A consensus emerged between the new CLF and the RUC that the SAS should not be deployed in ambushes. Instead, their skills of concealment would be exploited to allow them to take a greater role in the burgeoning surveillance effort.
There was an element of self-interest in the RUC’s position. Newman, with his emphatic belief in Police Primacy, wanted RUC undercover squads to assume the responsibilities of the Army. But many Army officers felt that most of the police were unsuited to such work: sitting in a ditch for several days, soaking wet, was too much like hard work for a member of the police force, they would say. They regarded the RUC as having more of a ‘nine-to-five’ mentality. Some, remembering the strongly Protestant flavour of the Special Patrol Group police squads, wondered whether the force would behave impartially in situations where its members confronted terrorists. One senior officer says of the RUC’s acquisition of special units, ‘What they didn’t appreciate initially was the degree of professionalism which was required to be successful.’
The police felt that they could train men in undercover work, even if this required them to recruit many ex-soldiers. A senior RUC officer says he thinks it is right that a member of the police should be involved in such work because ‘he has more sense of the legal consequences of his actions, a different training’.
All of this debate about special forces and the integration of intelligence took place in the context of a broad and unresolved tension between the RUC and the Army, which had simmered away since the outset of Police Primacy early in 1976. While still agreeing to the principle, Lisburn felt that control of operations had been handed over to the RUC too quickly. The danger of expressing such views openly at weekly meetings of the Security Policy Committee must have been obvious to Lieutenant General Creasey, the GOC – doing so could precipitate a row which would damage the whole anti-terrorist effort. But, in any case, the rivalry between the Army and the RUC was about to be forced into the open by a devastating series of events in a single day.
9Warrenpoint
The events of 27 August 1979 caused the tension which had been deepening between the RUC and the Army over the past few years to erupt. It was a day which saw the Army’s worst ever loss in Northern Ireland and the assassination of a member of the Royal Family – a day which, in the words of a senior security forces official, ‘brought to a head the crisis which had been brewing between the police and the Army’.
Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, were travelling from the Army depot at Ballykinlar in County Down towards Newry. The men were riding in two four-ton lorries and a Land Rover. They had no more protection than was offered by the canvas sides of their vehicles.
The IRA had chosen to ambush them at a place called Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint. Here, the road comes close to the sliver of water which marks the international boundary between the Republic and the North and connects Newry, via a canal, to the Irish Sea.
In its conception and planning, the attack showed how far the Provisionals had come from their early, chaotic, bomb-making days. About 1500lb of explosive were used in the attack. Attacks in rural areas often involve huge amounts of explosive because the IRA knows the chances of catching innocent bystanders are much less than in the city and because it is much easier for them to conceal large quantities in the open country.
Some 500lb) of explosive had been packed in milk churns, placed on a lorry trailer and covered with hay bails. The trailer was left in a lay-by beside the road. The people who planned the attack exploited local knowledge and experience to the full. In 1976 the Provisionals had attempted to ambush the Royal Marines in exactly the same place. But the troops whom they wanted to catch had noticed the wires through which the command detonating the bomb was to be sent. The Royal Marines, realizing the danger, had sought cover 400m away, behind the granite masonry of the gateway to Narrow Waters castle.
Three years later the Provisionals decided to do things differently. There would be no tell-tale command wires. Instead, the bomb on the trailer was to be triggered by remote control, using a small transmitter unit of a type manufactured for model aircraft enthusiasts. A second bomb, twice as powerful as the first, would be placed at the castle gateway. Just to make sure the soldiers took cover there, snipers on the other side of the water, in the Republic, would open fire after the detonation of the first bomb.
At about 4.30 p.m. the trailer bomb went off, catching the second lorry. It was ripped apart by the blast and six of the paratroopers inside were killed. The IRA members opened fire as dazed paratroopers tried to disentangle mutilated comrades from the twisted metal. A passer-by was also killed on the road. As the IRA had reckoned, the paras sought cover behind the castle gates. Everything went according to the IRA’s plan.
The battalion based nearby at Bessbrook, the Queen’s Own Highlanders, was alerted. A Wessex helicopter took off. Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, the Highlanders’ CO, took off in a Gazelle light helicopter to investigate.
At 4.59 p.m., with Lieutenant Colonel Blair conferring with the paratroopers behind the gates and a Wessex lifting off with injured men, another radio signal was sent. The 1000lb device at the gates went off. Another twelve soldiers, including the Lieutenant Colonel, died.
In Mullaghmore in the Republic, the IRA struck on the same day. Lord Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh’s uncle, and three other people were killed by a bomb concealed on their pleasure boat. Once again, it was a highly sophisticated attack. Careful intelligence had been used
