*
At Lisburn and Knock there was consternation. If this was the revamped IRA, officers wondered, how would they cope? The Provos had staged two ‘spectaculars’ in one day. Either of them – killing a large number of paratroopers or striking a member of the Royal Family – would have been a major coup in itself. Together they were sufficient to bring the differences over security policy to a point where the Prime Minister had to become involved.
Margaret Thatcher had been elected Prime Minister only three months before. She found herself facing her first real crisis. As before and since, the mounting of a ‘spectacular’ by the IRA produced many calls for tough action. Mrs Thatcher went to Northern Ireland to meet the GOC, CLF and Chief Constable. The events of 27 August, coupled with the killing by INLA terrorists of her old friend and political helper Airey Neave earlier in the year, meant that Mrs Thatcher went to Northern Ireland with the desire to bring in measures which would really hurt the IRA. But she soon found herself caught up in Army/RUC rivalry.
Lieutenant General Creasey, the GOC, decided the time was right to check what he believed had been the RUC’s premature assumption of responsibility for security. During a working lunch attended by the Prime Minister and senior Army officers at the headquarters of 3 Brigade in Portadown, Lieutenant General Creasey inserted what was, in bureaucratic terms, the dagger. He suggested that there should be a single security supremo for Ulster, and implied that it should be a military man. The GOC said the Army should regain operational control, at least for a limited period. At first he asked for twelve months, later reducing this to six. He also advocated a closer integration of intelligence – something which was, in fact, already underway.
The Prime Minister went to Crossmaglen to talk to troops and then by helicopter to Gough Barracks in Armagh, where Kenneth Newman and the RUC team were waiting. There the Chief Constable asked her to authorize the expansion of the force by 1000. The Prime Minister agreed to this on the spot. In the days following her return to London, Newman defended the RUC’s assumption of control of all security operations, resisting the Army’s call for a temporary reversal of Police Primacy.
In London Frank Cooper, a senior Ministry of Defence civil servant with some experience of Ulster, was given the task of evaluating the Army and RUC proposals. Cooper soon realized the difficulties involved in abandoning Police Primacy, even temporarily. But the Army’s attempt to regain the direction of operations could not be wished away. Cooper came up with the idea of appointing someone to soothe the tension between police and Army and to chart the way ahead in security policy. It was decided that Maurice Oldfield, chief of SIS (MI6) between 1973 and 1978, should be appointed as Security Co-ordinator. Oldfield – sometimes described as the model for John Le Carré’s fictional character George Smiley – had retired to All Souls College in Oxford, where he had intended to pursue his interest in mediaeval history. Such was his sense of duty that Oldfield felt he could not refuse the Prime Minister’s personal appeal to go to Northern Ireland.
His appointment as Security Co-ordinator was announced on 2 October 1979 and, less than one week later, he had arrived. Oldfield, a bachelor, lived in a flat above his offices in Stormont House, which adjoins the castle which was once home to the devolved Northern Ireland government. The Security Co-ordinator was not given the authority to run actual operations; neither was he given any power to compel the RUC or the Army to accept his judgement. Instead he and his staff were briefed to draw up reports which analysed what was going wrong in the government’s handling of the situation. Some of these studies dealt with particular matters of security policy, for example the organization of intelligence. Others set out political, economic and security strategy for each of Ulster’s six counties. The aim was to present these reports to ministers and officials who might then implement further improvements in security based on Oldfield’s recommendations.
Oldfield was assisted in his task by a group known as the Planning Staff. It contained two Army, two RUC officers and two civil servants. Its members were rising figures within their respective organizations. Brigadier Robert Pascoe, the Army’s senior member, was a Royal Green Jacket officer who had commanded a battalion in Ulster and would go on to become the GOC there. Assistant-Chief Constable John Whiteside was considered one of the rising stars of the RUC. Before joining the Planning Staff he had spent several years as a chief superintendent in charge of Belfast CID. When the Planning Staff’s eighteen-month assignment was complete he went on to be Head of CID.
The Security Co-ordinator earned the respect of most of the people he came into contact with. As a senior figure at Lisburn recalls, ‘He had no executive powers, but with his great presence and experience he was able to persuade and cajole people down the right path. He was really a sort of Solomon-like figure: everyone thought they could trust him and go to him. People were prepared to accept his adjudication. He really took the steam out of it.’ Small, with thick spectacles, Oldfield had the bearing of an academic. Someone who worked at Stormont remembers, ‘He was almost a teddy bear of a man. Very unimposing – a delight – most of us became very fond of him.’
At the same time as Oldfield and the Planning Staff were preparing their reports, Whitehall was preparing to put the reins of security into new hands. Kenneth Newman was coming towards the end of his time as Chief Constable and was to go on to become Commandant of the
