by the RUC and An Garda Síochána, and their readiness to impart their intelligence to their counterparts on the mainland, this intelligence-led operation would never have got off the ground. Of equal importance was the unstinting co-operation of the provincial forces involved and those members of the public who readily agreed to allow their premises to be used as OPs or for the installation of CCTV. Finally, there were the roles played by various branches of the Metropolitan Police – the Anti-Terrorist Branch, the Firearms Branch (D.11), C7 (for the CCTV), the uniform branch and, last but not least, the Special Branch.
On 17 March 1981, at the Old Bailey, Glenholmes and Campbell were each sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for conspiring to effect Keenan’s escape and possession of firearms; Keenan, who had supplied the conspirators with accurate plans of the prison which he had drawn himself, had three years added to the eighteen he was already serving; Parratt and O’Malley, who both pleaded guilty, were each fined £1,000 and were given suspended prison sentences, eighteen months in the case of O’Malley, twelve months for Parratt; after a retrial, Storey was acquitted of being involved in the escape plot and possession of firearms. As he was released from custody he was rearrested and an exclusion order applied for under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Gerry Tuite (see below) did not appear in the dock with his fellow conspirators as he had escaped from Brixton Prison while in custody. Christine Keenan had been acquitted at an earlier court appearance.15
Police were delighted when Gerry Tuite was rounded up with the other conspirators, for he was already wanted in connection with explosions over the Christmas period in 1978. However, he did not appear in the dock with his confederates, for, on 16 December 1980, together with two other prisoners, he tunnelled out of the maximum-security wing of Brixton Prison while on remand and contrived to make his way back to Ireland.16 He remained at liberty until 4 March 1982, when An Garda Síochána arrested him at Drogheda, in the Republic of Ireland, and held him in custody under the Offences Against the State Act while the British authorities deliberated as to whether to apply for his extradition.17 It was considered unlikely that any such application would be successful, as the case would be viewed in the Republic as political and Irish courts normally refused such requests. The British Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), however, decided on a different course of action by asking his opposite number in Dublin to have Tuite tried in the Irish courts on a charge of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life and property between July 1978 and March 1979.
This would be the first occasion for an Irish citizen to be tried in an Irish court for a terrorist offence committed in Britain and police in London and in Dublin were apprehensive about the practicalities of preparing the evidence in a manner acceptable to the Irish court. Commander William Hucklesby, head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, had productive discussions with top brass from An Garda Síochána to discuss the feasibility of this sensitive operation. Later, in order to familiarise himself with Irish court procedure and to discuss the evidence with senior officers from An Garda Síochána, DCS Philip Corbett, Hucklesby’s deputy, accompanied by DCS Ray Wilson from MPSB, travelled to Dublin, where productive talks were held at the Phoenix Park headquarters of the Republic’s police force. In the event, the DPP’s initiative paid off for, on 13 July 1982, at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court Tuite was found guilty of possessing bomb-making equipment in London four years previously and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. His subsequent appeal against conviction was unsuccessful.18
After the 1978 series of bomb attacks, in which Tuite had played a leading role, the ’70s was to see one final example of Irish republican terrorism. On 30 March 1979, Airey Neave MP was killed when his car was blown up by a tilt bomb as he drove up the ramp leading from the Palace of Westminster’s car park. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), which had split from the IRA many years before, claimed responsibility for the killing, but no one was ever convicted for the offence.
1 Recollections of the writer
2 TNA J297/57 contains statements made by police, witnesses and the various suspects interviewed
3 Allason, The Branch, pp. 154–5
4 Shane Paul O’Doherty, The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man’s True Story (London: Fount, 1993), p. 137
5 The Times, 11 September 1976
6 The Times, 11 June 1974
7 Recollections of Paul Croyden
8 This section is based on the contents of House of Commons paper 351, HMS.O., Report to the Home Secretary from the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis on the Actions of Police Officers Concerned with the Case of Kenneth Joseph Lennon
9 The Times, 17 April 1974
10 Ibid., 2 November 1974
11 Ibid., 9 March 1973
12 Ibid., 25 October 1974
13 The following narrative is based on conversations with Lord Imbert and David Waghorn and on the excellent account of the event contained in Steven Moysey’s book The Road to Balcombe Street (London: Routledge, 2008)
14 The following account has been compiled from the recollections of members of the Special Branch teams involved in ‘Operation Otis’ and from contemporaneous press reports
15 Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1981
16 The Times, 17 December 1980
17 Ibid., 5 March 1982
18 Personal recollections of the writer