Shots Fired in the Mall
ecently, the Princess Royal recalled the time when an attempt was made to abduct her in the Mall and gave her opinion as to why it failed. “The reason it didn’t work is that there was only one of him,” she stated. “If there had been more than one of him, it would probably have worked.”
It could be she was right; but it must not be forgotten that on 20 March 1974 it was not through want of trying that her lone abductor failed in his attempt to kidnap Her Majesty the Queen’s second eldest child in order to extort a ransom. It should also be remembered that during the attack a number of very gallant people, both police officers and civilians, went to her aid and that four of them were shot at the closest possible range, one of them three times. The incident resulted in the lunatic kidnapper being overpowered and seven gallantry awards being bestowed; it also revealed a shocking lack of security procedures in respect of the royal family.
The man who was eventually charged under the name of Ian Ball was born Peter Sydney Ball in 1947. Bullied at school, he acquired six ‘O’ levels before starting a series of undemanding jobs, interspersed with petty crime; he was convicted for offences of receiving stolen goods and obtaining property by deception, none of which led to custodial sentences. He was a loner and a dreamer; the desire for easy money and a grand lifestyle, plus a personality disorder which was becoming more severe, were inexorably leading to a plan which would culminate in worldwide headlines. In 1966 Ball had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and by 1972 he was suffering from depression; in the single furnished room in which he lived frugally in Bayswater, the social security benefits he received were meticulously set aside – as were the profits from a small mail-order fraud – for the grand coup he had started plotting the previous year.
The scheme, three years in the planning, was quite simply to kidnap Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, and to demand a ransom from Her Majesty the Queen of £3 million. In fact, the preparation was meticulous; he obtained a false driver’s licence in the name of John Williams and used this to hire a white Ford Escort, registration number SVL 282L. He used accommodation addresses, acquired two Astra handguns in Madrid with a sufficiency of ammunition, and had taken a house in Fleet, Hampshire on a six-month rental, using the name of Jason van der Sluis. There were sufficient provisions in the house for a week and in addition, there were four sets of handcuffs, two of them adapted to make leg shackles. All previous documentation relating to Peter Sydney Ball had been destroyed, as had the labels in his clothing.
A week before the attack, Ball hired a typewriter from a shop in Camberley, using his alias of John Williams – which would not in itself have attracted attention, although the fact that he was wearing white cotton gloves during the transaction did. Back at the house in Fleet, Ball typed his preposterous ransom note to the Queen, in which he demanded £3 million in used £5 notes, to be packed into suitcases with the amount in each suitcase shown on the outside. What he did not know is that a combination of grease and dirt adds to the weight of used notes, and the total weight of the money demanded would have amounted to approximately seventy-five kilos; Ball would have encountered grave difficulties in attempting to manage the cases himself. Perhaps he hoped Princess Anne would help load the suitcases on to the aeroplane which he also demanded, to fly them to Zürich. Incorporated in Ball’s nonsensical demands was the stipulation that he would receive a free pardon for his crimes, including, chillingly, ‘the murder of any police officers’.
Ball’s initial plan was to ambush Princess Anne close to her home at Oak Grove House, Sandhurst Military Academy, Berkshire, where her (then) husband Captain Mark Phillips was a staff instructor. The academy was just a few miles away from Fleet, and twice in one week Ball was stopped and questioned by military personnel and police in that immediate area. In fact, a staff sergeant had spotted his distinctive white hire-car at eleven different locations during the space of four days, but although the car was searched, nothing incriminating was found and he was allowed to go. Now, on 20 March, Ball resolved that decisive action had to be taken. He knew from the Court Circular published in the Daily Telegraph that Princess Anne and her husband would be attending a charity film show at Sudbury House in the City of London that evening; he was also aware that five days hence she would be travelling to Germany. This latter information had been gleaned by telephoning the Press Office at Buckingham Palace.
So that afternoon Ball followed Princess Anne to London and parked up in Newgate Street, where he waited until 7.30, at which time Princess Anne and her husband left the film performance and got into the maroon Austin limousine, registration number NGN 1, which was used for royal duties. The elderly vehicle had no protection whatsoever; it was not armour-plated, did not have bullet-proof glass in the windows, nor was it accompanied by back-up vehicles of any kind. This in itself would not have presented so much of a problem had the vehicle possessed an R/T set to communicate with New Scotland Yard in the event of an emergency – but it did not. Only one person in that car possessed a weapon to use in the event of an attack; and as events would show, the firearm which had been issued was woefully inadequate.
The vehicle used by Ian Ball, on the other hand, was very well equipped. He had the two revolvers, fifty-eight extra rounds of ammunition, the handcuffs and three sets of cotton gloves, one pair of which he was now wearing. In his pocket was the absurd ransom demand addressed to the Queen.
During the next fifteen minutes the Austin headed west across London until it passed Admiralty Arch, and as it drove down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, Ball decided it was time to act. How he thought he could abduct the Princess and then convey her to his hideout, over forty miles away, probably did not occur to him; a plan that he would kidnap Princess Anne, come what may, had become fixed in his fragmenting mind, and now that plan had to be carried out. “Ball was obsessive,” Graham Melvin, one of the investigating officers told me, over thirty-five years later. “He believed it was a foolproof plan.”
The Princess was sitting in the rear of the royal car on the offside, behind the driver, with Captain Phillips sitting next to her; opposite him sat Princess Anne’s Lady in Waiting, Miss Rowena Brassey, on a fold-down ‘dicky’ seat. The vehicle was driven by a long-serving chauffeur to the royal household, Alexander Callender; next to him sat Inspector James Wallace Beaton, married, aged thirty-one, who had been a member of the Metropolitan Police for twelve years. He had served at Notting Hill, Harrow Road and Wembley before transferring as an inspector to the Royalty Protection Department in March 1973. One year later he had been appointed personal police officer to Princess Anne. Trained in the use of firearms, he was carrying a 9mm Walther PP semi-automatic pistol, serial number 17125A.
Named after their designer, Carl Walther, these pistols were first manufactured in Germany in 1929 and were considered both reliable and concealable. One was used with great success by Adolf Hitler, who blew his brains out with it in his bunker in 1945, and another by Ian Fleming’s fictional secret agent, James Bond. Light, weighing just over one pound, Beaton’s weapon was fitted with what should have been – according to the manufacturer’s instructions – a standard clip containing eleven 9mm Parabellum rounds. But it was not. The 9mm ammunition which had been issued was the cheapest the Metropolitan Police could find. So that, plus the propensity for automatic weapons to jam, did not augur well for Beaton’s personal protection weapon.*
Now, in the Mall, the Austin screeched to a halt as Ball’s Escort cut in front of it. Ball got out of the car and walked towards Callender; Beaton, seeing this, initially thought that the man was going to remonstrate with Callender over some imagined traffic incident. Therefore he got out of the car and walked around the back of the Austin to approach the man and find out what was happening. What he did not know was that Ball was pointing his .38 revolver at Callender and telling him to turn off the ignition; as Beaton rounded the back of the car, Ball fired twice, one bullet tearing Beaton’s jacket, the other hitting him in the right shoulder and puncturing a lung.
Initially, Beaton did not realize he had been shot; there was a feeling as though he had been kicked or punched in the shoulder, and as he later said, “It did not register I had been wounded.” He immediately drew his pistol and fired in Ball’s direction, but the strength had drained from his right arm, and as he lowered the weapon he realized that the bullet had hit the back of the royal car. Furthermore, he now noticed that he was bleeding from the shoulder and that this had distorted his aim. Stepping away from the car, Beaton adopted a two-handed stance to fire his weapon, but discovered that the pistol had jammed. He retreated to the rear nearside of the car and, crouching down, tried to clear the gun. The magazine slide was back; Beaton put his finger inside the mechanism but it was completely blocked. As he did so, on the other side of the car, Callender grabbed Ball’s arm in an attempt to take the gun off him, but Ball said, “I’ll shoot you,” and did just that; the shot fired at point-blank range hit Callender in the chest, knocking him back into the driver’s seat.
Suddenly Beaton saw the rear nearside door of the car open and Miss Brassey come out in a crouch, very low, leaving the door open as an avenue of escape for the Princess. He moved towards the door, seeing a man silhouetted in the open offside doorway opposite. As Beaton started to get in the car, Ball said, “Put your gun down, or I’ll shoot her.” Since the pistol had jammed and could not be freed, Beaton put the gun down in the roadway, then held his hands up to show Ball that he had done as he had been told and at the same time started to move into the car in an effort to get between Princess Anne and the gunman. Ball had hold of Princess Anne’s wrist and was pulling her towards him, while Captain Phillips was holding her around her waist and attempting to shut the door.
With commendable presence of mind, Princess Anne tried to defuse the situation by asking, “Why are you doing this?” Ball replied, “I’ll get a couple of million.”
“I haven’t got a couple of million!” replied the Princess indignantly, and when Ball told her, “Get out of the car,” her response was predictable: “Not bloody likely!”
Beaton had managed to get closer and now, his elbow resting on the Princess’s knees, he was still trying to get between her and the gunman. When, for some unaccountable reason, Ball took a step back, Captain Phillips took the opportunity to slam the door shut. Beaton was on his knees leaning against the Princess, and Ball, pointing the gun at the closed window, shouted, “Open the door or I’ll shoot!” Ball pulled the trigger, and as Beaton later stated, “I immediately held my hand up in its path and everything seemed to explode at once.” The window shattered and the bullet from Ball’s gun hit the palm of Beaton’s hand, lodging there. Captain Phillips was still holding the door shut and Beaton told him to release it, as he meant to kick the door open with the intention of knocking Ball back into what he imagined would be a crowd of people outside, in the hope that they would capture him. With a superhuman effort, Beaton kicked the door and the fragmented glass flew out of the window frame, but the door opened hardly at all. Ball wrenched the door open and shot Beaton for the third time, on this occasion in the stomach, the bullet ploughing through his intestines and lodging in his pelvis.
Now grievously wounded and in complete shock, Beaton would later say he felt ‘drunk’; in fact, he was utterly disorientated. In common with many people who suffer great trauma, Beaton, who was wearing a new blue pinstripe suit, a red and white shirt and a dark tie, found he was concentrating on minutiae. He just wanted his new suit to suffer as little damage as possible – unlikely, since his blood was running from three separate bullet wounds – and he gently collapsed by a tree at the side of the Mall; there he would remain until the ambulance came for him.
Incredibly, only a few minutes had passed since the Escort had swerved in front of the royal car; but by now passers-by were stopping and traffic from the direction of Admiralty Arch was piling up. People were shouting, car horns were sounding and what appeared to be the sound of a car backfiring had attracted the attention of Police Constable 736 ‘A’ Michael Hills, on duty outside St James’ Palace. Running towards the scene, he immediately recognised the royal car and, believing that the vehicle must have been involved in a traffic incident, he radioed this information to Cannon Row police station. As he reached the car, he became aware that the rear offside window was shattered and that a man was leaning in through the open door. Someone shouted, “He’s got a gun,” but Hills grabbed hold of the man by the door, saying, “What’s going on?” Ball turned and fired – by now, he had emptied his .38 revolver and was using the second of the Astra handguns, this one containing .22 ammunition. The bullet struck Hills in the stomach, coming to rest just by his liver; Hills managed to duck behind the limousine and sent a second, more accurate radio transmission to Cannon Row, with such precise information that police cars from all over Central London began racing towards the scene.
Attracted by the commotion, the chauffeur of a Jaguar, Glenmore Thomas Walter Martin, had pulled up in front of Ball’s Escort. He looked back, saw the wounded Alex Callender in the driving seat of the Austin weakly beckoning for help and saw Ball discharge his revolver into the offside rear window, firing the bullet which hit Beaton’s hand. He immediately reversed his Jaguar against the front of the Escort to prevent Ball’s escape, then ran over to the royal car. Ball pushed the muzzle of the gun against his ribs and told him, “Clear off.”
Martin turned to see PC Hills, who had picked up Beaton’s discarded – and useless – Walther with the intention of shooting Ball, but the bullet wound had weakened him to such an extent that he staggered, and Glenmore Martin helped him to the pavement, where Hills collapsed.
John Brian McConnell, a forty-six-year-old journalist, had spent a convivial evening with lawyer friends at El Vino’s in Fleet Street; now, they were en route to the Irish Club in Euston Square in a taxi, when he heard the sound of gunfire. Jumping from the cab, McConnell saw that Ball was holding a gun and, as he later told a reporter for the Daily Mirror who interviewed him at his hospital bedside, “I ran up to the gunman and stood in front of him. I said to him, ‘Look old man, these people are friends of mine – don’t be silly, just give me the gun.’ He told me, ‘Get out of the way, get out of the way!’ I moved forward to take the gun from his hand and he pulled the trigger. There was a blinding flash and I remember thinking, ‘Christ, the bastard’s shot me!’” McConnell staggered to the rear of the royal car and collapsed; the bullet had passed between his fifth and sixth rib and lodged under his right armpit.
At that point, twenty-six-year-old Ronald George Russell, who was driving home on the opposite side of the Mall, saw what was happening. The six feet four former heavyweight boxer (‘with no time for bullies or liberty takers’) got out of his van and ran across the thoroughfare. By now, the car door was shut and Ball was smashing it with his gun butt. Russell punched him on the side of his head. This caused Ball to turn and fire – the bullet narrowly missed Russell and splintered the windscreen of a taxi. Russell then ran round to the nearside of the car; Glenmore Martin was still looking after PC Hills, and Russell said, “Give me his truncheon,” but there was no time – two more shots sounded on the other side of the car. Ball had got the door open again; he grabbed Princess Anne by the wrist and was trying to pull her out, whilst Captain Phillips was holding her back inside the car. “Come on, Anne,” said Ball. “You know you’ve got to come!”
“Why don’t you go away?” replied the Princess, quietly. “What good is all this going to do?” – and at that moment she broke free from his grip. Now Russell leant in through the nearside door, saying, “Come this way, Anne, you’ll be safe.” She had almost reached the pavement when Ball came round the front of the car and Captain Phillips wisely pulled her back into the car. Russell stood in front of the Princess, prepared to ‘take the bullet’, but Ball tried to get past between Russell and the car; it was the last of many mistakes he had made. Russell punched him on the chin, so hard that he actually overbalanced. When he got to his feet, Ball had run off; but twenty-six-year-old Temporary Detective Constable Peter Roy Edmonds, crewing the local ‘Q’ Car and having heard the radio message that had flashed across one quarter of the capital, rushed to the scene. As he arrived, he took in the sight of four men on the ground who had been shot, before taking up the pursuit. Shouting at the gunman to stop, and seeing him turn and aim his revolver at him, Edmonds threw his coat over Ball’s head and brought him crashing to the ground with a rugby tackle. Five more police officers piled on top, one of them knocking the revolver, still with five live rounds in its chambers, from Ball’s hand.
Four men had been grievously wounded, but at least an act of violence against a member of the royal family – the most serious since the anarchist Jean-Baptiste Spirido had fired a shot at King Edward VII in protest against the Boer War, seventy-four years previously – had been averted. Unlike Spirido, the perpetrator of the carnage in the Mall had been caught. Now, as the injured were ferried to hospital, the investigation had to commence – to find out the who, the how and the why of the offence, and to discover who else (if anybody) was involved. This last was a perfectly reasonable supposition, since at that time mainland Britain was in the middle of a particularly vicious IRA offensive. Although kidnappings were not commonplace, shootings were.
Instead, an act of unparalleled stupidity was committed.
The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was Sir Robert Mark GBE, QPM, and following a number of high-profile scandals, he had removed several of Scotland Yard’s senior CID officers from office and replaced them with uniformed officers, the majority of whom, like their leader, had no expertise whatever in the world of criminal investigation.
Now, having initially heard the news of the attempted abduction of Princess Anne from Magnolia, one of the Yard’s waitresses, Sir Robert received confirmation of the incident from the Assistant Commissioner (Crime), Colin Woods, who until recently had been in charge of supervising the flow of London’s traffic. Having confirmed that Magnolia’s information was essentially correct, Sir Robert set off to the Reform Club to deliver a speech. An hour later, Sir Robert spoke to the Home Secretary at the House of Commons, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson made a late statement in the House, confirming that an incident had occurred in the Mall involving Princess Anne, that shots had been fired, the Princess had not been injured and a man had been arrested who would appear in court in the morning. The statement was made with the same confidence that a custody officer might have in prophesying the simple appearance in court of someone who had been charged with being drunk and disorderly – whereas at that time no one knew anything about Ball, who he was, where he lived, whether he had plotted alone or been part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.
Fortunately, the calibre of the three-man investigating team was up to the job. At its head was Deputy Assistant Commissioner ‘C’ Department (Operations) Ernie Bond OBE, QPM, who was a dyed-in-the-wool career detective and a shrewd investigator. His second-in-command was Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ransom, and newly-promoted Detective Inspector Graham Melvin completed the trio. They got to work immediately, Bond directing Flying Squad teams to work throughout the night establishing Ball’s true identity, his antecedents and the possibility of anybody else being involved in the incident. Ball appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court the following day, and just two months later an extremely brief trial was held at the Old Bailey.
Ball pleaded guilty to two charges of attempted murder, two charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and attempting to steal and carry away Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne. There was little that could be said in mitigation; a Home Office psychiatrist certified that Ball was suffering from ‘a severe personality disorder’, and Lord Chief Justice Widgery ordered that Ball be detained under the Mental Health Act, without limit of time. He was sent to Rampton Mental Hospital and he remains incarcerated to this day.
Beaton and Hills were on the sick list for a considerable length of time; the bullet which lodged by Hills’ liver had to be left where it was, because the surgeons believed it would be too dangerous to try to remove it. Beaton returned to duty after six months, and he, Hills and Edmonds were all highly commended by the commissioner. The following November, the heroes of the Mall were honoured at Buckingham Police. Jim Beaton’s gallantry was recognised with the award of the George Cross – the highest award it was possible for him to receive. The George Medal was awarded to Michael Hills and Ron Russell, the latter saying that when he received the award the Queen told him, “The medal is from the Queen of England; the thank-you is from Anne’s mother.” Alexander Callender, Peter Edmonds and Brian McConnell were each awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, and Glenmore Martin, the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct. And of course, Princess Anne had acted with cool courage throughout her ordeal; she was appointed a Dame of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victoria Order, although as her father the Duke of Edinburgh is said to have commented, “If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time in captivity!”
The American Secret Service, which amongst other duties is tasked with protecting the life of the President, awarded Jim Beaton the Director’s Honor Award. He remained with Princess Anne until 1979, when he was promoted to chief inspector, and three years later he became the Queen’s Police Officer. In 1983 he was promoted to the rank of superintendent and in 1985, chief superintendent. Two years later he was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order and in 1992 he was promoted to Commander of the Order. Jim Beaton retired after thirty years’ service and now lives quietly in the north of England.
Three years after the incident in the Mall, Peter Edmonds and a fellow officer were confronted by a gunman who had stolen a car in order to carry out a post office robbery. They chased the man, who fired at them during the pursuit, and overpowered him. Edmonds was twice highly commended by the commissioner for outstanding courage and received five other commissioner’s commendations for bravery and detective ability. He served in the East End of London, as well as in postings with the Stolen Car Squad, and retired with the rank of detective sergeant in 1998, after twenty-seven years’ service. He retired to Devon, but sadly died at the early age of fifty-six.
Michael Hills retired from the Metropolitan Police on medical grounds in 2000; he has always been reluctant to discuss the incident.
Brian McConnell died from cancer in July 2004, aged seventy-five; a reporter and author to his fingertips, he was still writing a column for the South London Press at the time of his death.
Ron Russell now lives in Cromer, Norfolk; he and his wife Eve ran a succession of pubs in villages in Norfolk, East Runton, North Creake and Worstead, before he started a roofing business. “I’m a ‘get-involved’ sort of person,” he says, “and would do the same thing again, today.”
Her Royal Highness Princess Anne – now the Princess Royal – and Captain Phillips divorced in 1992 and she re-married Commander (now Vice-Admiral) Timothy Lawrence. An accomplished horsewoman – she was a pupil at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna – the Princess competed in equestrian events in the 1976 Olympic Games and won a gold and two silver medals at the European Eventing Championships. With a host of British and foreign decorations, honorary degrees and military appointments, the Princess is the patron of over 200 organisations and on behalf of the Queen carries out over 700 royal engagements every year. In papers declassified and released after thirty years, in a written note for the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, she stated, “It was all so infuriating; I kept saying I didn’t want to get out of the car and I was not going to get out of the car.”
As well as worldwide media coverage at the time, the incident inspired the 2006 Granada Television docu-drama To Kidnap a Princess, and was the basis for Tom Clancy’s novel Patriot Games and Antonia Fraser’s Your Royal Hostage. It also prompted a much-needed review of royal security.
Close protection skills were stepped up and the Walthers were hastily discarded; eventually Royalty Protection Officers were armed with the Austrian-made Glock automatic pistol, made of steel with a plastic covering. With a magazine holding seventeen rounds, it does not have a tendency to jam. The Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department was formed in 1983; it embraced inter alia the Royalty Protection Department. Close and Personal Protection Officers liaise with each other as well as with intelligence agencies and are in radio contact with the Special Escort Group. Medical equipment is carried in their vehicles, and all personnel are trained to a high degree in advanced first-aid.
It all seems a long way from the elderly, defenceless Austin in the Mall in 1974; or rather it did until December 2010, when an equally defenceless Rolls-Royce Phantom VI, containing the heir to the throne, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was attacked in Regent Street by a howling mob of protesters. The car, which had been presented to the Queen three years after the incident in the Mall, was splattered with paint and kicked, and a window was broken. Denying that the Duchess had been struck with a stick, Home Secretary Theresa May nevertheless admitted that ‘physical contact’ had been made and, refusing to offer her resignation, smartly passed the buck to the commissioner of police, who did. His offer was not taken up, although after Prime Minister David Cameron promised that the protesters responsible should face ‘the full weight of the law’ it was of course stated that an investigation would reveal if ‘any lessons needed to be learnt’. Will they be? Time will tell.
Many long-term prisoners, sane or otherwise, with little hope of ever being released, turn to God. Instead, Ian Ball has turned to the internet and has kept his disintegrating mind busy composing a rambling blog in which he offers a £1 million reward to the person who can prove that the incident was a hoax; that it occurred one year later and therefore he cannot be responsible because he was in Rampton; that the whole matter was orchestrated by a police officer named ‘Frank’; and that the woman in the car was not Princess Anne. She was a substitute, planted there by ‘Frank’ and so, claims Ball, since Princess Anne must know it was a hoax, she would have told her mother. Therefore, it is the Queen’s fault that an innocent man has been kept incarcerated for over thirty years.
When the truth of this miscarriage of justice is finally made public, Ball believes his autobiography will be a best-seller – probably grossing in excess of £2 million.
* In fact, the author fired off thirteen rounds from a police-issue Browning Hi-Power automatic pistol which should, like the Walther PP (and according to the manufacturer) have been issued with 9mm Parabellum bullets; it jammed three times.