After the high tide of loyalist sectarian murder in the mid 1970s the rate of killings dropped considerably. During the late 1970s and 1980s the rate of killing by loyalists of active republicans was low compared to the number killed by the IRA itself for informing. Two active IRA and two INLA men were killed during 1977 to 1987 by loyalists, compared to more than twenty-four Catholics killed by the IRA itself as informers. Of course the loyalists killed many other Catholics who were not in the IRA, including people involved in republican politics during this period, but their attacks were, by and large, poorly targeted. This is not what one would have expected if intelligence agencies, frustrated by their inability to put senior IRA members behind bars, were behind the killings.
6Lethal Confusion
At about 9 p.m. on 20 June 1978 four men arrived at the Shamrock club in the republican Ardoyne area of west Belfast. They found the owner of a car and asked him to hand over the keys. Afraid, he allowed the men, IRA members of the 3rd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade, to take his car, a blue Mazda.
The IRA men – William Mailey, thirty-one, believed to be the leader of the Active Service Unit; Denis Brown, twenty-eight; James Mulvenna, twenty-eight, and another who was at the wheel of the car – went to collect several explosive incendiary bombs.
Each bomb consisted of a plastic container full of petrol, an explosive charge and a timing device. When the explosive detonated it caused a fireball. Three months before an explosive incendiary device had incinerated twelve people at the La Mon House hotel in County Down. The incident caused widespread revulsion, drawing an admission from the Provisionals that the nine minutes of warning given had been ‘totally inadequate’ and calls from loyalist leaders for tougher measures against the IRA.
On that night in June the bombers had a different objective. As they drove north into the strongly loyalist area of Ballysillan they came in sight of their target, a Post Office depot. A little after midnight they parked the car in Wheatfield Drive and Mailey, Brown and Mulvenna began taking the bombs from it. None of the three was carrying a gun. The IRA’s aim was to destroy the depot and vehicles parked behind it.
But the security forces had been tipped off. A joint SAS and RUC force, including members of the SPG Bronze Section and Special Branch, was lying in wait. As the men walked towards their target they were intercepted by the soldiers. The Army said later that warnings had been shouted. The soldiers opened fire, killing the three IRA men.
They knew from their surveillance that there was a fourth member of the bombing team. SAS men found a man standing in the playing field next to the depot and shot him. They had killed William Hanna, a twenty-eight-year-old local Protestant who was walking home from the pub with a friend. Hanna’s companion hid beneath a hedge. The fourth IRA man fled across the nearby housing estate, banging on doors, pleading for help. He had chosen the wrong part of Belfast’s tribal patchwork to look for mercy, although he managed to escape on foot. Another bystander was injured after shots were fired into a car at a roadblock near the scene. Five SAS soldiers and one policeman had fired a total of 111 shots.
Experience from previous incidents involving undercover forces had left security chiefs with the belief that they had to get their version of events to the media before the IRA did. But following the incident the Army press office at Lisburn distributed versions of what had happened which some people at headquarters knew to be inaccurate, suggesting deliberate deception rather than mistakes made in haste.
Newspapers were told that the IRA had opened fire first and that Hanna had been killed in a ‘crossfire’. Hours later it was admitted that no guns had been found. Two days later a Belfast newspaper carried a police claim that the fourth IRA man had been armed and it was he who had opened fire. When the SAS men came to account for their actions at an inquest two years later, no evidence was offered that the fourth man had opened fire. Instead the soldiers said they had seen ‘flashes’ and heard what they believed to be gunshots.
While inaccurate information on whether the terrorists were armed might have been released accidentally, other elements of the version given to the press were deliberately misleading according to an Army officer then serving at Lisburn who was fully briefed on the operation. Journalists were told that the soldiers who took part were not SAS but one of the ‘SAS-type units’, which had been set up the previous summer. The Belfast Telegraph reported, ‘Security chiefs – pleased with the success of the SAS-type stake-out at the depot – are considering stepping up “undercover” operations in Belfast and Londonderry.’ The officer confirms that the claim that an ‘SAS-type unit’ or Close Observation Platoon, as they are properly known, was used was untrue and designed to ‘deter’ the IRA.
Press officers also claimed that security at the depot had been stepped up following a statement in An Phoblacht/Republican News, the Sinn Fein paper, that the IRA was going to target communications centres. In fact the SAS had been there as a result of information from an informer. Admitting to foreknowledge of an IRA operation can cause the Army problems, since it could prompt questions about whether it was necessary to use force at all or whether other measures could have been used to protect life and property.
Some Army officers told the press that William Hanna was a member of a loyalist paramilitary gang. Whether or not this was true should have had no bearing on the case; and it appears that this was an attempt to deflect
