AFTER THE CONVICTION in June 1986 of PIRA’s ace bomber Magee and other key operatives, the PIRA took time to regroup, which left the mainland comparatively free of Irish terrorism for a few years. The peace was abruptly shattered on 22 September 1989 when the Royal Marines barracks at Deal in Kent was subjected to a murderous attack. The precise target, the regiment’s School of Music, was extensively damaged by the terrorists’ bomb, which killed eleven bandsmen and wounded another twenty-one (one died later). Approximately 15 lbs of explosive charge was used in the manufacture of the device, which was detonated by a timing mechanism.
Within a few days of this atrocity, the attention of the counter-terrorism services was directed to South Wales. Codenamed Operation Pebble, the narrative begins with the receipt in Special Branch Reserve Room of a message from the Anti-Terrorist Branch relaying information received from Dyfed-Powys Police. In brief, the information related to a discovery by workmen re-setting a signpost on the Pembrokeshire coastal path of a quantity of electric wires and circuit boards. Unaware of the significance of the find, they loaded it into the back of their truck, where it remained over the weekend until they handed it in to the local police station at Haverfordwest. While uniformed police were investigating the site where the material had been buried, they were approached by a bird watcher, who mentioned that there was also some disturbed ground in a disused quarry some 300 yards away. The police quickly discovered the ‘disturbed ground’, which was in fact a massive store of arms and ammunition covered by a tarpaulin hidden by cut bracken and gorse.
After receiving this information, officers from the Anti-Terrorist Branch and MPSB, joined later by their surveillance team, were quickly on the scene to attend a conference chaired by the Assistant Chief Constable, at which it was decided to set up an OP about 200 yards from the hide to be manned by Metropolitan Police officers and the local armed response unit. SB surveillance officers inevitably drew the short straw – they were set the unenviable task of concealing themselves near the hide in atrocious conditions and remaining in situ initially in three-day shifts, reduced to two days when they showed signs of physical exhaustion (they were medically examined after each changeover). The stakeout lasted over seven weeks, when, to the relief of all concerned, not least the frozen watchers, two PIRA members arrived to retrieve some of the equipment and were promptly arrested.
A shrewd move by Commander George Churchill-Coleman, in charge of the operation, was to call a conference during the surveillance assuring the press, who already sensed that something was in the air, that they would get their story when the action was finished, providing they maintained silence until then. Not a word appeared in the newspapers until after the arrests and they got their story.
In December 1990, Damien McComb and Liam O’Duibhir were each sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to cause explosions. This operation could not have succeeded had it not been for the excellence of the teamwork displayed by the three agencies concerned, the Anti-Terrorist Branch, MPSB and, particularly, Dyfed-Powys Police. But, above all, the stoicism and tenacity of the surveillance teams were outstanding and deserving of the utmost praise.
Regrettably, other arsenals were available to the PIRA and there followed a wave of PIRA bomb attacks throughout England which continued until April 1997, nearly three years before the ‘Belfast Agreement’ came into effect. The vast majority of these occurred within the Metropolitan Police District, but one notable exception was the murder of Ian Gow MP, who was killed on 30 July 1990 by a car bomb outside his Sussex home. Ian Gow, a popular member of the House of Commons and at one time Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary, was killed when a 4.5 lb Semtex bomb, which had been affixed under his car during the night, exploded as he reversed out of his driveway. He received grievous wounds to his lower body and died ten minutes later. He was a close personal friend of the Prime Minister and an outspoken opponent of the IRA. In admitting responsibility for his death, the IRA stated, ‘He was targeted because he was a close personal associate of Margaret Thatcher and due to his role in developing British policy on Northern Ireland.’1 Despite being an obvious target for the IRA, he chose to ignore security advice, parked his car on the drive and even had his telephone number recorded in the local telephone directory. Although the incident took place within the jurisdiction of the Sussex Police, Commander George Churchill-Coleman, head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch, immediately went to the scene to offer assistance, and MPSB also rendered support. No one was arrested for the crime, which was undoubtedly carried out by an IRA cell responsible for many other incidents during the current campaign.
As a direct result of the politician’s assassination, enhanced physical and technical protection measures (over and above those dealt with in Chapter 27) were introduced for figures who were assessed by Special Branch to be at the greatest risk from the IRA. A scheme, codenamed Operation Octavian, provided for increased patrols around targets considered particularly vulnerable. Each of the eight areas within the Metropolitan Police District was allocated an Armed Response Vehicle crewed by a traffic patrol driver and two authorised firearms officers, which visited each of the potential targets twice within every eight-hour shift. As in Operation Neon (see below), no terrorists were arrested, but hopefully the scheme went some way towards preventing further atrocities. The cost of the scheme was to be financed out of the public purse.
The difficulty of providing protection for vulnerable personalities, particularly those who courageously or negligently failed to take basic security precautions, was further illustrated in September 1990, when Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Terry, who was Governor of Gibraltar at the time of the controversial shooting there by the SAS of a team of would-be PIRA killers, was seriously wounded at his Staffordshire home by a lone gunman. The failed assassination by a member of the PIRA was seen as retaliation for the deaths of the three terrorists on the Rock. Like Sir Ian Gow, Sir Peter adopted a cavalier approach to his personal security, declined personal protection and kept his name in the local telephone directory and in Who’s Who.
Another provincial atrocity that provoked a storm of bitter public condemnation took place in the centre of Warrington when an IRA bomb exploded, killing two children and wounding many other people out shopping. Once again, the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and Anti-Terrorist Branch rendered what assistance they could to the provincial police who were in charge of the investigation, but no one has ever been prosecuted for the offence.
In London, many of the early targets were military, including easily accessible premises like the Army Recruiting Centre in Wembley, where Sergeant Charles Chapman of the Queen’s Regiment was killed. In an attempt to forestall this particular type of attack, Operation Neon was drawn up by Assistant Commissioner Bill Taylor, head of Special Operations. It involved the mounting of intensive surveillance for a restricted period of time on every military recruiting office in England. A briefing organised by SB, to which senior officers from every Constabulary in the country were invited, took place at New Scotland Yard; following this, every force was encouraged to make its own contingency plans. In London alone there were at least twelve centres requiring surveillance, each of which was to be covered, front and rear, by an OP; each site was allocated an armed response vehicle with a tactical firearms team on standby. A dedicated unit was set up at Scotland Yard to monitor the operation, which dealt separately and discreetly with reports from the OPs of unrelated criminal activity. The whole scheme, a tremendous drain on resources, was shrouded in secrecy and it is to the credit of all those involved that no leakages of information appeared in the press until many years later. Regrettably, no terrorists were captured or identified through Operation Neon, although several burglars and would-be car thieves were arrested through reports from the OPs.
In the first five years of the campaign, hundreds of bombs were detonated, resulting in the loss of many lives, hundreds of injuries and damage to property amounting to millions of pounds. It is not proposed to catalogue all these events, but a number of incidents in London stand out: the attacks on Downing Street (1991), the Baltic Exchange (1992), Harrods (1993) and Bishopsgate (1993).
The mortar attack on Downing Street was probably the most audacious and, had it been successful, the most devastating of any of the IRA’s attacks on the mainland. On 7 February 1991, a hired Transit van was parked in Horse Guards Avenue near the junction with Whitehall by an IRA member, who quickly left the scene on a waiting motorcycle. The van contained a rocket launcher and a number of mortar shells, each four-and-a-half-feet long and carrying a pay load of 40 lbs of Semtex. The device was aimed at the rear of 10 Downing Street but, when fired, only one shell exploded, uncomfortably close to where a Cabinet meeting was in progress some thirty yards away. Four people were injured but no members of the Cabinet were hurt. The politicians may have escaped unscathed but the incident dealt a mortal blow to Special Branch in their already doomed attempt to retain their primacy in mainland operations against Irish republicans.
From the earliest days of the establishment of MI5 in 1909, there was rivalry between the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, which had already been in existence for twenty-five years, and the new organisation. Christopher Andrew, in his history of MI5, makes frequent reference to this rivalry, which intensified in 1913 with the appointment of the flamboyant Basil Thomson to the post of Assistant Commissioner (Crime) with overall responsibility for Special Branch. He soon crossed swords with Vernon Kell, head of MO5(g), forerunner of MI5, and by 1916 had earned ‘the collective enmity of most of MI5’.2 This ‘enmity’ flourished over the years and Andrew refers to a 1920 document probably written by Eric Holt-Wilson, Kell’s deputy until 1940, who shared his chief’s distaste for Sir Basil and Special Branch:
Sir Basil Thomson’s existing higher staff consists mainly of ex-officers of MI5 not considered sufficiently able for retention by that Department. The Army Council are not satisfied with their ability to perform the necessary duties under Sir Basil Thomson’s direction and they are satisfied that detective officers alone, without direction from above, are unfitted for the work.
Reference has already been made in Chapter 8 to MI5’s low opinion of Special Branch, which Andrew attributes to the deep animosity of senior staff in the Security Service towards Sir Basil Thomson and resentment towards those who had jumped ship from MI5.3
In 1929, MPSB suffered a grievous blow to its pride when two of its officers were dismissed from the police service after being found guilty by a disciplinary board of supplying information to ‘an unauthorised person’. Undoubtedly this had some influence on the Home Office’s decision in June 1931 to transfer responsibility for countering domestic subversion to MI5. Vernon Kell was delighted and for the ensuing sixty years MI5 had its eyes firmly fixed on the next goal, the lead role in countering Irish republican terrorism on the mainland. Andrew refers to the reluctance of the Security Service leadership in 1981 ‘to provoke a conflict with the Met by claiming the lead intelligence role against Irish republican terrorism on the mainland […] despite its private criticism of the MPSB’.4 This ill-concealed ambition is further illustrated by Andrew when he asserts that Stella Rimington, who became their Director General in 1992, ‘argued that the aftermath of the Brighton bombing would have been the moment for the Security Service to claim from the MPSB the lead intelligence role in combating Irish republican terrorism in Britain’. Rimington blamed senior management who had not wanted to take on the responsibility because they were afraid of criticism if they failed. Andrew adds his own comment that the ‘ineffectiveness of PIRA mainland operations after the Brighton bombing also lessened what pressure there was for a radical reorganisation of counter-terrorism’.5 He neglects to mention that this ‘ineffectiveness’ was due, in no small measure, to the major role played by MPSB in forestalling the planned PIRA series of bombing attacks in London and holiday resorts in 1985, described earlier.
For many years, MI5 confined discussion of their aspirations to the higher echelons of the Service, but although they kept MPSB in the dark about their ultimate intentions, it was common knowledge among the senior ranks of ‘C’ Department at New Scotland Yard that the Security Service would dearly love to add the Irish lead role to their repertoire. However, early in 1991, the Service abandoned its previous hesitancy in bidding for that role with a whole series of measures. Impetus was given to their efforts by what must have seemed to them a gift from the gods, the 1991 PIRA mortar-bomb attack on 10 Downing Street, which Stella Rimington saw as ‘strengthening the case for Service primacy over MPSB in mainland operations against Irish republicans’.6
Having already set up a new ‘T’ Branch to deal with its existing Irish counter-terrorist responsibilities, MI5 secured ministerial approval in April 1991 for increased counter-terrorist resources. By June, it had begun preparing a detailed case for the transfer of the lead intelligence role against Irish terrorism from MPSB. In July 1991, Sir Gerry Warner, described by Andrew as ‘the most influential Whitehall supporter of the Service case’, was appointed Intelligence Co-ordinator. This sounded the death knell for any hopes that the MPSB had for retaining its lead responsibilities, for Warner was to play a significant role in influencing the future of counter-terrorism on the mainland.
Soon after his appointment, Warner persuaded the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Percy Cradock, to visit the Service for briefings. It was no great surprise that within days the Director General of the Security Service and Sir Percy met the Cabinet Secretary for discussions about a hypothetical takeover. The Security Service’s plans were sent to Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary, at which point the transfer of responsibilities was a fait accompli. Within a week, the Cabinet Secretary told a meeting attended by the Director General, Warner, Cradock and the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office that the benefits accruing from a transfer of responsibility now outweighed the possible disruption that the change would involve. The Prime Minister, John Major, agreed but, due to the complexities involved, first sought a review and report, which was to be undertaken by Ian Burns, Deputy Under-Secretary at the Home Office.
While the above negotiations were proceeding with indecent haste, MPSB was not formally consulted and, although general rumours existed, the scale and knowledge of the Security Service’s political manoeuvrings were confined to a very select audience.
Burns subsequently met the police side, represented by Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations Bill Taylor; DAC John Howley, Head of MPSB, and Commander Operations Don Buchanan. He explained that his remit was to review how the resources of MPSB and the Security Service could be best structured and directed in the future to deal with PIRA terrorism on the mainland, and make recommendations. After individual meetings had taken place, the Metropolitan Police was invited to prepare a paper setting out its proposals. The submission articulated a powerful case for MPSB to retain the lead responsibility within a broader structure, embracing the Security Service’s extensive technical resources and manpower. The police case stressed the intelligence/evidential interface through liaison with the Anti-Terrorist Branch, the positive embedded relationships with the RUC and An Garda Síochána, the comprehensive Special Branch Records system, expertise in criminal law and court procedure and their familiarity and knowledge of the Irish scene based on over 100 years of intelligence-gathering and investigations. Burns accepted that this report highlighted a number of important issues which, hitherto, had not been considered or acknowledged by the Security Service, but he also sought the views of selected provincial chief constables and heads of Special Branches; unhelpfully (to the Branch) some of the latter, at best, were lukewarm in their support for MPSB.
Unsurprisingly, Burns recommended that the lead responsibility for combating Irish republican terrorism on the mainland be transferred from MPSB to the Security Service. Shortly afterwards, there was a series of meetings at the Security Service to discuss arrangements for the handover. Representing the Security Service were Stephen Lander, Eliza Manningham-Buller and Jonathan Evans – the principals behind the successful bid – who were, in due course, destined to become successive Directors General of the Service. These meetings were fractious affairs. The Security Service team displayed breathtaking arrogance and demanded that the transfer take place forthwith, as they were fully prepared and organised for their new role. MPSB pointed out that, to maintain continuity, minimise disruption and avoid compromising existing investigations, the handover must be carried out incrementally within a structured plan. The Security Service reluctantly accepted this approach after being apprised of the scale and complexities involved.
The reason for their haste was abundantly obvious. The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the disintegration of the Soviet Union meant a rapid de-escalation in the subversive and espionage threat to this country.7 The large number of officers dealing with those matters thus became virtually redundant and Operation Ascribe was as much a means of securing new work for them as its advertised intention of providing a more professional approach to the threat posed by Irish republican terrorism.
The decision to remove the lead role from MPSB was announced to the House of Commons on 8 May 1992 and there followed five months of fraught negotiations between the two services before the official handover from MPSB to the Security Service took place on 1 October 1992.8
Blissfully ignorant of the internecine struggle that was exercising the minds of the security services, the PIRA pressed on with their campaign and now turned their eyes towards the City of London for their next target. The bomb that extensively damaged the Baltic Exchange on 10 April 1992 was devastating to British commercial trading, as the Exchange was at the hub of world shipping interests and had been since the middle of the eighteenth century. The device that created the explosion weighed one ton and comprised homemade explosive wrapped in 100 lbs of Semtex. It killed three people and injured nearly 100.9 The event marked a shift in the PIRA’s targeting policy and the beginning of a potentially crippling offensive against the City of London, at that time the commercial capital of the world. Christopher Andrew cites a Whitehall report which states: ‘The cost of four or five similar explosions [to the Baltic Exchange] would have been equivalent to the contingency reserve for a financial year.’ Andrew comments, ‘The Service’s role in preventing a series of City bombings on the scale of that at the Baltic Exchange made an important and perhaps crucial difference to the struggle against PIRA.’10
Nevertheless, the Service was unable to prevent the PIRA from detonating a bomb, similar in size and composition, at the NatWest Tower in Bishopsgate on 24 April 1993, killing one person, inflicting injuries on thirty more and causing damage estimated at £350 million. However, a sophisticated Security Service operation, in which Special Branch (as well as many other agencies) played a crucial role, helped to forestall an extension of the offensive. This operation, which the Security Service initiated with surveillance on a senior member of the IRA, Robert ‘Rab’ Fryers, revealed that Fryers intended to elude the ‘ring of steel’ that police had placed round the City of London by carrying a bomb on a bus, as he believed only private motor vehicles were being stopped. He had confided to a confederate, Hugh Jack, that he would drive from Scotland to the Scratchwood Service Station on the M1 and, after a rest, would continue his drive to Neasden, where he proposed to catch a bus into the City. Unbeknown to Fryers, he was tracked by MI5 surveillance teams to Scratchwood, where MPSB surveillance officers took up the chase early in the morning of 14 July 1993 and arrested him in Neasden after he had parked his car. At the time of his arrest he was in possession of a timer and power unit (TPU), 2 lbs of Semtex explosive and half a gallon of petrol in a plastic container. His accomplice, Jack, together with some friends and relatives, was arrested by Central Scotland Police shortly afterwards; this led to the discovery in local woods of sufficient Semtex, TPUs and detonators to construct six car bombs for use in a continuance of the City of London campaign. At their Old Bailey trial on 20 January 1995, Fryers was jailed for twenty-five years and Jack for twenty years. This success was some compensation to the Security Service for their failure to prevent the Bishopsgate bomb, which Stephen Lander described as ‘one of the low points in his career’.11
On 13 May 1994, two Englishmen, Patrick Hayes and Jan Taylor, were each sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment for their part in a number of the incidents that took place during the recent campaign and for possession of explosives and firearms. This was an atypical example of Irish republican terrorism, for not only were the two principal protagonists English, but their political antecedents did not suggest that they were hardened terrorists. However, the pair were both known to Special Branch: Jan Taylor had a 1984 conviction for selling Sinn Féin literature in a Hammersmith public house and Hayes was heavily involved with Red Action, an extreme left-wing/anarchic organisation that strongly supported the Irish republican movement, but was essentially a violent anti-fascist organisation.
The pair were caught on CCTV outside Harrods on 28 January 1993, when Hayes was seen to drop a package, later proved to be a bomb containing about 1lb of Semtex, into a metal litter bin. Approximately half an hour later, at 9.40 a.m., the bomb exploded, slightly injuring four people and causing extensive damage to a window display. It was not until a month later that an experienced and perceptive Special Branch officer, examining images from the video, identified Hayes. Not long afterwards, armed police burst into Hayes’s basement flat in Stoke Newington and arrested him and Taylor. The flat contained damning evidence against the pair – 22 lbs of Semtex, hand guns and ammunition, detonators, timing devices and the keys to Pandora’s box: a lock-up garage in Muswell Hill which was a store-house for a large quantity of explosives. It was apparent that the attack on Harrods was not an isolated incident and forensic evidence linked them both with a recent attack on a train in Kent and Hayes along with several large lorry bombs similar to the ones used at the Baltic Exchange and Bishopsgate.12
While Hayes and Taylor were awaiting trial, MPSB played a vital role in another successful MI5-led operation which prevented further carnage being perpetrated by the IRA. In January 1994, Security Service watchers commenced a protracted surveillance operation on Feilim Hamill (Feilim O’Hadhmaill), a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. After weeks of patient surveillance, the watchers followed him by a tortuous trail to a South Mimms motorway service station where he entered a Datsun motor car, which MI5 intelligence suggested contained bomb-making equipment. Hamill drove the car home to Accrington, where he had begun dismantling it in the garage when he was surprised in the act by armed Special Branch personnel in company with MI5 officers storming in to arrest him. A vast array of detonators, Semtex, magnetic booby trap bombs, a pistol and ammunition and TPUs was recovered, which led to his conviction in November 1994 and a sentence of twenty-five years’ imprisonment.13
There followed a temporary lull in the IRA’s terrorist activities as the so-called ‘Peace Process’ teetered towards its eventual conclusion; Loyalist bombings and shootings, however, continued regardless. This fragile truce was shattered on 9 February 1996, when the PIRA detonated a massive truck bomb near the Docklands Light Railway in the Canary Wharf complex, killing two people, injuring many others and causing extensive damage to commercial buildings and railway property. Following an exhaustive investigation by MPSB and Anti-Terrorist Branch officers, James McArdle was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions and, on 25 June 1998, sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment.14 He served only a tiny fraction of this term, as he was released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 2000. Other PIRA members responsible for this incident had been arrested in South Armagh in April 1997.
Before this peace pact came into effect, the PIRA made a final effort to mount a large-scale campaign on the mainland. That they failed in their mission was due to a superhuman response by the security forces, who not only prevented the terrorists carrying out their plans but in the process netted a number of the PIRA’s top operatives. Special Branch played a not insignificant role in two major operations codenamed ‘Airlines’ and ‘Tinnitus’, alongside officers from the Security Service, Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit, the Anti-Terrorist and Criminal Intelligence Branches.
But, prior to these operations taking place, a massive search, unique in the history of the war against the IRA terrorist campaign in mainland Britain, struck the PIRA in their supposedly impregnable fortress of South Armagh, which intelligence clearly indicated was linked, either through personnel or direction, to most of the recent Irish atrocities in this country. In June 1996, Commander John Grieve, recently appointed head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, led a contingent of officers from his department, reinforced by an MPSB presence supplying critically vital intelligence, into this PIRA stronghold, seeking, among other things, evidence for the Docklands bombing. According to Toby Harnden, more than 1,000 soldiers from British regiments sealed off Mullaghbawn and Forkhill while ninety officers from the Metropolitan Police were flown in. Several vehicles were airlifted back to England for forensic examination but, although there were arrests, no convictions followed. What was most important from a police viewpoint was the deep psychological impact the raid had on the PIRA; to quote John Grieve, ‘It makes life much more difficult for [them] in the future.’15
Undeterred, in June 1996 a team of known members of the PIRA began actively plotting to bring chaos to London and the south-east of England by blowing up pylons and electricity sub-stations in the area. In July, a massive surveillance operation, which included electronic eavesdropping, was mounted by the security forces. Members of the terrorist cell were seen reconnoitring power stations over a wide area from Amersham in the north to Canterbury in the south; they were followed as they conducted research in public libraries where they obtained information about the National Grid and they were known to have acquired ladders for scaling the perimeter fences round their targets. On 15 July, the three addresses used by the conspirators were raided by MI5 officers and teams of police, some armed, who took possession of thirty-seven bombs already made up, together with false documents, money and plans for future PIRA operations.16
At the end of their Old Bailey trial on 2 July 1997, the six members of the team, Donal Gannon, John Crawley, Gerard Hanratty, Robert Morrow, Patrick Martin and Francis Rafferty, were each sentenced to thirty-five years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to cause explosions. Two others, Clive Brampton and Martin Murphy, were acquitted.17
In Operation Tinnitus, four members of a second PIRA team plotting to cause massive explosions in England in September 1996 were arrested after weeks of a sophisticated surveillance operation involving the combined forces of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, Special Branch and MI5. At the Old Bailey in December 1997, Brian McHugh, leader of the group, was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment, Patrick Kelly, twenty years, James Murphy, seventeen years, and a fourth member of the ASU was acquitted; Diarmuid O’Neill was shot dead in the raid on his Hammersmith flat, the first member of the IRA to lose his life at the hands of ‘the enemy’ in this country, although a number died of self-inflicted wounds.
Between June 2000 and November 2001, the Real IRA (RIRA; a maverick group who did not recognise the Good Friday Agreement) carried out a number of comparatively minor attacks chiefly on the SIS headquarters at Vauxhall (with an RPG-22 rocket), outside the BBC TV Centre in west London and at Ealing Broadway, where seven people were injured. Later, four RIRA members were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from twenty to twenty-two years while a fourth, on account of his age, was ordered to be detained for twenty-one years.
There were no further Irish republican attacks on the mainland before 2006, when Special Branch (SO12) as an entity ceased to exist, ending a tradition that had been proudly upheld for over 120 years. It is something of a paradox that after the Security Service took the lead role in countering Irish republican terrorism the Branch’s primary focus became more Irish-orientated, with the bulk of surveillance, technical and operational support being targeted against PIRA – tasks that its officers, despite the disappointment of losing the lead on Irish republican terrorism, undertook with typical professionalism, dedication and probity. In the final years of its existence, the establishment of ‘B’ Squad rose to a record level of 150 or more officers, thirty of whom comprised an intelligence cell concentrating on maintaining and improving the already excellent links with An Garda Síochána and the RUC, the source of some of the vital leads resulting in many of the successful operations against the terrorists.
Meanwhile, other traditional roles that the Branch had successfully performed over the years – naturalisation, protection, prosecution of espionage offenders and the monitoring of anarchists, among others – continued to be carried out quietly and efficiently. It is a tribute to the calibre of Special Branch personnel that no fewer than seven of its members were selected to become chief officers of other police forces – Brian Hayes (Surrey); Victor Gilbert (Cambridgeshire); Michael Fuller (Kent); Ben Gunn (Cambridgeshire); Hugh Annesley (RUC) – while Peter Imbert eventually became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
• • •
It is a measure of the regard that former members of the Branch hold for their old department and the camaraderie that was forged through many years’ involvement in pursuing a common and, one felt, worthy cause – the defence of the realm – that over 300 one-time colleagues keep in touch through membership of an ‘old boys’ association and regular social gatherings, some of which attract up to sixty rapidly ageing pensioners. They are proud of the history and tradition of the Branch and it is hoped that this book will go some way to preserving that history.
1 sussexhistoryforum.co.uk, accessed on 17 November 2014
2 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 81–3
3 Ibid., pp. 117–18
4 Ibid., p. 696
5 Ibid., p. 734
6 Stella Rimington, Open Secret (London: Hutchinson, 2001), p. 220
7 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 771
8 The above section relies to a large extent on details contained in The Defence of the Realm and on conversations with the head of MPSB at the time, DAC John Howley, and his Commander Operations, Don Buchanan
9 A. R. Oppenheimer, The Bombs and the Bullets: A History of Deadly Ingenuity (Dublin: Irish Academy Press, 2009), p. 124
10 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 782
11 Ibid., p. 783, citing ‘Recollections of Stephen Lander’
12 The Independent, 14 May 1994
13 Tony Geraghty, The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence (London: Harper Collins,1998), pp. 149–51
14 The Independent, 25 June 1998
15 Toby Harnden, ‘Bandit Country’: The IRA and South Armagh (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000), pp. 247–8
16 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 795–7
17 The Independent, 3 July 1997