Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (8 page)
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Authors: Ed Moloney
On 18 June 1970 a British general election saw Ian Paisley win a seat at Westminster, the defeat of the Labour Party and a new Conservative government, headed by Edward Heath, put into power in London. Harold Wilson’s government had been sympathetic to the plight of Northern Nationalists and supported many of the reforms demanded by the civil rights movement. Unionists suspected, with good reason, that some in Wilson’s cabinet favoured Irish reunification and independence. The loss of such a friend to Nationalism, along with Paisley’s new stature, appears to have either emboldened the Unionist cabinet or terrified it into action. Pressure on the British Army to appease Protestant hardliners
grew and, within a week of getting their way, Belfast was set ablaze.
In North Belfast, the military forced an Orange march through part of the Catholic Ardoyne area and the result was fierce rioting during which the Provisional IRA shot dead three Protestants, alleged Loyalist rioters. The trouble spread across the River Lagan, to the small Catholic enclave of Short Strand in East Belfast where stone-throwing following the return of bands and lodges from the North Belfast Orange parade deteriorated into a gun battle that would enter Provisional mythology. The ‘Siege of St Matthew’s’ was, according to the IRA’s account, a determined effort by Loyalist mobs and gunmen to burn down the area’s sole Catholic church. All this, the version continues, was facilitated by the British Army, which stepped aside to give the Loyalists a free hand. Into the gap stepped a small group of IRA men led by Brigade Commander Billy McKee, who kept the mobs at bay and finally drove them off. Two Protestants and one Catholic were shot dead that night, and McKee was left badly wounded.
Loyalists strongly denied this version, saying they had been the victims of an IRA set-up, while there have been claims recently that the Catholic fatality was caused by an accidental IRA shooting and not by a Protestant bullet.
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No matter what had really happened; there was little doubt that between the two incidents that weekend in Belfast, the Provisional IRA had convincingly validated its claim to be the Catholic defenders.
There was more to come. The following Friday, British troops raided a small cluster of homes in the Lower Falls Road area searching for weapons dumps. It was a puzzling raid for the troops had raided Official IRA homes and, since the split, the Officials had been reluctant to seek serious conflict with the British. The carnage of the previous weekend had left hardline Unionists angry, adding to the pressure on Chichester-Clark for a response. In those early days and for reasons more to do with British politics, the military regarded the Marxist Officials as the more dangerous of the two Republican groups, and that might have influenced the decision to mount the raid, or it might have been simply that the British knew
more about the Officials who were the initial point of contact with areas such as the Lower Falls. Whatever the reason, the troops were stoned as they left; some were trapped and reinforcements were sent in to relieve them. Soon three thousand troops had occupied the district and the British Commander declared a curfew that lasted the weekend, during which scores of homes were searched, businesses wrecked and bars looted by soldiers. Four men were killed, three shot dead by troops and one deliberately run over by an armoured car. It was a turning point for the Provisionals, poisoning public opinion in this key Catholic area against the British Army and pushing sentiment towards the more militant Republican group. Brendan Hughes was in the thick of it.
…
during that whole day there was a continual gun battle, blast
bombs being thrown at the British, petrol bombs and, later on that
afternoon, a helicopter arrived and announced over loud hailers
that the Lower Falls was under curfew and anyone found on the
streets would be shot. Charlie Hughes was the O/C at that time and
he assembled the whole of D Company at his house in Servia Street.
The Falls had been surrounded by British troops and Charlie’s
house was right on the corner of Servia Street. At the other end was
Albert Street … there was eleven of us at that time in D Company
and we were informed that we were going to break the curfew, so
we had to get out of the house. The first man out ran across Servia
Street to the corner of Bosnia Street, with a .303 rifle. He was called
John Joe Magee and he was an ex-British marine who was good
with a rifle. He ran across and took up a firing position to give us
cover … he fired up Servia Street towards Albert Street at the
British. They obviously returned fire. One by one, we came out of
Servia Street, out of Charlie’s house, and made our way along as
a foot patrol. John Joe continued firing at the Brits; they had not
moved into the area at this time. They’d surrounded the whole area
[but] they hadn’t actually moved into it. So we moved along and,
I mean, the weapons we had were old and there wasn’t a great firepower
there. The .303 was probably the best rifle we had. By this
time the whole area had been cleared, we were the only ones on the
street, people took the warning from the British seriously and got off
the streets. We made our way to Cyprus Street and split up into two
groups, one group went to the one side of Cyprus Street. I finished
up on the right-hand side, four of us, but before we got to the top of
Cyprus Street, the British had moved into the area and they opened
up. We took cover in houses in Cyprus Street and continued to fire at
the British who were in the corner of Varna Gap. The gun battle
lasted five, maybe six, minutes. I had run out of ammunition and
found myself in a house [owned by] a man called Giuseppe Conlon
whose son was later convicted for bombing Guildford.
†
That was
Gerry Conlon; he and Paul Hill were convicted but they were not
guilty. They were in England because of me … Gerry Conlon and
Paul Hill were two young criminals. It was actually me who ordered
the two of them out of the country. They were breaking into people’s
houses; they were totally uncontrollable. Actually, at one period both
of them had spent a short time in the Fianna Eireann, the young
IRA. But … when they were put out [of the Fianna] they were
breaking into people’s houses, breaking their [gas] meters open and
stealing the money. So they were both ordered out of the country or
they would be shot. And that was the last I heard of them until they
were arrested for the bombings … Giuseppe would not have been a
Republican; he was just a nice, typical practising Catholic man …
He went over to visit his son, Gerry, was arrested and charged in
connection with the Guildford bombs which was … totally untrue;
the man was not involved in anything. But [on] the night of the
curfew, 99 per cent of the people on the Falls Road would have been
sympathetic to us. I mean the whole area had been saturated by
British troops; they began to kick in doors … the person next door
…
was firing at the British as well … that was Hatchet Kerr
‡
who
was one of the well-known Official IRA men of the area at the time
and was later killed by the IPLO [Irish People’s Liberation Organisation].
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So I settled down in Giuseppe’s. I had two hand grenades
left and I asked Giuseppe was there anywhere I could hide them
because all we could do now was sit and wait on the door getting
kicked in. Giuseppe brought me out to the back and I hid the two
hand grenades, two blast bombs they were, on the roof of Giuseppe’s
shed, came back in and we sat down. We worked out a plan and this
is ironic … Giuseppe would claim to be my father and I would be
Gerry Conlon. That was in the event of the Brits coming in. So, I
took my coat off, washed my hands, cleaned up a bit and Giuseppe
made tea. There was this eerie silence; the whole area was totally
quiet, the only noise was a helicopter hovering overhead. Then we
heard the doors getting kicked in. —— was in the house directly
facing me and his door was kicked in. Coincidence again. ——
was the man with the Thompson sub-machine gun that night on
the roof of St Comgall’s school. His house was picked out because
that’s where the machine gun was being fired from, so they had
pinpointed the house, kicked in the door, and I could see the Brits
trailing —— up the street, on his back. A few other doors were
kicked in and I was just sitting waiting my turn. Fortunately for
me, it didn’t come. We sat up the whole night, myself and Giuseppe
waiting and waiting. Then it went quiet again and we settled in for
the night. We sat up the whole night and the next morning the
curfew continued. But we didn’t know what was going on. We
couldn’t communicate with anyone, there was no telephone in the
house, so we just had to wait and listen to the radio … I think it
lasted three days. On the third day, there was this total silence except
I could hear the sound of people talking, an awful lot of people, and
it got closer and closer and I could distinctly hear people shouting,
‘The curfew’s over, come out, the curfew’s over.’ I looked out the
window and I saw hundreds of people passing the window with
prams and children and there was this great sense of … ‘it’s over’.
So I went out the back and recovered my weapon and two grenades
and joined in with the crowd and there were women I knew with
prams and the weapons were handed over and put in the prams …
we just mingled … there were five of us left in Cyprus Street who
were not arrested that night. We made our way out of the area, and
up into Andersonstown … we were picked up in cars and brought
to a location, a school where there was a debriefing, what weapons
we had lost and what weapons we had gained and what casualties
and so forth. The Chief of Staff was there … he assembled us all,
lined us up and congratulated us for our stand. I did not expect
Sean MacStiofain to be there, but obviously he had made his way
into Belfast, during the curfew … Actually afterwards, when the
weapons were counted, we had five or six weapons more than we
went into the curfew with because the Officials had left their
weapons and we were able to recover them. So I think we had four
or five extra short arms and we lost a Thompson sub-machine gun
.
The year 1970 continued in the same vein. The British Army responded to the growing street clashes in working-class Catholic districts with a promise to shoot petrol-bombers dead, a promise made good three weeks after the Falls curfew when a nineteen-year-old youth was killed during a riot in North Belfast. The British move caused the IRA problems. The rioting between the military and Catholic youths had several benefits for the IRA. It invariably alienated and radicalised communities and for many young people was often the spur to join the IRA. It also gave a chance to blood Fianna members and very often it was they who made and threw the petrol bombs. But the prospect of being shot dead was clearly a serious deterrent. How they solved that problem revealed a feature of the IRA that would become the organisation’s hallmark, an ability to improvise, invent and manufacture its own weaponry and explosives.
…
at that period they were shooting petrol-bombers. Anybody, I
mean. They used to warn you during riots. A Brit would come out
with a big loud hailer: ‘Petrol-bombers will be shot!’ And they were
quite easy to identify, petrol-bombers, because you had to light the
petrol bomb before throwing it. One of our E/Os, Explosive Officers,
came up with this torch paper. It was a chemical mixture …
sodium chlorate was one [ingredient], sugar and something else and
you just got an
Irish News,
our daily newspaper, tore it into strips,
soaked it in this stuff and then hang the strips on the washing line
to dry … you then wrapped it round the bottle of petrol, and tied it.
You could throw it and once the liquid hit the torch paper it ignited
…
which meant there was no need to light the thing … many a time
we’d have made torch paper and hung it out to dry. I’m sure people
were wondering, ‘What the fuck are they doing drying paper?’
In September 1970, Northern Ireland had its hundredth bombing since August 1969; a month later the first killing was carried out by a Loyalist paramilitary group called the Ulster Defence Association (UDA); in January 1971, the IRA started policing Catholic areas, tarring and feathering four men accused of criminal behaviour. Early February saw the first British Army fatality of the Troubles, Gunner Robert Curtis, who was shot dead by the IRA in North Belfast, not far from where the Catholic petrol-bomber had been killed, and the following day Unionist leader Chichester-Clark declared, somewhat clumsily, that ‘Northern Ireland is at war with the Irish Republican Army, Provisionals.’
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