In his 1978 report, Future Terrorist Trends, James Glover had noted the weakness of the Provisionals’ middle level of command. Those who ran groups of ASUs were in a difficult position. The Northern Command leadership expected to exert control over the direction of policy and the types of targets attacked and ASU commanders expected to have considerable operational freedom. Matters were made more difficult by problems of co-ordination and communication. Telephones were assumed to be tapped and known activists frequently followed.
But in the mid 1980s the Tyrone leadership overcame many of these difficulties, bringing together groups of ASUs to mount complex attacks. Their primary targets were off-duty members of the security forces and remote police stations. The IRA had realized that the RUC’s network of small stations in rural areas was vulnerable. There were about twenty-four police stations in rural Tyrone, many of them run by four or five officers, during the day-time only. These buildings were often at risk since they could not all be protected by Army patrols. Mortar and bomb attacks on police stations were backed by intimidation against contractors called in to repair the damage.
The campaign against police stations in Tyrone peaked late in 1985. The most spectacular operation was an attack on Ballygawley police station. It was a complex operation, involving teams of dickers, a group of armed members and bomb-making experts. The IRA attacked the station with gunfire. Reserve Constable William Clements and Constable George Gilliland were shot dead at the entrance to the station. The IRA members then went into the wrecked building taking guns and documents and planting a bomb in the entrance to the building. It went off: three other police officers who had been inside escaped through the back door.
The Ballygawley attack delighted the terrorist leaders. An IRA man referring to it in a later magazine interview said, ‘That is the type of operation that we would like to have all of the time. Unfortunately most times it doesn’t present itself to be as easily worked as that.’ Episodes like Ballygawley appealed to the terrorists’ self-image as guerrilla fighters. They also offered the chance to humiliate the authorities. The IRA made much of the claim that three police officers had fled the station during the assault.
Provisional members used an RUC standard issue Ruger revolver, taken from the body of Reserve Constable Clements, in a way which must have caused a further blow to morale for members of the force. When it was recovered nearly two years later it was established that the dead policeman’s gun had been used to kill a UDR man in March 1986, as well as a building contractor in Greencastle who did work for the security forces, a Magherafelt businessman and in two other attempted killings.
The December assault on RUC outposts in Tyrone was continued ten days after Ballygawley by a mortar attack on Castlederg station. Two days later, on 22 December, there was a further mortar attack. Carrickmore station and several nearby buildings were damaged. Nobody was injured in the Castlederg or Carrickmore attacks, but they underlined the vulnerability of the outposts and the vitality of the IRA command in the county.
The IRA’s offensive against police stations in rural areas and the disturbances from loyalists opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement led in 1986 to the Army reversing the pattern of the previous decade, and increasing its troop strength. Two more battalions were sent to Ulster, taking the number of regular soldiers from 9000 to about 10,200. These units were referred to as ‘incremental reinforcement battalions’, the idea being that their presence was only temporary. However, the Army’s later attempts to remove them were thwarted by IRA activity in the border area and cries of alarm from Protestants who objected to any diminution in the Army presence.
One of the architects of the IRA’s strategy in Tyrone was Patrick Kelly, a thirty-year-old Dungannon man believed by security chiefs to have effective control of the group of ASUs around the town. Late in 1986, Kelly is thought to have devised a plan to attack another RUC station. Although nobody was killed at The Birches, it was an operation which demonstrated a tactical approach still more sophisticated than at Ballygawley.
The Birches, like many other stations, had been surrounded by a high wire fence. This was intended to give protection against attack with anti-tank weapons, hand-thrown bombs and stones. The IRA decided to hijack a mechanical excavator and put a bomb in its front bucket. The digger would then be driven through the fence and the bomb detonated.
Early in 1987 I was given a briefing by a member of the security forces which contained a detailed account of how the attack on The Birches had been carried out. There had been several teams with different tasks. One group had staged a diversionary incident in Pomeroy, more than 20 kilometres north-west of Dungannon, which was designed to draw security forces away from the target. Another group had hijacked the digger and other vehicles needed for the job in Washing Bay, several kilometres to the east of Dungannon. A further team had mounted the attack itself. The attackers evaded security forces roadblocks after the raid by escaping by boat across Lough Neagh. When hijackers, ‘dickers’, gun-carrying members and bombers were included, the attack had involved thirty-five people, the person giving the briefing said. The Birches RUC station was destroyed by the bomb, creating problems for the authorities about how to re-build it.
The Tyrone IRA was able to combine practical skills such as bomb-making and the welding needed to make mortars with considerable resources and know-how. Its members went on operations carrying the latest assault rifles and often wore body-armour similar to that used by the security forces, giving them protection against pistol or sub-machine-gun fire. By 1987 they had also succeeded in obtaining night-sights, allowing them to aim weapons or observe their enemy in darkness.
In April 1986 Jim Lynagh, a
