Read Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Online
Authors: Ed Moloney
* * *
Four days after Brendan Hughes was arrested in Myrtlefield Park, the Ulster Workers’ Council strike began. The trigger was a motion supporting Sunningdale that was passed in the new assembly. Anti-Sunningdale Unionists were defeated by 44 votes to 28 but the balance of Unionist politics had changed radically since the assembly was elected and there was little doubt by the spring of 1974 that anti-Sunningdale Unionists reflected majority Protestant opinion. After all, their candidates had outpolled Brian Faulkner’s pro-Sunningdale Unionists by four to one in the February 1974 general election. On the evening of 14 May, workers at the Ballylumford power station in ultra-Loyalist Larne, County Antrim, reduced electricity output by nearly half, a signal that Protestant Ulster had begun an extraordinary rebellion against British authority. It soon became clear that the Protestant middle class was backing the strike and after that it was just a matter of time before the UWC won. Loyalism had been in a ferment ever since the February election and sectarian tensions were rising alarmingly. Protestant crowds had rioted against the British Army in East Belfast and there had been gun battles in which one Loyalist was shot dead. Respectable anti-Sunningdale Unionists were cosying up to the hard men; in April the UDA, the largest of the Loyalist paramilitaries, was invited to attend the anti-Agreement Unionists’ conference to plan the way ahead. There were marches at which Unionist leaders mingled happily with men wearing masks and combat gear. In such an atmosphere predictions of a civil war, or a serious bloodbath, did not seem outlandish and the IRA was making plans for the worst. Documents outlining one such plan had been discovered in Myrtlefield Park, and the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, claimed they were evidence of a plot by the IRA to ‘foment inter-sectarian hatred’ so that they could take and occupy large parts of Belfast. But, according to Brendan Hughes, the documents were really a proposal to defend Catholic districts in the event of a Loyalist uprising against Sunningdale. He was working on the plan when he was arrested.
When I came into Crumlin Road jail, the IRA outside had great fear
that Unionists would declare UDI, a unilateral declaration of independence,
and the reason why I was caught [in Myrtlefield Park]
was that we were drawing up plans for defence of Nationalist areas
in the event of this happening. So I carried all that in my head into
the prison with me, that there was a possibility of a major blow-up
in the six counties; that the Loyalists, especially Paisley, believed that
the British were withdrawing. I didn’t believe that, but precautions
had to be taken within the prison and we began to organise defence
preparations in the event that something developed inside the jail.
I was quite conscious of the fact that if UDI was declared by the
Unionists – the militant Unionists – we would be in grave danger
.
That worry became quite acute when eight men arrived onto
A Wing. On the day I was arrested two policemen were shot dead
¶
and some of these people had been charged as a result.
58
Now I
should have known these people, at least some of them … but I
didn’t. So … interrogations started under Tommy Dougan and his
assistant. Within a short period it became clear that these people
were not involved in shooting the policemen. Tommy was interrogating
a guy called Vinty [Vincent] Heatherington who was put
into a cell just two away [from] me. Tommy asked me would I take
over, that there was something wrong. So I began to interrogate
Heatherington. He told me that he was in the Fianna but he
couldn’t understand why he had [been] arrested for [killing] the two
cops; he hadn’t been involved. I then left and went up to interrogate
McGrogan, Myles McGrogan, and he insisted that he wasn’t
involved either. And he didn’t know why he had been arrested. The
other people who came in with them were also being investigated
but the interrogations centred round these two people, Heatherington
and McGrogan, because the intelligence I was getting said that
they were two hoods. People who knew them and were from the
same area told us this. It was so crazy that they had been arrested
because they were not even Republican. Heatherington had a short
history of involvement in the Fianna, but had been dismissed
because of his criminal activities. Heatherington was, I think, about
eighteen or nineteen. So I started the interrogation and initially I
talked to him in a very friendly way, to try and tease him out. And
he told me that a few years before he had been arrested by the
[RUC] Special Branch and taken up to Hannahstown Hill
||
– it
was a Sunday. There was a Gaelic match being played … and the
Special Branch fired a burst of automatic fire at the people playing
football. They then handed the rifle to Heatherington and took it
back off him and said, ‘Your prints are now on this gun; you can be
charged with this shooting.’ So I put the question to him: ‘Did you
start working for them?’ He says, ‘No.’ He denied it. And I says,
‘What did you do?’ ‘I went on the run,’ he said. I was soon able to
break that down. I went and made tea and sandwiches for him and
came back and talked to him in a fatherly way. He then admitted
that he was working for them, at a low level, passing on information,
watching people, their movements, and passing that on to his
handler. He told me he used to meet his handler in different places.
He had a code name, which I can’t remember, that his handlers
gave him
.
I stopped the interrogation after that, once I had established that
he was an informer. Now the question was: what the hell was he
doing in the prison? He then admitted he’d been sent into prison.
He was told the day before his arrest that he and McGrogan would
be sent into the jail. ‘What for?’ I asked. He replied that he didn’t
know; he would be told that in the prison by someone. This really
was concerning. So I asked the I/O, Tommy, to put a bit more
weight on McGrogan, to question more deeply, not to use violence.
Heatherington then began to break down a bit more and told me
about a group of people he had been working with, a network
working for the Brits. I was passing on to Tommy information that
Heatherington was giving to me, and obviously the way they were
putting it to McGrogan, McGrogan knew that Heatherington was
talking to me. We broke for something to eat and McGrogan was
seen walking past Heatherington’s cell and he threw something into
Heatherington’s cell, into a small rubbish bin. The note was found;
Tommy Dougan went to the cell, searched through the rubbish and
found this note which said, ‘Talk and you die.’ That’s all it said:
‘Talk and you die.’ That was given to me. I then realised that this
is getting a lot more serious. So I put more mental pressure on
Heatherington. He then broke down and told me about some of the
operations he was involved in. I brought Junior Fitszimmons in on
the interrogation. He told us more about the group – they were
based in Holywood Barracks, they were supplied with money, with
women, along with their handlers. They were allowed to come and
go as they pleased. The Special Branch initially employed them but
…
they were then handed over to the military – but the backbone
of the operation was British Intelligence. He had been taken away
for training in Essex; they lived in a large country house. They were
given weapons training, explosives training and anti-interrogation
training and sent back. He told me about a flat that they had in
Dublin, beside Connolly station, about the women who were
involved with them. I can’t remember their names but one of the
women was a Protestant from the Shankill. They were given explosives
and weapons to be brought to Belfast. They also had a house
near a police station on the Lisburn Road. Heatherington really
began to open up now. I asked him what operations was he involved
in. And he told me about this particular operation in Corporation
Street, near the docks, when he and McGrogan drove a car bomb
into the street with a five-minute timer on it. According to Heatherington,
he had seen two kids swinging on a lamp-post and he tried
to talk McGrogan into defusing the bomb but McGrogan said no.
So they left, and the bomb went off and the two kids were killed.
McGrogan was the dominant figure; Heatherington was the weakling.
This was around Hallowe’en 1972. It was made to look as if it
was the IRA had done it. What they also did was when the IRA put
bombs into the town they would slip one in as well. And I know this
happened, because there were times when bombs exploded that we
could not account for. He told me about raping a young girl on
Kennedy Way, about robbing a garage. When Heatherington
admitted to the shooting at the Gaelic football match, Junior, who
was a big fella, immediately went for Heatherington’s throat. I had
great difficult pulling Junior off. He had been at the match that day
along with his wife and kids
.
I then asked him for the names of the other people in this group
with him. And he began to give me them. He named one of the guys
that came in with him who was an IRA Volunteer, ——. So more
trustworthy Intelligence Officers had to be pulled in, to interrogate
[him]. Heatherington then gave me a list of other names, of people
in the jail. Names such as ——; —— from the Strand; he gave
——’ s name as well. So all these people had to be interrogated and
some of them were up in Long Kesh. I asked him, ‘Well, what was
the purpose of this group?’ And he told me this. I mean, this is a kid
telling me this. In the event of major confrontations in Belfast that
they would be the sabotage unit. In the event of barricades going up,
they would be sent in to plant bombs at barricades and they would
be sent in to disrupt as much as they could, to break down defences.
Fifth columnists, that’s what they were. Now I believed him when
he said McGrogan was involved but of the rest of them I wasn’t sure.
We still couldn’t understand or work out their mission. He then told
me that he had been sent in to poison the wing, when he got the OK.
I said, ‘How were you going to get the poison?’ He says, ‘A prison
officer …’ They didn’t know the name of the prison officer. They
were told the prison officer would approach him with instructions
and the poison. They were to put the poison in the water we used
to make tea. But before that they had major targets. Me, I was to
be targeted first. Tommy Roberts. Junior Fitzsimmons. Curly Coyle
from Derry
.
Now, by this stage, there were people being interrogated all over
the wing and in Long Kesh. So we started to take precautions. We
put guards on the water tanks, guards on our food. Once Heatherington
told me about the poison plot, I got word up to Davy Morley
who was O/C at Long Kesh, to warn him that some of the names
that I was getting were on his staff. The next day, I got word back
from Morley giving me a whole rundown on British Army intelligence
activities in Aden. Then poison was found in the Loyalist
wing, behind a cistern. It turned out to be Lenny Murphy
**
who
poisoned a Loyalist prisoner in the hospital wing, if I remember.
So the plot thickened and there was mad hysteria in the wing and
suspicions everywhere. Heatherington then retracted all the names
he had given me, withdrew them, saying they weren’t involved, and
…
started to give me other names. So I asked him, ‘Why did you
give me the wrong names?’ He says, ‘That’s what we were told to
do.’ I asked, ‘Why?’ ‘To cause as much confusion as possible,’ he
answered. I hadn’t actually broken him during interrogation as I
thought I had done; he was playing with me. It was basic counterintelligence
disinformation that they were spreading. I asked
Brigade what to do and they sent an order in to go and inform the
Prison Governor. It was a very weak response [and] I felt they
weren’t taking it as seriously as they should. I just felt totally
isolated. The interrogations began to get out of hand. I did not order
anybody to be physically beaten or tortured although I certainly
ordered people to take a heavier hand in getting this information
together because we were in a panic situation here; we were in a bad
situation. Everybody in the wing knew it. And I remember going
round all the people getting interrogated and I went into a cell on
the top wing, and there was a young lad sitting there with his feet
in a bucket of water, cigarette burns all over his arms, and totally
shattered. They were doing Japanese torture on them … They were
breaking people in Long Kesh who were naming people on A Wing.
So we were in a total disarray here. You trusted nobody; we didn’t
know where we were going. You didn’t know who was a tout, or who
was going to poison you or … stick a knife in your ribs. Total and
utter confusion. I went to Hilditch, the Governor of the jail. Hilditch
told me that the poison plot was nonsense, that it was to do with the
Loyalists. And I gave the order in the wing, you know, and I told
Hilditch, ‘I’m not eating any food.’ So I gave the order in the wing:
‘No one touches the prison food.’ We were allowed parcels in at that
time, so I said, ‘Live off your parcels; we’re not touching the food.’
I said to Hilditch, ‘You come in every day and taste the food.’ So he
agreed and I would pick out something for him to taste. It must have
been really demeaning for him, you know, to do this. But he did it
.