DOING POLICING

OFFICER 1

My first station was Ballymena. Ballymena in the 1960s was a thriving town, industrious with a thriving farming community around it. ‘The Troubles’ of the 1950s and early 60s, which was mainly confined to a Border Campaign, had ended. So, it was a very nice time in Ballymena with Showbands and Ballrooms for a young man to enjoy. I really enjoyed that, and I went to do duty in Portrush, for two summer seasons to supplement the local police down there; Portrush in those days was the holiday Mecca of the country.

I met William Martin, the Sergeant there, who was the author of the ‘Black Manual’ or ‘Code’ (RUC Code of Conduct) which we had to study. He had lots of legal books around his office, when he found out I had passed the Sergeants Exam he brought me in and treated me as an’ Assistant Sergeant’. He actually allowed me to stand in for him one or two days when he was off, much to the chagrin of the older men who had been there a lifetime. The community got on well with us they wanted to help us and the holiday visitors wanted their photograph taken with us. I remember one occasion I was on mobile patrol in a 2 door Ford Anglia car, to get into the back you had to pull forward the front seat. I got a call to deal with a ‘Simple Drunk’ causing annoyance on the Main Street, I went round, and there he was showing all the signs of a drunk man but doing no real harm. I tried to get him away for a cup of tea but when we got to the car he changed his mind and wouldn’t get in, he locked his arms, one on the roof and the other on the door, so he was going no-where and I was on my own with him and the police car. We weren’t going anywhere until a young man came over and offered to help. I climbed into the back of the car and pulled while my helper pushed until we got the drunk in the back seat with me, but there was no one to drive until the young guy offered to drive the police car to the station I agreed, and, hoped no one would tell the Sergeant otherwise my career was over, thankfully nobody did and after a couple of hours sleep the drunk managed to make his way home. That was the type of thing the community would do for us.

The pay was about £30-40 a month in your hand, so you weren’t going to be extravagant spending money at the time on cars or anything like that! The crime rate was low and when the judges came to Fermanagh they were often presented with ‘white gloves’ as most of the time there were no cases to try!(the phrase white gloves is an old saying indicating nothing to do) That was the atmosphere I was brought up in – you trusted your neighbours, you didn’t need to lock doors, you could leave the keys in your car as it wouldn’t be stolen, you didn’t need to do anything (take crime prevention precautions) – it was a different atmosphere to what is happening now unfortunately.

I like to keep the peace, it was always my aim in life not to worry too much about regulations if I had to do something to keep the peace, keeping the Peace was my priority throughout my service. When I was a supervisor I always advised my officers before they went out on patrol that one of the aims of that patrol was to make ‘friends’ (establish good relationships with the public). Yes, we stopped cars and later in my service looked for terrorists; we were looking for all sorts of criminals, on Night duty we were looking for burglars. If you stopped ordinary folk on the road and found something wrong with their car and you appreciated from their reaction and their acceptance of the fault that they would get it fixed you took their word that they would get it fixed rather than ‘book’ them for something minor so you could make a ‘friend’.

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At my first station we didn’t carry firearms on patrol so personal security wasn’t a major problem. It was later on when the so called ‘Troubles’ started (in 1968) that guns came back to us. We were trained as a paramilitary force, we did our drills in the Depot, we carried rifles, we fixed bayonets and we did a lot of firearms training and went to the range to see that we could use the weapons if necessary. So that was always there, but you still wanted to treat the public as ordinary human beings, if they were a ‘reasonable’ type who saw you were doing a necessary job and didn’t want to attack you, you treated them with respect and gave them their place in society, you didn’t try to undermine them or do something that was going to harm them.

I was in Ballymena in the 1960s where I walked the beat or took a cycle patrol out one of the ‘spokes’ of the wheel towards Antrim, Larne, Broughshane, Ballymoney, Ahoghill or out the Galgorm Road. There were all sorts of rules and regulations for the man in the station, the Station Duty Officer or ‘Guard’ as he was called in those days. He kept a book for people coming and going from the station, those on duty, those in for a ‘break’, and when they went out after a ‘break’. One Night duty a colleague who finished duty at midnight came up to me on the Beat and said, ‘there’s nobody at the station if you want to go in for a cup of tea’, I didn’t go immediately but I did go in earlier than scheduled for my break. ‘The Guard’ made an entry in the book recording my arrival; unbeknown to me my ‘off duty’ colleague who approached me broke a shop window and stole a washing machine while I was in for my ‘break’. He was caught fairly quickly and the machine recovered; that event lead to the only disciplinary blemish I had, coming in early for my break. That was the only time I was spoken to by a senior officer for doing wrong. I didn’t heed the advice I was given in ‘The Depot’ just look for your own name on the duty sheet no one else’s and just do what you are supposed to do and do it’; it was good advice for an 18year old. ‘The Guard’ that night, whose father was a District Inspector in Derry, was worried about what might happen to him and he had a word with his dad about what had happened and who the thief was, in turn his father had a word with our County Inspector and that was how the thief was identified. The thief was charged and absconded before his trial. Later when we were out on the streets some of the ‘corner boys’ shouted over at us ‘Where are you breaking in to tonight?’ it took a long time to get over that. You don’t want that behaviour in the police; I always did my best to catch criminals.

There were a few female officers in the 60s and we had two in the Ballymena station with 40 male officers. They were in a separate unit the WPU (Woman Police Unit) with their own hierarchy, their Sergeant would call to see them, and ‘Ma’am’ (the Female District Inspector in charge of the WPU) would call as well. I always got on well with them, I knew they were getting less pay than me, which was common in most jobs, it was the way of life at the time that women were paid less than men. Also, there were fewer opportunities for females. Everyone had to pass the promotion exam and then the interview, but the opportunities for females were fewer because they had to wait for vacancies in the WPU. There was no crossover into the regular policing role, so females couldn’t become section (response) supervisors. I never came across any discrimination by male police officers towards female officers. When we came across incidents involving abused women or children we called in the WPU, the thinking at the time was the female is the ‘mother figure’ and better able to deal with these types of incidents. Female officers were really valuable and necessary, I knew several and did some joint patrols with them they were very good.

As more females joined I grew to respect them even more, they were very capable and did the roughest of jobs with the men – one a Chief Superintendent now in HQ thinks I am wonderful

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because I encouraged her as a young constable. If you see the ability, then you want to see them use it whoever it is.

POLICING ‘THE TROUBLES’

The first thing when ‘The Troubles’ started was going to riots ...... I was a Sergeant in 1969 and I was in Rosslea, which was described to me as a place you drive into and reverse out off! I went to Rosslea and I had a really good squad of Constables with me in the station. Because we were well placed and numerically strong several of us were sent down to Londonderry for 2-3 days at a time or even longer to deal with the riots which had by then started up. On one occasion I was sent to Derry for two weeks and had to sleep on a ‘Stalker’ boat moored in Lough Foyle, and I even slept on a riot shield in William Street during a lull in the rioting, it was chaos. We had to rely on the people in ‘The Fountain’ a small Protestant community on the Cityside to feed us. It was tough at that time, we were always glad to get back to our own station, even if it was only half a mile from the border (with ROI which had been exploited by the IRA to attack police and other targets in NI).

Rosslea was OK at that time, I married in 1969, my wife, when she was my girlfriend would travel down to see me sometimes on a Sunday and we crossed over the border to Clones where we stood in Clones town and had an ice cream – I could not have done that later! There were no married quarters in Rosslea, so my wife lived with her parents in Ballymena 80 odd miles away. Because of the Police regulations at the time I could not serve in Co Antrim again as my wife had family there, so I had to wait for a transfer to Belfast. Things then took off in 1970 and 1971 when the bombs and bullets started to fly, life totally changed, and we were issued with all sorts of weapons and body armour to defend ourselves. We could no longer travel to work in uniform on public transport as that would only make us a target.

We weren’t professional in dealing with the riots in those early days. I had been in Londonderry; in fact, I had been in several places where there were riots, Newry for instance and Belfast later. I remember one particular occasion, we were standing facing the rioters coming out of the Bogside (Londonderry) and we weren’t properly prepared at all we had no equipment, no helmets or shields. All we had was our normal uniforms and overcoats, so we took bin lids from local homes to protect ourselves, then the next thing when the stones came at us the District Inspector [DI], the police officer in charge, kicked the stones forward a bit and said, ‘throw them back at them boys throw them back’. This was an order from a DI to throw stones at the public, I am afraid to admit to doing it, but it was the only line of defence we had, we later got the plastic bullet gun and other weaponry.

Looking back, we weren’t professional, our response wasn’t well organised. We were set up for ordinary policing, we didn’t have DMSUs (District Mobile Support Units – providing a specialist public order capability) and other specialist groups, although they would come on the scene later with better equipment, helmets and shields things like that. The DMSUs took the lead in riots while ordinary police officers stood back a bit. That was a little bit more professional, but we were still in the middle of it, there was no such thing as being regarded as ordinary policemen by the rioters who were throwing the stones and things, we were targets the same as every other officer on the ground.

Gradually during 1969 we were overwhelmed, that’s the truth of the matter! Gradually because of the numerical strength of the ‘enemy’ if you like to call them that – the rioters and IRA types just

DOING POLICING Page 3 of 109 overwhelmed us with numerical strength. They diverted us, they started riots in Derry and then in Belfast and other places to divert us, resources were just too small. It was chaos. In August 69 I was sent to Hastings Street to help out; the station was being shot at and we could hear the bullets going overhead, and, fire being returned from the roof of the station. Rioting was going on in the streets between the Falls and Shankill with the police trying to keep the Catholic rioters on the Falls Road but there were too few police and Loyalists managed to come down behind the police to attack Catholic houses we just didn’t have the men to prevent it. It was only after 1969 that the recruiting process built us up from 3000, it is hard to look back and think there were only 3000 of us in those days and we were able to run the country very well. We could put people out on the beat, out on bicycle patrols; now there are 7000, and, we were up to 12000 at one time if you took in the Full Time Reserve. Now they are closing police stations all over the place after spending millions of pounds on them.

We tried to deal with the ordinary things that happened, if someone reported a burglary or other smaller type of crime we tried to get there to see what we could do, and get CID involved as necessary. But after 1969 our minds were turning to the possibility of terrorist attacks ‘How am I going to keep these men of mine safe, or, my force safe, or, myself even safe travelling along a road?’ Our mindset changed gradually, it had too; it really had to otherwise through negligence on your own part you could get yourself killed. Some Police stations were easy targets. When I was transferred from Rosslea I went to Chichester Road in North Belfast it was in a terrace and next door to a shop. I had just left after talking to the Inspector in his Office and returned to my office when there was an explosion, it blew my office door open and a load of dust came in, I closed the door and when I opened it the stairs and the Inspectors Office was gone, and he was killed. I couldn’t get out and had to wait for the Fire Brigade to come with a ladder. It turned out that the IRA had planted a bomb in the shop next door and had used glue to stick it to the floor to prevent its removal as some bombs were carried out into the street by the property owners; the warning was just long enough for the people to get out of the shop before the explosion.

That change wasn’t pleasant; you had to be on the alert so much it made you tired. I remember saying to my wife one day when I was stationed in Belfast, where I was at a bomb scene almost every day, we are going to have to get out of here for a while, and we did. We went down to the travel agent and booked a holiday, we headed to Ibiza for a fortnight on a well earned holiday. It was when I was on holiday that Bloody Friday happened when PIRA blew up buses, the bus depot, restaurants and shops injuring and killing dozens (PIRA detonated 22 bombs across Belfast in 90 minutes the number of bombs and the short warnings overwhelmed the RUC).

We hadn’t the manpower to cope, if there’s a murder nowadays at least a Chief Inspector is in charge as the Investigating Officer with up to 20 people working with him on that one case. I can tell you about a time in Dungannon, a little bit later on than we are talking about at one time there were 5 murder incident rooms running in that Division. There were only about 12 detectives for all five, and that was when we had about 12000 officers.

If a serious incident happened in your area, like Lisburn Road or Dunmurry [both Belfast] there was a Sergeant and maybe 4, 5 or 6 constables in CID and a DI [Detective Inspector] or DCI [Detective Chief Inspector] would have been called in to run the daily meetings, to see how things were going and to

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decide the next steps in the investigation. In Dungannon where you had 5 murders running at one time you just dropped one and went to the next.

I think 1972 was the biggest year in terms of the number killed; we were so busy we just didn’t have enough people. They ‘imported’ people, detectives came from England, some of them were very good workers, there were some ‘glory hunters’ chasing the next rank as well and some lost their lives too.

I was in Lisburn Road station for 4 years during the 1970s before I went into Training Branch. We had an incident almost every day in that area –Lisburn Road and Malone Road [Belfast] where there were high quality houses with Judges, really important people and Resident Magistrates living there, and, the Lisburn Road was used as a route from West Belfast by the terrorists into the city centre. That led to one major incident involving a siege of a house off the Lisburn Road. The Intelligence boys were following a suspect vehicle, two vehicles in fact, the scout vehicle and the vehicle carrying the bomb with its ‘tail end’ almost touching the road because it was carrying hundreds of pounds of explosives. We intercepted it and they took off up the side streets off the Lisburn Road before abandoning the bomb which exploded 15-20mins later it killed no one but damaged half a dozen houses, big houses. The bombers ran from the cars about 3 or 4 of them went into a house and took the gardener, who was working in the garden and the only person at the house that day, hostage and held him upstairs in a bedroom. We laid siege to the house.

If there is a way not to do a thing you would have learnt it that day, nearly every officer from HQ turned up, and, they all started to have a conference in the house underneath the bedroom where the terrorists were with their weapons, they could have killed half the top echelon of the Force! I was doing a bit of negotiating, I wasn’t a trained negotiator, but I can be persuasive at times, when I became aware of something very close to my ear, you know without actually seeing it you feel something, it was a Military Policeman (MP) standing with a cocked automatic Sub Machine Gun with his finger on the trigger. I mean, anyone bumped into him he would have put it off; I politely told him ‘to take himself and his weapon off elsewhere please!’

So that was a good one, it worked out well despite the chaos at the beginning. We picked up 7 of those boys that day and they were all charged and went to jail. It was resolved peacefully, after a priest came along and negotiated them out of the bedroom without any shooting. Again, it wasn’t professional, I was in charge at the start, but I was overwhelmed by all sorts of officers. It was a case of finding out as we went along, later someone drew up a proper plan of action if the same thing ever happened again. No one had experience at the time of conducting negotiations, later we ended up with trained negotiators within the Force. It was stumbling along and learning as quickly as you could, that’s the way it went. If you dealt with an incident once you would know how to handle it better the next time.

Big bombs were being planted in the centre of Belfast just for the sake of blowing buildings up, usually there was some sort of warning so that it didn’t kill so many people, but it wrecked the town. There were shooting incidents, you were a target if you were a Judge, in the Security Forces, or, if the terrorists didn’t like you, or, you were a Part Time member of the UDR (Ulster Defence Regiment) or RUCR. The Part Timers were most vulnerable and often were attacked at their place of work or whilst at home - they were regarded as ‘soft’ and easy targets by the terrorist. There was a judge shot dead up the Malone Road, and, at the Chapel a Resident Magistrate was murdered

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coming out after Mass; that’s the sort of incidents that turned up unexpectedly, we were dependent on intelligence which wasn’t as good then as it became later on.

Decision making on the foot of intelligence was difficult because the intelligence was vague, it was very difficult, but you did it so often it was also second nature. We would put in some Vehicle Check Points (VCP) and we were well supported by the military at the time too. We would ask them to do a VCP in one place and we would do a VCP on another road to see what was picked up or see what the reaction was from the ‘enemy’; you just your changed tactics according to any new information and even put a ‘dummy’ policeman in a car and park it somewhere.

It was all professional judgement. The SB Inspector would come in and say to me ‘I don’t have a very clear picture here boss, but you need to watch that area up there’, so I ask him what he thinks is happening and try to get a bit more out of him, you know you aren’t going to get it all. There was no legal framework or professional practice to help guide us it was down to the initiative of the leaders. I would speak to the police Sub Divisional Commander or a good Chief Inspector or Inspector in the area to which the intelligence referred and asked what they thought the best way was to respond and then I came to a decision on what to do. The aim of the decision was to deter the attack until hopefully the Branch would get a little bit more information or to deter the attack so much the ‘enemy’ knew we were on to them and they would abandon the attack altogether.

OFFICER 2

[Policing in Northern Ireland vis-a-vis GB] Oh, it was very, very different in so many ways, but not just in the obvious ways, I really enjoyed it when I was a young officer in the Met. One thing I didn’t really want to do was be a Uniform Branch Chief Inspector, because when I was a Constable I thought how ‘deadly’ the job of the Uniform Chief Inspector in the Met was. As it happened, when I got up to Chief Inspector rank I was already in the CID and I went from being a DI to a DCI. When I came to Northern Ireland I was given a Chief Inspector’s uniform and it was the best thing ever, I’m fairly old fashioned in my views about the way that Police careers should be structured. So as I had already reached the rank of Chief Inspector, the best way for me to learn about being in the RUC was not to go into the CID, it was to go into a Station, which had a mixture of different types of problems, as a Uniform Branch Chief Inspector, and, find out how the organisation operates which is the opportunity I was given.

It was a perfect posting because it was possible to get in and out without armoured vehicles. But every time I drove into the Police Station, there were seven or eight young men standing outside the College of Further Education who were noting car numbers, and, they may have been trying to photograph me, I don’t know. They were watching to see what happened when I went in, I remember SDC, the late Sam Johnston said, ‘always insist that the R/Con checks your bonnet and boot when you’re driving into the station, because only you and I are allowed to bring our cars into the station’. I asked why’s that? he said, ‘Well because it’s in your interests, if they see that you’re always checked then there’s less chance of them deciding to kidnap your family and make you drive the bomb into the station because they’ll know that you’re not going to get into the station with the bomb because your car’s always checked’. It is little things like that help you start to learn about the organisation, the way it works, the differences, and mostly obviously about the terrorist, and, the way you patrol. I actually went and did the anti-ambush and defensive patrolling course at Ballykinler which turns out to be the coldest place in the world, even in June and July! Certainly,

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when I was there it was covered in snow the whole time. The course wasn’t really intended for Chief Inspectors, but I thought it was something I ought to do.

The obvious differences between policing in NI and GB may not, to someone who was born and brought up here and never served in any other force than the RUC, seem so obvious. All RUC Officers were trained about patrolling and what to look out for, which calls not to answer, how to let things ‘soak’, where to put cordons and all these sorts of things to do with terrorism as well as the use of Emergency Provisions legislation; all that sort of thing was different to England. So, I had to learn about all those sorts of things, along with the organisational structure and the RUC manual.

When I first came over I had six weeks of acclimatisation where I was posted to different things between 8.30-9.00 in the morning and six o’clock in the evening and I was living in Antrim Road Section House, so I would sit and read the manual in the evening. There were lots of things that were different which had nothing to do with terrorism, or, were only tangentially to do with the terrorist situation, such as things related to the origins of the force, its structure, attitudes and discipline, and, so on. Terrorism probably slowed down some developments here that had taken place in Policing.

The uniform, the saluting, the deference to authority, these were things that I actually loved, I thought it was great, I don’t know for what reasons, probably someone would say it was something that happened to me as a child! I loved the idea of structure and order and proper processes and you could say the RUC was very good at that, others might say the RUC was living in the Middle Ages, but I suppose it depends which way you look at it. Some people were hopelessly old fashioned, and sort of discipline minded about niggly things because they’d been subjected to a strict regime when they were junior in rank and they were dammed well going to get their own back. Others got promotions they didn’t really deserve because the force had quickly expanded, and, some didn’t know how to exercise their authority other than by being petty and niggly about minor things. But there was another explanation, for some the reason was they were trying to keep people alive. I think there was an ACC in Belfast who was a bit like that as well, Robin McLaughlin, he gave me a ‘bollicking’ once, he’d gone to the Lord Chief Justice’s house without telling me and found somebody didn’t have his gun or his flak jacket in the right place. Well, it’s my job to go and find those things out and take action and if I failed in that then okay, you could say well the ACC should tell me but I’m not so sure he should be inspecting security points; when I was an ACC I didn’t really have time to do that sort of thing. Now maybe I should have done, but I had the idea that the function of the ACC is to be strategic not just to be another ‘Sergeant’. So, that was one thing that was different, and, as I say in some ways it was good, and, in some ways, it wasn’t.

Another thing that was different was the pathetic bureaucracy, the piles of paper and the quality of some of the files submitted by Officers was absolutely appalling. I know I said earlier that I like structure in an organisation, but I was seeing files where some Constable somewhere had written on a file that he wanted something done somewhere else, so he would have gone to his Sergeant, who said to the Inspector, agreed, please action. The Inspector had sent it to the Chief Inspector, agreed, please action, the Chief Inspector had sent it to the Superintendent, who sent it to the other Superintendent, who sent it down through the ranks to another Constable, and, I thought how does anything ever get done here, why don’t people pick up the phone and do things and then make a record of it as necessary? So, I thought that was poor.

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There didn’t seem to be any system for giving people cautions. I had a prosecution file come in front of me for some woman who’d done something trivial and I said, ‘Can’t I give this woman a caution?’ in the end, I got her to come into the Police Station and I told her, ‘Don’t do this again, this is not how you conduct yourself when you’re driving a car’, it could have been done by a Constable or a Sergeant on the spot. Now to me as an ex-CID officer from the Metropolitan Police, where serious crime is taking place all the time, a detection was actually nicking somebody for something ‘half decent’ and getting evidence and putting them up at Crown Court, or, if you were lucky the Old Bailey, or, Knightsbridge Crown Court. As a Met probationer I was expected to make so many arrests during my first two years, and, on ‘Section’ if you weren’t making a lot of arrests, you got a reputation, why doesn’t he ever arrest anyone?

I wasn’t a thief taker, I didn’t have a nose for spotting a villain walking down the street and all this sort of thing. I think maybe that quality does exist, I don’t know but if it does there were a lot of people who had it in much greater quantities than I did, who were much better than I was at that sort of thing, but I did my bit. I did things logically and looked for clues and looked at people and stopped them in the street, used Section 66 of the Metropolitan Police Act which allowed me to stop any person or vessel, boat, cart or carriage upon which I believed something stolen or unlawfully obtained may be found. We used these powers to do ‘stops’ on the street, and, of course today it’s extremely restricted because of the suggestion that the Police as a whole used this as a tool for harassing people whose appearance they didn’t much care for. As a product of the 1970s I have to say that there was some truth in that, there were officers that I knew who were like that, but that’s not a reason for removing a tool which is useful to police. That’s a reason for disciplining police officers and training police officers and picking the right people to be in the police in the first place, not a reason for taking powers away from the police that they actually need. I did all that sort of thing and I nicked quite a lot of people, as I say, I was by no means a prolific thief taker.

I couldn’t believe when I came to Northern Ireland, how few people the Constables under my command actually arrested. What were they doing all the time? I know the answer now of course, because they were doing VCPs and all sorts of things. But their experience in court, I don’t know how many times I appeared in court in my first seven or eight years of service, but it must run into several hundred, Magistrates Court, Crown Court, Old Bailey, Appeal Court, Juvenile Court, Coroners Court. All these, in out, in out, regularly giving evidence in contested cases, actually prosecuting cases, and here I had officers under my command, some of them with two and three years police service who’d barely set foot in a court, I couldn’t believe it.

But there’s another thing that was remarkable. I conscientiously read the overnight Occurrence Sheets every morning, because as the Chief Inspector, Deputy Sub Divisional Commander, I believed I should know what’s going on and I had my own copy and an office to sit and read it in. I went through the Occurrence Sheet to make sure I was up to speed with what was going on, there would have been about 25 to 30 items, and, I always zoomed in on all the terrorist sightings or threats or whatever it was. I got a phone call one day, ‘Oh the Divisional Commander wants to speak to you’, ‘Oh yeah, put him through’, ‘What’s happening with this burglary?’ ‘Which burglary is that?’ ‘At such and such an address, haven’t you seen the Occurrence Sheet’, I said, ‘oh yes, yes, I’ve seen, yeah, yes, yes’. ‘Well what’s happening with it?’ and I said, ‘well I haven’t been down to the CID office to ask about this particular burglary is there something special?’ ‘Ah that’s Doctor such and such’ I thought ‘blimey why on earth would I when there is a constant threat of these gangsters coming in

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and putting a bomb under a sick Superintendent’s car and killing him and nearly killing his wife, or blowing the windows out of an ACCs house when he and his wife and his baby are sitting in the living room and leaving a secondary device to kill whichever hapless soldier or police officer happened to tread on a pressure plate at a cordon point or blowing up the centre of Lisburn, or any of the other things happening during my first few months? Why on earth would I be prioritising a burglary at a doctor’s house over that?’ Well the answer is because this is Northern Ireland and people know each other and probably the Chief Superintendent’s wife knows the doctor’s wife, so you should know about what’s going on in that burglary, in fact, you should probably be down there with a team of SOCOs and all the rest of it! Now I’m not trying to minimise the importance of the domestic burglary, but really, was that right? So those were some of the things that I found were different.

Some of the differences were related to the terrorism bit, perhaps I was a bit arrogant, but what I regarded as the lack of development of some sort of modern attitudes, I think was related to the terrorism bit even if it was a degree removed. For example, if you were to ask me as someone who is not in the police but moved to Northern Ireland in 1989, what differences did you find? There were differences that I found that would be perhaps in some ways parallel the differences in policing and they were attributable not purely to terrorist situations but to differences in society. I think London has improved a lot in the last 25 years, one of the things I noticed about Northern Ireland was how polite people were. People in shops couldn’t do enough to help you, now you may say, well that’s normal commercial practise, of course you want to be polite to your customers, but if you’d gone to London in 1989 you wouldn’t have found the same level of service.

I think there were a lot of similarities, especially to someone from outside the Police, some sociologists for example looking at the Met police in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and, the RUC in the ‘80s and ‘90s could see a lot of similarities. In some ways the RUC was like the Met only more so, by that I’m referring to the socialisation which takes place amongst police officers after joining.

In the Met I tended to serve in semi-inner or inner London areas which were difficult. Many Met officers didn’t live in the same division they worked in, particularly in certain semi-inner areas, they just wouldn’t live there, so most officers travelled to work. In the RUC, it was slightly different, there were certain areas where under no circumstances would any Police Officer ever live, particularly where they’d all been driven out in the late or early ‘70s such as parts of Londonderry and West Belfast where no police officer could ever consider living. But in the areas where police lived, a lot of police actually lived in the places where they worked, that was something which was fairly new to me coming from the Met, although if I’d come from North Yorkshire or Suffolk it might not have seemed quite so weird.

OFFICER 3

When I joined, the RUC was only 10% Catholic, and personally no one ever said to me you are Catholic you shouldn’t be in the police or anything like that. I got on a 100% in every station I was in, with every member I served with, and all those in higher authority Sergeants, Inspectors and all that. Nobody ever asked what religion I was, there was no bigotry whatsoever. I was 30 years in Glengormley, and, in that time there was a quite a proportion of females in each section, I never had any bother with them at all in any way, they were all good police officers.

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In the first Troubles [IRA Border campaign 1956-62] I was in Cranagh in the Sperrin Mountains in County Tyrone halfway between Plumbridge and Draperstown. There was only one road through the village and we went on the ‘Beat’ on our own. The station, which no longer exists, had 4 Constables, 1 Sergeant and 2 ‘B’ Men [Ulster Special Constabulary Part time constables] at the time. The area was 90% Nationalist, they put up with us, but we got no assistance from them. We went out on the ‘Beat’ on our own, we had no radios, so once we left the station we had no contact with it until we came back again. Bicycle and foot patrols were the only way we got around.

In Cranagh, we lived in the Station, we never went out, we never went out socially even if we knew a house we could go to have a conversation. We were on duty 24 hours a day, and, we never got out of the station until we got 2 days leave, as they called it, once a month to go home. So, we were basically confined to the Barracks except for the 2 days leave a month. My parents lived in Keady in Co Armagh which was 95% Nationalist and it took me almost a day to get home and almost a day to get back, so I had may be 2 or 3 hours with my mother and father.

In Cranagh there was a Post Office, Butchers, Grocers, Pub and a Chapel. To get home, the old man in the Post Office had a car which he used as a taxi, it wasn’t an official taxi, and he drove me from Cranagh to Newtownstewart where I got a train to Armagh, changing at Portadown, and then walked the rest of the way home about 6 miles.

The comradeship of the men in the station was brilliant, we read books, played games inside the station and we had to do our own cooking. Everything we needed bread, milk, meat all had to be brought in by van by the Butcher from Plumbridge. There was very little down in Cranagh village except the grocer, so everything had to be brought in, but it was alright for the 15 months I was there, although we got the odd unpopular Sergeant, and, we had 4 in 15 months!

We did gardening, we grew our own food and when the Sergeant had his 2 weeks leave in the summer they brought in a senior Constable from Omagh to cover. We did the census for every house in the area, mothers, fathers, grandparents down to the children and whatever land they owned. We collected firearms certificates when they were due for renewal and took them back again, we served summonses, although there were very few in our particular area. The people wouldn’t report crime, as they didn’t want us near them.

At night the station gate was closed, with a guard at the front of the station, there was a tripwire and barbed wire fence right round the perimeter of the station, the trip wire was inside the barbed wire. The guard was in a sandbag Sangar with a Bren gun and about 12 magazines of ammunition, he never got into the station until 7 o’clock in the morning from 11 o’clock at night. One particular night, at the front of the station where the barbed wire backed onto the garden of a man from the village, at about 3 o’clock in the morning the trip wire flare went up, the orders for the security guard were that if the trip flare went off and he could identify its position he was to open fire, so he opened up with the Bren gun on automatic and fired off a magazine of ammunition. He had no radio to contact the Duty Officer inside who heard the shooting but couldn’t do anything about it. In the morning the Sergeant asked what had happened, the security guard told him the trip flare went off so he fired, he didn’t know if he had hit anything and when they went to investigate they found a dead donkey. Long grass had grown inside the barbed wire and the donkey had put its head in to eat the long grass and set the trip wire off. The police refunded the cost of the donkey, but that was the sort of situation that could happen at night because of fears about the IRA attacks.

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One sergeant didn’t want the Duty Officer to sleep, whereas in some other stations he could, so he took everything out of the Guardroom that we could lie on, the wooden chair, the wooden bench, he took everything out just in case we would lie down on it. Cranagh was one of the old stations with the married quarters at one end for the Sergeant, his wife and two children. He would come through the communicating door during the night to slip down to see if the Guard was awake or not. If you were asleep, he reported you and if you got 2 reports you could be dismissed – dismissed! And if we let anybody in between the hours of 11 o’clock at night and 7 o’clock in the morning he told the District Inspector that you disobeyed orders, it was quite tough.

The District Inspector did an inspection once a month, we lined up in a row, he inspected our uniform and if you weren’t 100% tidy he put you to one side and talked to you afterwards. The Station Sergeant was that strict the Duty Officer had to polish the parquet floor using skids [every night], clean out and reset the fire, and parade with the new Guard at 9 o’clock in the morning. The Sergeant looked at us, went ‘round behind us, and if we had dust on our boots he reported us, so it was like a military camp! There was a big book we had to fill in when we came in from patrol saying where we were, who we spoke too, everything, everything we did went into that book and it was countersigned by the Sergeant. It was good but only for the comradeship it would have been sterile.

We were tolerated by the local community, there was no violence towards us, the only incident I had myself was on 17 March night [St Patricks Day]. I was sent out to do a 3 hour night patrol from 12 -3am. I went down into the village there was only 1 pub, there was singing and laughter coming from the pub, the door was lying open at 12 midnight, closing time then was 10 pm. I was accompanied by another officer, I told him to go around the back, and I went in the front. I eventually found the manageress, it was a small pub, and told her she had the public house open after hours. I ‘booked’ everyone in the pub including her. When we came out again we were walking along the village street and some of the men I ‘booked’ were standing along the Chapel wall. They came towards me, one of them hit me on the side of the chin, my hat fell off, I then informed him I was ‘booking’ him for assaulting the police and disorderly behaviour. He was eventually brought before the court and fined for the pub incident plus the assault and disorderly behaviour outside. That was the only incident I had, I never had any bother with them after that, if I met them on the road they would say ‘Good morning Constable’ or whatever, there was never any trouble after that until I left 15 months later.

In Cranagh we were detailed a ‘beat’ the area was about 6 miles, it went around in a circle, along the main road then up a wee country road and back onto the main road. It was about 6 miles we had no radio, we could have been kidnapped, or, shot and nobody would have known, that was always in your mind all the time when you went out. After the pub incident they could have taken that out on me afterwards when I was on my own, they could have done whatever they liked to me, lucky enough it didn’t happen.

Policing during the 1960s was quite normal. I left Cranagh after 15 months and went to Castlecaulfield which was 75% Protestant and 25% Catholic where there was no problem at all for policing. At Castlecaulfield the Station Sergeant would speak to us but he never got very friendly with you. I was there 15 months, and, in that time, I got engaged. After I put in my application to get married to the girl I met from the village the Sergeant got me transferred back to Plumbridge which was about 5 miles from Cranagh. I spent a year there, I didn’t understand the reason for my transfer,

DOING POLICING Page 11 of 109 but I found that I couldn’t get a house in Plumbridge as there was only a small estate of council houses and they were rented out to local people. If the mother and father were there and the mother and father died it went to their kids keeping it in their family, so you could never get in to get a house. There were no more houses being built and there weren’t any houses to rent in the sub- division because there were none, so I said to myself I have to get out of here and get a transfer to County Antrim or County Down.

I then put in for a transfer to County Down or County Antrim, at that time if you had relatives in any county you couldn’t be transferred to that county so the only two I could be transferred too were Counties Antrim and Down. I then got Ballyclare which was fine, normal policing all the way through, I spent 9 years there before I was transferred to Glengormley where it was normal policing again except when the Trouble started in Belfast with riots every night. I spent the next 30 years in Glengormley all in uniform except the last 15 when I was on plain clothes duties.

Ballyclare was OK, the station was on the Doagh Road where McClellands are today, it was a private house made into a police station, but it was still a house with the Station Sergeant’s office window looking out into The Square [town centre]. There was 1 Sergeant and 4 Constables, the Sergeant rode an old bicycle, he used to live in Margaret Avenue off the Rashee Road as there were no married quarters attached to the station. He would come down at the weekend, ride his bicycle down and park it outside his office window on the footpath. The senior Constable, I was the second senior man, was detailed to police 4 dances on Saturday nights, one was in the High School, one in The Square in the Townhall and another in Abbey Hall.

We had 2 men on the ‘Beat’ at weekends and when the Sergeant went to go home some Saturday nights his bicycle was gone, he often asked if we knew where his bike went but we didn’t know. Then one night a guy told me that a fella from Queens Park in Glengormley was taking the Sergeants bike, he couldn’t get home after the dance and knowing where the bike was he took it to ride home, we caught him, and he was ‘done’ for theft of a bicycle 4 or 5 times. Those dances were hairy, George Herron, he was a Bus Inspector, used to bring a busload from the Shankill to the dances, we had a gang from Cogry who were ‘hell bent’ on fighting and the two would meet up at the Dance especially the one in Abbey Hall. There was Davy Hamill, who lived about Ligoniel Belfast, he was a bouncer, a big guy if he didn’t like you he won’t let you into the dance or he would assault you; we used to have to pull him up all the time and tell him that if he didn’t stop we would have to ‘do’ him for assault. Eventually he got so bad I took George Herron to one side and told him Hamill was assaulting people who were doing nothing, they were innocent people, and to get him away, George did, and, the new guy was dead on and did his duties OK. For assaults and disorderly behaviour, it was hell for leather every weekend. The local magistrate John Fox held the Petty Sessions in the Barron Hall in Glengormley and he took a firm view of the fights and after he doubled the fines things settled down; it took some time, but things got back to normal.

Back then policing was a bit like the policing in you see in Heartbeat, the TV programme, it was quite normal, we had cars to get around in, we had radios, we could talk to people, people would give us information, we were in touch with all the shopkeepers and businessmen, we knew everybody. We knew the good areas and the bad areas, if you went into a bad area you got back up if you needed it which I didn’t get in my previous stations because we didn’t have the manpower, so it was quite normal. If we made an arrest, we called Andy Horner at McConnell’s the Undertaker and taxi people

DOING POLICING Page 12 of 109 to take the prisoners back to the station. Andy would bring the transit van and we would take the prisoners to the station and put them in the cell until the dance was over. The Sergeant would come around midnight and ask if all was quiet and he was told to go down to the cells to see for himself. I really enjoyed it and we were kept busy, very busy.

After I was working in Glengormley for a few years I moved house back to live in Ballyclare, and when the ‘gougers’ [those likely to be disorderly] saw me again they asked me if I was back working in Ballyclare, and, when I told them, ‘No only to live’ they said ‘that’s alright then’. They were afraid of me when I was on duty and they would still say to me to this day you were a ‘tight’ officer [a no nonsense officer]. There was one lad who lived in the country and he would ring someone in town to see if I was on duty and if I was he would wait until I was off duty. I did everything legally, by the book if people broke the law I cautioned them first, if it happened a second time then, yes I booked them, I had no favourites, everyone was treated the same and they would tell me later ‘you’re an honest policeman who did his duty’ they respected me for that.

If the Sergeant gave you firearms certificates to do in Glenwherry [town land outside Ballyclare] that was 6 miles walking: that’s the sort of thing we did. One day you patrolled the town, the next day you were in the country, you were as fit as a fiddle. It was good, enjoyable when there were no ‘Troubles’.

After ‘The Troubles’ started in 1968 we had to go to all these different things, we were sent to the Civil Rights marches whether they were in Belfast or Derry City, in the end we could go anywhere in Northern Ireland, and, very often wherever the parade was, there was Trouble. Our training was basic, basic riot training up at Aldergrove with wee short metal shields where we faced a ‘rioting crowd’ of police officers pretending to be rioters who would throw wooden bricks at us. Our riot equipment was basic, a riot helmet, what I would call a motor cycle helmet, and a basic shield, we had no other protection, no clothing or anything like that other than the helmet and the shield.

They talked about police doing shift duty, but we were actually on duty 24 hours a day. We did our ordinary duty during the day, and, at night we went into Belfast, or anywhere there was trouble and riots. Every day was the same, ordinary duty during the day, and, at night wherever the trouble was, the next day was the same. There was disruption to our family life all the time, everyday there was no respite from it, it went on and on.

As the riots got worse we did duty in our own station be it 7am-3pm or 3pm-11pm, and if we were on ‘Earlys’ the 7-3 shift we were also detailed to start at 7pm and we may be didn’t get home to 3am. There were always riots in Belfast either on the Shankill or Falls Road, and, we had to deal with all sorts, rioting, shootings and explosions and things like that. Our tactics were hold back until the rioters came forward, and, if they got too close we were ordered to draw batons and baton charge. That’s the way it went, we arrested when we had to arrest, and when we arrested someone he was taken to the back of our lines, put in a Land Rover and taken to Musgrave Street Police Station to be charged. The only equipment we had was the helmet, an ordinary baton and a short shield, so we could get hit on the legs under the shield and our arms were unprotected. The shields were pitiful, they were useless really, they were just like a sheet of tin 2½ feet long and about 1½ feet wide held by a grip on the back; we did get longer ones later. When we did weapon training we had no ear protection, and we fired all sorts of guns revolvers, shotguns, Sten guns, SMGs [Sterling submachine gun], Bren gun all with no protection for our ears at all, that went on all the time.

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Did the police fail to protect Catholics during the 68/69 riots? No, I never witnessed that, everyone got as much protection as we could give, we did our best, but we needed more officers – there was no failure to protect Catholics, it just didn’t happen. During the riots our equipment got better slowly, but that was the only improvement, and because there were so many riots all over the place the manpower was quite short. If the trouble had been localised it might have been different but there were riots going in Belfast, and then they started somewhere else and then somewhere else, so manpower had to be diverted which meant it was a thin blue line really. We did our ordinary duty during the day, there were that many riots every night we had to deal with, it was completely different to the ordinary duty. We were protecting the public and trying to protect ourselves too: it was quite difficult, quite difficult.

When the shooting started we had to train officers and issue weapons, we had some officers with M1 carbines to pinpoint snipers from either side, and, to return fire if need be to protect the men on the street that were doing the riot duty. We hadn’t the time to look out for all the gunfire coming towards us, the Land Rovers were fired on, and the beat patrols in Duncairn Gardens or Falls Road or Shankill Road were regularly shot at, we had to be very careful. After it got so bad in Derry they called the Army in to compensate for the police who couldn’t cope with everything that was going on. Personally, the police shouldn’t have been involved in the anti-terrorist stuff. I joined the police to be an ordinary Constable and didn’t join to be a paramilitary.

We had to watch what areas we went into, there were good areas and bad areas, if we went into a bad area especially at night we had to have quick backup if needed. When I went into Plain Clothes in the last years of my service I was getting information from an informant especially in one area. I did plain clothes duty on my own using my own car although I had a radio with me to call for help if I needed it. One night my informant asked to see me at the station, I saw him in an interview room and he told me ‘you were up in ... last night delivering summonses there were 3 boys going to attack you. I don’t know what they were going to do to you, but they were there waiting but something happened outside, somebody interrupted them’, and that’s why I got out of the estate safely. I told the Station Sergeant and my Inspector what the informant told me, I was taken out of the area, and, if I had to go in to it, I went in with Uniform officers in a Land Rover, who would guard me until I left. That was the only incident that posed any danger to me personally, otherwise I could do my duty alright.

OFFICER 4

If you go back to the 60s the RUC was largely a provincial force of about 3000 officers who had the support of the community. They were dealing with ordinary everyday things; it was like a ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ sort of thing with police stations in hamlets with little or no population. Suddenly they are confronted with this political stuff, civil rights demonstrations and basically weren’t able to cope. Politics were greatly into policing at that stage with a Unionist government who wrongly used the police in the Civil Rights protests, basically to prevent marches in areas where there would have been little risk. It was a political decision rather than a public order situation. The down side of this was the police could not cope. So, when the riots started the police were ill equipped and didn’t have the numbers; the Unionist government at that stage didn’t give them any credit and basically continued with the same policy, there will be ‘no marches here’.

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I can remember the Civil Rights wanting to march in Newry, which is 85-90% Nationalist, and to walk across the Stonebridge, the march was disallowed, and violence broke out when the march arrived at the police barrier stopping the march crossing the bridge. It would have made little or no difference had they walked across, there was no one objecting, but that was the way it was. The police were used badly, and the fall out was they didn’t have the proper equipment to deal with the trouble and were overwhelmed. It got to the stage the police couldn’t cope and the Army had to be brought in. Was this a good decision or bad decision? In hindsight it was a bad decision to bring the Army in but something needed to be done.

South Armagh became a ‘No Go Area’ because it was so dangerous, the PIRA started to train and equip themselves with explosives. Army vehicles were blown up and as the years went on it became so dangerous that patrols could only go on foot and travel had to be done by helicopter.

Other areas like West Belfast, Derry and East Tyrone were equally as dangerous and normal policing couldn’t exist. PIRA started to target [police] officers, on and off duty in these areas which forced the removal of community policing leaving a security zone. Police tactics had to change [to a security policing style] that didn’t fit well with community policing.

I don’t think there was any alternative, you still needed the Police to be in control. Who would you bring in? There was talk of UN forces, that would not have been acceptable, that would have been usurping the role of the British government. The Army was here, they thought they were equipped but they weren’t, they had no experience of working in support of a UK police force. They came with the experience of various colonial wars, they had no experience of dealing with the community and trying to get community support, it was purely a military response they had to offer. The RUC could not have been removed to do community policing only, Northern Ireland is a small place, it’s tiny and people would still have looked to the police. I think everyone thought ‘The Troubles’ would be over quickly; they would only last about year and fizzle out in 2 or 3 years after a few political changes, a few changes to the police, and, everything would be rosy for another 20 years, but it didn’t happen. I don’t see how the RUC could have been removed.

OFFICER 5

In the 1960s Keady was a predominantly Catholic town, with 13 pubs, only one of which was Protestant owned; it was a close knit rural community and coming from Belfast I found it difficult to adjust to living in the country. I lived across the road from the Church of Ireland church and although my wife was Church of Ireland we found them very ‘stand offish’ and as for the Presbyterians they were too evangelical. Every Sunday night there was a dance on in the Parochial Hall, the pubs weren’t open, well not officially! On occasion when on duty I would go down on a Sunday night, there were a lot of young men and women there my own age including the priest who was there to make sure they didn’t dance too close together! I would go down and have a cup of tea and a sandwich with him in the Parochial Hall and we became friendly, so the closest relationship I had was with the Catholic Church.

I think the most surprising thing was by the time the dance was over at midnight the street lights on Main Street switched off. In Belfast the street lights were on all of the time whereas in the country it was commonplace for the street lights to be switched off at night - that surprised me. Learning country life was a bit of a surprise and I knew nothing about farming, and, Keady being a market

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town had a cattle and pig market every week. Being so close to the border there was a lot of smuggling of piglets, lambs and calves with the animals going back and fro to take advantage of various subsides. We had a Land Rover which had a canvas cover on the back, it was partly armoured, loaned to us by the Ministry of Agriculture to counter the illegal importation under the Livestock Orders of 1958. There were rewards if we made a seizure, I recall seizing piglets with a resale value of £100, and, when they were disposed off under a court order, I received a £5 reward.

There were 2 Sergeants and 10 Constables which was bit heavy, and during the IRA Border Campaign there had been a RUC Reserve Force Platoon [RUC tactical support unit] nearby but not in my time. We patrolled on foot and bicycles. On the 50 th anniversary of the Easter Rising IRA attacks on police stations were expected and we were given a load of sand and sandbags, fortunately we had a mobilised ‘B’ man who was ex-army and he was able to show us how to fill sandbags and build a sandbag emplacement with a roof on it. We had another mobilised ‘B’ man who stood guard outside as well as the Station Duty Officer (SDO) inside. The SDO would take calls at the [station] door, if there were any, but there were very few, so he could sleep on a cot come 11 o’clock at night, while the ‘B man’ would stand outside on guard all night. One night he started shooting with a SMG (sub machine gun) as he thought we were under attack.

There were fields in front of the station which was a 1936/37 model station white with married quarters attached so the Sergeant came running in. My duty was to push the alarm button to call out the ‘B’ Specials. When daylight came, we searched the area and found he had opened fire on a bullock, he had heard a noise, called out for it to stop and when it didn’t he opened fire. I think that was my only experience of being ‘attacked’, I don’t recall any attacks on police stations on the 50 th anniversary of the 1916 Rising at all, it was very much a non-event.

There were parades in Belfast and L/Derry to mark the anniversary but not many as I recall. There was no impact on us in Keady, no tricolours went up, the people were largely friendly, and I don’t remember any hostile attitudes towards the police from the local community. I don’t recall any difficulties clearing out the pubs on a Saturday night; we shopped in the town, went to the local dentist, I got my hair cut in the town, my wife didn’t work in the town, but she moved about freely, and I took the Cub Scouts for a while. Policing was actually very boring I would go on bicycle patrols, there were no crimes. In the 3 years I spent in Keady there was only one Indictable crime, so we mostly dealt with traffic accidents, motoring offences, motoring defects and the odd disorderly behaviour, there was no sectarianism at all. Of the two Sergeants, one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant, I found no hostility at all.

I thought the police community relations were excellent. When we went out and around the station area which included a stretch of the border, we could go right down to the border collecting Firearms Certificates, delivering Firearms Certificates and visiting a whole range of farms. I don’t know if they were Protestant or Catholic, the majority of small farm holdings I would have thought were Catholic. I would have gone to Derrynoose, a small village with a Post office, which sold a few groceries and sweets, and called in there and to other houses I knew both Catholic and Protestant. It was interesting from my point of view because I had no experience of life in the country, but it was boring, very boring.

Occasionally we would go out in the Land Rover, but I couldn’t drive until I was 21. When I started to drive a Constable, younger than me arrived and we were sent out on patrol in the Land Rover. I

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inadvertently crossed the border, I didn’t know, as the border was poorly marked at most crossings. I didn’t know we had crossed the border until I was flagged down by a local farmer who told me I was in the South. I tried to turn in a field to go back but I got bogged down and even with a 4 wheel drive Land Rover in low gear I couldn’t get out until the farmer got his tractor and pulled me out. I felt rather relieved as I didn’t know how I was going to explain to the Sergeant how I managed to get the Land Rover stuck in a field south of the border.

While I was there the Orangemen from all over Armagh came to Keady for their 12 th July parade. There was no trouble at all, the Orangemen drank in the Catholic pubs, there was no trouble before the parade and there was no trouble after it. On another occasion, it was 1976 when I was an Inspector, I was back in Keady for the same parade and there was no trouble that year either, I don’t recall any community difficulties. I just didn’t detect any difficulty, hostility or anything like that towards the police or between the small Protestant community and the Catholic community at all.

One occasion that sticks in my mind was the visit of Cardinal Conway to Keady on his return from Rome after becoming Cardinal en route to Armagh. There was a large crowd gathered to greet him in the ‘Cow Fair’, an open space in Keady, my wife was there along with another policeman’s wife. I was on duty stuck in the middle of the large crowd along with Sergeant Dan Clarke, when the Cardinal got up to speak everybody got down on their knees, I was the only one standing, wondering what I should do. So, I took off my cap and stood as he spoke and that was that, or so I thought. When the Sergeant came back he roared with laughter and said, ‘Bet you never thought you would get stuck like that?’, and No, I didn’t!

Tension built up in the Protestant community on the run up to the 50 th anniversary Easter Rising and a young religious firebrand, Rev Ian Paisley came on the scene in 1964. I despised the man, I ran into him a few times before and after I joined the RUC, he was just a firebrand more interested in Ian Paisley than evangelism. In September that year a Tricolour was displayed in the Republican Club on Divis Street in Belfast, the police didn’t interfere with it believing if they did it would only result in disorder. But Paisley threatened if it wasn’t removed he would lead a parade up Divis Street to remove it, so in the face of this threat the government decided it should be removed to prevent a breach of the peace. The Flags and Emblems Act allowed police to remove a flag to prevent a breach of the peace, so the police forcibly removed the tricolour which caused three days of rioting. I was just back from honeymoon and was deployed to Divis Street for 3 nights until the rioting petered out. That was my first experience of a riot.

The whole civil rights case in 1968 was over the allegations of housing allocation, discrimination in jobs, gerrymandering of electoral boundaries e.g. you had Derry City which was predominantly Catholic with a Unionist council; there were a number of places like that but not as bad. The resentment grew and came to head when a Nationalist MP Austin Currie occupied a house in Caledon amid allegations that a Catholic family had been evicted by force to make way for a single Protestant girl, that was clearly unfair and was one of the events leading up to the Civil Rights protests.

Then there was the parade in Derry banned by the Minister of Home Affairs, William Craig. Ross McGimpsey was the DI in charge in Derry City, I later learnt that Ross and his boss CI Shillington had been summoned to meet Craig, and, it was Craig who laid down the order telling them that the parade was not to be allowed through, it was to be stopped. That order put Ross in a difficult

DOING POLICING Page 17 of 109 position, the parade was stopped, and we know what happened after that, there was excessive violence. A RTE TV crew and other press were there, and pictures of the violence were sent round the world. There were also a number of UK Labour Party MPs there, the Labour Party had a number of historic Irish connections and Wilson the PM was anti unionist, he was very hostile to unionists and that didn’t help at the time. There had been no interference by the British government in NI since partition right through to 1968 even though they had the power to intervene, but they allowed things to continue. When I was growing up I wasn’t aware of those issues [civil rights grievances].

After 3 years in Keady I was transferred to Brown Square on the Shankill Road in West Belfast – it was from one extreme to the other. I didn’t know the Shankill even though I was a Belfastman and had worked in the city centre, I didn’t really know where it was. I didn’t know where the Falls was either I just didn’t know that part of Belfast at all. I moved into Ballybeen in Dundonald which was a newly built housing estate and there wasn’t any bother in it. I didn’t find getting along with the general public in the area difficult, I didn’t encounter any grave hostility, OK there was the odd person, but generally everyone was fairly law abiding.

Brown Square was a predominantly Protestant area, it interfaced with Hastings Street, a predominantly Catholic area to the West, to the East was Ardoyne in Oldpark’s territory, and the city centre to the South. I expected policing the Shankill to be rough and tumble, but it wasn’t, I don’t ever recall having to draw my baton, I don’t ever recall being assaulted. Even when I went to a drunken street brawl, if some of the crowd turned on me others intervened to protect me. I was told that I looked like a schoolboy in uniform and I suppose I did. I remember one occasion someone called out ‘leave that wee boy alone’ I wondered who they were talking about, but it was me! I never found policing that difficult and the population was generally friendly.

The lower part of the Shankill was undergoing a period of re-development, the Peter’s Hill area had been cleared, the old public baths had been removed and building Unity Flats started. Crime was low with only the odd theft and disorderly behaviour; I thoroughly enjoyed Brown’s Square. We worked in sections and did night duty for a month at a time. The early shift started at 5.45am, I lived in Dundonald, didn’t have a car and buses didn’t start to run until 500am. I would get up at 4am for the early shift walk down get the bus hoping the bus wouldn’t be delayed and ran like hell from the bus stop up to Brown’s Square where the Sergeant was waiting to parade us at 5.45am. The experience working on the Shankill Road was enlightening on how to deal with people.

On night duty I would do ‘Nightbeats’on my own, and I got to know the people who stayed up late particularly the old people. In Denmark Street I would drop in with the ‘old dears’, who stayed up for a chat, for a cup of tea and even a bit of warmth on a winter’s night – that was a regular stop. And during the day I would call in at local schools and other premises and have a cup of tea with the caretaker. My Beat in Brown Square was 1 Beat which was Upper North Street, Upper Donegal Street and across Millfield. I probably did 5 Beat sometimes which took me across to the Crumlin Road, Agnes Street and down the Shankill and Peter’s Hill. On 1 Beat there was a Chapel on Donegal Street which today has become a flashpoint but back then it wasn’t, there were no hostile crowds and I suspect whatever the bands played was just ignored but today it has become contentious.

July was the main problem month. The number of Orange Order and band parades was a job for a couple of constables who plotted all the 11/1s [notice for a parade] received. There were a few Catholic shops at Peter’s Hill, one was Bannon’s house furnishers, who is still in business in Belfast

DOING POLICING Page 18 of 109 city centre, all the locals would buy from him on ‘tick’ [credit] but during July they would smash his shop windows, so every July we were posted outside the shop to try and prevent attacks. July was a difficult month for us, there was a lot of drunkenness over the 11/12 th as the pubs were open night and day. We prayed for rain when the lodges returned – nothing disperses a parade like a bit of rain. Then at the end of July things reverted to normal.

A lot of Scottish bands would come over for the 12 th July and they didn’t help things. In 1969 the police stations in Brown Square and in Leopold Street (at the other end of the Shankill) closed and we all moved to Tennent Street to cover the Shankill and parts of the Ardoyne including Hooker Street which was soon to be the scene of serious sectarian rioting. At this time Peter’s Hill, Unity Flats were completed providing new housing for Catholics and that soon to add to our problems.

I couldn’t understand then and still don’t know why the planners allowed those flats to be built right up to Peter’s Hill junction because it was a flashpoint for every Orange parade afterwards. The flats overlooked the junction and people threw stones and all sorts of things from the balconies down onto the parades. There was a regular ‘points man’ directing traffic at Peter’s Hill and when ‘The Troubles’ started he had to be removed because he was a target for stone throwers and gunmen.

When the 68/69 trouble started in Derry and Newry, we were sent down in detachments to cover Civil Rights parades. I was there a couple of times but there was only one which caused a little bit of trouble, for the others we were held in reserve outside Newry and never deployed as nothing really significant happened.

On one occasion we were deployed from Newry to Portadown after an outbreak of trouble, and, then went to Lurgan after trouble broke out there, but we weren’t deployed, instead we were sent to Derry after serious rioting broke out. When we arrived, I think it was about 10 or 11pm on 19 April 1969 the rioting had been going on for most of the day when a guy Devenney was struck by a police baton. At approximately 8.30pm a couple of sections of the Reserve Force were in hot pursuit of some rioters who were running in and out of Mr Devenney’s house and out the back door. Police chased them and Mr Devenney who was in his 40 or50s tried to stop the police and somebody thumped him, he was admitted to hospital and died a couple of weeks later from a second heart attack [at the time he was recuperating from a heart attack] and some allege his fatal heart attack some weeks later was a consequence of his injury at the hands of the police and that caused further uproar in Derry.

Detective Chief Superintendent Drury and a Sergeant from the London Metropolitan Police came over to investigate the death, I was interviewed by Drury but as I didn’t arrive in Derry until after 10pm and wasn’t deployed until 1130pm I was eliminated from the enquiry. Drury during the course of the enquiry frequented Pubs in the Bogside and invariably showed the signs of his visits. Anyway, that was the only engagement I had in Derry. The other time I was at riots in Londonderry was around the 12 th August 1969 Apprentice Boys Day. The rioting was usually connected to an Orange Parade going through or in close proximity to a Catholic area that would trigger stone throwing.

Riot control was a case of charging back and forth in the Bogside, we chased them, they chased us; we just chased each other back and forth. We had no training, apart from the units of the ‘Reserve Force’, in crowd control, no training whatsoever. We had no equipment, only the WW2 old steel helmets which were useless, our ordinary [12 inch long] pocket batons, no shields; it was just a

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waste of time. The police didn’t really have any tactics to deal with rioters throwing stones, we held the line until whoever was in charge decided enough was enough and gave the order to charge. We just charged at them they retreated, we set up a new line, they attacked us, we moved back; it was just back and forward. We would try and contain the rioting and accepted being stoned, which I thought was a waste of time. I could understand containing the crowd and holding a line but couldn’t understand charging about the Bogside which was a warren, we didn’t know where we were going, and the locals knew where to go to disappear. When the CS gas was introduced we didn’t have enough gas-masks and some of those who did, didn’t know they had to take out a cardboard seal first, you couldn’t breathe in the mask until you did. A few of the Reserve Force had masks but the rest of us ran about with handkerchiefs wrapped around our mouths, the reality was only the Reserve Force had any public order training, it was apparent to me it was just chaos.

The RUC was a small force, about 3000 officers it was too small to deal with the problems it faced. There was a part time police reserve, the B Specials, however mobilising the B men would have been a red flag to the bull [B Men a part time poorly trained Special Constabulary had a poor relationship with the Catholic community]. As a last resort some B men were mobilised around 14 th August, I understood it was done because we were exhausted but the idea of deploying B men in Derry with pick shafts wasn’t going to resolve anything.

By now the rioting had spread to Belfast, in the Ardoyne and along the Shankill/Falls interface the situation was deteriorating. It was very busy, we would have rioting to 2 or 3 in the morning then nothing until the afternoon when people got ‘tanked up’ a bit and it started again around teatime or when a police vehicle went through; we still had all the ordinary policing tasks to do. We used to do ‘fixed points’ duty at the cross roads at top of the Crumlin Road near Hooker Street, where regrettably Constable Cecil Cunningham was shot dead as he walked across Hooker Street. A number of police officers were shot in the Oldpark area, in my recollection the greatest number of deaths occurred in C Division area (includes Protestant west Belfast and its interfaces with the Catholic Falls Road, Ardoyne and Oldpark areas).

CID in C Division would set up a team operating out of Tennent Street to investigate each murder. It was very difficult to carry out any sort of enquiries due to the scale of the trouble, the shortage of officers and a lack of co-operation from the public. There were attempts to make arrests and do searches but they were hugely difficult, as soon as we appeared everybody came out onto the street and we had to withdraw. Even when the Army took over, they didn’t want us to go in and we couldn’t go in without them, the Army saw themselves as Peacekeepers and saw us as some of the Bad Boys. I think in some way we were, but that was due to our political masters.

At this time, I was promoted Sergeant and sent to Lisnaskea. I knew nothing about Lisnaskea, I knew where it was because I had been in ‘The Depot’ in nearby Enniskillen but beyond that I knew nothing about Lisnaskea. The District Inspector in Lisnaskea was Bob Killen, who had been Head Constable in Brown Square when I was there. He ran a ‘school’ in Brown’s Square for Constables interested in taking the Sergeant’s exam, he had about 12 in the ‘school’, I was one of them and he did this largely in his own time. On arrival at Lisnaskea I was shipped out to Rosslea as there was no Sergeant there. All the men in Rosslea were single except me; the station had a garden full of vegetables and a lady from the village came in to cook dinners for the station party. One day I went with 2 constables to take possession of a Shoreland Armoured car from Enniskillen, none of us knew how to drive it. It

DOING POLICING Page 20 of 109 was a four wheel drive, long wheel base Land Rover chassis fitted with armour and a turret mounted Browning machine gun no one knew how to fire. I was only there 1 or 2 months moving back and forth to Lisnaskea when SB briefed us of a fear, which presumably came from HQ, that the Irish Army would make a dash [invade NI] into Northern Ireland to Derry City, Newry and the Falls Road in Belfast. There was 1 Crime Special (later SB) Detective Constable in Lisnaskea, I don’t know what he actually did, I don’t know.

Lisnaskea was a new station with no married quarters so I got a Housing Trust house at the far end of the town where 6 other police constables lived so my wife was able to come and join me, she became known as the ‘Sergeant’s wife’. Lisnaskea was a mixed town roughly equal in terms of Protestants and Catholics while the outlying areas were mostly Catholic, there was no real difficulty there at that time. The station party was a mixed religious group I don’t know how many of each. Sergeant Paddy McGuinness was a Catholic, he was a countryman and his wife was a school teacher in a Catholic school. He came and went as he wished, the Head Constable would come looking for him and ask if I knew where he was, when I said I didn’t know he wanted to know why I didn’t know, I told the Head if he didn’t know, Sgt McGuinness wasn’t going to tell me. Paddy just came and went as he pleased, he was a strange character he wore his rain coat even in the summer, he never buttoned it, he never walked on the footpath just walked up the road, always smoked his pipe and wore his cap at half cock, he was a most untidy cop but living there for years he knew the area and its people inside out.

I didn’t find the Protestant community very welcoming although the Catholic community was. I was involved with the Cub Scouts and took them for a while and my wife took the Brownies, so we got to know people through that. In 1969 Constable Victor Arbuckle was shot dead [by a loyalist gunman] in the Shankill, his was the first police death which shook the Force significantly. I remember hearing about it at Enniskillen Magistrates Court where I was giving evidence against one of the McManus’ for attending an illegal parade. The court was packed when the news arrived, it was mostly the civil rights crowd supporting McManus who were talking about it. It was the first police death and the turnout of police at the funeral was enormous. Victor had been an extrovert type, a well built guy who was in the Reserve Force and did duty at Brown Square periodically. He drank, he was the first man to introduce me to ‘hot gin’, which I never had before, one winter’s night on Night Duty, he became religious and was a completely different man. Sadly, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot dead on the Shankill Road near Townsend Street.

It is difficult coming from a Protestant/Unionist background to understand or realise the deprivation the Catholic community suffered in terms of jobs, they virtually couldn’t work in the shipyard and aircraft industry, instead usually working in unskilled jobs and in hotels and pubs. There was no attempt historically by Unionist governments to reach out to Catholics, as David Trimble said ‘It was a cold house for Catholics’, it was, and I don’t think many unionists realised that. I could see no difference between the Protestant in his 2 up 2 down house on the Shankill and the Catholic in his 2 up 2 down house on the Falls. In the streets that connected the two, if you walked down Dover Street you would find the two communities overlapped and generally there wasn’t much bother except during July. I think the working class Catholics ‘lived’ with the police, and it worked, but when put under stress it didn’t take much before the cracks appeared

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I was part of a police detachment from Fermanagh who were billeted in Ebrington Barracks known then as HMS Sea Eagle, when the Army were deployed into Derry. We numbered about 15 men and, apart from the Head [Constable], were billeted in a room about 14 foot square with bunk beds; we were there for a month non-stop duty. In order to get petrol we had to drive into Victoria RUC Station on Strand Road, the first time we did it (the Army had police radios) we were driving Land Rovers and the next thing I heard was the Army saying there was a column of police heading for Derry City Centre and were going to invade the Bogside, the Head [Constable] looked at me and I said they’re talking about us and they were! The police at this time were personae non grata and we didn’t go into the Bogside. We spent a month in ‘Derry and not much really happened while we were deployed. There used to be a large Protestant working and middle class in the Cityside, but they moved out across to the Waterside because of the IRA violence; it was the biggest movement of people in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’. They moved through the ‘fear’ of attack rather than from attacks.

The Trouble was just starting in Tennent Street area when I was transferred out so I saw the beginnings of it there and I saw the beginning and the results of it in Derry but there was none in Lisnaskea. I had been sent on duty to Newry but even then, I didn’t find I was confronted by any great hostility. The rioting to the level that developed in Derry and Belfast didn’t happen in the rural areas, although some members of the Catholic community were hostile to the police, but it wasn’t widespread. Certainly in my experiences of the Ardoyne before I left on promotion I was shocked at all the charging about, I saw 1 or 2 people improperly struck with police batons, I cringed when I saw one man hit across the head, I couldn’t see any reason for it I was really disgusted, disgusted at the man who did it but not surprised because he was fond of the baton, he would have ‘batoned’ anybody who got in his way, I was appalled at what he did. In all my service I never struck anybody with my baton, I did draw it, but I never struck anyone with it. In a way it is a sense of pride that I never used my baton I was one of those fortunate people.

There were a couple of attacks on the police in ‘B’ Division (West Belfast predominantly Catholic), in 1967/68 on one occasion a grenade was rolled under a parked police car which didn’t go off, and, a few shots were fired at Police around Hastings Street. It was at this time that the phrase ‘No Go’ area first came into use. A list of streets in the Falls and Divis areas was compiled, and, if we were called to a crime or disorder incident Belfast Communications Centre in Castlereagh would give us a ‘No Go’ call if they thought we would be attacked.

My experience in uniform didn’t involve encountering extreme hostility, I was just deployed to it, I went to it, but I didn’t live or work in it. When I left Lisnaskea I was sent to Castlereagh and apart from the Short Strand/Willowfield interface there was really no bother unless we were deployed as a unit to other trouble spots. We occasionally got calls to the Catholic Convent and Chapel at Ravenhill/Ormeau Road junction when a child in their care went missing and I don’t recall the convent being attacked. The area was largely middle class and bordered a ‘well to do’ area so there wasn’t much rioting.

There were some strange policing actions enduring from the past; during the school terms police were sent over to the junction at Carlisle Circus, I remember asking the Head why? He told me ‘mind your own business and just do it!’ I came to realise he didn’t know either. It turned out that a bus carrying Catholic school children through the junction had been snowballed one winter sometime in

DOING POLICING Page 22 of 109 the 1950s and by mid 1960s the school children no longer travelled through the junction, yet we were still policing it. Another instance was the Entry that ran from Lower North Street to Lower Donegall Street whenever there was a parade we put a policeman at the entry, because in 1936 a group of Catholics had escaped through the entry after throwing stones at a parade, and, here we were in the mid 1960s, still standing in the entry. Things had moved on but the policing of ‘points’ had become standard practice, there was no rational analysis to the deployment and need for police officers.

When Sir Arthur Young became the new RUC Chief Constable (he replaced Peacock who was arbitrarily told to resign) he sent a DI ‘Ali’ Hood to be trained in crowd control by the Met. The Met were used to policing passive crowds and TV footage showed how chaotic they were when dealing with hostile crowds in the Poll Tax riots and Broadwater Farm in London. The Met training was all about dealing with peaceful crowds with police linking arms, forming wedges and shuffling forward. When Hood came back and started training on the new crowd control tactics, it became known in the RUC as the ’Ali Shuffle’ based on units of 1 Sergeant and 6 Constables. Most of the Sergeants in the RUC were brought to Castlereagh to be trained and I was one of them.

An amazing development was the supply of packed lunches whilst on public order duty, before this we just took our own sandwiches, although the Reserve Force had a ‘Chuck Wagon’ which supplied tea and sandwiches if they were there, but other than that you were on your own. On one occasion I went to Newry and was moved around to other flashpoints for 5 days and lived off sandwiches provided by the public; we were unable to wash or change our clothes and I wore the same shirt for the 5 days – it was appalling organisation. Having said that by this stage Belfast was in chaos, Derry was in chaos. The IRA tactic was to stretch the RUC and there were riots in places like Strabane, Lurgan, Armagh, the interfaces of Portadown, and, across Belfast of course, it did stretch us, we were just exhausted, ill equipped, ill trained, and, we needed the Army to take over.

The Army thought we were part of the problem, my own view when I was a Sergeant in Castlereagh in the early 70s was we were part of the problem, but we were also part of the solution. We were part of the problem because of the way we were deployed and the violence we used at the start coupled with the TV pictures broadcast round the world of us charging around Derry, the use of CS gas, and reported allegations of brutality. In my view the RUC had changed little since its inception in 1922, it was still the same RIC model. I couldn’t see how we would be able to regain a foothold in Nationalist areas, particularly after Internment, Bloody Sunday and Ballymurphy (during 3 nights of rioting the Army shot dead 5 one of whom was a RC priest claiming they were gunmen). Actually, ‘Derry City was relatively quick to calm down, it was Belfast that was the problem. At that time, I didn’t appreciate the level of insurrection from the Loyalist community; I think we underestimated that, the first bombs were put down to the IRA, but they were by Loyalists. The NI community had almost out grown its police force, NI society had changed, the influence of the Irish Diaspora in America was growing, and both the Labour Government and Heath’s Tories viewed the Unionist government with distain. I didn’t think we could regain a hold even after we were disarmed (Hunt Report Reform of the RUC 1970) for a short time. Officers were concerned about their safety and held meetings to discuss what to do, some suggested a work to rule and Paddy McGuinness said ‘that was dangerous as we might actually get something done’ that raised a laugh, a short time later a couple of cops were shot dead on the Finaghy Road and we were rearmed with .38 revolvers.

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The police leadership was poor, I am not being hypercritical, but they had not been trained and they had a unionist mentality; effectively the force was controlled by the unionist government. I think most of the senior officers were overwhelmed, Peacock (IG) was out of his depth; he would have gone off fishing with a Bantam radio instead of being in the command room. He had a very good Anglican background, went to Cambridge, and his brother was Dean of St Anne’s Cathedral. The RUC was his first job after university, he joined as an officer cadet some of whom were ‘Gentlemen’ and not good cops having little experience of life, although one or two were excellent. One who was had been promoted to County Inspector and he was out during the Divis Street riots of 1964 leading the police, he wore one of the white coats, worn by officers on traffic points duty, so we could see him. He was the first to try, overtly try to control things, he developed a system using hand signals to call us to him, to move forward slowly, or fast, or, to withdraw, they were quite obvious, but he was the only one I can remember on the street exercising that control.

After returning to Belfast from Fermanagh I was in Castlereagh when Internment was introduced. The overtime went through the roof, we never knew where we were going in terms of duty, often it was West or North Belfast or sometimes to parades around the country. I remember internment, on the morning of internment I was at the interface at Ravenhill Road and Short Strand with 4 or 5 Constables, it was drizzling when I heard a noise and saw sparks on the road and thought ‘what the hell was that?’ I saw a guy across the road in Short Strand with a Thompson Sub Machine Gun rattling off, fortunately the range of the Thompson wasn’t very good, and the bullets were bouncing off the road. At about 1am I was called back to Castlereagh and the Deputy Divisional Commander asked me to get him an A4 sized alphabetical index book and index cards as internment was going to be introduced at 4am, there were a lot of army about as I got the book and cards. Later when I was back on duty there were a lot of men in the parade room, and outside there was a ring of barbed wire with a group of people sitting within it. The place was crawling with soldiers. Castlereagh at this time had a large lawn which was now covered in Army tents for use as a reception centres for internees.

I was sent over to the Holding Centre at Girdwood Army Barracks in North Belfast to take charge of a number of prisoners from a police Sergeant who was finishing Night duty. The men were sitting on their hunches facing a wall, there weren’t any cells, the Sergeant gave me a book with a list of names and the times when they came in, there was no record of who arrested them or what they had been arrested for, although the odd entry did or just said arrested by the Army. I counted 8 prisoners more than was on the list I asked one ‘Where were you arrested?’ ‘In the Ardoyne.’ ‘Who arrested you?’ ‘The Army’ ‘What were you arrested for?’ ‘Don’t know.’ I looked down the list for the 8 who weren’t booked in and I thought to hell with this. I was thinking if I go away and some of these boys are knocked about I’ll be accountable, so I got an Army medic to examine them and give me a record, there no injuries but one or two had a few cuts. I thought none of these guys are in the book, nobody was coming to see them, so I ‘threw’ them out [released], that could have been the end of my career, but nobody ever said anything. The Army had lifted these guys, if they were looking for John and they got Joe it didn’t matter they took him just in case, and if you looked at their briefing they were really arresting anyone over the age of 18.

I know there are books that talk about the value of internment, but to a large extent it was a disaster and caused a lot of trouble although there was a product from it. An academic from Queens argues it had a degree of success and I agree with him, some people were recruited as informants the

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figures range from 20-40 (out of 400 detainees) although I tend towards 20 but it really was a bit of a political disaster and really entrenched the hostility to the Unionist government, the police and army. The people who welcomed the Army with tea and biscuits were now on the opposing side. General Freeland, the Army GOC developed a purely military approach based on his and the army’s experience in the colonies and this approach alienated the Catholic community and helped the IRA consolidate. At this time, we were in difficulty, the barricades had gone up across the city including in Loyalist areas; behind the barricades the communities were subjected to the thugs and ‘Cornerboys’ of the UDA/UVF and the IRA who went about collecting money for ‘the cause’ and ordering people about.

When I was a uniform Sergeant in Castlereagh I was ‘fortunate’ to be elected as the Sergeants Representative to the Police Federation. The first thing to confront me was shortly after the disarming of the Police, when two officers were murdered in the Finaghy Road area giving rise to a strong sense that we should be armed to protect ourselves. A meeting was held in Castlereagh for the Divisions A, E & F but it was circulated province wide so when I went into the hall it was packed with people from all over Northern Ireland. The Inspector who called the meeting sent a message he couldn’t attend, and I ended up in the Chair much to my discomfort, fortunately Dick Wright the Federation Secretary was there, and he sat beside me. It was a difficult meeting with people shouting from the floor and a motion was put forward that unless we were re-armed we would go on strike. I tried to point out that the meeting was only for A, E & F Divisions so there could be no vote on the motion however one officer stood up and said, ‘You think you are going to put me out just try it!’ this captured the mood and a vote supporting the motion went ahead. The next day the Divisional Commander called me into his office and told me that the Chief Constable had been on and wanted to know what had happened, and, what was I going to do, I told him we didn’t know what to do, then another officer suggested holding another meeting for A, E & F Divisions only, which we did. The ‘moderates’ were rallied, the proposal was re-put formally to the meeting and defeated, which got me out of that corner! We were eventually re-armed a short time later; it was an experience I thought might have finished my career.

As part of the gun control laws at the time all legally held weapons had to be test fired and one morning I was returning from Palace Barracks after collecting a load of these weapons. I had a driver and another Constable as we approached the Castlereagh roundabout there was a radio broadcast that there were gunmen at the Hillfoot Bar on the Braniel Road. It was a flat roofed building, a bomb had been planted and by the time I arrived it had exploded collapsing the roof, but no one was injured. The bombers had robbed the bar first, a bystander pointed out the direction of travel and told me they had made off in a blue van. We followed the direction of the van and when we turned a corner there was the blue van and 3 young men who were armed changing cars. I got out and fired 4 shots as we had been trained, I was a bloody awful shot, but I hit one ‘boy’ in the ear. The reason I fired was he drew a snub nosed 38, I can distinctly remember his movements and the click of his gun when the round didn’t fire; what I did was instinctive. When it went to trial, I was asked if I had been in fear for my life, ‘Yes, I was, particularly when he pulled the trigger!’ He was convicted, and I never heard of him again.

I was due to be promoted Inspector to Lisburn Road, but a threat came in against me and I was sent to ‘Derry instead. I queried that transfer and was told I was being sent to Derry for my own safety, I couldn’t follow the logic of that! So off I went to Derry, having previously been there as a civilian and

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having done duty there, I hated the bloody place! I was in uniform in Victoria Barracks, there were very few police there, when I did Night duty I had a Sergeant and maybe 4 men, if I was lucky, one of whom had to do ‘Guard’ [Station Duty Officer] and if there were prisoners I had to have someone there to look after them so I may be ended up with 2 Constables to police the whole city; sometimes there might have been a couple of additional officers in the Waterside. We weren’t allowed by the Army into the Bogside or Creggan; if I wanted to go in I had to go with them and occasionally I did. One day myself and a constable went with the Army in their Land Rover into the Creggan, when we got out suddenly a crowd came down the hill towards us the Army jumped into the Land Rover and drove off leaving us, I never ran as fast in my life to get out.

Derry was a bloody awful place, we all lived in Browning Drive [Army accommodation made available to police officers working in ‘Derry] close to Ebrington Barracks. You couldn’t sleep in the place because of the noise of police officers coming and going and the Army helicopters coming into land and take off, it got to the stage I had to go home to Belfast to get a night’s sleep. There were a couple of uniform colleagues there who were very helpful to me, and, if I was home for a couple of days they would hang on for a couple of hours to give me more time at home. There was a high level of camaraderie there at the time, Bill McCreesh, a Uniform sergeant in Waterside, was the most amazing character I ever worked with. When I was sent over to Waterside to cover for an Inspector away on a training course Bill and I shared an office, it was a laugh a minute.

After about 3 years I was promoted Chief Inspector to Donegal Pass the same day Archie Hayes arrived as Superintendent. He was one of the most interesting characters I ever came across, his father had been a Head Constable, from a Catholic background. He said to me ‘We are going to sort out this Sub Division I’ll look after the ‘Taigs’ and you look after the ‘Prods’ and that’s generally how we did it. I became friendly with a youngish Priest from the Markets area which included the Ormeau Road where Loyalist parades were often stoned as they passed the Catholic houses on the left. As usual it was the ‘rabble’ coming back with the parade shouting insults and gesticulating at the Catholic residents that often provoked the trouble, and a number were drunk. We came to an agreement with the Priest that he would restrain the residents in the side streets, and, we would make sure the Prods stayed on the other side of the road so if stones were thrown it was only the police who would be hit, and it worked after a fashion.

‘The Pass’ was an enjoyable and challenging place which had a couple of interfaces, the Ormeau Road and another further up the Donegall Road at Broadway where there always a problem when Cliftonville [football team largely supported by Catholics] were playing Linfield at Windsor Park [largely supported by Protestants and the ground was in a Protestant area]. At the end of the match the Cliftonville supporters came out the back gate and we would escort them as a single group away from the ground, we would have to close the M1 motorway to get them across and away home as quickly as possible. They would break windows in the Protestant houses, and, to try and stop this we had a big contingent of police and would hold them up until all the supporters were out of the ground before escorting them away. On one occasion when there was something else on in the city the ACC for Belfast took all the local officers and replaced them with a detachment from Bangor and Holywood none of whom had any experience of escorting the supporters. I had the officers stretched out in a double and triple line to control the crowd and I had a guy with a FRG [Federal Riot Gun] beside me. I briefed the officers to expect being attacked with stones and bottles by the supporters, and, it was important that they hold their line and hold the supporters together, so we

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could escort them across the M1. The crowd came out and of course the inexperienced cordon broke and I was shouting ‘hold the line’, I said to the Constable with the FRG to ‘show the gun’ and he fired a round, afterwards he said he thought I had said ‘shoot the gun’. The ACC was nearby, and I thought ‘Oh my God’ at that range somebody must have been hit but nobody came forward nor was anyone reported injured.

During the Hunger Strike period in 1981 it was generally the Markets area where most of the trouble occurred. I remember one night after we stood down at 2am a crowd of Catholics came out of the side streets onto the Ormeau Road to attack the builder’s yard of H & J Martin, their favoured target. I had about 8 men on Night Duty, we got into Land Rovers 2 men in each and drove 4 abreast up the Ormeau Road stopping short of the yard; I was afraid of being overwhelmed. We fired baton rounds until the crowd withdrew back into the side streets and we moved to take up and hold a line at the junctions keeping the rioters in the side streets until they dispersed. The next morning, I got a call from HQ wanting to know what had happened and why we fired baton rounds I wrote my report including that no injuries were reported.

‘The Pass’ was a very interesting place to work. There were a lot of attacks on young women going to and from Queen’s and there was a ‘Red Light’ District, stretching from City Hall up the Dublin Road, in which women and girls working the late shift in bars, cinemas and restaurants were pestered by kerb crawlers and some were sexually assaulted. We put out a plain clothes patrol which stopped and spoke to kerb crawlers telling them we would interview them at their homes later, and that had some effect! Then one day the Divisional Commander rang me asking about my ‘Vice Squad’, apparently the ‘Newsletter’ newspaper ran a story about our plain clothes patrol to curb kerb crawling and labelled it ‘The Vice Squad’ and said a Garda team was coming up to see it in action, so, all of a sudden, we had a ‘Vice Squad’. When I explained he laughed, I learnt a lot in ‘The Pass’.

After a while there I was promoted Superintendent to HQ to work for Jack Hermon, who had become Chief Constable, which was a surprise and took my breath away. I had never met Jack Hermon although I had appeared in front of a selection board for a Bramshill course around 1975 which he chaired and failed me. Usually people were only in the job 6-9 months, but I was there 3 years, it was the most interesting job I ever had. Jack was a strong character and fearless when dealing with politicians up to and including the Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher. The Police Authority was a bit of a misnomer, the budget passed through it and the force was accountable to it, but they weren’t briefed on anything of a controversial or sensitive nature. However, Jack would have briefed the Chairman to the degree he felt he needed to bring him along and get his support, other than that the Police Authority met monthly he and the Deputy went along, I went as a note taker. The Authority were a mix of elected councillors, and, people from youth organisations, voluntary bodies and business, it was a real mixture, but it had no real punch. Jack would give a rundown on what he called the attrition against the terrorist, the numbers of arrests, people charged, guns and explosives recovered, people killed and injured and that was probably it.

Jack Hermon was tough, determined, he was always close to the problem, took a strategic view and followed a moral approach. I remember one occasion it was alleged that police had failed to respond to a bomb warning phoned through to the confidential telephone and the bomb exploded. He thought it was a resignation matter, that was how he felt, but it transpired that the warning was too short, and we didn’t have the time respond. He was strong and took on the politicians and the Army,

DOING POLICING Page 27 of 109 he wasn’t afraid, he was confident, prepared to take on the politicians not just locally but also on the ‘Hill’ (Stormont); he made it clear that the police were in charge. The Security Policy Meeting met every month with the Chief Constable, the GOC, the Secretary of State, Head of the Civil Service, the Director & Co-ordinator of Intelligence and MI5 to discuss security and security related issues. Some Secretaries of State had a better grasp of their portfolio than others, if the Secretary addressed a question to the GOC, a question that Jack thought was a police matter, he would speak up and say so, his view was SOS, DCIs and GOCs come and go but the police remained.

There were no approved Home Office guidelines for what we were doing, only the 1969 guidelines for the handling of crime informants which were irrelevant to terrorist informants. We were doing pioneering work, and people had to take the initiative. The law on telephone intercepts only became clear in 1981 when the Interception of Communications Act was passed. People found the various rules such as the Judges Rules, the Guidelines, case law and the policing principles could be ambiguous at times. To a large extent we were guided by our ‘moral common sense’, advice and professional experience. I can say with confidence the policing principles were used, and, we were also very alive to trying to avoid putting our people in a situation that could put them into the dock. The procedures we developed were the basis for RIPA.

We had been pressing the government for guidelines to address the situation but it kept slipping off the table no matter how hard we pressed and it wasn’t addressed until 2000. John Chilcott was the Under Secretary and Deverell was there as well, but it just wasn’t grasped – I think it was seen as too hard to do. So there were no guidelines other than the criminal law and a moral stand. My position was I can’t push people into situations or actions as a result of which they might find themselves in the dock in court. With this in mind I wasn’t going to pursue a strategy or use tactics to the point I was going to consciously put people in that position, and, I think most others did too. In the absence of guidelines we had to fall back on the available law and the principles of policing which were to protect life and property, prevent crime, preserve the peace and bring offenders to justice. These were the only things available and I, as a senior police officer, had to make judgements using these from a professional and moral point of view.

OFFICER 6

The first eighteen months of my police career were fairly difficult. On reflection I was probably not sufficiently mature to deal with everything however there were good people around me to help. So, after eighteen months in what would be seen as a sort of medium danger City Centre Station I was transferred to West Belfast to replace an officer who had been killed. So, I went from a relatively normal policing environment where you needed an awareness of terrorism to a terrorist policing environment with a mild policing function which required us to take steps to protect ourselves. It was not that we didn’t want to help the community out in a policing sense which was essentially what we did every day but our ability to go into certain areas, at certain times, to do policing was hugely restricted by the terrorist campaign. The threat of terrorist attack was huge, and we had the military there for our protection. We didn’t go anywhere without a Military escort, so any vehicular patrol would have been two police vehicles with an army ‘brick’ as they called them, which was an army Land Rover with two soldiers out the top with rifles, and, they would be our middle cover to deter attacks from the IRA; that’s how West Belfast was patrolled.

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I arrived in West Belfast in 1981, and on my second day my vehicle was shot at by the IRA. We were sitting on a Peace Line when a car drove passed and two gunmen opened up with rifles and riddled the side of our vehicle. We chased them, but we were in an armoured Land Rover and they were in quite a high powered stolen car, they escaped, they got away. It was a stark awakening for me, I’d been in the City Centre where things like bombings were regular, even occasional close quarter shooting attacks by people like Gerard Steenson and what have you; I’m not saying it was normal, but it was close to normal. You were aware that attacks could happen, but they were rare. In the City Centre we did beat patrols with two or three men, but in West Belfast we did three vehicle patrols, with four to five people per vehicle. So, it went from two or three, to ten police officers and four soldiers in three armoured Land Rovers, which shows the difference in the level of threat.

Why did I join SB? It’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot and it’s not a simple answer. It was something I found I had an aptitude for, I was able to get on with and understand people. West Belfast was a very difficult place to work at the time, and some of the people we dealt with had an attitude expecting a certain approach from members of the RUC. They expected us to deal with them in a particular way. I think the way I dealt with people perhaps made them feel differently. I was a bit more approachable and as a result I ended up recruiting a couple of people who were terrorists (which was rare for a uniformed officer to do) who I passed onto Special Branch. So, a couple of guys in Special Branch must have seen a bit of talent and they recruited me, so I sort of fell into it. When I think back on it, it was probably the way I felt I wanted to go, even before recruiting the informants I felt I could make a difference if I joined Special Branch. I thought that if we were ever going to get back to a situation in society where my kids could have normal lives, we had to get past the terrorist bit, we had to deal with the ‘hard bit’ before things got better and I think that was my thinking. I didn’t join the Police to join Special Branch, that’s not the way it was, I genuinely joined the police for the reasons I said earlier and sort of fell into joining Special Branch probably because in my heart of hearts I understood that that’s where the biggest difference could be made.

At the time I applied for Special Branch I was on secondment to CID, Special Branch didn’t do that sort of thing, because they operated in a completely different way. CID and Special Branch had a cross-over in a lot of the work that they did at the time, simply because the responsibilities hadn’t been properly defined. What I was doing in CID was investigating crimes, but it was to a degree akin to some of the Special Branch work as we were encouraged to recruit informers. I was working with a very famous Detective Sergeant in West Belfast who was rather keen that I stayed in CID. When he heard that I had applied for Special Branch he was quite annoyed, he thought that CID should have had the Special Branch role. I disagreed with his view because I understood there was a difference, but I also understood where he was coming from. CID officers are naturally inquisitive, they want to know the reason for everything and they don’t like being told ‘here’s what’s happening, and I can’t tell you anymore’. It’s totally understandable they would want to know more, and, in a normal society that could be possible, but we were living in an abnormal society where to give identities of informers to anyone, could cost lives be it the source, you, or, the lives of other police officers in the future.

It was difficult being a Special Branch Officer, going back to the ones mentioned earlier, not everybody in the police was particularly supportive, there was a pervading attitude that we would look after the source before we would look after anybody else. It actually got to a position at one stage when I was in West Belfast we got some word back that there was a feeling at the time that, to

DOING POLICING Page 29 of 109 use a colloquialism, people [uniform officers] were being ‘hung out to dry’. In other words, they weren’t being looked after by us as well as they felt we should be looking after them which couldn’t have been further from the truth! The opposite was the truth because I knew what was going on at the time and I had been a uniformed officer prior to that and because of where I was I knew what Special Branch were doing and I knew how much protection we were affording them. But it simply didn’t feel like that to them so much so that our Superintendent at the time went to Woodbourne and paraded everybody in uniform who was there and explained in the clearest way possible that the rumours that were going around were simply creating ill feeling and ill will which could lead to difficulties and it needed to stop and they needed to help Special Branch and be on our side and be part of what we were trying to achieve because what we were trying to achieve was, saving their lives, all day, every day - it was hugely effective because Superintendents in Special Branch never went into a local Police Station and spoke to uniformed officers. You know it was just not heard of and he did it, because he understood, how the human mind works, how people are, and he knew we were losing the confidence we wanted them to have in what we were doing, so it needed to become personal.

It was bloody difficult at times because of some people’s attitudes, and not just those within the Police. If you know that you’re doing your very best to get something done but you’re constantly being told the opposite by friends and colleagues, it’s quite difficult to deal with that, because you can’t explain, you can’t, the ‘need to know’ basis stops you being able to explain even to the point of not sharing what you did with other people; the group of people you could share that with was very small.

OFFICER 7

I served and had the slight benefit of actually serving in a peace time Royal Ulster Constabulary from 1965 until 1969, but it was actually quite boring Policing. I started my service in Fermanagh and really there wasn’t much in the way of law enforcement of any sort of big issues other than motoring laws and things of that nature and that’s really what occupied my time; it was very bucolic in a sense, from a single man’s point of view, very boring. As a single man no matter what I was dealing with I had to be back in Barracks because, come 11 o’clock at night the Station Sergeant had to sign the party off as being present and correct before he could go home, or, before the Head Constable arrived to do the books or something. So, life was very much ritualised and regimented, and it had one foot deeply rooted in the historic past of the RIC barrack regulations that had been in place for over a hundred years nearly at that time.

In 1966, after I read an article in the newspaper that Sergeant Donaldson had graduated from Queens I thought to myself, well you know, this is maybe one way of getting out of Fermanagh. So, I made an application to Queens first to see if I could be accepted for the School of Law, I got a letter back saying yes, your academic qualifications qualify you for a place. So, armed with that, I then applied to the Chief Constable of the day, or the Inspector General as he would have been then, for permission to do what Donaldson had done, and, to my massive surprise, it came back and said yes, and, was I transferred to Ballynafeigh in the great metropolis of Belfast to facilitate my studies.

In 1966 that was a wonderful liberating move and I finished up as I say doing beat duty and policing out of Ballynafeigh during the day whilst going to Queens later in the day. I was granted half duties, in other words I did 27 hours a week of Police duties, which meant getting up and doing the lock-ups

DOING POLICING Page 30 of 109 as we called them at half five in the morning before doing points duty at Rosetta or Ballynafeigh or Sunnyside Street or wherever else until half nine after which I hopped into my car or walked to Queens where I was a student until four o’clock in the afternoon when I went back and did another couple of hours on points duty or the beat for a short period and that was the life I lived. At the weekends I would also do Station Guard and that ate up a good eight hours or more, so that’s the life I lived; part-time student, part-time police officer.

I would say police community relations were quite good prior to the sort of People’s Democracy (PD), student and the civil rights protests and things. It was a very interesting time because Queens was at the centre of a lot of the sort of the PD and the Civil Rights marches and things, these groups had a strong student base and my contemporaries were Eamon McCann and Bernadette Devlin and [Tom] McGurk and all the other notables were there. Some of the students, teachers even, like [Kevin] Boyle were on the fringes of Peoples Democracy and Civil Rights which were the in-things across Europe at that time. So, it was a good time to be at Queens because I could sit in on all the student meetings about protests and marches and where they were going, that was my first introduction to Crime Special issues. Crime Special Officers tried to cover these meetings from the point of view of, what are they planning to do, but because they wore a trench coat and a soft fedora hat, they sort of stood out a wee bit among these long haired students. So, I was quickly enlisted as a source and was able to tell Crime Special the next morning what the protest plans were for the various student demos, where they were assembling, and, where they were going to sit down to block the road or protest. I suppose to some degree it helped with the actual policing of the events because the police service if you remember in those days was only about 3200 strong so we were spreading a lot of men, or very few men, across big problems in terms of large turn outs of people at marches and things. So that was my first introduction to the world of intelligence gathering.

When ‘The Troubles’ started, basically every night I was sent along with others across to Hooker Street in our riot gear where we went through the ritual dance of chasing people, down Hooker Street or some of the other streets in North Belfast and they chased us back up again. That went on until about 10/11.30 at night and then everybody got fed up and tired and went home and I got back to my Station. The next day I was a student again and at night I was back covering the street disorder or else policing a protest parade or something at the weekend. The hours were long, but it was the time the Police Service was still working a 72 hour week, with two split shifts a day and things of that nature. When you are young and single you are resilient, the only thing was I wasn’t paid any overtime for it, but you did these things just because that was what you did.

I wasn’t a member of Crime Special; I was a Uniformed Officer throughout all this. When I graduated in 1970, as a reward the Chief Constable deemed that I had passed the Sergeant’s Exam, and, put my name on the promotion list without having to do the Sergeant’s Exam, which I thought was great. Presentation of my reward saw me promoted to be the Sergeant in Coalisland, so I went there as a Uniform Sergeant.

When I went there it was a reasonably peaceful town, I wouldn’t say there was a great love for the Police, we were sort of tolerated but we were able to actually eat our meals in a local café and things like that because public relations hadn’t turned sour. The old Republican families were about the town and had been for decades, and, from the 56/62 campaign you had Kevin Mallon and Hughes

DOING POLICING Page 31 of 109 and Company who had all done their bit as it were in that campaign and they all lived in the area. The only sort of excitement was the annual Orange Parade on the 1 st July I think it was in or around that period which caused a bit of protest every year because it had to come down from Brackaville, walk round the centre of the town and back out the road and that would have excited a few ‘folk’. But outside that Police community relationships were more or less as they were elsewhere in the province at the time, normal.

We went through about three fairly turbulent years, 68/69/70, with street protests, peace movements, marches and rioting all very much to the fore all making their own demands. The government was struggling to address these issues, not really knowing what they were dealing with partly because this sort of civil unrest was spread right across Europe and I think every Government in every country was worried about the way things were going and struggled to cope. So, the government in place here immediately interpreted what was happening here and all the demands being made through Nationalist/Republican agitation were due to a big Republican plot. I suppose having come out of the 56/62 campaign and, when you look back on it, having had this sort of almost political siege mentality it wasn’t unnatural that this was the easy explanation. So, the people agitating, were seen as not wanting to be part of Northern Ireland and were another threat to the wellbeing of the State. So, the police service which was totally under strength, under-funded, under equipped, struggling to cope and was in the middle of all the civil disorder and had a government that didn’t understand what was going on.

I think when we look back, as to how you actually cope and address these things we did a reasonable job up to the point where we were just really burnt out and overrun. Once the violent element came into it, or increasingly started to come into it, we were losing more and more men injured and the threat level was going up. Eventually the whole thing broke down and the military were invited in to relieve the police and the government commissioned the Hunt Report to review the police and make recommendations to modernise the RUC and bring us into line with the GB police standards.

There was a Special Constabulary, the ‘B Specials’, to support the RUC which was numerically strong, it was an organisation that had its origins in the 1920/22 period for the protection of the border and guarding against IRA attacks. The ‘B’ men comprised of very well meaning individuals, but I think again they were neither equipped, nor trained, nor led by people with any sort of wider perception other than that which was handed down to them by their politicians who continued to see them as the last bastion of defence against the IRA. The ‘B Specials’ were drawn from just ordinary community people, they were Breadmen, Salesmen, Coal Merchants and whatever during the day and then they put their uniform on at night and came out to protect public buildings and bridges and property things of that nature. In a way they probably would have seen themselves naturally aligned with the Loyalist communities to protect against any nationalist threat. Unionist thinking of the day was dominated by the fear of a nationalist campaign out to destroy Northern Ireland and to bring about a united Ireland. I can understand the fears that people had and that they would react to them. At that time, the whole situation was totally muddled politically, and it did look like, I suppose, to most people that this was agitation to bring about a united Ireland. Even though the government of the day did make concessions they were deemed to be too little too late because things had moved on. Command and control of the ‘B Specials’ and their ability to bring home their

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issue rifles and handguns was perhaps a bit of a recipe for disaster, but I mean that would be just the result of the application of hindsight and ignoring context.

Despite the argument over whether the RUC uniform should change from green to blue and things of that nature, Hunt recommended a shift system which to everybody’s great delight introduced overtime. So, if we were going to work excessive hours at least we were going to be paid for them. But Hunt thought of us policing Somerset or Devon and Cornwall, in other words, we were policing with the consent of the community and security issues were something that the military would deal with, so we would be unarmed and get on with dealing with ordinary domestic violence, robberies (even though there weren’t a great deal of robberies in those days) and other routine policing matters presuming that somehow or other, ‘The Troubles’ would flow past us. Hunt certainly led to a revamping in terms of slightly better equipment, more money actually going into the Police Service and an increase of manpower though more recruitment. But as regards the ordinary officer on the ground we just felt that we had been brought into line with the Policing Regulations in GB.

A new rank structure came in and the ranks of Inspector General and County Inspectors were set aside being replaced by new ranks and a new promotion system. A whole new rank structure Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable, Assistant Chief Constable, Chief Superintendent, Superintendent, Chief Inspector, Inspector, Sergeant and Constable was introduced so there were promotions and opportunities; it felt like a breath of fresh air. I suppose at the time most people relished the fact that if they’re going to work 12 to 14 hours a day, at least they’re going to have to get some financial compensation for it. I remember the headline coming out, ‘the thousand pound coppers’, but our pay scales were regulated by the UK pay scales. So, from a Federation point of view everybody thought that this alignment with GB was at least a step forward for the rank and file.

‘The Troubles’ started to have a greater impact and Hunt’s disarming of the Police didn’t last too long. After a couple of police officers were murdered we were reissued with firearms for Station protection and self-defence. The increase in manpower I think was a bonus, and after that recruitment sort of kept going because a new ceiling had been set for the levels of manpower we should have.

INTERNMENT

I think Internment, as you know from history, the Police consistently opposed Internment, but it was insisted upon as a political requirement at the time. But the situation was evolving all the time while the people to be picked up were identified on more or less redundant intelligence that focused on the old IRA membership. But there had been a transition from those of the traditional ‘sticky’ (Official IRA) types to what we know as the Provisional IRA types and there had been such an influx of new faces that it would have been almost impossible to keep up with things. It might have been different if they had been a bit more sophisticated in terms of who they were picking up.

The other thing was, it was initially introduced only against the Nationalist/Republican Community and it wasn’t until later on, that it actually embraced the Loyalists as well. I think pragmatically the authorities felt they couldn’t be policing on two fronts, and if they started locking up the Loyalists that would only antagonise things even further. Internment had worked before when it was done south of the border as well, but we will never know what would have happened in the 70s if the

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Southern Government had been persuaded that there was a need for Internment across Ireland on this occasion, but they had other political perspectives on the thing.

So, having introduced internment, the problem was how do we extricate ourselves, and, that took a number of years. Deciding who to let out, who was the least bad amongst those detained, saw a whittling down of detainee numbers over a period of time until they got to the point where Internment wasn’t there. Of course, with Internment and no trials you’re holding onto people without charging them and that in itself has a bad smell about it and it’s not democratic. We were putting these people into the ‘Universities of Terrorism’, and, the ‘Cage System’ where they were detained helped the development of a sort of Cult status ‘the men behind the wire’ sort of stuff and they became recruitment posters really for ‘The Troubles’. So, it was almost one hand working against the other in that respect, but these are all lessons that were learnt after the event, not during.

I think during the Seventies, certainly into the Eighties, it was more of a case of survival, it wasn’t that there was any broad strategic plan laid out, certainly in the rank that I was serving at, I didn’t see any long term objectives, other than containment of the problem and survival of the police service. It was for politicians in terms of the Direct Rule folk at that stage to sort out, but I mean it was security, security, security. The agenda was set by the number of people who were being killed and properties that were being destroyed; everything was focused around reducing the violence before we could turn our minds to other issues. The whole policing day was consumed simply by keeping Officers alive and at the same time, trying to disrupt or prevent more attacks on members of the public. So that was our daily existence and at the end of the day, trying to get home and survive and come back for duty the next day. We were in survival mode; it was an existence thing as opposed to following any great strategic political plan because I don’t think there was one.

I think if you were living in a Nationalist community it would be very easy to interpret the sight, on the other side of the road, of Loyalists by sheer weight of numbers pushing aside half a dozen Police Officers who were trying to stop them as weak policing. Or, in response to Nationalists throwing stones a police baton charge or use of CS Gas canisters to disperse the stone throwers was perceived as an attack on the Catholic nationalist community. Because the Police were Prods by and large, it was very, very easy for Nationalists to think we were acting on behalf of the Loyalists who were attacking them. But when we attempted to police loyalist protests they [Loyalists] saw us as only taking action against them, we couldn’t win. The police were ill prepared, ill-trained and found themselves in an unusual situation which along with the communal violence contributed to the development of a siege mentality amongst the Nationalist and Loyalist communities.

Loyalists saw us as against them thinking, here is the Police interfering when we are only marching in support of them or protecting them. During early 1970, the UDA came into being partly because of the fear that Northern Ireland might not continue to exist because of the violence and the ‘B Specials’, who were regarded as the last line of defence against the IRA, being disbanded as part of the Hunt Report. There was very much a genuine fear, and, when you reflect back on the marches and things that were taking place by the UDA in the early ‘70s, they reflected the fear that existed across the wider Protestant community. At this time a lot of people in the UDA were not people that were in it with any malevolent intent, many were business and professional people who saw it as a sort of a ‘Doomsday’ structure and a show of strength to let those that would be seeking to destroy

DOING POLICING Page 34 of 109 the Province that they were going to be there to protect it. When you were looking at parades that were 7, 8 or 10 thousand strong a large number of them were what you would call, local business people, as time went by and the threat to the existence of Northern Ireland was seen to recede the UDA morphed into the sort of paramilitary organisation it is today. But in the early days, it was another vehicle for people to say, well this is the side I’m on and nobody’s going to take this country from us.

So, things ebbed and flowed in those days and nobody I think had clear sight as to what was actually happening; we just instinctively lived from day to day. You switched on the radio in the morning to see if you still had a job to go to, and, to find out what sort of issues had been going on during the night, where the trouble was, what had been burnt down or destroyed and so on. It was a country that was sort of sleepwalking itself nearly towards civil war and massive civil disturbance, and, neither the government of the day or anybody else could do anything. Then of course the Military had arrived onto the streets. By early ’70, I supposed some might say they aggravated the situation and actually raised fears as people saw the British Army on the streets and thought there is still violence and they’re still trying to cope. The level of violence in the 1972/73 period was massive and marked the height of ‘The Troubles’ with massive numbers of military on the streets and the highest annual level of violence and the deaths, it was almost a blood-letting that was going on and the Police and the Military were nearly powerless to stop it.

As a police officer people’s religion, didn’t matter, once you put the uniform on, you put your religion in the locker because you were just ‘a Police Officer’ and the guy standing beside you was a Police Officer and the guy beside him so you didn’t know whether they were Jew, Catholic or Protestant and it didn’t matter, we were all targets for stones, rocks, and whatever else. We depended on each other and there were Catholic Sergeants, Inspectors, Superintendents, Assistant Chief Constables, even a Chief Constable. But you know, religion didn’t matter, and this is a curious thing, people automatically assume that we must have been consciously aware who our colleagues were, but no, no, we weren’t. To the people opposing us, they couldn’t tell either, we weren’t wearing name badges or anything else that would have identified us except for our numerals, so that’s it, religion was probably far more influential externally than it actually influenced or impacted within the organisation.

However, this changed a bit whenever we got into what you would call the heart of ‘The Troubles’ when all Police Officers were seen as agents of the state and legitimate targets. You really did feel for your Catholic colleagues who no longer could visit their parents, may be because of where they were living or the additional burdens they had in relation to their children going to school, Catholic schools and things like that nature, and, even attending their places of worship. So, we were conscious yes, that Catholic Officers were probably because of their religion were carrying a bigger burden than perhaps those of the Protestant denomination, but it was never one that affected their professionalism or the way they discharged their job. I never heard any individual, who was of Catholic persuasion, ever raise the issue as something that they felt that the job was sort of pressing down on them or the burden was too much, we all sought to work and accommodate the pressures of being a police officer. The same pressures were on Protestant police officers who were recruited from the South of Ireland, they couldn’t go home to Donegal or Cavan, or, any of the border counties with any degree of safety or security, so there were pressures on different people in different areas, and, at the same time there was growing pressures on Protestant police officers living in Loyalist

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estates. In a large number of cases, those Officers had a choice to make, do I go on living here with the potential threat that my house will be targeted, or, do I get out? So, there was a quiet exodus of a fair number of Police Officers moving ahead of ultimately being pushed out, moving out of traditional areas where they had lived in mixed communities, as the communities themselves sort of congealed into one religion or the other. Many Police Officers made the choice to move out to sort of rural areas, places where the community mix was still there, and, the threats were less.

I wasn’t given a big choice, I was transferred into Special Branch in 1974. I’d left Coalisland at that stage and I was standing in for another Officer who had been working in Headquarters, my wife hadn’t been well at the time and the Doctor said, look she’s living on her nerves, get a 9-5 job and I was accommodated for about 9 months I think it was, in Headquarters, in early ’74, yeah. It gave me time actually to study for the Inspector’s exam and I passed, and, was on the promotion list. When I was leaving Headquarters one day I was stopped at the gate and told to go back that a Senior Officer wanted to see me immediately. I thought to myself, ‘Uck, he’s looking for a file or something’, I went back in and went into his office only to find that he was accompanied by our future Chief Constable, Jack Hermon. I was asked perfunctorily if I was on the list for promotion and I said, ‘Yes I am’, ‘Well, we’re doing a list of promotions now and you’re going to Special Branch’ and when I said, it wasn’t something I was overly familiar with, I was told that didn’t matter, I was going to Special Branch. The only thing I had to decide was which one of the three stations they outlined did I wish to go too, I listened, and I decided to ask for a bit of time to think. I was told I had until nine o’clock the next morning to tell Mr Liggett my decision, and, was warned ‘remember young lad that should you decline this, you’ll not know where you could actually finish up on the list’. So, it was fairly clear to me that I was going and if I didn’t go, I might never go off this list. I went home, I had a quick conversation with my wife, we were living in Dungannon at the time and I thought, well I don’t want to go West and I don’t want to go further North, so I finished up saying the next morning, ‘I’ll take the vacancy that’s coming up in J Division’, which was Lurgan. So, in ’74 I became a Special Branch Officer at the rank of Detective Inspector and I was sent to Lurgan, so that was just more or less at the beginning of the Mid-Ulster murder triangle times, so that was my introduction into Special Branch.

OFFICER 8

After joining the police, I very quickly realised it was not all about counter terrorist work protecting and defending the country against terrorism, which it was when I was a part time soldier in the UDR. After I graduated from the RUC Training Centre I thrived on ordinary police work, in fact within weeks my original counter terrorist motivations were replaced by motivations relating to professional policing even though I wore a flak jacket, carried a gun and did all the counter terrorist training and public order training. I was very lucky to be based in Dunmurry which in those days covered the Woodbourne area of West Belfast where we patrolled Republican dominated areas such as the Twinbrook and Lenadoon estates where PIRA operated, Loyalist areas like Seymour Hill and Taughmonagh, and, the relatively peaceful middle-class areas of the Malone Road, Lambeg and Lisburn areas of South Belfast. I saw both sides of working class Belfast, and, the more affluent areas relatively untouched by terrorism. As a result, I had a good grounding in ordinary community policing and doing a variety of policing tasks, including taking children through their cycling proficiency test, doing road safety patrols, dealing with ordinary crime, burglaries and so on. So, for

DOING POLICING Page 36 of 109 me the context was ordinary policing but under an umbrella of counter terrorist work which meant we had to be careful about our own security and understand we were a target both on and off duty.

I have to say that I was ambitious although at the time I would have denied it. Looking back on it now, I was a very ambitious young man, keen to do the Sergeants exam and do more educational training. I was keen to better myself in a lot of ways because I saw the police as offering a brilliant career path if I applied myself. So, for me my priorities were my family and earning a good living; there was a massive amount of overtime averaging 100 hours a month. In those days you could have had a good standard of living, very quickly buying a semi-detached or detached house within 2-3 years of joining the police. I was absolutely clear in my own mind that I was going to be successful in the job (police).

My duties changed daily and were dependent on my duty shift. I worked Early, Late or Night shifts in Dunmurry and depending on what the Sergeant told me to do I could be sitting down in Ward 18 (a secure area of Musgrave Park Hospital) guarding Hunger Strikers (protesting prisoners convicted of terrorist crimes) or Police Officers who had lost limbs/injured in a terrorist attack so I was very conscious of the fact that it was a colleague in the hospital bed we were protecting from further attack and were alert to the threat. Likewise, when we were sitting with PIRA or UVF prisoners in Ward 18 who had come out of the Maze Prison to receive hospital treatment we were very conscious it was a place subject to attack, and, indeed it was blown up by the IRA.

During the day I could do an ordinary beat patrol (I think I was only asked twice in my life to do a normal beat patrol without the Army) or work at some major public event like the Ideal Home Exhibition at the Kings Hall in my pristine uniform and shiny boots interfacing with the public. Overall, a lot of my life was involved with normal policing, performing very ordinary policing duties – e.g. dealing with lost children, giving people directions, going to the scene of a Road Traffic Accident, and, giving evidence in court.

In the evening I could be patrolling the ‘interfaces’ (between Catholic and Protestant areas where public disorder was likely) with the Army being petrol bombed or going into the Woodbourne area on foot patrol with 16 soldiers, so my duties were very varied. In my two and half years as a Constable 50% was normal policing, 50% was public order and countering terrorism, so that context always meant I was always alive to the threat.

There is an example I always give, particularly when I am talking to audiences from outside NI, to explain what it was like in those days. Then I was very fit, a relatively good sportsman and tended to get chosen for things that involved physical activity. I was part of an Amber Serial (Temporary Mobile Support Unit trained in Public Order and search duties) comprising 1 Inspector, 4 Sergeants and 20 Constables in 5 Land Rovers used to support beat and patrol officers, and to provide additional security patrols. We were trained to work as a unit with riot shields and so on in order to counter the threats from public disorder and we were used to police paramilitary funerals, riots and so on. During the Hunger Strikes we were sent to Londonderry and saw a bit of action there, for example we were petrol bombed and attacked on many occasions by rioters. On the night Bobby Sands (first Hunger Striker to die 5 May 1981) died I was in a ‘Barracks’ (police station) in Londonderry, I think it was 0117 hours, we were awake playing cards using a riot shield as a table when someone told us to get out on the ground as Bobby Sands had died and that rioting was expected. Sure enough, a Black Flag Parade (Public Protest supporting the Hunger Strike prisoners) came out of the Bogside and

DOING POLICING Page 37 of 109 walked past us in very eerie silence; we were expecting all hell to break loose, but it didn’t. A short time later we were recalled to Dunmurry because the Delorean Factory (where the famous car was made) was under attack by Republican rioters who had pulled down the perimeter fences and were threatening to burn down the factory even though some of the people working there lived nearby in Twinbrook. We came back and lived on the factory test track for a week.

One night we came under gun attack, it was the first time I had come under fire and another police officer, an ex-army guy, and myself tried to return fire. We climbed up the track to try and get a few shots back at the gunman but one of our colleagues thought we were being attacked from behind as the crack of the shots was reverberating and echoing in such a way that he thought the shots were being fired from behind us (not in front). However, he was mistaken because of the acoustics of the track. To cut a long story short it was exciting, exhilarating, the sort of things most young men would probably enjoy. Then the next day it was back to normal policing when the Sergeant needed someone to take school children through the Cycling Proficiency Test at the local primary school. I was selected and went to the station where I showered, changed uniform and took the children (10/11 year olds) in the primary school playground through the Cycling Proficiency Test. To me that epitomises what police officers were being asked to do: very dangerous and difficult tasks one minute and then very gentle ordinary policing – village bobby tasks - the next. I think that is why it took a very particular type of person along with good supervision and good leadership to allow police officers to be that flexible to do the job.

As I settled into the RUC my focus moved away from counter terrorism and I became interested in other aspects of policing one of which was joining Drugs Squad. I applied for Drugs Squad and was successful, but the day I was appointed to Drugs Squad (as a Detective Constable), I was also promoted to Sergeant, thus I had to make a career choice; I chose the ‘stripes’ (promotion to Sergeant).

With hindsight, I think we got all sorts of things wrong, but I don’t think anyone has necessarily got to take the blame for that. No one could possibly have foreseen that the conflict that started in 1969 was going to continue for 30 years, and, that the police would need to adapt and change in so many ways in response to the many and varied legislative, social, political, environmental, and financial pressures and challenges that arose. There were all sorts of the pressures that the RUC had to deal with, for example, new legislation like PACE, set new standards for prisoner detention, interviewing, and the use of evidence. Then the Human Rights Act 2000 reforms took the RUC, indeed all UK police services, 2 years to prepare for, and, of course the Patten Reforms demanded big organisational changes and over 10 years to complete. During the period 1968-2001 there were massive radical changes that the police had to deal with, and every change presented its own unique challenges.

More often incremental changes were also occurring, for example, manpower increases, originally 6 officers were required for each shift but with the demographic changes, falling Army support, the changing terrorist threat all gave rise to the need for more police officers. In some areas a shift needed 30 officers or more to cover foot and mobile patrols sometimes in armoured vehicles, to protect the police station and other high value targets, and of course there were changes in weaponry. Every change was a challenge.

I am very, very proud that the RUC rose to the challenges manfully. That said could individual Sergeants and Inspectors that I worked with as a Constable have done better? Yes. Could they have

DOING POLICING Page 38 of 109 provided better leadership? Yes. Could they themselves have been better supervised and managed by middle management level? Yes. Could those at the strategic level at the top command of the Force done better? Yes. But I think we were dealing with an absolute avalanche of problems and issues that a lot of people simply could not handle strategically nor had the time to consider the long-term consequences of their decisions, and, the changes imposed on the RUC. They could only deal with the here and now and do their best, most did. However, if they had had the time to stand back to reflect and consider events they may have seen things differently. In my opinion that is where a place like Bramshill (UK Police Staff College) came into its own, in that training environment officers had the chance to step back and reflect on what their own force was doing, those that did were the fortunate ones. So, the opportunity for training, more training, was a key issue. With the benefit of hindsight, if during ‘The Troubles’ the RUC had been able to take people out of the ‘front line’ and away from the daily problems they faced more strategic solutions may have been identified. However, with so much conflict, unrest and all the other issues, people were overwhelmed and dealt with things the best they could.

I always maintained that good leadership (including decision making and team building) is all about communication. It grieves me to this day when my son (a PSNI officer) tells me that there are Superintendents and Chief Inspectors who pass him in the corridor and don’t know his name and he has been in the same station for 7 years. My son and his colleague saved a guy’s life and two days later the Superintendent still hadn’t spoken to them, in fact didn’t even know of the incident. In my days as a Superintendent, every Constable who came to my Sub Division was invited into my office for an initial conversation so I could get to know the officer, and, for him/her to meet me and understand the standards required. Most days I would stop in the Enquiry Office and talk to the officers, even if there were 200-300 officers I like to think they all knew me, their Superintendent, and I knew them. I can’t believe this doesn’t happen today and that after 5 years a Commander doesn’t know his staff. It grieves me that communication between ranks is not good.

I believe I have good communication skills and when I briefed sections as a Sergeant, Inspector, Chief Inspector or Superintendent I would remind them we were all cops together and that our role was all about protecting life and property, preventing crime and that we all had a part to play. I would be very supportive of Neighbourhood Police officers and when I was SDC and ACC I regularly went on patrol with the neighbour police teams.

OFFICER 9

On ‘passing out’ from the RUC ‘Depot’, where the regime came as a culture shock to me, I was posted to Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. Considering that most of my contemporaries were ‘shipped off’ to Londonderry, mine wasn’t a bad posting on the face of it. On arrival I discovered that the station was actually a ‘Castle’, a crumbling 19 th Century building which had been intended for the Punjab in India. The living conditions in the single men’s accommodation were atrocious, it was a pre-fab building at the rear of the station largely without heating with unsanitary ablution facilities and shared beds, yes indeed, shared beds! I almost broke my hip during the winter of 1978/79 when I slipped on a sheet of clear ice in one of the shower trays!

I had replaced a murdered colleague in Dungannon, and whilst I wasn’t greatly affected by the constant terrorist threat, I became aware that this was statistically, one of the most dangerous postings in the RUC. Three massive car bombs during my first year there confirmed its reputation,

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and, in that time, I was shot at twice and blown up once, all without any serious injury. The threat of car-bombings loomed large in the minds of every officer in Dungannon and I witnessed many heroic acts by colleagues whilst clearing shops and streets, following bomb warnings, bomb scares, several of which turned out to be devastating bomb attacks.

As an 18 year old “townie”, I didn’t adapt well to life amongst the rural folk of Co. Tyrone and I ‘pulled’ a move through an old friend who had a contact in Personnel Department. My transfer to ‘B’ Division, West Belfast, was a new dawn and the beginning of my love affair with policing.

Woodbourne Police Station was largely a station in name only, having been up-graded from a Police Post within the Army base, shortly before I had arrived. The ‘station’ was a series of pre-fabs with no canteen facilities, which didn’t deter the station party of largely single young men, and, after the welcome intervention of Councillor Paddy Devlin the facilities were upgraded. Like many of the young guys in ‘B’ Division at the time, I felt myself to be ten foot tall and bulletproof, despite terrible equipment and defective weapons. Our attitude was one of wanting to take the fight to PIRA and to have the opportunity to ‘strike back’. The following four years in Woodbourne, through the ‘Hunger Strikes’ and several fatal attacks on my colleagues set the anti-terrorist tone for the rest of my police career. We lost three colleagues during those years and twice as many seriously injured. Despite the obvious danger, the attitude of the bulk of the young men in Woodbourne was enormously positive, and, there was a determination to bring a real policing service to the people of West Belfast, no matter what the threat was and what it might cost us.

I remember after Stevie Magill was shot we realised just how one sided the fight was; PIRA had M60s (machine gun) and high-powered rifles and we had old WW2 M1 carbines with 10 round magazines and Sterling sub machines guns from the1950s. If we came up against Bobby Storey and his Woodmaster with armoured piercing rounds we were not going to come out of that well. There was a general level of dissatisfaction with the level of equipment we had at the time.

In response the “bosses” gave us 25 round ‘banana’ mags for the M1s, which was an improvement, but only served to highlight how bad a state the M1s were in. We went weapon training at Ballykinler a short time later, of the five x M1s we took with us only one fired continuously without a stoppage, one wouldn’t fire at all, another fired one round and stopped – we couldn’t get it working again - both were binned and replaced, the other two fired periodically albeit with constant stoppages, so out of the five, only one worked as it should. As the rest of the station party went weapon training this became a theme, nearly all our entire stock of weapons in the station had to go to the armourer for a major overhaul and several were taken out of service because they were unserviceable. So some of the weapons we were carrying couldn’t even fire!

While our situation was extremely dangerous, we would have welcomed the chance to take PIRA on, even if it was just bravado, it often saw young guys, who thought they were bulletproof and convinced of their own immortality put themselves in harm’s way. Some would go into Out of Bounds (OOB) areas thinking there must be IRA activity going on there, simply to see if they would get shot at because the only way to get a chance to take the ‘RA on was to become a target first. I saw ‘crews’ drive around almost daring the IRA to have a go so that they could have a go back. Perhaps if they had known how bad the equipment was they wouldn’t have been so ‘ballsy’, but I doubt it. The mentality was that the only way to get a shot at the IRA in a fair fight was to let them have a go at you first; it was just bravado.

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I was in ‘B’ Division during the ‘Hunger Strikes’. There was a constant threat of RPG 7 attack, and when I say constant, I mean 24/7, although after dark the threat diminished a bit because the ‘RA didn’t want to fire a RPG 7 in the dark. During the hours of daylight however, the threat was constant and at least once a week the Branch would have briefed the early crew as to a new threat.

In my section only, myself and the senior constable hadn’t crashed one of the Land Rovers at some point, so naturally the Sergeant detailed us for driving duties, as the only two guys who had clean driving cards. My reward for a clean driving card was to drive ‘eight-zero’ the lead patrol vehicle day after day; a break for me was to drive ‘eight-one’, the second vehicle. ‘Eight-zero’, the lead vehicle of the 3 vehicle patrol, was the target for the IRA because in hitting the driver, they would bring the whole patrol to a standstill allowing them to take us on as we debussed from the vehicles – that was the IRA tactic. So, the driver of the lead vehicle was the one getting it. I drove for months, and back then, there was no power steering on the “Hotspur” Land Rovers. Between this and regular bodybuilding, I was built like a ‘brick shithouse’; as they said in my favourite movie The Quiet Man, I had ‘shoulders like an Ox’. I really did develop broad shoulders from ‘muscling’ those vehicles around and I was knackered most of the time, from just driving constantly.

Young guys like us were so ‘ballsy’ that we learnt to deal with an enormously high level of stress. I think in any other job people might have ‘cracked up’ but it was just life to us. I went to Woodbourne at nineteen and left at twenty-three and like most of the young guys, we were absolutely convinced we were indestructible and had a strong sense of doing good, with the result that we just accepted the inherent risks which we faced day and daily and just got on with it. We were able to cope with an enormously high stress level and it just became part of life; I didn’t feel stressed, although I felt scared at times. The ‘Branch’ would come along for instance, and say “there will be a RPG attack if you give them an opportunity in this Sub-Division today or tomorrow, they are looking to get an attack off and you are the prime target”. So, when we were going out to visit some wee woman who’d had her door kicked in or to an RTA, we thought is it a set up? We knew there was a risk when we were driving to the ‘call’, and the only defence we had was checking calls and driving defensively. We used to hit the security ramps at 30mph and the driver simply shouted ‘Brace, Brace, Brace’ to the people in the back. We attempted to go ‘round corners without slowing and tried to avoid getting bogged down in slow traffic, or, stopping anywhere near open ground; we just got a feel for driving like that and how to make ourselves a harder target. I can understand that some people today would just dissolve under that pressure, we just soaked it up and got on with it and it became our way of life.

I was always good at terrorist recognition. In ‘B’ Division we used to test each other on local knowledge and our knowledge of terrorists to boost our professionalism; I soon found out that I was really good with faces. When the Branch and the Collator gave us briefings on terrorist activity we would quiz each other on what they’d said, and, tried to guess the identity of the terrorists in the photographs we were issued with. We used these games to build our professionalism. We also developed our own code after an incident in which a gruff Belfast voice came on the radio and asked, ‘are you away yet you bastards?’ It certainly wasn’t a policeman and it was obvious he was listening into our radio; later we discovered the IRA was listening in too. So, we sat down and came up with a list of codes for all the main locations in our area, places, junctions and incident types, for example “twenty B & H” was a burglary and “twenty Regal” was a RTA, and, we would change these

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every few weeks. Eventually the whole of ‘B’ Division adopted the use of a code system similar to the one we started off.

My section in the Station was the only one not to lose a man during those years. We were a ‘street wise’ bunch who knew everybody and everything, whatever you wanted to talk about, one of us knew about it, whatever bar we walked into we knew somebody; we knew the town like the back of our hand and we were really switched on.

For me being a police officer was just life; I didn’t get too stressed about it in general and to some degree at least, I revelled in the element of danger. The policing role frankly, held up well under the extraordinary circumstances in which it was performed. In ‘B’ Division, I witnessed a group of young people who were determined to provide as normal a policing service to the community as possible, even to those members of the public who wished us dead.

OFFICER 10

I joined in August 1973. My first station was Belleek in County Fermanagh, it was a fabulous station although it was a bit isolated, I think it was the most westerly police station in the UK; it isn’t there anymore. It was considered to be quite a dangerous place to be at that time, everyone there pulled very much together. I do remember I was pretty frightened on the journey down to Belleek and when I got into the village itself the station like most stations in towns wasn’t immediately obvious. I drove up and down this very wide street ‘heart scared’ to ask any of the locals where the police station was, because in my mind that would immediately identify me as a policeman and put in mortal danger. I remember driving down the street and there was this big imposing building with a fence around it, I thought this must be it, but it turned out to be Belleek Pottery! So I turned round and went back up the street and managed to get sufficient courage to ask someone who I thought wasn’t going to do me much harm, so I asked an old lady coming down the street where the police station was, she told me where to go (it was actually down a lane and wasn’t obvious at all) and I eventually got into the station.

One of my new colleagues brought me in and I saw the back of the station was completely pock marked with holes, of course in my naivety I hadn’t a clue what they were, and, when I asked what they were, the guy nonchalantly said ‘they are bullet holes’! The station was right on the border, right on the river which marks the border and at the back of the station was an area known as ‘The Battery’. There were some very determined attacks on the station and I think a few more were ‘Saturday night entertainment’ for some of the IRA guys who would take pot shots at the station, as a result of which the back of the station was completely pock marked with bullet holes.

About a year prior to my arrival, very sadly Bob Keys had been killed on the turn in the station stairs when a RPG 7 rocket came through the window and decapitated him. Luckily for me they had built a double ‘breeze block’ wall at the window because at three minutes past eight the next morning on my first day there was a rocket and mortar attack on the station which was probably the most

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frightening experience I ever had in my life, but equally funny. There was an enormous bang, I was in bed when it started, my immediate reaction was to fall onto the floor, I lay there for a few moments and I heard this ‘boom boom boom’, the Royal Tank Regiment was co-located with us and they were returning fire with a Browning 50 cal (machine gun) something I had never experienced before. I eventually got sufficient courage to open the door, there were a lot of soldiers running to ‘Stand To’ and I was carried along by the crowd, just as we got to the turn in the stairs where the ‘breeze block’ wall was at the ‘fatal’ window a RPG rocket hit the window again it ‘lifted’ me, another colleague and a soldier off our feet into a bedroom, very luckily none of us were injured; luckily it was a double breeze block wall. Luckily too the IRA at that point hadn’t worked out how to properly arm the RPG7s all they were doing was arming the propellant; they hadn’t worked out how to arm the explosive head. So basically, it was like a big bullet hitting the window, and, it was the shock of the impact that ‘lifted’ and blew us back. We gathered ourselves up and went downstairs; a guy Raymond Madill an A Con, who had this fancy moustache which drooped down the side of his mouth, came out of the Station Duty Officer’s room in striped pyjamas with a bandolier of 303 ammunition over each shoulder and two 303 rifles in his hands, for all the world he looked like a Mexican Bandit coming out of the room! He gave me one rifle and I was carried along to the back of the station where everyone was returning fire to the terrorists attacking the station. Needless to say, not being familiar with the weapon I made no contribution at all, the attack lasted 8 minutes; it was probably the longest and most frightening time of my life. As it turned out there were 2 groups of IRA men, one on the shore of the river preparing to launch mortars and at the top of the hill was the second group who launched the RPG7. An Army sentry had spotted the group on the shore with mortars and challenged them, and, when the second group fired the RPG he returned fire with the Browning. I think the idea of the attack was by firing the RPG we would ‘Stand To’ and they would fire the mortars into the station yard. Luckily no one was hurt, but it definitely did question my resolve.

I stayed in Belleek for about a year, but I was attracted by the Belfast ‘City lights’ and the fact that I had met a girl, later my wife, who lived in Dundonald I was eager to get up to the ‘City’. I made some enquiries and eventually was posted to Dundonald where I spent a very short time until I was married, after which I was given a ‘marriage transfer’ to Holywood where it was just ordinary uniform beat and patrol duties. As my wife lived in Dundonald I could not serve in the same town as her family so after I was married I was transferred to Holywood, still in the same Division but a transfer nonetheless. At that time, you had to apply to get permission from the Chief Constable to marry, I believe it was on a Form 9. That was the way it was you had to get permission to marry, by 1975 it was just going through the motions although it probably had a bigger effect in the early RUC and RIC days.

While I was in Holywood I knuckled down to study and I was very fortunate to pass the Sergeant’s exam. I did the [promotion] Board and applied to join CID. I was successful at both and was first appointed to CID and transferred to Mountpottinger. My ‘vast’ CID experience lasted a fortnight until I was promoted Sergeant (I had 3 months less than 3 years service) and transferred to Derrygonnelly in County Fermanagh. My promotion in no way reflected my abilities, it was the fact that the RUC was expanding in response to the ongoing ‘Troubles’ and needed people, so anyone who made the list was virtually an automatic promotion. So, I went to Derrygonnelly as Station Sergeant, it was very rural, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. It was probably one of the few places in Northern Ireland where normal policing was carried out and it was in the unique position

DOING POLICING Page 43 of 109 that there were no recognised areas of Republicanism or Loyalism and normal police work went on. In fact, it’s the only place I served a summons for a motoring offence at a house and was invited in and given tea and biscuits. So, there were old fashioned values and the people had a tremendous respect for the police. When I walked down the street from the Station people would ‘touch their forelock’ and say, ‘Good Morning Sergeant’, I have to say it was fantastic, a bit like ‘Heart Beat’ (a TV programme about rural policing in Yorkshire). I was there 14-15 months and throughout which time there was only one crime report, and it was very minor. The owner of a mobile (grocery) shop came to report things were being stolen from his mobile shop and to ask would we investigate. We mounted a ‘covert’ operation, myself and a colleague sat in a van, not for very long because at 8 o’clock in the evening the complainants’ son and his friend arrived and took a Mars Bar, a Topic and a few pence out of the till. We sprung our trap and it was all we could do to keep the father from delivering a lot more ‘justice’ to his son that we could!!

So that was the only crime reported during my whole time there, we cleared it so we had a 100% crime clearance!! On another occasion I was asked to go and give a talk at the local primary school about Road Safety. It was the most daunting experience, frightening in fact; I am sure the kids were scarred for life by the delivery of my talk it was absolutely awful. After that I resolved to improve my public speaking and I applied for Training Branch.

I moved into Probationary Training at Connswater (Belfast) and was there for a couple of years. During that time, I did the Inspector’s exam and again was fortunate to pass. Probationary Training probably didn’t appeal to my initial thoughts of the police being an exciting job, it was too repetitive and that certainly didn’t suit me. Whilst there I applied to join the SPG (Special Patrol Group) and after 2 years in Probationary Training I joined Black Section SPG based at Castlereagh which appealed much more to my sense of adventure and interest, it was a fantastic job. We carried out our work in Belfast, I thoroughly enjoyed the work, it was demanding, very rewarding and interesting. Just at that point I suppose my future career started to develop. Within the SPG there was Bronze Section which was a plain clothes group that carried out surveillance pretty much based on speculation, but they had quite reasonable success. There was a more formal unit within Special Branch which tended to work on intelligence, but there was only one team, and, there was a lot of intelligence.

What happened was Bronze Section got the ‘hand me downs’ from Special Branch and they proved to be very successful. When Bronze Section went out they would have Navy SPG Section support today, Red Section support the next and White Section support the day after so by the end of the week everyone in Belfast knew what was happening which was no good for security. So, the ‘powers that be’ decided they would have a dedicated SPG unit with the grand title No 11 Section Bronze Section Support Unit with the colour code Fawn (All SPG sections had a colour designation) to support Bronze Section. I applied to join Bronze Support Section and submitted myself to a 5 day assessment course at Ballykinler, I think there were 3 courses and out of these a sufficient number, 28-30 people were selected. The assessment course was one that probably tested your determination and resilience; that’s probably all it did.

During the 5 days I had maybe 17 hours sleep with lots of forced marches, and, ended up with a day hike across the Mourne Mountains. We were given a number of points to go to, some were manned some weren’t, basically it was a test of our map reading skills and our resolve to get the job done.

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Myself and 3 others were one group, we had Pye Bantham radio sets which were probably about the size of a box of Cornflakes slung across your chest, they were completely useless unless you had line of sight, they didn’t work. We were tramping away, it was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon in October so it was going to be dark before 7pm, when we heard some radio transmissions telling other groups to go to the nearest road. When we got to the top of a hill we transmitted back saying we had heard other groups being instructed to make for the road and did they have any instructions for us? I think there must have been some confusion where we where, and we were told to keep going so we did and when darkness fell we were beside the Blue Lake in the middle of the Mournes in October, and it was a particularly cold October.

As the exercise was to test our resolve we had been given a 24 hour ration pack between us with instructions only to use it in an emergency and one sleeping bag again only to be used in an emergency. We were very reluctant to open the ration pack because we thought it was part and parcel of the test, so throughout the night the ration pack sat unopened. We absolutely froze. We thought we would light a fire, so we got some gorse, but it burns in a ‘Whoosh’ and there wasn’t enough so that wasn’t a source of heat. Being in the mountains the ground was very stony and it was cold, so we gathered some more Gorse to lie on to take us off the cold stones, then we stretched the sleeping bag out so all four of us at least had our hips on it. It turned out funny, here were four burly men who didn’t want to touch each other and if someone’s elbow touched you they pulled it away very quickly until after about 20 minutes we were cuddling each other for nothing more than heat! The was wind blowing and the guy facing it after about 20 minutes got up and went ‘round to the other side and someone else took a turn in the wind until it was morning. We survived the night.

I think the organisers of the course were panicking and had called out the Mountain Rescue Team, but we found them before they found us, there they were cosy sitting in their Land Rovers drinking a cup of coffee. Before long we were in Newcastle given something to eat and had warmed up thinking we would be given the rest of the day off when we got back to Ballykinler, but ‘No’, after breakfast we went on with the course.

By the time the SPG had formed the Bronze Support Unit, the Bronze team had been subsumed into E Department making a second E Department surveillance team and creating E4. Of course, that meant we were sitting outside E Department as a SPG section selected to provide protection and reaction for a surveillance team. So, for three months we were outside Special Branch E Department and when we supported any E Department operations we were given a brown envelope and instructed only to open it after we received a radio message to do so. The radio message meant someone was in immediate danger, but it was going to take us time to read the contents of the envelope and get to where we were to go, the whole arrangement was quite farcical. The overtime at the time was quite high and it was paid by the SPG authorities, of course they were unaware of what we were doing and they got to the point where they said ‘look this is eating into our budget, we don’t know what they are doing; we have no command and control of them’ so it was decided that the Bronze Support Unit would join Special Branch. We were given the option of joining Special Branch or transferring to another SPG section, I think perhaps two guys opted to stay in SPG the vast majority joined Special Branch and formed the Special Support Unit (SSU).

Right from the start, well with the exception of Day 2 – my first full day in Belleek when there was that 8 minute rocket and mortar attack - I loved it. I never once woke up in the morning and thought

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‘Oh I don’t want to go to work’, I got up, I was always enthusiastic about my job and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a feeling that what I was doing was worthwhile, I have a lot of self worth, that it was a good job and it was something I had to do. I suppose that the work within Special Branch was restricted, I knew that the job I was doing was extremely important and over the years ‘the Branch’ saved so many lives. I think it probably brought the Republicans to the table once they realised they weren’t going to win militarily, and I have to say that we weren’t going to win the war militarily either. I think that is evident today because you only need a few people who are motivated to cause you a lot of pain, it doesn’t need a vast number, only a small number of people.

OFFICER 11

I had a part time job when I was still at school and funny enough I was moving and working in a lot of Republican areas like Swatagh, Coalisland and parts of Dungannon, and, when I went in there I certainly didn’t want to tell them I was from a police family. You could feel the hostility, you could sense it, you could see from the memorabilia they had around their houses, you knew when to open, and, when not to open your mouth. And in those areas, there was just a sense of distrust of the police, and in particular the UDR, at the time. I had been in the UDR for a couple of years, and, that was another reason, up until I went to the police never to give away too much information. It was just a case of knowing who you could speak too and who you couldn’t. I was wary of people I didn’t know and wouldn’t give them any information.

My police training was a complete change, although having gone to Rainey School in Magherafelt where I had to have my hair cut on a very regular basis to keep it short, when I went into the RUC my hair had gotten a little bit longer, and, the first thing they did was chop it down, and, I was back to my school days again. As regards the training you had to behave yourself, we were under scrutiny all the time and learnt a lot about tidiness, making beds, polishing floors and things like that, things I wouldn’t have naturally done at home, so quite honestly it was a change of perspective if nothing else.

I went in for my interview with the Commandant just before leaving the ‘The Depot’, he had just arrived, and he asked me where I would like to go, I told him Ballycastle. He asked why, and I said there wasn’t a lot of trouble there and it was quiet community, he just looked and me and then said, ‘How about a couple of years in Belfast?’ to which I said ‘I’ll take Rosemount’ that shocked him! And he said that’s a bit of a turnaround, I just told him I knew I wasn’t going to get Ballycastle but thought I would ask anyway, so I ended up in Rosemount in Londonderry.

I asked for Rosemount for a number of reasons, as a young fella I was frequently about the police station in Maghera and quite a few policemen passed through there who had done a spell in Rosemount during their time in ‘Derry, and, I heard them talking about it and the people they worked with there. In fact, John Bellingham when he was in Rosemount had been badly shot up on the Racecourse Road, and, despite being badly injured he said he would ‘go back in the morning’ as there was a good ‘esprit du corps’ there.

I went to Rosemount as a single man and worked in a section of 3-4 men for 2 ½ years as a Unit Beat Officer working specifically with the Army. Although we were attached to Rosemount, because of the threat we worked out an office about the size of 6 telephone kiosk in the old Victoria Station on Strand Road. We sent someone with the Army every day at 4pm into Rosemount Police Post and he

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was there until 9am the next day to do ‘Guard’ or SDO. We never actually worked out of Rosemount which at that stage covered the Creggan, Shantallow and out to the border. We weren’t allowed into the Creggan or Shantallow without Army cover so as a result there was no Night Shift and no ‘Beats’; we just did mobile patrols around the periphery of those estates and out along the border. Policing there was dealing with ‘break ins’, Road Traffic Accidents and delivering summonses, there was virtually no other crime.

Our role in Rosemount was not one the police force should have to do, and the problem was, there was no one else doing it. So, either we did it or chaos took over, somebody had to be out there doing it. Perhaps it would be nice to be somewhere like Devon and Cornwall where you wander around, or, in Central London where you are a public information officer, and, help people who have lost their bag and things like that, but somebody had to do it and unfortunately it was down to us.

From the point of view of intelligence gathering one of the problems was after the IRA 1950s campaign the government ran the police down, closing offices and stations, depleting their resources forcing the move away from intelligence gathering. So after ‘The Troubles’ started in 1969, and, when they decided to introduce internment they were working on intelligence which was 10-15 years old. Because of that they interned people who shouldn’t have been, that aggravated a difficult situation which encouraged people to get involved because they felt their community was being picked on, and many got involved who wouldn’t have. So, after that they had to build the police intelligence capability from scratch which became a model of many other places. Today they have started to do the same thing running down the police and closing stations.

In terms of investigations had it not been for ‘The Troubles’ forensic science wouldn’t have the capability it has now. The same is true for CID interview and investigation skills. We introduced interview technique skills training in Northern Ireland, which I was lucky to be one of the first to go on, and, it became the model for the rest of the UK with people coming over here to be trained as trainers to train others in their home forces. CID interviewers and Crime Squads, the way we recorded interviews, our notes and recorded everything to put the evidence beyond reproach were all learnt here.

The Crime Squads fell into a bit of disrepute, but anything that hurt the paramilitaries has fallen into disrepute. If you are doing something that’s not hurting them they won’t do anything about it and there’ll be no propaganda about it. We didn’t meet their propaganda with propaganda, we just listened and defended, we were never out there trying to put our point across, we were in no position to do it, there were people in other places who should have done it but didn’t.

Interviewing can get abrasive of course, but forced confessions are inadmissible so our interviewing had to be and was successful. Of course everybody is innocent, some people say empty vessels make the most noise but I think it was the Nazis who said ‘if you tell people something often enough, you shout loud enough, or show them in big print they’ll start to believe it’ and that is exactly what the IRA did, everything, every weapon in our armoury we used that hurt them they countered it pretending they were illegal. On a number of occasions, they succeeded in the courts, and, part and parcel of that was some of the solicitors involved, they were far from being helpful or truthful in what they did. There is proof that some colluded, but it is something that hasn’t gone very often to court, and, hasn’t seen the light of day. Jonny Sandhu was one, but he was more motivated by money, some of the solicitors we have got their degrees while serving time for terrorist crimes in the

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Maze prison. This information about the solicitors came from informants, unfortunately it can’t see the light of day in court because of the risk to the informants, and, because no one would give evidence against any of the solicitors.

Coming from a police family prior to ‘The Troubles’ the police were poorly paid, they had no money, no equipment they had bugger all. It wasn’t until Sir Arthur Young came over as Chief Constable in 1970, which didn’t please everybody, but he was the first to start kitting out stations right to supplying cutlery so as time progressed money was spent upgrading the police. In a riot situation in 1969, compared to today, they wore tin hats and used bin lids to try and defend themselves while the equipment they have now is one of the big things to have come out of ‘The Troubles’. I was very fortunate that I was never in a lot of riots, I saw civil disorder involving a couple of hundred people but not thousands, and, never actually received any formal riot training. As the years went on more training came in after I joined Special Branch in 1985.

CID seemed to get more training; for everybody else there was the compulsory weapon training and a few bits and pieces but little else. I wasn’t searched trained, we learned by experience, and, by reading what happened elsewhere, for example they brought a shotgun into Donegal Pass and when it was opened it exploded, it was booby trapped. The biggest majority of what we learnt was on the job training, for example, the Army had come across a stash of stolen goods in a shed they found lying open, nobody went in until the sniffer dog checked for booby traps, and, when it didn’t react Reggie Reeves picked up a stolen TV to take the stuff back to the station it blew up and killed him. We learnt the sniffer dog wasn’t fool proof.

OFFICER 12

What we did was tailored for the environment, working in Newtownhamilton you could see the different styles that were needed. There were parts we could go to and enforce the licensing laws and that could be done with 6 officers in two cars or even fewer, it was as normal as you could get, and, then there were other parts we needed a big Army presence which in a really ‘hostile’ environment was normal. You could see the benefits of both and everyone in the police wanted to move towards the normal bit, but if we moved too quickly we were going to lose a lot of police officers in the process.

I saw the ‘grand plan’ to be trying to get normal policing into as many places as possible, but it was difficult to do against something as deadly as the IRA who were very innovative in how they improvised to attack and murder people. I don’t think The West has seen anything like them before or since. So, our type of policing approach, there was no template for it and we became very innovative. I would say without any question it was always about protecting life, but back then it was called saving life, and, protecting property. It was worded differently but it was very simple, and, it meant the same thing, we were trying to protect people, and the best way to do that is by getting intelligence to prevent attacks and the evidence to put the perpetrators behind bars. I think the majority of the police recognised that.

I know since my police career finished and I look at other countries all people talk about is community policing. I recall when I was growing up in a housing estate there was a big cop ‘Norman’, he was 6 foot 4 and when you’re small he looked like a bloody giant, but he was the most affable and likeable man, he had a few pounds around his waist, but he knew every kid by name. It was a

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mixed estate and he helped set up a football team and he got sponsorship at a time when sponsorship didn’t appear on the jersey, it was ‘Norman’ who persuaded a local business to buy the kit.

So, look at ‘Norman’; that was community policing in its purest form with an affable face. I always remember my parents talking fondly of ‘Norman’, but there has to be a purpose to ‘Norman’. ‘Norman’ was putting intelligence into the system about the kids starting to get mixed up with the ‘bad crowd’. Some will say he was feeding this intelligence bureaucratic machine, and, to an extent he was but the community expects him to do that. The community essentially says to ‘Norman’, pulling him to the side and saying, ‘that’s the wee boy I was telling you about over there, keep an eye on him’. But ‘Norman’ can’t do this on his own so he links into the system and that’s the connection.

There needs to be community policing, but it needs to be linked into the rest of the system, it just can’t stand alone with ‘Norman’ doing his own thing, if he isn’t part of the bigger entity there is no point him doing anything. What he did for that community was fantastic but when ‘The Troubles’ really became bad ‘Norman’ could no longer operate in that community. The trouble got so bad that the likes of ‘Norman’ were getting murdered. Now there were parts of Northern Ireland, maybe North Down you could still have that aspect but in the areas that needed ‘Norman’ he couldn’t do it the ‘Norman’ way just appearing on his own on foot talking to everybody, kicking the ball; everybody liked ‘Norman’ and talked to him. But there were some there who saw him as a threat because they realised people were talking to ‘Norman’ and that’s the last thing the people who want to control the community wanted, the last thing they wanted was the ‘Norman’s’ of this world. It’s funny, it’s what we still strive for today, today we want ‘Norman’. Ideally it would be a policeman and a policewoman going in, the police want this too because the community will tell them things, and the community all know that ‘Norman’ will tell others in the police. ‘Norman’ has to differentiate between gossip and what people want him to know, they will say look out for so and so, or, there is stolen property at such and such address, or they’re dealing in drugs over there. Back in the day police officers could differentiate between the two determining what was gossip and what was useful and that’s important. When ‘Norman’ withdrew we lost that channel of communication, the community can no longer talk to us, and with officers patrolling in vehicles sometimes armoured Land Rovers it’s a bit like going back to the military days, making it harder to talk to the police as ‘Norman’ was very approachable. When you’re in that scenario the question is how can the community talk to the police? There is the confidential phone but how can we differentiate between chat and useful information?

Special Branch is specifically there for collecting information and they recognise there are people in society who want to report crime, but they can’t be seen to outwardly do this and this is one reason it was set up 200-250 years ago, so it’s not like it’s unique to ‘The Troubles’ or Northern Ireland. SB takes that portfolio on until society becomes more normal and ‘Norman’ can return. When you don’t have a police presence how do you find out what going on in the community?

There are 2 aspects, the heartbeat of the counter terrorist effort is SB gathering intelligence from people in terrorist organisations and the people close to them, that’s what makes it tick. That’s the way it evolved, E Dept did very well to co-ordinate its surveillance and executive arm, the HMSU, but it also became highly skilled at co-ordinating the military support which was superb. But Special

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Branch would have been nothing without the professional front line officers – the ‘Normans’. If you don’t have ‘Normans’ on the front line serving summonses with soldiers in Newtownhamilton or on a bicycle in Bangor or in armoured Land Rovers in Derry’s Bogside, if you don’t have that professional front line Special Branch becomes incidental and I think a lot of people miss that, and, that is where people came from to join the Branch. Without professional frontline police officers, who are essential and seen by the public day and daily, if the community are asked about the police it’s the Uniform front line officers they talk about not the people in plain clothes who the majority never meet. If the front line isn’t professional you’re screwed. Special Branch made the counter terrorist effort tick, Special Branch getting intelligence from agents in terrorist organisation was vital, and, the way surveillance became so professional, the rising number of ‘red handed’ operations and the co-ordination with the military was just out of this world.

The police didn’t let themselves down, Special Branch was the heartbeat of the counter terrorist effort which was intelligence led. I don’t think people truly understand how all that was joined up, nobody has taken a step back to look at it, it frustrates me that they turn round and isolate Special Branch. But you can’t talk about Special Branch without talking about the whole police family and the wider security apparatus, may be the fixation with SB is because of the ‘need to know’ principle I don’t know.

I think Community Policing and Intelligence Led Policing are completely complementary. I think if you ignore or represent Community Policing as the only response in what is an armed insurgency with a very deadly sophisticated threat, or, you think of Community Policing as a standalone entity with policemen and policewomen going in to play football, hold ‘Blue Lamp’ discos and Ramble schemes, if you think they can’t be linked to an intelligence system you are being very foolish. But it is restricted by the threat level and if you look anywhere in the world where there is conflict the intelligence system is at the centre of the state response, so if you’re not linked in you are going to be on the periphery and incidental. Community and Intelligence Led Policing go hand in hand, basically they’re two peas in the same pod.

‘Norman’ can convince people to make statements and go to court to give evidence, but sadly in a society in conflict this doesn’t happen. People don’t want it known they gave evidence against someone who lives a few doors away from their home, so they won’t put themselves in a position this might happen. ‘Norman’ is given information in confidence with the expectation that police will deal with it, so getting evidence becomes difficult, harder to get. When ‘Norman’ withdraws there is a fall in public confidence and people will not want to give evidence. ‘Norman’ is the living example, ‘You can talk to me’, invariably police want people to tell ‘Norman’ if they see something and make statements. So, take ‘Norman’ away and you have to rely more on the intelligence machine.

OFFICER 13

On Sunday 15 October 1978 my parents drove me to ‘The Depot’, and after a quick look round my parents said their goodbyes, and, I was left to start on my professional policing career. After a short time, all the new recruits were called together and allocated to dormitories, where I met some of my classmates with whom I would be spending the next 12 weeks. There were 6 of us in the dorm, one guy, who was a few months younger than me didn’t last 4 weeks before he resigned, although he did re-join several years later, I think he realised he was just too young. My Squad was 82 strong of

DOING POLICING Page 50 of 109 which 13 were females, and the age span was from 18 to a couple of 40-year olds, who were the ‘fathers of the squad’.

Life in ‘The Depot’ was quite regulated and having self-identified as a swimmer, I was to pay the price and went swimming 4 mornings a week at 6am before returning for a shower, breakfast, and, parade and inspection at 0830 before starting class at 9. If inspection didn’t go well, you had a ‘show parade’ at 145pm, during lunch break, and classes started again at 2 until 5. We had a couple of hours break to press our uniform for the next morning, and, have tea before taking typing class or circuits. There wasn’t much down time, it was all go from 7pm on Sundays through to 5pm on Fridays, and we had the weekend off.

Classes were on police procedure and powers, the law, and, self-defence and the use of force, it was always the minimum force that was stressed and only delivered to protect you and your aggressor, I remember the instructor saying ‘Hit him in the family jewels, that will bring the biggest man to his knees’! The fundamental of training, as I remember, was service, to treat people with courtesy and respect, to help them, and, to protect them from criminals, and, of course terrorist acts. There was little to prepare me for the hostility that some would show me as a police officer once I went ’operational’. Each weekend we had to learn definitions for Monday morning which were central to our training, the most memorable was courtesy which was the bedrock of how we should treat members of the public. As we moved through our training the definitions started to include the more common offences such as theft, burglary and so on. Training was, looking back enjoyable, but arduous, it taught us something about ourselves, to care for our uniform, to understand we were providing a service to the public and gave us some awareness of police procedures and practices. We did get lessons on the NIEP powers, how to search people, our powers of arrest and search. We had weekly tests to check our knowledge and monthly exams to chart our progress. On ‘Passing out’ we went to Belfast for a week to collect our quota of equipment, do anti-ambush training, 2 days public order training and a week weapon training. Once you successfully classified, namely showed you could safely handle the weapons, and, hit the target at least 45 times out of 50, you were issued with a Walther pistol for personal protection, this was followed by a 4 weeks Driving Course before heading to our stations, for me, I went to Lurgan.

Having a gun was exciting and frightening, frightening in case you had to use it or lost it. I found myself working through scenarios in my head what I should do in certain circumstances, thankfully I never had to use it, in fact I never struck anyone with my baton either. What stuck with me from training was if you must use force you have lost the argument, something I still try and practice today. Having a gun was a burden, a lot of places you went off duty, you were searched before entry, so you had to disclose you were a police officer to the ‘door men’ and that could be a security risk. It was an offence to be drunk in charge of a firearm so getting drunk was a problem, and if you left the weapon at home on a ‘night out’ you had to find a secure place for it because on occasions guns were stolen by burglars. And of course, on duty you could find yourself in a fight and having a gun made self-defence that bit more complex.

Lurgan was my first station and I loved it, I was there for 18 months when my Sergeant told me I should take some annual leave because other than scheduled Rest Days I hadn’t taken time off and had the 2 years annual leave to take in 6 months. Whilst on the driving course the instructor took each of us in the car, each instructor had 3 ‘students’, to our respective stations to meet the Station

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Sergeant who gave us a welcome talk, pointed out our living quarters and station locker, that was exciting. After finishing the Driving School, I moved my ‘gear’ into Moira police station which was 5 miles from Lurgan, single men lived in Moira because the IRA had blown up the police station in 1973 and the Old Townhall, which was being used as a temporary station, had no living quarters. After settling into Moira, I drove to Lurgan, parked my car in a carpark and walked up and down the main street past the police station and its sangar, which was right beside the entrance into the local Working Men’s Club, guarding the entrance to Union Street and the front door of the station.

In Moira I shared a dorm with 2 other constables, one of whom worked in my section. In a way I was fortunate because the other two often travelled home, so I had the dorm mostly to myself and wasn’t disturbed by anyone coming in, or, leaving for a shift whilst I was sleeping. The one shift everybody travelled home after was Nights, just to get some sleep which was nigh impossible in a working police station. Eventually 12 single bedrooms were built using Portacabins, one of which I got. Living in Moira station was at times surreal, it was a limited opening station which meant it wasn’t manned 24hrs, so as residents we had keys to the station to enable us to come and go as we pleased, and, on occasion I was the only one in the station. It would have been so easy for the terrorists to lie in wait for you opening the security gate and rush you, access the station to try kill anybody in the station, and, maybe even try to break into the armoury and steal the station weapons. In case of an attack on the station there was a flare launcher outside my dormitory bedroom window, however I never did see any flares for it. It’s hard to remember that the only communication was by telephone, and, there were few of those, while radio coverage could be patchy, and, it was easy for anyone with a good quality radio tuner to listen in to the police net. After 3 years ‘living in’ I decided to get a foot on the property ladder and bought my first ‘house’.

Lurgan had a recent history of IRA violence which was greatly curtailed after several IRA members were arrested during 1976/77. Nevertheless, the threat of attack was very real, we had a Military base just off the Main Street, at Kitchen Hill, from which we could call on ATO, and, it was the base for the RMPs who patrolled the town centre. We had 8 Constables to each section, 2 to cover the sangar, at least 1 for SDO and Comms, and at least 4 to patrol as we needed two car patrols in some areas, so with admin duties or other abstractions it meant we couldn’t patrol the Main Street to deter bombings and reassure shoppers unless we people were brought in on overtime. Back then it was illegal to leave your car parked unattended in the town centre in case of car bombs, and, on many occasions, we were called to unattended cars. We would clear the surrounding area and tour the town centre calling on the vehicle tannoy for the driver of the car to return. Many times, we called out the ATO, and, on one occasion the driver of an unattended car watched the ATO blow up his car in a controlled explosion before he realised it was his car; the driver enjoyed the show until he realised he had no car to go home in! The drivers of unattended cars were prosecuted but as the risk of car bombs reduced so did prosecutions, first to cautions and eventually the restrictions were removed. As we got more manpower the military presence lessened and by 1980 the military had withdrawn to Mahon Road in Portadown.

Lurgan was divided by religion, the Parish Church and War Memorial marked the ‘border’ between the Catholic and Protestant parts of the town. We went to every call, although due to the risk in some Catholic areas, we responded at times a bit slower because we checked the call to make sure it was not a ‘come on’ and waited until we had 3 or 4 officers before going in because of the possibility that the police cars and/or officers outside could be attacked. Because of the risk we worked as

DOING POLICING Page 52 of 109 quick as possible, unlike the Protestant area where 2 officers could safely respond to calls and take as long as necessary. That was sad for us because as police officers we wanted to help people, and, to respond to calls for help as quickly as possible, but a dead ‘peeler’ is no good to anyone! So, unfortunately in high risk areas we couldn’t spend as much time as we would’ve liked, and, I think this sent a message to people in those areas that we didn’t care, we did but as history shows if we stayed in one place for too long we became a target.

I was shocked to find that some people hated the police, and the extent of the hostility took me back, I just couldn’t understand why, so I set about finding out. I made enquiries and found that the old Unionist government had discriminated against Catholics since 1922 and had cultivated a fear amongst the Protestant of a united Ireland as justification. As a result, the Catholic community had come to view state agents as supporting discrimination, little wonder some were hostile, and, of course some police actions during and since the Civil Rights protests did nothing to dispel this view. I would have been better prepared if I had known this before ‘hitting’ the streets’ as a police officer.

The ‘Hunger Strike’ period was frightening particularly during the rioting, when there were numerous attempts to lure us into Kilwilkie and to a lesser extent Taghnevan. Daylight wasn’t so bad but after dark the rioting started, it was orchestrated, they had destroyed the street lights, and, we were tasked with keeping the railway level crossing open, and, to prevent Lake Street being blocked with barricades. Usually the rioters would hijack a resident’s car and set it alight in the middle of the road to draw us in and attack us with stones, bottles and petrol bombs. It was frightening getting out of the armoured Land Rovers and hearing the bottles and stones landing around you, at least you could see the petrol bombs and tried to avoid them, but you couldn’t do that with the other missiles; you couldn’t see where or who was throwing them. The only equipment individual officers had in a riot was a helmet, most likely a motor cycle helmet, body armour and a pocket baton, there were 4 officers to each Land Rover which had a couple of short plastic shields and one ‘baton gun ‘or FRG. The FRG was to be used against petrol bombers and to keep rioters from over running our lines, look at what happened at Ardoyne in 2005 when they didn’t use the FRGs, 105 officers were injured before they did; we couldn’t sustain that level of attrition because during the Hunger Strikes rioting was happening in a long of places. The FRGs weren’t supposed to be lethal but a few people died after being hit by one, although others weren’t injured at all, I saw one petrol bomber hit on the shoulder and it just knocked him off balance and after straightening up he threw his petrol bomb which hit a police vehicle, thankfully no one was hurt.

The IRA were very dangerous and determined to kill. When I was in Carrickmore we worked a rota of 12 hour shifts for 4 days followed by 2 Rest days, and there were several IRA attacks on us using landmines, booby trap bombs and homemade mortars. My patrol had passed over the landmine a couple of times before another patrol stumbled across it when an officer found fishing line running along a hedge line, he followed it and saw it disappear into a culvert, and, when he looked inside he saw the explosives. The ATO destroyed the explosives and told us he thought the landmine didn’t detonate because the fishing line had snagged on the rough concrete casing of the culvert. Then an officer was slightly injured when a booby trap bomb partially detonated when he triggered a trip wire, and, there were several mortar attacks one of which demolished my bedroom. The mortar attacks forced us into ‘hard cover’, and, to use a ‘hot bed’ system, in other words I had a bed while a colleague was on duty, and, when I was on duty he had the bed.

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I worked in Special Branch for a few years, in ways it was one of the most rewarding times of my service. It could be a bit boring, there was admin work to be done, discrete enquiries for vettings, reading files and trying to learn about the paramilitaries in your area. But when there was an intelligence led operation being planned and running, and, when arrests were made, the sense of elation was immense. You had a great sense of satisfaction that all the time and effort had been rewarded with the arrests, recovery of munitions, and, by thwarting a terrorist operation ultimately you saved lives. Back then, SB interviewed its own prisoners both to collect intelligence and to try and recruit informants, which at times proved successful, but as time went on this practice died away as defence lawyers opposed the tactic, and, gradually arrests were usually just made for criminal investigation purposes.

The paramilitaries had their counter interview techniques, you couldn’t call what we did interrogation because it was interviewing, we only spoke to those we interviewed in a controlled environment, a room equipped with four chairs, desk and two video cameras. By the time a terrorist suspect found themselves in a Holding Centre, particularly IRA members, they had been trained not to talk during interviews, and, only to ask uniform gaolers for visits to the toilets, drinks of water or for visits from their solicitor or a Doctor. During interviews suspects stared a point on the wall behind the interviewers, or, they sat with their back to you, or, lay down on the floor facing the wall. On one occasion a prisoner masturbated, while another pushed back into his chair and spat into the air trying to land his spit on the table. Very occasionally a suspect would be so confident in themselves they would engage in conversation about anything except violence, once you mentioned terrorism they just smiled and said nothing, ask them about football and they would start talking again, at least those suspects helped pass the time for everybody.

The detention regime was relatively comfortable for prisoners. On arrest they were taken to the Holding Centre by the arresting officers, on arrival the uniform goalers completed the paperwork, before they were forensically examined and seen by a police Forensic Medical Officer who checked for injuries, ailments and formed an opinion if they were fit for interview. Interviews were usually up to 2 hours with hour breaks for lunch and dinner, and at least 8 hours for sleep. In effect interviews were conducted between 9am and 11pm unless there was a pressing need to secure evidence or save life.

I worked in several areas, and, across Northern Ireland, two of the most revealing postings I had was in West Belfast one on either side of the Peaceline. On the Nationalist side, Grosvenor Road, the threat of attack was high, we had to patrol with a military escort, 2 police land rovers and 1 military, and often along with a multiple, 16 soldiers on foot providing mutual support for each other to deter attack. This tactic was effective, it saved lives, but it was heavy handed particularly when we tried to speak to people, and, it undoubtedly created a barrier between police and community. Apart from the security aspect the people of Nationalist and Loyalist west Belfast lived identical lives, they had the same houses, same life opportunities, same depressed communities, but they didn’t know what life was like on the other side of the Peaceline. They thought the other side was better off than they were when the reality was they were the same, and, I thought if only they knew they could work together to improve their lot. The reduced security threat on the Protestant side, Tennent Street, allowed police to patrol in smaller numbers and without military escorts which possibly fed into Nationalist perceptions of bias policing. Sadly, the wall and paramilitary connected self-appointed

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leaders contrived to keep the sense of ‘otherness’ to bolster their own interests by demonising the other side.

I worked in Newry and Londonderry, both places you didn’t want to go too, but once you did you found policing was much like everywhere else, they just had earned a bad reputation. Working there gave you a sense of satisfaction and most people wanted a policing service and peace.

In CID, it was rewarding particularly when you were able to charge someone, but it could be very frustrating as criminals particularly those in terrorist groups, became increasingly forensically aware, and, adept at resisting our efforts to get evidence through interviewing. With suspects having their legal adviser sitting in during interviews advising them when to say nothing, the result was that interviews were often neutral affairs in which we merely put our case to the suspect and invited a reply. Once the suspect and his adviser learnt the extent of the police case then they would give an account to provide an alternative explanation. So, the change in interview regime meant that investigators had to gather more and better physical and witness evidence to secure prosecution. When you do, and you can tell the victim that the suspects are in court, that is very satisfying.

I found the people I met wanted the police to help them, that’s not to say that everyone supported the police, there were those who never would, and, others whose support was perhaps confined to ordinary crime matters, but of those I engaged with the vast majority did want us to help them.

Yes, there were differences at times in how the police did things, but they were due to the prevailing security situation in the various areas. In high threat areas where the IRA were active we had to take security precautions, patrolling in number, and, not remaining static in an area for too long, because if we did the IRA would attack the cordon, or instigate a public order incident. The latter could also occur in some hardline Loyalist areas as well, as public disorder negatively impacted on that community we tried to minimise the risks as best we could. So, perhaps to some Catholic communities it did seem we came heavy handed or didn’t care, but that wasn’t true we didn’t want to be the cause of unnecessary disruption, or, to ‘police’ the community, we wanted to give a policing service to the community.

In many areas we did successfully provide a policing service to communities particularly in those communities relatively free from paramilitary intimidation. I think, first and foremost, relationships were governed by the security situation, and I have to say we, at times mishandled situations. At times situations were contrived to provoke a confrontation with us, and, unfortunately, we allowed that to happened, of course that was used against us by the few. In short, I think we had a good relationship with most of the population. I am not saying everybody loved the police, certainly Republicans didn’t, Loyalists gave conditional support if we left them alone, but I think we enjoyed a positive relationship with the majority.

OFFICER 14

Our Platoon [B Special] would have been sent out on patrol and to do checkpoints with 6 Special Constables and a Special Sergeant in charge. The Special Sergeant would normally be an ex- serviceman and fairly experienced in the rank, our Sgt was an ex Palestine policeman and was very strict and correct on everything we did.

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I know now that we could have been better equipped and trained, the Government didn’t seem to realise what was needed. Everything was done on a shoe string budget, and we were paid 7 shillings and 6 pence for each 4 or 5 hour patrol. The uniforms we wore were old 1914/1918 war surplus uniforms dyed green to suit as were the weapons we were issued with. We were even issued with an 18 inch bayonet as part of our equipment, which wasn’t much use for doing police duties.

When I turned 18, I went along to my local RUC station and put in my application. The Station Sergeant set me an exam which I passed, and I was then referred to the Headquarter Station to do the educational exam. I had no problem but had to wait for the medical exam. I thought I was OK as I was very fit.

I was looking forward to going to ‘The Depot’ in Enniskillen as both my brothers had had a great experience there and enjoyed every minute of it. At the medical I got the shock of my life when the doctor found I was colour blind, it came as a slap in the face, I never had a disappointment like it. At that time, the RUC medicals were held in Waring Street in Belfast and the authorities had just appointed a new doctor who brought in a new type of colour test, a Japanese test, one with numbers in it. I was rhyming off the numbers as I seen them, as the doctor was turning the pages. He just said, “I’m sorry but you are colour-blind” and that was it. I couldn’t understand it so I went to my local library and found the test in a book and brought it home. My father, mother and sisters all saw different numbers than I did, so it explained in the back of the book that I was red/green blind. The Head Constable in my local station couldn’t take it in and appealed the case for me. I was then sent to the RAF recruiting office in Clifton Street in Belfast where I was given another type of test (for RAF pilots), I failed it and was turned down again. I took this really bad, as all my hopes were dashed.

I worked on in the construction business until 1959 when a big contract I was working on came to an end, it was December, winter time and a bad time to be laid off work. I had planned to get married the following March and didn’t know what to do. I had heard that the RUC were looking to mobilise Special Constables to help combat the IRA Border campaign that was still going on. I went to my local Station and applied. I was told to start the next Monday at Victoria Barracks, the Headquarters Station. On my first duty, I was sent as static guard to an electric station and later to guard the Post Office. I did this in the old USC uniform for about 4 weeks and was then sent to Sprucefield, near Lisburn for an RUC uniform. When I got there the Sergeant in charge told me that he was in ‘The Depot’ with my eldest brother. This man was an ex-RAF war time airman who had been badly burned in an aircraft crash and had joined the RUC after the war. He said to me, “I have the uniform for you if it fits. It had belonged to a sergeant who had just retired, and it had never been worn”. The uniform fitted perfectly but he said laughing, “sorry but I cannot give you the stripes.”

When I looked at the duty sheet a few days later I couldn’t see my name on any of the protection points. When I looked further I saw I was down for Station Orderly. I nearly had a fit as I had never done that duty before. The Station Sergeant saw I was a bit nervous about it but assured me that an experienced Constable would be there also to assist.

During my first duty as Station Duty Officer, when anyone came into the station with an enquiry this guy made me deal with it, enter everything in the relevant books, he kept me right all through the day. From then on, I was on the ‘Beat’, in the DMP car etc and was doing ‘The Job’. I was delighted

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and very happy, I made many friends in that station that I still have today, and the comradeship was first class.

I remember the first road accident I dealt with, ‘the sweat was breaking on me’ in case I didn’t deal with it properly; it was a ‘Damage Only’ but a big thing to me. It was at a road junction, so I got out my notebook and tape and being a joiner, I knew how to take accurate measurements, so I measured everything just in case. At the station if you ever needed help or advice some of the other constables would always help out. Reports had to be typed. I was Station Orderly one day and had just started typing with two fingers, which for me was an all day job, starting with “I beg to report” when a good friend Molly, a policewoman, came in to the station just off the ‘Beat’ for her break, she said, “You will be typing to next week at that speed”. She was a touch typist, she pushed me off the seat and had my typing done in about 10 minutes. I always got help like that and it give me great confidence, I just loved the job.

There were no sections then and no regular duties except night duty, and, that lasted for a calendar month 10.45 pm until 5.45am with two nights off in the month. The authorities could detail you for duty any time and there was no such thing as overtime. I never heard anyone complain and the ‘Sick’ record was very low. The Station party consisted of about 100 people, a County Inspector, District Inspector, four Head Constables, thirteen Sergeants and the rest Constables.

I was at Duke Street in Londonderry on October 5 th 1968, as a spectator, and saw the whole thing develop. The ‘Civil Righters’ had assembled near the LMS Railway Station and had intended marching in protest to the city centre. The Rev Ian Paisley and his supporters were also protesting and had assembled at the city side of the bridge to confront the opposition. Both demonstrations had been banned by the NI Government as it was a recipe for disorder.

When the Civil Rights marchers approached the top of Duke Street at the junction with Craigavon Bridge the police blocked the road and the RUC officer in charge warned the crowd through a loud hailer that the march was banned and advised everyone to disperse. Some of the crowd then broke away and attacked the police using their placards as weapons and injuring a good few men. The policemen were not in riot gear and had only their short baton to defend themselves.

It transpired afterwards that a film crew from RTE had set up in a pub overlooking the scene but had only filmed the police baton-ing the rioters, and, had not the beginning of the trouble. I don’t know if the film crew missed the beginning of the trouble or just didn’t show it, but the film went worldwide and the police got the blame for it all, we always seemed to be ‘piggy in the middle’, and, always to blame.

I don’t think the police were prepared for the type of public disorder that was happening then. When I think back to my short time in the job, I was involved in a few incidents, baton charges and the like. I remember one night when trouble broke out after the pubs closed and we were called out to it. There were about five police officers to a crowd of near 200; we ran from the station to where the problem was, we found ourselves in the middle of it and getting nowhere, it was stupid. Then old George, the senior man, (he was about 40) appeared and managed to organise us into ‘line abreast’ and we were able to disperse them.

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The police weren’t even prepared then for a simple bit of disorder and were far behind when civil rights disorder broke out. No riot shields or leg guards to protect from missiles or placards etc. I remember my training, we were instructed in the event of having to use our baton, to hit on the back and shoulders and to avoid the head but during a moving situation, but in the heat of the moment no guarantee could be given as to where the baton would strike.

I remember the ‘Battle of the Bogside’, the police, who were few in numbers, faced a large number of rioters intent on wrecking and burning the city, and, they had already destroyed a good few businesses. Not all the police had riot shields and some reverted to throwing the stones that had been thrown at them, back again at the rioters. The Civil Rights people were soon infiltrated by the IRA who introduced petrol bombs and nail bombs to throw at the police. I was very proud of the RUC men who held the line in William Street and saved the city from further depredation.

Most people now think that the protesters prevented the police from entering the Bogside, but the police intention then was to contain these people in that area and they succeeded in doing so at great cost to themselves as many were seriously injured.

The blame always seemed to be laid on the police, and the rioters always the innocent party. My brother was on duty in William Street one night during some very heavy rioting. They noticed some youths repeatedly throwing petrol bombs and other missiles at the police, before running through the open door of a house to escape capture, this had happened a good few times that night. The gentleman who owned this house had a habit of standing at the open door watching the rioting and facilitated the youths escape. This man had a severe heart complaint and was not allowed to work. On one occasion, a few policemen who had seen what was happening endeavoured to pursue the youths, but the man attempted to stop them following. During the struggle with the police this man, his daughter and another man in the house were struck by police batons. All were treated in hospital for minor cuts and bruising and released home. Approximately 4 months after this incident the gentleman (house owner) died of a heart attack. An inquest was held and found no connection between the incident and his death. It is repeatedly said until this day by certain politicians that the police beat this man to death, but that’s not true.

I joined the RUC Reserve in Londonderry on its formation as I believed I could help with duties that would allow full time RUC men to concentrate on more important business. I thought that the ‘Reserve men’ would be used as Station Orderlies or for static guard duties, but I found myself doing the ‘Beat’ and other duties again. I was a shift worker and had good time off, so I was able to spend a lot of my off time at my local station. There was a young Sergeant in the station who was amazed at my local knowledge, he didn’t realise that I had lived in that area all my life.

I think I was of some value to them. Some of the RUC men I worked with are still among my closest friends and sadly a few of them were shot dead or blown up by the IRA. When I joined the Reserve at the beginning, some of the younger RUC men seemed to resent us, and, thought we were there to do them out of overtime which was wrong. We were only there to help out, and when they realised we were just ordinary blokes doing our best, they came ‘round to seeing us as mates.

It was also sad to see how some people turned against the police, I think it was because of all the propaganda that was being voiced at the time by certain MPs and the like. We didn’t seem to have anyone capable of telling our side of the story. I remember one day when I was on duty, just after a

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Civil Rights march, when the dispersing crowd decided to break shop windows and turn on the police, I noticed an old neighbour who I always thought was a very moderate minded person. She started to curse at me and called me a ‘black bastard’. I went over to her, tipped my hat back and said, “Hello Mrs Kelly how are you”, she recognised me then and took off like ‘a bat out of hell’.

The Reserve men in my area were also used to guard local prominent businessmen as a few top business executives were shot dead by the IRA who denied any responsibility. The IRA’s intention then was to try and discourage industrialists from investing in Northern Ireland. It is still galling nowadays to see the people who did this, holding prominent positions in our government.

OFFICER 15

I was posted to Dungannon and on my first day I was detailed to do a town beat with a Part Time Reserve officer who was very experienced and knowledgeable, he was farmer and a decent countryman. Dungannon, like a lot of country towns, was physically divided; go down the Square and turn right into Irish Street that was the Nationalist/Republican end, turn left and you were into the Unionist/Loyalist end. He taught me in those first few hours that no matter who I met I should treat them with respect. A Probationer today would look at you ‘as if you had two heads’ if you told him that he was going on patrol in the charge of a Part Time Reserve.

Dungannon was a very difficult Sub Division. We used to guard Austin Currie who at that time was a prominent member of the SDLP; he had a permanent security detail and we had converted his garage into a security ‘hut’. Austin and his wife Anita were very good to us and on Christmas Day Anita would provide a Christmas dinner for the single men. I remember we were called to their house, it might have been Sept 1975, the two guards had been playing quick ‘draw’ and one was shot and killed; it was so tragic. I remember my mother was in hospital at the time and I went down to see her and ended up crying like a wee child on her bed with her arms rounds me. This was my first experience of a colleague being killed.

Then a couple of months later Paddy Maxwell and Sam Clark were killed. A short time later, when I was doing security in Thomas Street, I spoke to the guys in the Coalisland car after it had called in to collect a Part Time Reserve Officer as extra man. They were leaving Dungannon to go on patrol, about an hour later they were ambushed, and, the Part Time man was killed. Then Kenny Nelson was killed followed by John McCambridge. John came from around Ballycastle he was a countryman and I can still picture him he was engaged to be married and was a decent man. Everybody in Dungannon even the bad guys had time for John, he had bought a house and the IRA were waiting for him when he went home.

After Dungannon I was posted to Armagh SPG; I remember walking into the briefing room on my first day, you are always apprehensive on your first day and I was met by this big guy with a Mexican moustache and his opening words were ‘I suppose you’ll be fucking looking off on the 15th August?’ and I started thinking am I supposed to be on leave the 15 th August?, I wasn’t and when I told him ‘No’, he asked was I not marching with the Hibernians; that was his way of saying I know you are a Catholic. Generally, the rest of the guys were all good guys but this one continued to give me a hard time, one day as I was walking across the station square a colleague said the next time he says something to you ask him why he hates Catholics when he married one. I bided my time and when he started one day in the Briefing Room in front of a few others I did ask him, and, you could have

DOING POLICING Page 59 of 109 heard a pin drop, nobody else knew he had married a Catholic. He was one of those ‘bad apples’, it came as no surprise when he was arrested and jailed for house burglary in Portadown.

Sergeant Gary Armstrong played football with me and we got on well, he was very intelligent and was promoted Sergeant at a young age; Billy McCaughey I didn’t really know him, but he treated me very well and there was Lawrence McClure a Full Time Reserve Officer. I knew there was a wee core who didn’t like Catholics. It came to a head one day when I was on patrol in Newtownhamilton, I stopped a car and found that the driver had no licence and insurance, so I cautioned him and noted his details intending to report him for prosecution. When I got back to the station Gary Armstrong told me ‘we don’t prosecute Prods here’, well that’s when I knew it was time to go, and I asked for an appointment to meet the Commander of the SPG in Belfast. Weir hadn’t arrived at this time and I had no inkling of Armstrong’s involvement with Loyalists. On my way to Belfast I knew I had two options either I was transferred, or, I was leaving the police. It was a Friday afternoon when I met the Commander and before I mentioned anybody he asked was it ...... ? and when I said ‘Yes’ he told me to collect my gear from Armagh and report to the SPG at Strandtown on Monday, and it was like day and night; it was a breath of fresh air.

Policing in Belfast during the late 70s was scary, busy, challenging and rewarding. There was never a time I left the house thinking I wouldn’t be coming back. I remember the Hunger Strike vividly, I was in the ‘Reds’, one night we got a call to Lepper Street/Duncairn Gardens and when we arrived it was mayhem, it marked the ‘Peaceline’ between Nationalist Duncairn and Loyalist Tiger’s Bay, there were petrol bombs being thrown everywhere. A Full Time Reserve man was beside me when a bottle came over with liquid pouring out of it, it didn’t explode, and the next thing is he starts screaming – he was soaked with acid. As more police arrived a gunman appeared from around a corner in Lepper Street and everybody hit ‘the deck’, in the absence of a target he withdrew and went up to the next street corner where a ‘crew’ from North Queen Street was and opened up on them killing a colleague, to them he was just a ‘peeler’.

During the Hunger Strike, at times you didn’t know how it was going to go because there was so much happening. Being in the SPG we were going to incidents in big numbers, not like now where there could only be 2 to a car and it could be two policewomen.

After I was married I was transferred to the SPG in Omagh. I left Omagh on promotion to ‘Uniform’ in Lisburn Road where I stayed for a year before going back into the SPG. In units like the SPG you are close, and you depended on one another; never for a moment did I go into a situation not knowing my back was covered and not covering someone else. I loved the camaraderie in the SPG patrolling and doing Road Stops to ‘target’ terrorists and the routes they used to plant bombs and kill people. We did Road Stop operations to protect the city centre and disrupt terrorist movement in North Belfast. During one of these I stopped 2 guys in a car on Clifton Park Avenue, one guy was out of place because he was immaculate, he looked like a male model, and both were friendly as I noted their names and addresses before letting go on their way. Later when I was on a ‘Break’ I mentioned stopping them to the Inspector who asked their names I told him Kirkpatrick and Steenson he took the details to pass on; it was one of the first times we had stopped Gerard Steenson aka Dr Death and a member of IPLO. He was later killed in the IPLO/INLA feud, and there he was looking like a male model immaculately dressed and articulate. I only learnt, after I was in E Department, what these guys had done and the extent of their involvement in regularly killing

DOING POLICING Page 60 of 109 people. It was then I realised how blissfully unaware I was in ‘Uniform’ doing Road Stops looking for terrorist suspects and recording their movements. I find it incredible today that those who killed and planted bombs on a regular basis are now walking about Belfast as if life has always been good.

I enjoyed the adrenaline rush when I responded to incidents, riots, bombings and shootings. When I think of North Queen Street and Tigers Bay I am struck by how lucky I was growing up in the country. There were some areas where people didn’t trust each other but they got on, they spoke to each other, they lived together and if the wheel came off they came to help. But, in Belfast it was naked, naked aggression I was just astounded, I was just a country fella who couldn’t understand how blatant the hatred was, it was awful.

When we started anti-riot training, I suppose it started because of the football supporters. At the height you had large numbers of supporters from Glentoran, Cliftonville and Linfield moving across the City to matches and we walked them every yard across to matches, we walked for miles. That was the start of organised public order. We went training at Aldergrove, we prepared better but we didn’t have all the equipment, but we had manpower. Our purpose when we went to rioting at an interface was to get each side back into its own area. It didn’t matter whether it was Green or Orange, the stones were the same whoever threw them at us. We went in to contain them in their own areas and to keep them apart, not so much to break them up.

From a policing perspective baton rounds were used to keep the petrol bombers at a distance otherwise the petrol bombs would be landing right on top of us, and sometimes they did. Baton rounds were the only means we had at that stage to create a ‘sterile’ area to protect us and to protect other police behind us dealing with an opposing crowd. If we didn’t have the baton rounds I don’t know what the alternative would have been, other than to use our weapons and that was unthinkable. We were faced with petrol bombs, acid bombs, blast bombs and then there were the gunmen with hand guns and larger weapons. We had to use our vehicles as protection too.

When I was in Armagh SPG patrolling Crossmaglen and Cullaville in South Armagh we used ‘ghost’ vehicles, normally unmarked cars that were switched around frequently, and, our Land Rovers had no armour fitted. When we started putting armour on to our Land Rovers we were able to use them, and it meant we could keep the petrol bombers at bay with the baton rounds while using the vehicles as protection against all the bombs and shooting attacks. If a rioting crowd got close to a vehicle they would set it on fire and try to kill the police inside.

We were called to a bombing at Peter’s Hill, when we got there a crowd was throwing missiles from the balconies of Unity Flats and as we got out I told the Baton gunner to load up. I was able to see a body lying on the footpath in front of me, I thought it was a girl because I couldn’t see any trousers and thought she must be wearing tights, but I quickly realised it was police officer and I saw another body lying on the ground nearby. They were still throwing missiles from the balconies of Unity Flats at the injured policemen who had been walking past a hoarding when the IRA detonated a bomb hidden behind it. The people throwing missiles wouldn’t give any dignity to those lying injured. More Call Signs arrived, and we secured the scene and moved the stone throwers off the balconies, as we did this one rioter tried to take a revolver off a policeman, but a colleague saw what was happening and stopped the rioter. I have no doubt if the rioter had gotten the gun he would have shot the policeman and maybe others too.

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During the ‘follow up’ we did house to house enquiries, nobody said they saw anything. At about 4am we were ordered to go and arrest a guy at a flat we had already called at; the woman was lovely and was distraught that 2 policemen had been blown up and one killed. We went back and arrested her son for involvement in the murder.

The only riot I felt vulnerable in, perhaps because I was getting older, was when I was Inspector in charge of the ‘Greens’. In the aftermath of all the Drumcree riots I was back in Belfast at a riot in North Belfast and I remember we had a baseline just below the junction of Limestone Road and Cliftonville Road where a crowd of Nationalist/Republicans were petrol bombing. It was really bad, and I saw rioters pulling metal railings out of the tarmac pavement to throw at us and they had a ferocity which matched that of the rioters at Drumcree Bridge. The ferocity and hostility I was now seeing was not matched by anything I previously witnessed even during the Hunger Strike. Maybe there was a sense of vulnerability on my part, maybe if I was 10-20 years younger I wouldn’t have felt like that but as you grow older you learn that the line between life and death is getting much thinner. As I was driving home that night I realised ‘this isn’t for me anymore, I am not able to do this anymore’ and I made a conscious decision I needed to move, and I did move.

I hadn’t long arrived as Inspector in charge of the ‘Greens’ when I got a summons to ACC Crime’s office, and I thought what on earth for? I went over and was introduced to a well dressed guy who said he was a US Attorney from California, they recounted my career history in Uniform, SPG, Training, Community Relations and MSU and I wondered ‘where is this going? What is a country boy from Downpatrick doing sitting here?’ Then they told me they wanted me to go to San Francisco to give evidence at the extradition hearing of Jimmy Smith who had escaped from the Maze. I said ‘No’ because I believed they were asking me was because I was Catholic, and, because I had already moved house once under SPED I didn’t want to risk being under threat again. They talked it over with me and asked that I think about it overnight and let the Superintendent know my answer in the morning. I briefly discussed it with my wife, I didn’t usually discuss police things with her and the next morning I rang the Superintendent and told him ‘No’, he asked me to call over and see him. He was a guy I held in high regard, I went to see him and he said he didn’t think I had the option to not go and that some people in the organisation would see my refusal to go in one of two ways, either I didn’t have the ‘balls’ to go, or, I had another reason I didn’t want to go; to this day I am still aggrieved about that. I went and gave evidence and he was extradited.

I lived close to the Maze prison at the time of the escape and shortly afterwards the Army arrived and ordered everybody out, we went and spent most of the day in Hillsborough before being allowed home. I was on Night duty and the next day when I was sleeping the police arrived to search the houses which they did. Later I went out to my garden shed, where I kept my bicycle and an old cardigan, and found the bike and the cardigan missing. I reported it as theft to the police thinking the Army had stolen them and made a claim to the insurance company which paid out. Sometime later I was watching a programme on TV about the IRA Maze escape and Kevin Barry Artt was being interviewed. I knew him from North Belfast, and he said when he escaped he broke into a garden shed and stole a cardigan and a bicycle to make his escape, how is that for coincidence?

I was standing in the Enquiry Office the night of Kingsmills happened, a day after the Reavey brothers were killed, and there was a SB man there too and I asked him if there was going to be all out war now, he just said ‘Not yet’. Now I remember Kingsmills but not the Reavey brothers and

DOING POLICING Page 62 of 109 there are so many incidents like that I can’t remember and that annoys me because policemen and civilians were killed and while I might have heard it on the news it doesn’t register now. It’s only a few I remember; there is one in particular which haunts me. Myself and another guy were going back to Omagh from Cookstown and we got a call there was a shooting in Loughmacrory, we were the first to arrive. The victim was a Part Time Reserve policeman Howard Donaghy, I think his daytime job was with BT, his father was a Full Time Reserve and his sister was married to a guy in Omagh. I’ll never forget it, he was building a bungalow near his home place and was getting married, when we arrived I saw his mother over him sobbing her heart out; his killers had put him on his knees and put a gun to the back of his head. I lifted her, and, I saw his blue eyes looking at me and I heard the sobs of his mother. I think to myself how many times, how many mothers have been like that, and for What? It brings me right back to the cemetery in Edendork where Paddy Maxwell lies beside my mother and father in law, and, the IRA volunteers nearby, what was it for? Of them all Howard Donaghy will be the one I’ll never forget.

Public Order was slightly different, from 1980 and the Hunger Strikes when I was a Sergeant in the ‘Reds’ public order hadn’t been really tested except for football matches with the religious divide evident amongst the supporters Cliftonville, Linfield and Glentoran. In public order situations if we were told to block a road we just did it. I remember an Apprentice Boys parade in Derry and a guy I later found out to be Gerry O’Hara (Sinn Féin) came up to me and wanted into the Diamond knowing his presence there would be provocative to those in the parade. He started quoting legislation and saying he wasn’t committing a breach of the peace and wanted to know what law we were using to stop him; we didn’t allow him through because, maybe it was ‘the Barbed Wire Act’ but he wasn’t allowed through to prevent a breach of the peace because his presence in the Diamond would have caused a breach of the peace once the locals saw him.

The Hunger Strikes caused a few problems for us, it was all about saving lives and preventing damage to property particularly along the ‘Peacelines’ in North and West Belfast. Whenever we went into the New Lodge or Ardoyne we didn’t get out of our vehicles unless it was to set up a baseline to stop a parade going somewhere it wasn’t wanted. Public Order was morphing all the time, in the early days we just did what we had to do to prevent injury to the public and police, and we as police officers took an awful lot of injuries. Again, I understand why, in the early days of ‘The Troubles’ the police were ill equipped and there weren’t very many of them either. Later we maybe had more manpower, but we didn’t always have the equipment. I heard recently the PSNI were questioning the use of plastic baton rounds, they were the only method we had back then to prevent the loss of life, it would have been better to have another option, absolutely, but the only other option would have been to use our ‘live fire’ weapons. I know some will say ‘well using plastic baton rounds actually took some lives’, yes that’s regrettable that a number of people were killed, and I am sure some of them maybe weren’t involved, and, were there as spectators or what not. Did I witness occasions when police officers used plastic baton rounds at will with little or no discretion? Yes, I did, it was generally those from the local stations. I was in the SPG, we were well disciplined, and, I recall in North Belfast seeing vehicles from the local stations using plastic baton rounds ‘willy nilly’; that was probably because of a lack of supervision and discipline and inexperience.

The scale of public disorder was enormous. I recall going to Leper Street, I don’t know which Hunger Striker had died, but all hell had broken loose and my vehicle was the only one there preventing a Nationalist crowd armed with petrol and acid bombs for getting across the road from Duncairn

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Gardens into Loyalist Tigers Bay. That was all there was 1 crew (4 police officers) which included an unarmed police woman, we had to get out and hold the crowd back until reinforcements arrived 10- 15 minutes later; the rest of the unit was dealing with disorder elsewhere. I never remember having a full SPG unit at one incident like that because there was so much going on our resources were stretched over a number of locations.

What we had to watch for was petrol bombs and blast bombs, but what we couldn’t see were the acid bombs until they hit you, one Full Time Reserve didn’t know what hit him until he started to burn. Another danger was gunmen using the rioters as cover to attack the police and I remember that happening a number of times, so we always used the vehicles as a barrier between us, the rioters and gunmen.

The Hunger Strike was the most ferocious experience I ever had until Drumcree; because of the level of viciousness, the number of petrol and blast bombs thrown we had to use the vehicles as a barrier. On one occasion a blast bomb was thrown at us and it exploded near a colleague, he still suffers from that experience today and that was in 1981. Luckily, we didn’t suffer any serious injuries from the blast bombs and gunfire which was probably the most common attack on us, did we return fire? Yes, we did. We were always mindful when returning fire that it was probably a single gunman who came out fired a few shots and ran off, we were mindful of this before we returned fire.

It was usually teenagers involved in the petrol bombing and rioting, and, sometimes they were as young as 11 or 12. I remember around the time of Drumcree on the Antrim Road, near the Phoenix Bar, a nationalist crowd had come out and was trying to get across to the Church of Ireland Church on the Cliftonville Road. The intensity of the petrol bombing was unreal, so me and a couple of other vehicles devised a plan that we would use one vehicle to draw the attention of the rioters, and the rest of us would get out of the vehicles, go down along a row of commercial premises to try and surprise the rioters at the bottom of the entry and make a few arrests. The Sergeant in the vehicle taking a real pelting from the petrol bombs was to tell us when to ‘Go’ but amongst all the noise I thought I heard him say ‘Go Go Go’ when in actual fact he was saying ‘No No No’, off we went and came across about 20 guys in the alley with petrol bombs, I don’t know who was more surprised them or us, we charged them and they ran off and one of the rioters fell and we were able to arrest him and put him into the safety of the Land Rover. The intensity of that incident was enormous and lasted to about 5am, it was getting daylight; it was unreal. Later we were able to laugh about the ‘Go Go Go’ and ‘No No No’. It was interesting times.

The kit we had back then was minimal; it consisted of a helmet, plastic shields, a baton and regular uniform and gloves. The only really tactic we had was to set up a baseline and hope the crowd, if it was peaceful would get bored and go home. If there was disorder we might do a baton charge but that was rare because of the risk of petrol and acid bombs, and gunfire; we had to use our vehicles and baton rounds for protection, which was often the case in North and West Belfast.

Bear in mind too, in the early days of the Hunger Strikes we had ‘Hotspur’ Land Rovers. I remember the first number of riots in West Belfast, the rioters were well ‘clue-ed’ in and would try to roll beer kegs under the ‘Hotspurs’ to topple them; to stop this we had to put metal skirts on the vehicles. There is no doubt if they had managed to isolate a vehicle they would have toppled it, took the police out of it who would have ended up as the ‘two corporals’ did at Casement Park, there is no doubt about that. We used plastic baton rounds to keep rioters at a distance and from overrunning

DOING POLICING Page 64 of 109 us, because if they overran us that was it, or, if they got into a Loyalist area ‘God Forbid’ what would have happened then.

I suppose when it came to rioting, Republican rioters were professional and Loyalists were just amateurs. In my experience going into a Republican area held many more dangers than going into a Loyalist area. Loyalists rarely used weapons against us, so that wasn’t really a consideration, but with Republican riots we were always concerned about guns and blast bombs. I remember during Drumcree we were on the Boyne Bridge [Belfast] stopping the Loyalists getting over it to the Grosvenor Road and Divis, we held the line on top of the Bridge and they were throwing petrol bombs and bricks at us and when we did a baton charge they ran away like scared children. When it came to Republican rioters, I don’t know if it was because they were orchestrated or more experienced, but they actually gave you all you could take and more.

Did we hold that line preventing incursions into other areas? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt! On many occasions when we were holding lines in North and West Belfast we held lines against Loyalists who were petrol bombing as well, so that is a prime example of us being really caught in the middle.

It’s hard to say what is ordinary policing, I don’t know what it was. Probably the closest I got to it was in Lisburn Road where there was very little terrorism even though it was on the periphery of West Belfast. Lisburn Road was a leafy suburb near the hospital and the Malone Road, people lived there oblivious of the fact that there was terrorism going on around them. When we went to a call we were always conscious, do we need to go? Do we need to do a call back? Do we park up and go on foot because compared to Oldpark where I knew some people very well and could ring the Parochial House to ask if someone could verify the call was genuine, I couldn’t do this in Lisburn Road, but it was probably the closest I came to normal policing.

I remember the morning Wilson Lewis was killed, he was going to do security at Newforge the police sports complex. Wilson was a Man U supporter and when he called at the shop at the bottom of Balmoral Avenue the IRA were waiting and Wilson was killed, he was one of the most inoffensive guys you would ever meet. Ordinary policing? That’s as close I ever came to it.

People have their expectations of what the police should do. Whenever we delivered policing we were either castigated for doing too much, or, too little depending on what side they were. If we were dealing with riots in the Ardoyne or doing VCPs on roads in and out the Prods were happy; when we did the same on the Shankill they said ‘you don’t do that on the Falls’. It was the same on the Catholic side too, if we worked in their area they thought that was bad, and that we didn’t work in the Prod areas – it was just nonsense. But that was people’s perception of policing. It goes back to when the unionist community thought of the police as theirs.

I saw everyday as a challenge going out to try and convert those nationalists who were suspicious of the police. I felt that obligation to try and be more persuasive, and, say I may be in a uniform but I am here to reach out a helping hand, I don’t care who you are or where you come from I am here to reach out and to help you.

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OFFICER 16

Policing in Antrim was diverse; we dealt with children going missing, dead bodies, accidents, burglaries there was just a wide variety of stuff, and, I was able to practise what I had learnt in ‘The Depot’. Antrim was quite quiet, it was one of those 70s ‘New Towns’ and was full of what you could call ’refugees’, people who moved in from various areas in search of work and a new house. There wasn’t any ‘us and them’ attitude, and, when you helped people out they were grateful. The type of policing you did depended on the area you were working, in Uniform in Antrim it was great, there were a load of small stations and the relationship with the public was great, and, they would look for your help.

After a couple of years in the ‘Section’, around the time of the Hunger Strikes I moved to the MSU in Antrim. Because Antrim was fairly quiet we did duties all over Northern Ireland, wherever we were needed on a daily basis. The MSU was more exciting, you worked in a bigger team over a bigger area, it was all very enjoyable.

It could be dangerous in the MSU. For example, in a riot situation you faced people who just hated you, and, you did the best you could to protect yourself. In one riot we were standing in a line facing the rioters who were throwing petrol bombs at us and all we had was the plastic shields. It was scary standing there with the petrol bombs igniting against the shields and feeling the heat. We didn’t have the same protective gear as they have nowadays, all we had was the ordinary uniform, helmet, gloves and a plastic shield; I don’t think we even had fire extinguishers at the start. In a riot the usual thing was to put out a ‘line’ of police with shields, and, if things turned ‘bad’ you would put the Land Rovers across the street for protection. When I went to Strand Road the tactic was to use the vehicles all the time, there were no ‘lines’ because the IRA would have started shooting at them, so it was always using Land Rovers, that required different tactics and had its own dangers. You were just sitting a ‘tin box’, I remember the vehicle being petrol bombed and we had to get out of it before it burnt out, that was pretty terrifying, we couldn’t breathe while we waited for the ‘cavalry’ to arrive and get us out. In riots if the crowd had gotten hold of you, you would have been killed; definitely you would have been killed.

I remember Strand Road in May 1982, I was only there a week when a CID man was killed, and I thought, I have been here a week and people are dying, I am going to die here. I had a bedroom in the station, at least there was no Sergeant checking I was in the station every night. If I had enough time off I went home; I had a girlfriend in Ballymena and I spent ‘days off’ there with her. So, if I had a couple of days off I got away from Strand Road, other than that between shifts you were just about the station or went across to Browning Drive for the evening, things like that. You couldn’t go into any premises in the ‘town’, it just wasn’t the ‘done thing’ or safe. When we went out we went out in a group, you didn’t go out on your own, so everybody looked after everybody’s back.

In E Dept it was another step up in the level of excitement. We were highly trained and there was a lot of training to work as a ‘tight team’. Our objectives were a lot more serious, we were often in life threatening situations and we always wanted to do our best to make sure people weren’t killed. We found ourselves in many frightening and dangerous situations; absolutely! Even on ‘day to day’ surveillance jobs you could find yourself in the middle of a totally hostile environment. In my early

DOING POLICING Page 66 of 109 days, I remember it was very hard to shift the idea that everybody would know I was a police officer, I felt that I had ‘police’ written across my forehead. I remember one time, I accidentally locked myself out of my car in Andersontown, that was a terrible feeling, I felt exposed and in danger even though it was broad daylight. I had ‘comms’ so I walked away and was able to call somebody to come and get me, I got the spare key and went back to recover my car. There was no danger to anyone, the public didn’t know who I was, the targets didn’t know me but to me it was a big thing!

We had to deal with the worry that we might be recognised even if there was no obvious threat, and that was the case with every Operation. It was the perceived threat and every time you had to deal with it. If things had gone wrong, you weren’t in a good place, so you had to deal with that perception all the time, and, not allow it to interfere with what you were trying to do.

In those early days when we went out on routine surveillance we mostly had no Uniform support with us, it was just you and your colleagues on the team. If things turned ugly you hoped you could get a message out and that somebody would know where you where, and, hopefully come to your rescue. A lot of the time it was just you in your car and your colleagues in their cars.

You have to remember that the people we were working on took steps to see if we had them under surveillance. It was obvious some of them had had training, or, had read up about surveillance in books as they did things to try and catch us out. We could see what they were trying to do so we avoided following them too closely, although sometimes we would get really close, so they couldn’t see us, or, we made sure we weren’t where they were looking.

We did a lot of work on Drugs for CID, and back them a lot of it linked back to terrorism. It was the terrorists who were in control of the Drugs Trade and all the big crime like stealing containers of cigarettes from the Docks and running bootleg alcohol; the main terrorist organisations were behind it all.

OFFICER 17

When I joined we had to keep our pistol hidden under our tunic, we weren’t allowed to display it. We could sign out ‘long arms’, usually a Sterling (sub machine gun) even though the Provies were using high powered rifles like the Garand and Armalite. Our authorities were slow to respond properly to the threat we faced, they expected us to be a normal ordinary police force despite the fact we were in an abnormal situation, and’ I think we lost people because of that over the years. Early on we didn’t have the equipment we needed, we didn’t have the training, and we didn’t have adequate knowledge and intelligence on the terrorists.

In West Belfast we were just ordinary normal police officers driving along in a Land Rover without any specialised training for working in a terrorist dominated zone. We literally had to do what we had to do; there was no training until you went into a specialist unit. The typical cop didn’t have any anti ambush training, our weapons, the Sterling and M1 carbine were useless, the armour on the Land Rovers was limited, had they put heavier armour on from the start more lives could have been saved. We always tried to be a normal police force doing normal policing, this normalisation of policing cost lives because the authorities didn’t want to make us look military. When I was in Uniform we were never told of any plan, and had little training and equipment, we just dealt with things as we encountered them with what we had trying hard to protect people and do our job.

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There was a plan of sorts in South Armagh to dominate the ground there using ‘Golf’ watchtowers, it took time, but it worked. However, it was specific to South Armagh, we could have done the same all along the Border. Other than South Armagh, I never saw any strategic plan for policing the Border.

When I was working on the Border they wouldn’t allow us to wear dark shirts, instead we had to wear shirts designed for normal ordinary policing (the issue shirts were light green making you easy to see), even though we were doing a near military role. In the end we had to buy clothing to keep us dry because the authorities wouldn’t supply us with proper equipment unless it was seen as a necessity, and, that type of ‘gear’ wasn’t. We literally stumbled around in the dark because we didn’t have night vision aids for night patrols. They didn’t want to give us special equipment; the evolution of policing was reactionary rather than active. It wasn’t until the mid/late 80s, when they realised the Provies were using AK47s and 50 calibre machine guns, did we start to get more effective weapons, but it was too late for many.

In West Belfast the adrenaline really kept you going every day, and every day you knew something could happen; we drove round in Land Rovers and waited for something to happen, it was like a drug. Even when I was on Annual Leave I wanted to go back to work, it was like an addiction, that’s hard to explain to people who don’t know and haven’t experienced it. If you are doing the right thing, and we were doing the right thing, you go out to continue to do that, and, you missed it when you weren’t there.

Every day there was a threat; there was never a day in West Belfast that there wasn’t a threat of a RPG 7 or gun attack or a bomb. Every time we went out onto the streets, whether it was the Lower Falls, Divis, Ballymurphy or Turf Lodge we were always on edge, every time we turned a corner and every time we stopped the Land Rover we were waiting for something to happen. It wasn’t that we were attacked every day, we weren’t, it was the threat of attack every day and some people couldn’t cope with that.

When we drove out the gates of Hastings Street the first thing we did was to check Divis Flats for stolen cars. We were bombarded, things were dropped off the top of the flats onto the Land Rovers, sometimes there were gun attacks, bomb attacks and soldiers were killed. Unfortunately, the soldiers took casualties for us, there was an incident every week, there was always something we responded to every day. I suppose not knowing what is going to happen gives you an adrenaline rush and buzz. Working in West Belfast, most of us had the same attitude, we worked hard and believed what we were doing was right thing.

Sadly, on one occasion a soldier was murdered, the scene took half an hour because there was an acceptance we weren’t going to get anything, and, if we hung around something else was going to happen, that was the way it was. Going back to ‘87, after PIRA got their resupply of weapons, there were gun attacks, bombings and kneecappings all the time, and attempted murders all over the place. Because of the threat we had to accept there wasn’t going to be a full scene investigation, because we couldn’t keep a scene for a long time. In West Belfast you had PIRA who were very good at what they did and could mount a gun attack in 30 minutes, they had volunteers and weapons available, it was their ground. For example, at a scene on the Springfield Road within 2 hours there was a gun attack on the cordon. PIRA were able to walk around and check the cordon, see what was happening and choose a safe vantage point for them to have another go at the cordon. Holding a scene was a problem, I remember one scene we held overnight and there were 3 attacks on the

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cordon. The ‘Provies’ had worked out our ‘blind spots’ and were taking pot shots, and, on another occasion the Army cordon was shot at in a drive by shooting. It got to the point we realised it was dangerous to stay static on the ground for a prolonged period, the soldiers and police deployed on the cordon got exhausted dealing with the potential threat, and, ultimately somebody else could die. A person had already been killed or shot and we didn’t want another. If someone was injured or killed in an attack on the cordon we had to extend the scene further and further, and, for longer and longer thereby increasing the risk.

Another thing about West Belfast was the potential for public disorder. Literally you could be on patrol and a mass public disorder incident, not a riot, would take place in seconds, and they are very hard to contain. These incidents could start over very little, one I remember was when we saw a guy ‘wanted on warrant’ standing on a street corner on the Springfield Road, it was late evening and trying to arrest him nearly turned into a full-scale riot because the nearby pubs emptied once they heard the guy shouting. When they saw there were only 6 of us, the crowd of a 100 or so, was quite happy to have a go and that sort of thing happened a number of times. It went from a simple arrest to nearly fighting for our lives within minutes. A lot of the time drink was involved in the disorder, that and a dislike of the police, an attitude that the law didn’t apply to them, and, a bit of crowd temperament. It could happen on the Shankill, it could happen anywhere, it wasn’t confined to West Belfast.

The Army were deployed to support the police, and, I couldn’t praise them enough, these were soldiers who were trained for a war situation to go and kill enemy soldiers. So, bringing them into a hostile environment like West Belfast, and telling them they couldn’t react as they had been trained, instead they had to be half police half soldier, was very difficult for them; soldiers aren’t trained that way. I have respect for the discipline and control the various units exercised when they came into West Belfast. They were there, they were the ones taking casualties for us. I could name you half a dozen soldiers who died doing foot patrols with the police. These guys came over for 3 or 6 months, taken away from the comfort of their barracks in England or Germany only to lose their lives walking the streets of Northern Ireland. I have total respect for them, and, the control and discipline they had, despite what other people may say, they were fantastic.

The police couldn’t work in areas like West Belfast without the Army, if we didn’t have them we would have needed several thousand more police. The Army did a job we probably couldn’t do, they could put large numbers of soldiers on the ground and their training was gradually tailored to suit working here. For example, going out on foot patrol from Grosvenor Road, there were two police officers accompanied by 12 -16 soldiers, the patrol went out in ‘bricks’ of 4, the Command Brick had the police with 4 soldiers and the other ‘satellite’ bricks ‘orbited’ around them. The idea was to prevent PIRA launching a gun attack because of the chance a ‘satellite brick’ could be behind them. It also helped deter bomb attacks being set off by command wire. To do this solely with police would have needed literally thousands more police.

I remember one old Superintendent telling me ‘Hold back until you have enough people to cope’. There was no sense getting into a situation, getting people hurt and not getting the job done. So, what we did was adopt tactics relevant to the situation, we had to police sensitively. It was the same when responding to calls. Calls in West Belfast were always checked to see if they were genuine because PIRA would make calls to lure us into an attack. For example, on the Stewartstown Road a

DOING POLICING Page 69 of 109 police officer was killed in a M60 attack responding to a burglary call, so we always had to take steps to check calls before responding. All these things had to be done unlike in other areas where you could run to every call, in West Belfast we had a ‘stop period’ while we thought out what we going to do.

Normal policing would be 2 officers in a car responding to calls without any threat of, or, worry of being shot or blown up. The fact we worked in an environment where we knew there were people who continually wanted to kill us didn’t permit normal policing. I can’t think of anywhere I served where there was normal policing. Even in Portrush policemen were killed doing foot patrol. Was there any normal policing in Northern Ireland? I don’t know if there was, I didn’t experience it.

There was, if you like a spectrum of policing styles, there were places where 2 guys could go out in a car, places like Portrush, where people assumed it was an ordinary policing area until officers were killed just walking down the street. Terrorism turned our ordinary policing style into a threat dominated policing style. There were very few areas terrorism didn’t reach in some form or another, in some places police didn’t need to carry ‘long arms’, or, take cover every time they got out of the vehicle. I generally think everywhere, even in Lisburn around 1989/90, when there were bombs in waste bins to catch police dealing with a bomb scare, there was the potential for a terrorist attack on police. While there might have been an impression that policing was normal, there was always, even if it was in the back of your mind, a threat.

The sad thing in policing Northern Ireland is that each side sees things as favouring the other side, and Drumcree was a case where everybody hated us. I faced the wrath of Loyalists at Drumcree 2 and they nearly won, we couldn’t have coped if the parade hadn’t been allowed that year. And, I faced the wrath of Republicans when the parade was forced down the Garvaghy Road, because it was the least bad option. At that time, I was involved in the intelligence world, the alternative if the parade hadn’t gone through was catastrophic and could have taken us to the brink of civil war. At Drumcree you had the IRA and Republicans on one side ‘bus-ing’ people in from all over Northern Ireland to be offended, and, the UVF/LVF on the other stirring things up creating a situation making a compromise impossible. Sinn Féin had a policy of putting forward known terrorists as negotiators who were never going to be acceptable to the Orange Order, and, the UVF/LVF were seen as leading the Loyalist side, so an agreement was never likely, and, we were caught in the middle. Each side put forward people with militant views to manipulate the situation, so whatever decision we made was going to annoy one community, in that situation we couldn’t win; we were literally the ‘scapegoats’.

One thing I tell people around the world is we were never in a civil war situation, we never lost control. Yes, there were areas in the 70s when it took a bit of time to get the rule of law restored, but in my service, there were no ‘No Go’ areas, the law was always enforced, and, we never allowed a civil war to take place. But that year at Drumcree, it was so close, there was a mass of people, who had never been against us, or, the Army, turning away and willing to take steps outside the rule of law, to stop this the decision was made to allow the parade down the Garvaghy Road. And, this is about the impartiality, the police made the decision the following year, when things had cooled, to stop the parade. So, we were hated by Nationalists for putting the parade through, and, the next year hated by Loyalists for stopping it. To be clear, the reasons for decisions like Drumcree need to be based on evidence, and the public told what the evidence is, unfortunately a lot of the information we had couldn’t be revealed, so it looked like the decision was not fully informed.

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We were often in a position where we couldn’t win, any decision that seems to go against Nationalism is viewed as a win for Loyalism and vice versa, so we were caught in the middle. Police can’t win in a divided society. They brought in the Parades Commission to make the decision on parades and it’s still the same. Probably, we weren’t good at giving people information about our decisions, we made decisions because we had too for the greater good, but we could have been better at communicating why we took the decisions we did. We were better after Drumcree.

From 1970 to 76 the military had primacy for security, and, in dealing with disorder they used Baton Rounds or Rubber Bullets which we didn’t get until the late 70s early 80s. Incidentally the first we used them was against Linfield supporters at a football match. We didn’t carry baton rounds as part of our normal kit even during the Hunger Strike. Often when we were being petrol bombed we were frightened to use Baton Rounds in case we would get into trouble if somebody was hit by mistake, they were classed as ‘firearms’, police don’t like doing paperwork, and every time you fired a baton round there was a lot of paperwork, so we only used them when we had to. There were very strict instructions governing their use, so we couldn’t fire them for any reason, only in specific circumstances, and, when authorised. We didn’t have pepper spray, long batons or even handcuffs, and, once we left the vehicle we were exposed, so it was really about using your head, about assessing the situation before you went in.

I think the most baton rounds were used in West Belfast especially during the Hunger Strikes because that’s where you had mass crowds, mass public disorder, and, baton rounds were used, ‘liberally’ shall we say, including being fired out the side of Land Rovers. A number of people were killed by baton rounds, the Army used them too, maybe more than we did. It was frightening, unless you were there you can’t appreciate what it was like facing a thousand people rioting, attacking you with petrol bombs, blast bombs and guns; police and soldiers were being murdered, so we needed the baton rounds to protect ourselves. At one stage we fired ‘blanks’ hoping the noise would make people run off, but it didn’t work very well because the rioters quickly realised we were firing blanks. From 1982 there was a move to stop using baton rounds in the aftermath of the Hunger Strike, so we went from regularly using baton rounds to virtually no use all within a few months.

During my time in West Belfast not many baton rounds were fired. The anniversary of internment was the one night of the year when everybody came out onto the streets, had bonfires and rioted, so that night some were fired. We had to have permission to fire them and I saw permission being denied many many times because we didn’t like using them. We did use them when necessary, and unfortunately the Sean Downes incident highlighted the dangers again. Then, there was all the disorder around Marley’s funeral and they were used again. They weren’t used every day and never for general disorder, there had to be a compelling reason to use them, and people were frightened to use them because you had to justify everything you did.

The Land Rovers gave us protection, and we felt relatively safe in them, but once you were on foot you were vulnerable. It happened to me in Divis, we were at a normal incident, and within minutes, were surrounded by 50-60 hostile people, it was dangerous, and, we couldn’t use the baton rounds because they were too close. The big fear in those situations was getting dragged off and beaten to death, there was no doubt about that; the deaths of Corporals Wood and Howes are an example of that could happen. In the early ‘Troubles’ another young soldier was dragged off and killed, so we were under no illusion, if they got you, you were dead, you would be taken away and killed, no ifs or

DOING POLICING Page 71 of 109 buts. Those situations were very dangerous, so we had to keep the rioters at a distance, and that was the reason we used baton rounds, to keep rioters back from overwhelming and killing us. We aren’t talking about somebody giving you a good ‘hiding’, we are talking about you being murdered. Even so in some cases rioters got so close to us that when we tried to get away, they were literally hanging off the Land Rover as they were trying to force the doors open.

In West Belfast using a ‘base line of shields’ was too dangerous, as the Provies used crowds to cover their gun attacks on police. On the 20th anniversary of the deployment of the Army in 69, we were trying to keep the Springfield Road open, up near Springhill Avenue. We were using the Land Rovers as a barricade when the Provies shot at us with heavy weapons on automatic fire, using the crowd for cover. That was the risk we faced when on public order duties. That’s why we didn’t use a shield line because we were exposing ourselves to that risk, even if it was just a pistol as the Loyalist did in Portadown, the shields were plastic and no protection against gunfire. So, you can’t allow police to be put in those positions and exposed to gunfire.

The thing about manpower was, in West Belfast, if we called for assistance we had maybe 10 Land Rovers in a couple of minutes, that level of support was exceptional because of the area. Policing in West Belfast was self-contained, outside support units weren’t allow in due to the threat, because they didn’t understand the area their presence could stir things even more.

At riots in West Belfast we wouldn’t put out a base line like they did at Ardoyne a few years ago when they took over 100 officers injured. We couldn’t stand and get hammered, we didn’t have the people, and with the threat being so high we used the Land Rovers as a protective barrier. Our objective in a riot was to contain the disorder, the rioters tended to stay close to home but if they had tried to get into the city centre we would have blocked them using a line and taken the ‘hit’. Going back to the Marley funeral, we had rioting for days and controlled it using Land Rovers as protection against the risk from the rioters and the risk of gunfire. Not using baton rounds would have been madness in those sorts of situations. When Frank O’Reilly was murdered by so called loyalists in Portadown in 1998 (he was the last RUC officer to be murdered) the crowd should have been kept back by baton rounds, but people were afraid to use them, and, the rioters got close enough to throw the blast bomb which killed him.

We had the Emergency Legislation and the Criminal Law. You were wary of using some legislation because you worried if you were doing the right thing. It got to the stage we were told, don’t arrest anybody under Section 12 Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allowed for detention up to 7 days, only use Section 11 of the Emergency Provisions Act, which was for a maximum of 3 days. I think compared to America we were very lenient with the powers we had available and our use of them against known terrorists. There are very few societies in the World that would accept that somebody could kill a policeman on Monday and be able to walk down the street on Tuesday and there was nothing the police could do.

We worked in an evidence based prosecution system, and, that is very hard to use against terrorists. We probably didn’t have the powers we should have had to enable us secure evidence, we were totally controlled by the Rule of Law, and, we worked within those rules. I don’t think there is another society which would have worked within the rules as we did for 30 years seeing our comrades and other innocent people being killed; other societies would have made laws to take the terrorists off the streets. I know we tried internment in 1972 which didn’t work because back then it

DOING POLICING Page 72 of 109 was done on the basis of inaccurate information. By the 80s we knew who the Loyalist and Republican terrorists were, and, we could easily have rounded them up. If the law had allowed it, we could have used proper ‘intelligence evidence’ to keep them in jail until they ended their terrorism, but after 1972 that was never going to be considered. Another option would have been to put police and soldiers on every street corner, but that wasn’t happening because we had to have ‘normalisation’. We were always striving to do ‘normal’ policing but it cost lives, and it allowed terrorists to control the streets. Other societies wouldn’t have allowed that to happen; we did because we were trying to be normal.

The No. 1 policing priority is the Protection of Life, to me that was what was most important. The protection of property was another, everything we did was to stop somebody being killed or property destroyed. When I was in the MSU we did road stops all the time to stop the City Centre being blown up, that was generally the protection of property. Everything in the Intelligence world was geared to protect life, so the principles of policing were foremost in everything we did, along with fairness and impartiality. The protection of life and property in counter terrorism is done by preventing terrorist crime, and, by trying to arrest the terrorists before they commit their crimes.

We had an issue with Special Branch in West Belfast, we didn’t trust them because a number of terrorist attacks had occurred, and we believed that Special Branch had actually allowed them to happen. A UDR man was shot dead, yet there was an operation running against the terrorists who escaped, and, then a soldier was killed a few minutes after an Out of Bounds was lifted; so, for us in Uniform, seeing these incidents we thought we were sacrificial lambs being put out there as bait. The situation got so bad that a SB Detective Superintendent came down to talk to us, but he was ‘chased out’ of the station by concerned Uniform Constables, and that didn’t go down too well with the authorities, but that was how we felt. Because of the level of mistrust, we started following strange vehicles in the area thinking they might be the ‘sneaky beakies’.

‘The Branch’ told us ‘what we do is secret, we can’t discuss it’ but that just added to our distrust. All we could see was the tangible evidence of people being killed, and unfairly we pointed the ‘finger of blame’ at ‘the Branch’. Over time we were reassured that ‘the Branch’ weren’t allowing things to happen, but because of our ‘ignorance’, not knowing what was going on behind the scenes, we speculated. The dilemma for ‘the Branch’, was should they tell us what they know or not?

OFFICER 18

I found it more stressful in peace time. I think it was because I was so used to living up ‘here’ on the thrill, the risks, the stresses, the pressure and excitement that when ‘peace’ came things became mundane, work was just mundane. We ran from one thing to another, it was nonstop, it was almost like living on a ‘high’ to a degree, especially in some of the jobs I did. There was a ‘buzz’, an excitement, an adrenaline rush, and then all of a sudden, there was nothing; that was nearly harder to deal with, it felt as if you weren’t achieving as much. Back then we thought we were invincible, we were young and thought nothing could ever happen to us, I never thought about the risks. My Mum still jokes about my Dad, who when I was out working in Uniform at night, would listen to the radio to see if anything was happening, and, he would sit up waiting for me to come home. It probably took a greater toll on them really. My brother and sister were younger, I don’t think me being in the police ever bothered them; my brother joined the Full Time Reserve for a couple of years and then left to join the Marines.

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Being female, I think I was pretty well looked after. Yes, there was the ‘old station stamp’ carry on when you went to your first station. A girl who was with me in the Cadets was in my section, they ‘stamped’ her in the ‘Rec Room’, when it was my turn I took a snooker cue to them, so they didn’t; I passed on the ‘stamping’. Again, when I think about it, it’s how you deal with things, like the whole thing today were they are trying to apply today’s rules to what happened 20 or 30 years ago, it’s ridiculous.

I didn’t feel I was discriminated against, certainly there was a bit of an attitude that because females weren’t armed some thought they can’t do the same job, can’t do the same work. But I never found things that annoying or difficult. I think I accepted I wasn’t doing all the same things but when I was armed things changed, but there were still jobs they didn’t expect women to do. I think there are some jobs a man is going to be more capable of doing than I am, and there are certain things I am better at than a man, so I think you have to be ‘sensible’ about things. In those days I didn’t think about it, I just got on with it, it was always so busy. In those days it had to be at least a male and female in the Car at Musgrave Street, we had a female Sergeant, and, if things got busy she would just get one of us and we would have gone out to the call. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was two females or not, her attitude was ‘just get the job done’. I think that was the attitude most people had, whatever it is, get the job done whatever it takes.

I joined SPG because I was approached by the Superintendent in charge of it. I didn’t do a formal Board he had a brief conversation with me on the back stairs in Musgrave Street and a month later I was transferred. In SPG, I felt I fitted in well even though I still wasn’t armed. The uniform was ridiculous at times, I was expected to go out wearing a skirt, I had a riot helmet and a pair of trousers rolled up in my carry bag as we weren’t supposed to put trousers on unless we had permission. We were actually hindered by stupid things. But was having to ask for permission to wear trousers discrimination? No, the female uniform was to wear a skirt, but nobody had thought sensibly about the female uniform in the SPG, or, if females should wear trousers. We wore trousers in the Training Centre, was it because they were worried about the effect all the girl’s legs would have on the boys? I don’t know. But seeing that as discrimination just wouldn’t be my way of thinking about it.

Most of the work in SPG was quite varied and included things like crowd control, anti-terrorist work and searches. Because I wasn’t armed if there was a riot, I put my trousers and helmet on, and, with my carry bag full of rubber bullets I accompanied of one the boys to make sure he never ran out. I drove a lot, and, searched women, sometimes I worked with SSU. SSU didn’t have any females, so when they were doing an operation in which they might need a female they got one of us from SPG. I also did the ‘Supergrass’ Trials in Crumlin Road Courthouse, the courts were usually packed with defendants and their families in the public gallery, and, we had guys with ‘long arms’ up beside the judge in case there was an attack. There were a few ‘riots’ in the court so we were there to control the defendants and their supporters. We had to search everybody going into the courtroom even the barristers, I think one was a female relative of Gerry Kelly who got most upset when we asked her to remove her robe and wig, so we weren’t very popular, but we kept everybody safe.

I found SPG exciting, probably I was a bit naive in some ways. I don’t remember being frightened, except for the time we were petrol bombed, the burning petrol poured through the gaps in the armour on the ‘Hotspur’ and set me on fire; apart for that No, not really, I probably didn’t have

DOING POLICING Page 74 of 109 enough brains to be frightened. I also did a lot of work with SB and my fiancé was in SSU, so probably because of those influences I decided to go for E4a.

I enjoyed the E4 assessment course, it was fun! It was constantly challenging, pushing you to see what you could do, or, couldn’t do identifying your areas of weakness and how you dealt with them. I enjoyed E4, I liked the challenge, it was a very exciting time as there were jobs on the go one after the other constantly. We were called out in the middle of the night, and, sometimes there might just be a few of you because not everybody was available. While I enjoyed it, I didn’t’t feel it was the best fit for me, I thought I stood out too much. I don’t know why I felt like that because the instructors always told me they didn’t see me coming down the street. I was happy doing mobile surveillance, but when I was on foot I felt I stood out. I didn’t think I was the ideal fit for it. I could do surveillance, but I just didn’t think it was my ‘bag’. The difficulties working in E4 were practical ones, like going to the toilet, in those days there weren’t the same facilities to get food as there are today, and, carrying the covert body radio, it would have been easier for a woman to carry it in her handbag. Another problem was meeting family and friends when you were working, they would shout ‘hello’ and try and stop you for a chat not knowing you were working which could draw attention to you. But things developed an awful lot very quickly.

The information you get from surveillance is limited. People think you get more than you do, you can’t follow somebody 24/7 and see everything he does and says. Nobody is constantly moving, and you can’t always get close enough to hear what he says, and, once he goes into his house, yes, you know he is there but not what he is doing. Surveillance isn’t as intrusive as people think. I worked all over Northern Ireland, and Londonderry was very high risk, when they set a team up there our comms didn’t work in the City Centre. So, if you were out on the ground there were times when nobody knew where you were, I wasn’t very happy about that! It would have been a bit more comfortable to know that everybody knew where you were. However, the thing about a surveillance team was, even if you didn’t have comms, everybody made an effort to know where you were. It could be dangerous, and we did get chased out of a few places, but it was just part of the job. I don’t know what they do now, but I like to think they are a lot further forward now. It was risky, we were armed, had a radio, police warrant card, and, your personal driving licence which had your name and address on it. Up until the mid 90s SB Handlers still had to use their private cars for source meets

In some ways you were safer in surveillance than Uniform where you were a big visible target, in surveillance you are more in control, it is your actions that would most likely compromise you. Yes, sometimes there were things you had to do that could cause you a problem but most of the time you were in control. In Uniform the guys and girls are in marked vehicles, so sometimes it was easier in surveillance.

I worked in the ‘Hen House’, that nearly drove me insane, it wasn’t the place for me. It was job mainly carried out by women, some of whom who had children and needed a more stable job. After a while I was bored, had itchy feet and wanted out; I became a handler. After a few years I moved across to Special Branch which I thought would be a better fit for me, and it was. I loved Special Branch, I liked researching people for recruitment, we were moving much farther forward that just randomly ‘pitching’ people, we were looking into people’s background to see what made them tick, how they could help us, how to get alongside them and to do longer term recruitment ops, I enjoyed all that.

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I found ‘handling’ the other handlers could be more difficult than handling the informant! A lot of the handlers were ‘old school’. I was put as third handler and the other two kept telling me that the informant wouldn’t talk to me, just to them, but when we met the informant he was waving to me and saying hello; it was just a case of the handlers getting ‘precious’. That was their mindset, ‘the informant is mine and I am going to keep him’, it had nothing to do with me being a female. It wouldn’t have mattered who the third handler was, the other two just wanted the informants for themselves.

OFFICER 19

Throughout my career I never thought of myself as a Police Woman, I was a police officer just the same as everybody else even though some male colleagues mightn’t have seen me that way. My first station was Victoria in Londonderry, when I went there most of the station party was young and just out of the Training Centre. There were some older officers who had made the City their home, but the majority of Uniform constables were young and not long out of the Training Centre, who after 2 years transferred back to wherever they wanted to go. We were all in the same boat, gender made no difference, male or female we all went out in the Land Rovers, did the Beat, we all did the same things, I found it fine. I was initially petrified because I had never been in the City before in my life, I didn’t drive and had to go back and forwards on the train. I wasn’t petrified just because of that but also because I was away from home for the first time, among people who hated the police with a passion, who spat on us and shouted at us; I’d never experienced anything like and I wondered ‘Have I done the right thing? What have I done?’

There was a shooting one Saturday, there was Beat patrol out on the City Walls surrounding the City Centre, it was usually done by ‘Rest Day people’ or ‘Late people’ brought in early, so from to 2 - 6pm the City Centre was swamped with Beats. The Walls were usually closed to the Public, but it was always assumed that one day they would re-open, and, on Saturdays we had a Beat along the Walls. Nobody wanted this Beat because it was boring, on this particular Saturday two guys volunteered. The City Centre Beats organised breaks between themselves and while they were leaning over the railings at William Street shouting down to another Beat that they wanted to go for a break one officer was shot in the back from a window further up William Street. Access to the Walls was via an alley which ran alongside them, then up a flight of steps onto the Walls, then along the parapet to where they were, but the ambulance couldn’t get close and they had to go on foot to bring the injured police officer down. By the time the ambulance arrived a large crowd had gathered; it was just unbelievable!

It never entered my head I was unarmed, I was always with somebody who was armed. It never struck me that I should be armed, there were never two females together, we were always with males who were armed. I did the full range of duties, the same as the men in ‘Derry, but when I went to North Queen Street I was rarely out the door, instead doing SDO most of the time. After a while I applied for the SPG. SPG was brilliant and there were no SDO duties. There was a duty cycle for the SPG and we did 2 weeks of prison escorts taking prisoners from prison to court and back, that was boring. When our Head Office didn’t have any taskings for us we were free to back up local police and do our own patrols. We went to a lot of parades, did early morning searches and backed up E Department in the days before HMSU, it was vibrant, exciting, doing different things all the time.

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There was only one female per SPG section, so I didn’t see I was treated any differently to any of the men, I was involved in everything, the riots, searches, everything.

Being shot at was a very real risk, particularly during the Hunger Strikes. They threw stones, sticks, petrol bombs and blast bombs in fact anything that came to hand. At time things nearly got out of hand because we didn’t have enough people, don’t forget the riots were going on all over the place and you couldn’t say ‘things are getting out of hand we need help’, because there wasn’t any back up.

If we didn’t have FRGs we would have been absolutely slaughtered, there weren’t enough people to deal with these riots, no matter what anybody says there weren’t sufficient people nor was the training very good. I went to riot training, it was all about wedges and formations, total nonsense for what we faced on the ground and many people don’t remember that it wasn’t suited to what we had to deal with. We had to try and keep the crowds back and avoid what they were throwing at us. When I went back to ‘Derry for the second time I went to the Waterside and I didn’t find the City just as bad as I did the first time I was there. That might have been because the first time it was my first station and it had been such a shock, but by the time I returned I had learnt a bit more and was more experienced.

A FEMALE IN THE POLICE

The first time I was stationed in ‘Derry I lived in ‘Digs’ on the City Side. Back then females had to live in approved ‘Digs’ which the Division Woman Sergeant had to check were suitable for women constables to live in, something I couldn’t understand.

I later transferred to North Queen Street which was very different to Victoria. I think I was SDO or Assistant SDO for a month because it was regarded as too dangerous for females. The only opportunity for females to get out was on the ‘Early’ turn to do the Beat down North Street or somewhere like that. After a while 4 of us (females) applied for the SPG just to get out and move on.

The organisation didn’t discriminate against females but there were people within it that thought ‘Yes policewomen are necessary to deal with women and children, shoplifters, do office work and to make tea’, but it wasn’t an organisational attitude, it was some individuals that held that attitude. I think it was a generational thing although some younger officers had the same view because when I was older there was Chief Inspector who held the view ‘It’s Ok, we need women but not in a significant role’. I was aware of this view all of the time, but I ignored it, I never felt I was a police woman, I was a police officer, I hated the prefix Woman, I never used it because it didn’t matter whether I was a male or female, we were all police officers. I had an Inspector in Special Branch who wrote to me and used the Woman Detective prefix, so I wrote back addressing him as MDI (Male Detective Inspector), he thought this was hilarious and told everybody, but I made my point, and, he didn’t do it again. In Special Branch it didn’t matter whether you were female or male there wasn’t a job a female couldn’t do, so you just did the job.

After I was married my husband we did the same Promotion Board, he passed, and I didn’t. Shortly after the list was published the Chair of the Board met me as I was going into the station, he took both my hands and said ‘Oh (my name) dear, you didn’t get the Board and we were in an awful predicament, we didn’t know what to do, we thought, should we let the husband in the house be

DOING POLICING Page 77 of 109 the boss or the wife? It wouldn’t look good if the wife was the boss, so we just put your husband on the list. Sure, you’ll get it next year.’ Now that was 1986, I just looked at him, went upstairs to my boss and said ‘You have no idea what the Board Chair just told me’, when I told him he just held his head and asked if I wanted some action taken, I said ‘No, but tell him he can’t do and say things like that.’ So that was the mindset of some of them, he hadn’t the wit to realise what he was saying to me. I was very conscious that it existed, very aware of it, but what could you do?

I didn’t accept that attitude for a second, I remember a Chief Inspector writing on my staff appraisal ‘She is a married woman with a child however this doesn’t affect her work’, I went into him and said you can’t write that, that’s discriminatory, but he thought it was complimentary and he only changed his mind after I asked him if he would write the same thing about a man. I did challenge things but not all the petty wee things, what’s the point? If I did I would only become a nuisance, I preferred to challenge informally; you had to be aware of the era. If I had challenged the Board Chair when he told me why I didn’t pass the Board, and, I was very much within my rights to challenge him, but can you imagine the knock-on effects if I did? Today no-one would bat an eyelid, they’d just say she’s right, the Board and the Chairman shouldn’t have done what they did, and no-one would query me at all. But in 1986 I would have been regarded as a ‘troublemaker’, it would have had a knock-on effect on me, no doubt at all, so it was easier to raise it informally to effect change. Somebody else might have done something different, but you have to get on and do what you can, and I did.

There was a sense among some that women could never be equal to men, we were the weaker sex, that they needed us for some jobs, and, we needed their protection. I don’t think that attitude towards females was any different to any another job at that time; jobs for females tended to be nurses, teachers, clerks and shop workers. However, I didn’t let it annoy me. Things did change, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do all the things I did do. I hope my actions challenged and helped break down those old views, I certainly think so because a several females followed after me.

OFFICER 20

From ‘The Depot’ I was sent to Limavady. I remember I went to the Commandant in ‘The Depot’ and saying to him I was 28 with military experience and didn’t want to go to Limavady, that I wanted to go to Tyrone or Armagh where my military experience would be of some value, only to be told ‘I should be glad I was going to Limavady’. I did a year in Limavady before applying for a transfer, I was sent to ‘H’ Division Armagh. I knew that the RUC wanted people with my experience, and I was very happy to work in places where that experience would be helpful rather than doing community policing. There were people who joined at the same time as me whose forte was Community Policing, and, they had no wish to get involved in the ‘sharp end’ of things, I was quite happy too.

Being a police officer during ‘The Troubles’ was a way of life. A lot of the time you were busy, and, there were a lot of scary things. I remember when I was in the MSU, at a Republican funeral there were only 60 of us at the plot when thousands of Republicans came over, I thought we were in for it, and, not just a hiding until the Army arrived at the last minute and changed things. I was at another Republican funeral in South Armagh, we had flown in by helicopter to prevent any paramilitary trappings after 3 terrorists blew themselves up. In South Armagh you are in their territory, once again there were only 60 of us at the grave side and the tension was palpable.

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After I left the UDR it took me 3 years to get the Army out of my system, and 5 years to get into Special Branch. In those 5 years I failed a Board for Special Branch but passed assessments for E4A and HMSU, but they weren’t for me. I also passed the Board to be a collator for E4A, I was living in Armagh then and when I refused to ‘move house’ to Belfast, I didn’t get the job. When I got the SB board they sent me to Strand Road saying I could live at home!

To be honest the RUC went about its job looking after the general public, and, dealing with the threats to everybody in a diligent and accountable way. To be honest I think the RUC was a good police force.

DOING SB

In the RUC we enjoyed a financial package, for most of the time I was there, way above what you would expect in other jobs. Margaret Thatcher had given us a 30% pay rise that put members of the RUC in the same salary bracket as doctors and solicitors, so we were professionally paid. Every year we could enjoy a holiday abroad which helped everybody.

In Uniform there was a fixed amount of overtime, I was in the MSU and had about 60 hours a month all the year round. When I went into SB there was no overtime, and, any there was had to be pre- approved by the Regional Head. That said we had a flexible working arrangement compared to Uniform officers, so I never had any difficulty getting time off.

I was in SB for 20 years, I never had a day’s sick in those 20 years, I was motivated, and I loved my work. I had worked hard to get into Special Branch, it was the only job I wanted in the police and I really enjoyed it.

The terrorists simply didn’t know what our capabilities were, not the physical capabilities, not the technical capabilities, they simply didn’t know the depth they were infiltrated. I know from personal experience that at least one terrorist saw Special Branch as a prestige target, and he kept extensive records on who he thought was in SB. But really, I don’t think the IRA and Loyalists made any distinction between us, if they wanted to shoot a policeman they shot a policeman, basically it was whoever was the ‘easy target’.

One of the reasons there were so few SB casualties was they simply didn’t know about our capabilities. They knew we would probably be better armed that Uniform officers, but they didn’t know how well trained we were, the extent of our operations, our communications and all the rest. So, with their lack of knowledge they just didn’t know the size of threat we posed to them, they were totally ignorant.

Some of our informants went to great lengths to help us, they volunteered to go to prison to find out what was going on there, and, some moved house to get closer to units we needed information on. In subsequent years some informants became inactive but because of their relationship with the handlers they promised to come forward if they heard anything was starting up again; some did.

In Londonderry we had 6500 personal files, some were very thick and went back to 1922 with handwritten notes. There could be details of entire families, so with a modern day suspect you could trace his lineage down through the years and see where he was radicalised. A lot of it, the ‘hate’, the giving yourself to a cause comes from the female side. I was there 5 years and probably read most of

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the files; whenever I started the only advice I was given was ‘read everything’ and I did. The files were invaluable in helping you prepare to go face to face with those you were trying to recruit. I was told to keep going back to make a pitch because sooner or later they would agree to work for you, and, that’s the way we went about it.

I enjoyed every minute being in SB, I would do it all over again tomorrow. A lot of people, even in Special Branch, thought it was a James Bond thing, it’s not, it’s the total opposite, it’s about researching things, assessing before you do it, asking is it worth it? Is it possible to get a result? And if the results warrant it, you go ahead, and you do it right, in the end it’s a relatively simple job.

Our aim was to effectively manage informants so as to permit Uniform officers to go about their job as safely as possible. We were briefing people all the time, patrol officers, Divisional Commanders and issuing Action Sheets on threats, all to keep people safe. Obviously, we couldn’t tell the public everything, if we had threats to the public we told them either as individuals or a community. The public knew we did the counter intelligence thing and CID did the investigating, so if the public wanted to talk to us they would ring the station, or, call in to talk to us, and, that did happen.

Years after the Teebane Bomb one of the bombers died and at the funeral the priest said something about past sins coming back on the deceased. People took this to mean that the deceased had been involved in the bomb. We followed up on this and visited a few people who told us what they knew because they had come to see the futility of violence, and, in some ways telling us what they knew did them some good by getting a burden of their shoulders. After that they passed on snippets they picked up from time to time, but they didn’t want to talk to CID or go to court, and, by this time many years after the event the evidence wasn’t there.

The main focus of Special Branch was to protect life, 100%, even the lives of extremely active Republicans. I never saw getting people into court as my main responsibility; my main responsibility was to get information to keep people alive. It was CID’s responsibility to get the evidence to get people to court, and, if we could help them we did, if we had information that would aid their investigation we passed it on.

In Mid Ulster there were 2 Loyalist groups- one was the UVF and the other operated with the blessing of the UVF Command Belfast. In all this second group killed 13 people; only one of whom had no links with SF/PIRA. We brought the Loyalists into Gough for interview, but they didn’t speak, and, we had to release them without charge once their time was up. So yeah, I think it took too long to get information on some Loyalist groups in areas where PIRA were active. But in places like Tyrone you couldn’t drop working against PIRA to work on Loyalists, you had to try and do both, and, we didn’t have enough resources to deal with both. The Loyalist violence was a distraction from the bigger threat.

I learnt a lot about these Loyalist groups, the background to their operations and who was involved. I would go to some of those involved trying to recruit them by telling them that the killing had to stop, and, the next time we made arrests they might not be released without charge. They did cease operations and their weapons were amongst the first to be decommissioned by General De Chastelain. In retrospect that second group maybe had an effect on IRA/Sinn Féin in Mid Ulster, and, may even helped them to talk peace. For example, their attack on Boyle’s Pub in Cappagh actually

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put fear into IRA/Sinn Féin, and I think that had some effect in making Republicans move towards peace. I think to our credit we were able to bring the loyalists killings to a complete stop.

We made no allowances for Loyalists, nobody in Special Branch said, ‘let’s go lighter on the Loyalists because they are putting IRA/Sinn Féin in fear’. When we got information of a threat there were a number of avenues open to us, overtly we could put them off, or, using covert methods we could try and develop the intelligence to do an arrest operation. But if it came to the point we couldn’t do an operation, or, force them to abort we had to think of something else. Sometimes we would selectively arrest some people we thought might be involved, and, try to sow mistrust among them to put them off.

You can only do something with what you know, at Loughgall for instance, there are only 8 officers with may be only 2 or 3 on duty at any one time. The PIRA team came from a wide area including some who lived in the ‘South’, they were heavily armed, experienced, wore body armour and had radios. They were involved in the murders of the Stronge’s at Tyan, they murdered two police officers at Ballygawley and tried to get into the station armoury, they attacked The Birches and blew the station up there. This was a PIRA team intent on killing people, and, prepared to take on targets, so this was a very dangerous team, there was only one option and that was to use the SAS.

If all the details of the IRA operations had been known you maybe could have looked at doing something earlier but I don’t think that was the case, we maybe knew an attack was imminent but not where and when. In these cases when things start to move they move very quickly so I don’t think they had enough time to do anything other than stakeout where they thought the attack might be. After the attack they found out that the van came from a farm about a mile away, so that didn’t leave much distance to do anything even if it had been known beforehand. There were 8 heavily armed men in the PIRA team and you have to look at all the risk factors, I think what happened probably had the least risk to everybody. This was an experienced cohesive IRA team, with better weapons than the police, confident they could take on anybody. With a team like that intent on killing, you have to be prepared you might have to use force and that people could be killed.

I don’t think there was another way, if they had put out a Police VCP the IRA team would have wiped it out. In military terms to win a battle you should have 2 to 3 times the size of your opposition, so to take on an eight man IRA team you need 24 police officers, and, it’s impossible to put them out on a VCP. You could block the road, but as soon as they see it in a rural area they could easily escape, take on the VCP, or, go to a farm and hold people hostage so the whole situation deteriorates, and you lose control. So, when the information is incomplete you have to try and guess what they might do from the snippets you have.

I think all they knew was there was going to be an attack on a police station somewhere in Mid Ulster sometime soon. When you think of the physical location of Loughgall police station it is in a valley with high ground and a church on one side, and, a wood on high ground on the other side. Basically, there was only one road, so that was controllable, the station was fairly solid and isolated with a football pitch and trees for a wind break behind it so that was controllable. In the end the PIRA team drove through the village, so to have intercepted them there would have posed too great a risk to the community. Until the bomb went off you wouldn’t have known for sure what was happening, and, if the SAS had gone too soon, they would have ‘blown’ the operation, so it is fine margin between going and waiting.

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From 1979, after the RUC and Special Branch were re-organised, there had been a shift to try and arrest the terrorists ‘in the act’ so we had a good chance of putting them in jail for a long time and to stop the killings. So, our operations were aimed at getting people put in prison after they were caught in the act.

One of the satisfying things about Special Branch is the effect you have behind the scenes saving lives and recovering weapons. I got a great deal of satisfaction from it, but it is not something you can share you can’t tell people about what you did because it could put the source at risk.

OFFICER 21

BEING A FEMALE

I joined when I was 21, I wasn’t a young 18 year old, as many were when they joined. I remember my first night on patrol, I was with a Full Time Reserve and a Regular who was a Catholic, the first questions I was asked were ‘Would I take a wee drink’ and ‘What school did I go too’. So right at the beginning they were ‘sussing out’ if I was ‘good living’, if they could they swear in front of me, and, my religion.

Then there was the old ‘Station Stamp’ thing for women going to their first station. The usual thing was the men in the Section got the Station Stamp, inked it and stamped the woman somewhere under her clothes. On the occasion my Section tried to do that to me, we were on Night Duty, I ran out of the Station and up High Street, eventually they tired and called me back, so it didn’t happen.

In one way the men looked after me. When you look at the way women are treated today, we made tea, typed the Occurrence Sheets, and, some of things said and done then wouldn’t be acceptable today, but that was how society viewed women at that time, it wasn’t a bias within the Police towards women. Society has changed a lot since. Things were said then that wouldn’t be acceptable today and there was some pornography, basically I dealt with that by taking myself off side when it started. I don’t think you can judge the past by today’s standards, whether that is the way women were treated or things were investigated – there were ‘chauvinistic pigs’ back then but then every man was HAHAHA. I just told them ‘I’d rather you didn’t talk like that in front of me’ and generally they did as I asked, so they knew not to do it when I was around. I took things in my stride, so the ‘machoism’, the inappropriate behaviour and banter of a few, I saw as just a part of life at that time.

DOING POLICING AS A FEMALE

The uniform didn’t help, the skirt was quite straight, so getting into Land Rovers was quite difficult, we had to ‘Howick’ it up to get in, and, as far as running was concerned, you couldn’t. The uniform wasn’t practical, although I thought it was very nice. I am happy to be a woman and be treated as a woman, but it wasn’t very practical.

Women weren’t armed in anyway, so whenever something happened I always felt a bit more vulnerable, and, that the guys with me were looking after me rather than being totally focused on what they should be doing, like catching somebody. Those were the two main issues, women weren’t armed and the uniform.

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Workwise I learnt to bargain, in Lurgan women did Station Security in a ‘hut’ at the front of the Station; my friends in Belfast didn’t. There was always two on Security, at least one had to be armed, so there was always a man there but if something happened he probably would have been thinking more of me than anything else. So, I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing having a woman do Station Security, but it certainly didn’t do me any harm.

I learnt to bargain with my security duties for typing the Occurrence Sheets, I learnt quickly. I had a good Section, the guys looked after me and their wives looked after me. I wasn’t the best sketch drawer, so some of the guys drew my RTA sketches, and, my Sergeant, because I was a Probationer, would help me with my files and look over them which gave me a template to get the next one right.

If there was an indecent assault or child abuse the women always dealt with those, men didn’t. It’s all different now, both men and women are trained, and, there are special units to deal with those things. I think those sexual and child neglect cases were given to us because they thought women would be more sympathetic and understanding. I think they just thought it was the right thing to do.

During the Hunger Strikes and Loyalist demonstrations women were kept inside, doing Comms, we wouldn’t be sent on to the Street. I’m not sure it was discrimination, the way I looked at it was we weren’t armed and had no riot training. So again, they probably thought they were doing the right thing because we had no training, and maybe some thought women were the ‘weaker’ sex and not as strong. That didn’t annoy me at the time, I wasn’t armed and trained so I would have been putting others at risk if I had been in those situations.

When it was decided we should be armed I was in CID; I was quite happy to be armed and carry a gun. Sometimes in CID I could be out on my own and having a gun gave me a bit of comfort, that should I need too, I could use it. Personally, I use to work out scenarios in my head about what I would do if I found myself in certain situations, so yeah, I was happy enough.

I enjoyed Uniform work and one of my joys, when I was on the Beat was speaking to everyone I passed. In Lurgan nobody liked you as a police officer, not the Catholics nor the Protestants. We used to have a competition to see how many people we could get to speak to us. It’s amazing the number of people who did speak, it was an instinctive reaction, we took them by surprise because they didn’t expect us to speak to them or to be nice to them. I used that approach throughout my career in Uniform and CID because suspects don’t expect the Police to be nice to them: that approach worked very much to my advantage over the years.

Not long after I arrived in Lurgan there was a murder in the Shankill Estate, a Catholic area and I found the body. It wasn’t my first dead body, but it was my first murder victim, I remember the first thing I heard was the blood dripping before I found the body. All my training from the Training Centre kicked in, I touched nothing, switched the lights on with my elbow, drew the ‘first on the scene’ sketch in my notebook, and, started the Scene Log, everything just came back. When CID arrived at the scene they took charge, everything became ordered and they knew what they were doing. I really enjoyed being part of the investigation and that made me think of CID. It wasn’t a sectarian killing, there had been a crowd of drunks in his house when a row started, and he was stabbed.

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In the end I fell into CID. Towards the end of my probation in Lurgan there was a large terrorist ‘lift’ in Co Armagh and I was sent to help the interview teams at Castlereagh, which suited me because it was close to home and I wasn’t driving. I kept the charts and records of who was interviewing who and when. During the week the Detective Chief Super, in charge of the ‘lift’, asked me if I would work for him in Belfast. After I gave it some thought I decided I would, thinking it would be a short term secondment, but I never went back to Lurgan.

A FEMALE IN CID

I worked on Kincora 2, the re-investigation into allegations of child abuse, the enquiry in the end widened out to other Children Homes, Scouts and Schools. There were lots of ‘veiled’ vague indirect allegations about who was involved, the investigation lasted years and found no evidence against anybody other than those who had been convicted many years before. The level of abuse was horrendous; the three people involved and convicted, were abusing boys in the Home and nearly everybody there knew what was going on, but for cigarettes, 50p or being allowed to stay up late they all kept quiet. Afterwards I was transferred to Headquarters Crime Squad and was involved in several long-term investigations which helped me realise that you can’t judge what happened in the past if you don’t know why things happened the way they did, and, if you only apply today’s standards. For example, 2 men were shot in 1972 in West Belfast and police just did the Inquest file, but it turned out that it was too dangerous for them to attend the scene because of the armed vigilantes and the murder squads roaming Belfast. It wasn’t safe, they didn’t have adequate cover or protection, so they just couldn’t go, even the Army found it difficult to move in West Belfast at the time. 1972 was the worst year of ‘The Troubles’ for killings, bombings and shootings, the level of violence was the worst in the history of the RUC.

I spent 15 years in the Crime Squad before going to a general CID Office. I found that change to be quite difficult to be honest. On long term investigations you don’t need to know about all the things that go on in a Station where things are a lot quicker and there is more happening. For the first 3 or 4 months I found it difficult to settle in, but after that I loved it, it was busy, but I loved it.

Apart for a couple of small things men and women did the same thing in CID. I was now armed but there was no big difference in what we dealt with. I was still the only woman in the Section, so I was called to all the Interview Suites, be it Castlereagh, Armagh or Strand Road, because in those days a policewoman had to be present during the interview of a woman, so I fell for that a lot, which was something I didn’t particularly like. Generally, there was not much of a difference between men and women, although they did try to get women into the HOLMES or MIRIAM rooms, and, that made me quite cross. I am certainly not a good typist, and I thought what makes them think a woman is a better typist than a man? That made me quite cross, I didn’t want to do it and they knew it.

I worked with the Metropolitan Police as a liaison officer and conducted enquiries here for them in relation to a double contract murder in London as the ‘shooters’ were believed to be from Northern Ireland. As a result of my enquiries I identified the ‘two shooters’ involved who were arrested, charged and convicted of the Murders. Afterwards I was called to my Detective Chief Super’s Office to receive a letter sent from the Met Commissioner in recognition of my work during the investigation. He read the letter to me and afterwards flippantly said ‘That’s great praise, were you wearing a short skirt when you were working with them?’ I said, ‘No I was doing my job’ and left his office. It seemed to me he was making little of my work because I was a woman.

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By the time I retired there were specialist units everywhere, Robbery Squad, Burglary Squad, Theft Squad, Sexual Offences Unit; there was a Unit for everything. When I joined CID, I dealt with everything and that’s the way it should be. Later we had people coming to us who had gone straight into a Unit; they didn’t know how to take a statement and didn’t know the basics of investigations. In a Unit you are given an Action Sheet and told to go and talk to someone, or, check the ownership of a car, whereas in a General Office you deal with everything from a theft to a murder, and, that experience is invaluable. However nowadays murders are handed over to the MITs. I think a lot has been lost by specialising too much, detectives should go into a General Office first for the experience. If you go to a General Office you can go anywhere, but if you go to a specialist unit, you can’t go anywhere without having a big learning curve.

OFFICER 22

Greencastle was fine, it was a mixed area running from Fortwilliam Park to the M2 motorway and from the Lough shore up to the Antrim Road. The cityside of the station was predominantly Protestant and we were well received, there was no hassle, no problems at all. As you moved into the more middle-class area, up towards the Antrim Road, again we were well received. It was slightly different in behind the station where it was a mixed area, as was the Whitewell Road. These were more challenging areas, but the Police were generally very well received in the Greencastle area. Bawnmore could be difficult. It was initially in Newtownabbey area, but they didn’t really police it, as they didn’t have the resources to go down there with everything going on in the rest of their area. We were only a stone’s throw away, so it’s a mystery why we didn’t have it earlier.

After I completed my probation I spent time in CID in Belfast City Centre. At that time the police were expanding, and, I was encouraged to sit the Sergeant’s exam, which I did and passed. CID was very good, and I learnt a lot. In Greencastle we only reported people for prosecution, whereas in CID everything was ‘arrest and charge’ which I had never previously done, so I had to learn very quickly. I found myself in the ‘Shop Lifting’ team where I arrested and charged dozens and dozens of people and went to Court every week. That year in CID was really, really, good and I learned a lot; it was really busy and interesting. We worked ‘split shifts’ 9am to 1pm and back in again at 7pm until 11, and, as the City Centre closed up at 8pm that gave us a bit of time to catch up with paperwork.

I think the 1981 Hunger Strike changed things, afterwards I noticed a big change in people’s attitude to us. I think the Hunger Strike was a key event in Northern Ireland and certainly for policing. I think the Protestant community was shocked to see that the Hunger Strikers were so committed that they starved themselves to death. For the community that would see itself as Catholic/Nationalist, I think it was huge shock for them too, as it was an indication that ‘The Troubles’ were here for a very long time. ‘The Troubles’ had been going on for 12 years by this time and the Hunger Strike just made it more long term. There was a bit of a change of attitude towards the Police, and, you could feel it on the streets and from the way people dealt with you. It was very strange.

When I went back to North Belfast 20 years later the Greencastle area had completely changed. The area behind the station was now 100% Protestant, as the Catholics had moved out. The Whitewell Road area, which is only a short distance from the station had become almost 100% Catholic. It was odd because the infrastructure of the Protestant community remained, the Methodist and Church of Ireland churches, the state school and the Orange Hall remained, but the Protestant community had

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gone, they didn’t live there anymore, they had moved up the road to ‘White City’ or into Rathcoole, so it was strange.

From talking to people in the area after I went back, they told me a big event for the area was the murder of Lindsay McCormack in 1983. Lindsay was the Neighbourhood Constable for Whitewell and was the senior man in the station. He went out every day on his own, never took anybody with him, he knew everybody in the community and he did the type of neighbourhood policing PSNI can only aspire to. He was out on the ‘Beat’ every day on his own. He was murdered for the reason he was so well integrated into the local community. For some years there hadn’t much terrorist activity by either side in Greencastle and that is why Lindsay’s murder was such a shock. During the early 70s there had been IRA activity around Bawnmore, Loyalist activity in Rathcoole, and, the station had been ‘rocketed’, but by the late 70s and up to the Hunger Strike the area was relatively quiet. There was no Army presence and there was no need to do searches for weapons, so it was probably as close to normal policing as you could get in North Belfast.

By 1998 when I went back it was a lot different. There was Loyalist activity in Rathcoole, Republican activity in Bawnmore and attitudes had changed for the worse. The communities had become estranged, there were no mixed communities anymore, the area had become polarised into Catholic and Protestant areas. Loyal Order parades, which we had dealt with by two people in a car to stop traffic, even in mixed areas, had become a real bone of contention, to the extent there was widescale rioting up and down the Whitewell Road following the ‘Black’ parade on the last Saturday in August 1997, which was previously unheard of. For the next nine months there was sectarian disorder most nights on the Whitwell Road. The communities had become polarised and there were agitators on both sides stoking the trouble. So, we had to adopt a more ‘hard’ policing style.

I later spent time in various parts of the RUC, including a short time in Drug Squad. It was different as I replaced John Dowd, the Sergeant who had been killed in the mortar attack in Newry. He had been my Instructor in the Training Centre and there I was replacing him, it was a bit surreal. Drugs Squad was normal policing, there was no security element to it although in some areas such as Newry, Lurgan and Armagh you had to be careful. It wasn’t just as simple as getting a warrant and searching a house, there were things we had to do. We had to clear even simple things like ‘stop and search’ operations, or, executing a search warrant with local Ops Planning and SB to make sure we weren’t tramping on anybody’s toes, and 99 times out of 100 we weren’t. It was just a case of a quick phone call and they usually said, ‘yes go ahead’.

The biggest challenge in my career was around Holy Cross. As part of the changes following the Patten Report, we were re-organising from Divisions to Districts and a lot of people were retiring. In the latter half of June 2001 we had difficulty on the Ardoyne Road, where there were always tensions with the Catholic school in a Protestant area. Going back to the 70s there had been the same difficulties with Everton, a Girls only state school, which was beside the Ardoyne shop fronts and the police had to escort the school kids to and from school. After the school closed things died down a bit. But in 2001 it kicked off again over nothing, somebody put up a flag and somebody else took offence with it, there was a fight between some parents and children, then suddenly there were hundreds of people on the street. There were rumours in Ardoyne that the kids were attacked and rumours in the Glenbryns that the Catholics were coming to burn the Protestants out and it just escalated overnight.

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There were protests the next day when the kids walked to school and the school management talked about closing the school, I told them not to be intimidated and that the police would do their best to keep people safe. We managed the situation until the end of the month and the start of the school holiday. I knew through the summer that tensions were high, and, that it wasn’t going to be easy if the Protestants decided to protest at the school after the summer holidays. It was to be the most difficult three and a half months of my entire police service.

We put in a police operation three times a day to get 100 school children up a 300m stretch of road safely. It cost millions, I think it was £3 million, and that’s just the Police overtime, which doesn’t include the opportunity cost, and, the cost of the Military who deployed in large numbers to support us. That was an extremely difficult time, a huge moral and operational dilemma for the Police, the Chief Constable and the Military. We considered every option, and, what we came up with was the best we could put in place on a daily basis.

There were police officers who were exhausted after being at Holy Cross every day for three and a half months, it nearly wrecked them. I have the utmost respect for those officers and what they did. They got precious little thanks from the organisation or from anybody else. We were faced by a situation which everybody backed away from, the Churches, the politicians they all backed off. The root cause wasn’t a policing issue, but it was left to the Police to resolve. I had something like 38 meetings with different groups over the course of the three and a half months to try and resolve it. It seemed to me that the Police were the only people trying to do something, everybody else stood back to watch and see what happened, because they didn’t want to take the blame if it went badly wrong. One side said we should stop the protest and push the protestors back, but they were protesting where they lived, some protesters were shouting out the windows of their homes and they had a right to protest. I asked, did they expect the police to go into people’s houses and beat them out of their homes? If the ACC had decided to do that we would have done it, but at what cost? We didn’t have a child physically injured during the protest, although some were emotionally traumatised. We had many police officers injured and a couple of police dogs; I received more letters of sympathy about the dogs than I did about the officers!

The whole thing was a huge dilemma. Should we allow a nasty vicious sectarian protest to continue? Could we have stamped it out? On any given day we could have arrested everyone but at what cost? The implications would have been felt elsewhere and I knew that if we over reacted, it would be ‘open season’ on Catholic schools in interface areas. I did receive intelligence one night that there were going to be protests at other Catholic schools in North Belfast and I had to put Police at them all to protect them. It was a hugely difficult time.

I think ‘The Troubles’ had a huge impact, as they diluted the capabilities of the Police in lots of ways. The RUC had plenty of people, but because of the constant threat we needed people to ‘look after’ other people, for example, in North Belfast vehicles didn’t go out unless there were 3 people in them, the driver, observer and ‘gunner’ in the back to provide security. In the rest of the UK police patrols were rarely ‘double crewed’ and police officers there went out on their own. I think you learn a great deal more when you are on your own, because if you are with somebody you tend to talk to each other. However, if you are on your own you have to get on with your work, and, you learn how to do things and to talk to people. I think as a result we had a skills deficit, and, I am not sure we were great at basic stuff such as talking to people.

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Many years later I became involved with OSPRE, the first skills based promotion system which involved testing interpersonal skills and knowledge. There was some research carried out after 2 years of OSPRE which showed that those who worked in less difficult areas, from a security perspective, places like Bangor, Newtownabbey, Lisburn and Coleraine did better in terms of OSPRE, particularly communication and interpersonal skills than people in difficult areas like Derry, South Armagh and West Belfast. One reason I put it down to is because in these ‘softer’ areas police had to deal with the public much more. The research didn’t go any further, it went into somebody’s ‘that’s too difficult to do’ box.

OFFICER 23

Policing here wasn’t anything like I envisaged it to be. In Belleek I just felt like a soldier and I hated that, hated it, although I tried to interact with people there. There was an ‘A Con’ in the station, who had been kept on from the mobilisation of the Special Constabulary in ‘68, he was a local with a fantastic knowledge and introduced me to a lot of people. Not everybody hated us, a lot of people did want to interact with us, and I enjoyed getting to know members of the local community. But no matter who I met it was always in my mind, ‘Are they befriending me because of an ulterior motive?’ I was always guarded.

I stayed in Belleek for about a year before the ‘A Con’ was to be transferred to Lisnaskea, he didn’t want to go. I volunteered to go in his place thinking it was a bigger station, closer to home and it would be more like ‘normal’ policing.

However, the job was actually ‘escorting’ explosives, and, when I got to Lisnaskea a guy on one of the Sections asked me if I would swop with him and I agreed, I went into ordinary duty and loved it. Back then we had to keep a 24 hour presence on the Main Street to deter bombers, during the day it was a 12 hour ‘Beat’ usually one guy, and, at night it was 2 men in a car doing VCPs. I loved the ‘Beat’, I spent my shift going shop to shop talking to people, I loved it. There was great interaction, people came and spoke to me; one day a guy approached me on the street and told me where to find a bomb and four rifles. He was a ‘big countryman’, I first met him in a local bar one night when I was off duty. I invited him to play a game of pool, we played a few frames and I bought him a pint before heading back to the station where I lived. It was a week later he gave me the information along with a sketch map where to find the munitions insisting I didn’t tell anybody who told me, I agreed. He was the sort of guy who could go anywhere, everybody knew him, and, nobody gave him a second glance.

He expressly told me not to tell the two Special Branch men in the station, he knew them both and wanted nothing to do with them, so I told my Inspector who put the area out of bounds. We did a recovery operation and got the bomb and rifles. A few days later SB came to me demanding to know who my source was, I refused to tell them saying he made me promise not to disclose his identity and I didn’t, but I did agree to ask him to speak to them. The source refused to speak to Special Branch telling me, ‘the D/Sgt was overheard saying he was going to a ‘meet’, he was followed, and people saw him talking to the source who is now compromised’, and that was why he didn’t want to talk to SB. I went back to the station to tell the SB Sergeant, but he couldn’t wait to get me in front of the Inspector, so I told them both and the Sergeant went ballistic.

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I later asked the guy why he gave me the information, and, he said the night I played pool with him was the first time a policeman had spoken to him. That made me feel good and shows how talking to people can help; we talked to people and we got a lot of information. Talking to people is something I did throughout my service and that was one of the good things about the police. I think the police today are under pressure and don’t have the time to talk to people.

I worked in Tyrone for a few years and that proved testing for all the family as I travelled up and down to Tyrone from Belfast. On the run up to the 12 th July in Pomeroy, for about 2 months I had been doing in the region of 15 hour days, and, in the three weeks leading up to the 12 th I had only been home for 2 evenings for about 3 hours before heading back to work. We got the parade over and I said to my Superintendent I wanted a week off as I needed to spend some time with my family, he said he couldn’t let me go because he had allowed another Inspector off. I pointed out that the other Inspector lived in in the area and went home every day while I couldn’t and hadn’t been home for weeks, he just told me I couldn’t have leave. Well, I just gave him an ultimate, either I have leave or I am ‘on the sick’ because I needed time with my family. Working like that created a tremendous strain on the family with my wife wondering what was going on when I was away from home for so long. In the end I took a week off and during that week I went into personnel in Lisnasharragh and spoke to the Superintendent asking for a transfer to Belfast and closer home, all he could offer me was MSU, I told him I would take it and a week later I started work in Belfast.

On my first day back in Belfast it was a Saturday working from 2pm to 2am, at 230pm we were called to a bomb scare at a pub in Corporation Street. There was a feud between the IRA and INLA at the time, a man walked into the pub, set a bag on the bar and said ‘bomb you have 20 mins’, we arrived and cleared the area. I was standing back about 100 metres or so, when I saw an old man walking towards the pub. At that time the pub was door – wall – window – wall - door, I don’t know where the ‘wee man’ came from, he must have been in his house and didn’t hear us knocking his door. I ran over to him shouting ‘Stop don’t go in there’, he stopped beside the wall between the door and the window, I stopped beside the wall near the second door, just as I told him there was a bomb it exploded and blew out the doors and windows and the ‘wee man’ said to me ‘Well it’s gone off, come on in son and we’ll have a drink’, that’s the sense humour people had back then.

Once we were released from that we were sent to a riot in the Ardoyne in which ‘coffee jar’ devices had been thrown. The Army were there helping to deal with the riot and defusing a ‘coffee jar’ device. We deployed on foot behind our vehicles and the next thing I saw was a ‘coffee jar’ coming towards me, it hit a grass bank and rolled to within a few feet of me, it didn’t explode, I thought ‘Shit’ and called for a withdrawal, as the driver of my vehicle started to reverse he almost drove over the device before I managed to stop him. Anyway, we got back safely, and the device was defused. Then at about 1130pm we were going down the Shankill when a local call sign, dealing with an alleged Rape, called for backup, as we were nearby we went around to help. I went up to the front door and knocked, the next thing I heard was DUMF, DUMF, DUMF and I looked up the street, there was a guy with a pistol shooting at me, he had an old Webley, so the rounds were probably weak. So that was my first day back in Belfast.

I never got to do the London ‘bobby’ style of policing, I think that the ‘bobby’ style of policing has changed. I think we advanced quicker than the rest of the UK because we were armed, and because

DOING POLICING Page 89 of 109 of what we had to deal with. I think the police in the rest of the UK will one day be armed because that is the way things are moving.

In GB, if the police get into a situation involving a firearm they ‘crash out’ the Armed Response people who arrive with an adrenaline rush. Whereas, because we had a gun 24/7 we didn’t have that adrenaline rush. I feel we progressed policing, I feel there are a lot of benefits for policing that came out of our experiences in ‘The Troubles’. We now have RIPA, which came about because the RUC, contrary to what protagonists say, the RUC actually asked for it, and, pushed for it. Raymond White asked Maggie Thatcher for legislation to govern the use of informants. Obviously, we knew the informants were in the IRA, UVF or UDA, and, by talking to them we were talking to criminals. Famously Maggie said something like ‘You’re doing a great job. Don’t get caught.’ RIPA came about because of the pressure from the RUC who wanted regulation.

The expertise we developed in investigations, public order and intelligence was available at lower ranks compared to other forces, for example D/Sgts investigated murders here because of the number of murders we had, we had to learn quickly to deal with things. Special Branch had to develop informant management, and that specialism has gone worldwide; Police forces from around the world come to the PSNI for the knowledge gained by the RUC. Former officers are educating and training police around the world in all these specialisms. That’s the positives, the negatives were the pressures and stresses on families.

In ‘B’ Division, West Belfast, I was there as a Sergeant and Ops Chief, no matter what was going on, it had to be planned, we didn’t go out on patrol for the sake of patrolling. We had to have a purpose to go out. In other parts of Belfast, you briefed the ‘crew’ on what happened since they were last on duty, and, off they went. In West Belfast we had 2 ‘crews’ and 2 Army ‘crews’ a total of 4 vehicles, the Sergeant didn’t just brief them and send them out, he/she went with them. Everybody was briefed on what we were going to do, where we were going and why. In West Belfast, ‘B’ Division, the threat was always high, so we didn’t patrol aimlessly as that just made us a target; we had to have a purpose to go out and something specific to do. This wasn’t the case in quieter areas.

In West Belfast if we got a call about a RTA with somebody injured we sent an Ambulance first to check it out, and, if they confirmed it we would go. Because I had been a Sergeant there before people knew me and they phoned in asking for me by name; I often got calls saying there is something funny on ‘such and such’ a road near the top junction be careful. When I got calls like that I told SB, put the area Out of Bounds and called in the military to mount a clearance operation. I remember we recovered a bomb in a wheelie bin left at the side of the road because of one of these calls, we got a lot of those calls and information from the community, because most of the community wanted peace. I’ll never forget going to a house in ‘Andytown’ on a legitimate enquiry, 2 police land rovers and 2 army land rovers pulled up outside the house, when the woman answered the door she started screaming and shouting but allowed me into her home, once she closed the door she said. ‘Sorry you know what it’s like around here. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Then after a quick cuppa and a chat she says when I was leaving ‘You know I have to shout at you again’ and she did. But they were decent people, they had to live that way, and, they couldn’t be seen to speak to us for their own safety.

Most of the Catholic community wanted to support the police even though a lot of them had bad experiences of policing. A lot of ‘folk’, may be with good reason resented the police, but I felt we had

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to keep trying to get their support. Some may be had harsh treatment at the hands of police, and, on several occasions, I told Constables to ‘back off’; I did this in both East and West Belfast, and, in Tyrone. I remember on one occasion a constable was hostile to a group of young people almost trying to provoke a reaction, he had to be ‘reined in’. In Tyrone a constable was being aggressive to a known IRA man. I told him to be professional, even though he was dealing with a known Provo he should be professional and treat him as he would anybody else, I also pointed out that should he ever prosecute him he could get off because of the way the constable was treating him then. There were times I challenged a constable on why he did something, or, the way he did it.

There were those on both sides who would challenge us, Protestants would say ‘you wouldn’t do that on the Falls’, and those on the Falls would say the same thing ‘you wouldn’t do it on the Shankill, or, you’re only doing that because I am Catholic’. I remember when I was in Donegall Pass when the Clubs and Pubs were emptying, a coloured guy came up to me mouthing off, and when I told him to go home he said, ‘you’re doing that because I am black’ I told him again to go home as we had ‘enough trouble with orange and green and didn’t need to add black to the mix’!

OFFICER 24

At first, understandably I was inexperienced. I remember taking a recognisance (bail) form to the Sub Divisional Commander in Lurgan asking him to release a prisoner on bail, (a Sergeant can sign it), but here I was asking the Superintendent. He just said, ‘I think you’ll find a Sergeant can sign this’, but he signed it anyway.

As I grew older and gained experience I came to realise that sometimes you need to give matters time. A senior Constable in Lurgan used to say to me, to ‘slow down, slow down you don’t need to be running at 100mph’, I was constantly running around doing things. He didn’t mean to slow down as in being lazy, just to take a little bit more time and think things through. Probably I didn’t think about things as deeply as the ‘old hands’ did. I saw things as black or white, and, as I grew in experience I realised there are lots of shades of grey. I loved policing, doing the job. I saw things that I remember to this day.

As a Detective Inspector I once went to a beautiful house where the marriage had broken up and the wife had poisoned the two dogs and researched on the family computer, how to commit suicide. I was at the hospital earlier that day with my son who had broken his leg falling off a trampoline when I got the call to go the scene. The lady had a daughter the same age as my son whom she had also poisoned. I walked in to the house ‘suited and booted’ in the white forensic suit along with the Forensic Medical Officer (a doctor contracted by the police to assist investigations). I sensed that the doctor didn’t want to see what lay before us, and, we knew that it wasn’t going to be pretty sight. The two dogs had been poisoned and we went upstairs into a bedroom where there was the wee girl in her nightdress lying on top of the bed. I remember her fingernails were painted, there she was all laid out on the bed, and, her mum had hung herself off the end of the bed. Although I have seen more gruesome scenes in my career, it occurred to me that this was such a waste of life, and, of the affects that mental illness can have on people. But then you get into professional mode and start to think about preserving the scene, looking for witnesses, examining the computer and all the other bits and pieces.

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I worked as an operational officer throughout my career, except for the 2 years I was in Training, because I wanted to be a ‘hands on’ police officer. For me doing the job was about investigating crime, helping people and everything else connected with policing with the community.

I investigated a paedophile ring in West Belfast, where a man ran a First Aid Group and held training sessions in his home. He brought young boys into his house, and along with other adults he sexually abused these young boys. Some of the abuse was major and serious. The families came to the police and a colleague, who was then in the CARE unit worked with me on the investigation. We investigated, collected the evidence and brought the abusers to court where they were convicted and jailed. I am proud of that investigation and the service we gave to the community. After court the families presented me and the CARE officer with pens engraved with our rank and names, which our bosses allowed us to keep; To me this was significant, it was the family's acknowledgement that they recognised we were part of the police, the RUC, and we had done our best to serve and protect their community, and, brought the offenders to justice. I am proud of that pen, it’s up there alongside many other things I achieved in my career, and, I am sure the other officer feels the same way.

Serving in West Belfast particularly, I felt at times like being a soldier more so than any other district that I worked in. For example, just to attend a Road Traffic Accident on the Grosvenor Road was a major logistical operation. Firstly, we had to put out an Army multiple of 16 soldiers to provide ground cover, sometimes we had a helicopter up and we would seek information from our military colleagues on what information or images the helicopter could provide of the scene. We spent time planning our route in and out, and, to ensure that this was not a "come-on" where we were being lured into a terrorist attack. Elsewhere I just checked if the area was out of bounds, grabbed the measuring tape and accident booklet, and, if everything was seemingly normal, went to the scene as quickly as possible.

I remember the HMSU coming into the station one winter evening. They must have been short of crews for whatever reason, and they wanted to show a ‘normal’ patrol presence or appearance for that area. They wanted us to drive around in our regular patrol structure of two police Land Rovers and an Army Land rover which provided us with top cover against snipers or bombers. The HMSU asked me to give them a police crew and a ‘Mike Echo'(military escort). They went first out of the station, and we followed along behind. The whole operation didn't take that long, but it seemed like 2 hours! We drove up the Grosvenor Road, the Falls, Andersontown Road down Kennedy Way and back along the motorway, it was just that square, we drove the route a couple of times. Talk about the sphincter muscle twitching! The HMSU didn’t tell us what was going on because we didn’t need to know. We just followed them wondering what was going on and because we didn’t know, we thought the worst was going to happen. After a while they got a radio message and after saying a brief ‘Thanks’ they left the area, and, left us wondering what it was all about.

In 1989 I was in Springfield Road when there was a bombing at the Falls Baths. When a Military foot patrol came out of North Howard Street Mill, the PIRA exploded a bomb at the side of Falls Baths killing a lady pedestrian and injuring a gentleman. The Ammunition Technical Officer was a guy called John Howard. He spoke with me and others telling us that he wasn’t long in Northern Ireland and that he had recently got married. He decided to clear the suspect device in the Baths himself in darkness which is really dangerous. He stood next to me as he suited up, and, as he readied the

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Electronic Counter Measures equipment he told us that he wanted to clear the Baths as soon as possible so he could speak to his wife on the telephone as he had arranged earlier to do. As he walked into the Baths he stood on a pressure pad exploding another booby trap bomb which killed him instantly. It was surreal that one minute you could be talking to someone and the next his life was over. That just brought home the dangers we faced, and, for the rest of the week that I was on night duty, I slept at home with the blinds open as I didn't want to be in the dark. I still think about John Howard, particularly around Armistice Day, along with the other colleagues we lost and whom I knew personally having served with them. To mention a few they include, Inspector Brian Martin, Constables Alan McCloy and Tracy Doak, but the two minutes silence is over before I can remember everyone that I knew who were killed in the Troubles.

Because of the dangers of terrorist attack and ‘come-ons’, sometimes we did not go to every call immediately. So, the service to the public was not what it would be in any other normal environment. I remember going to a high value armed robbery at a shopping centre. Back in those days I had the obligatory moustache, and, in CID you had to have the trademark Barbour coat, or, its lookalike, over a blazer and slacks. I suppose this made all the male officers look similar and help prevent anyone being singled out. I went to the robbery in a police Land Rover. I was a detective then and the staff from a shop were banking their cash when 2 robbers with guns came up behind them and robbed them. As I got out of the Land Rover with my document folder in my hand, all ready to start investigating the robbery, a lady walking close by me grabbed a ‘shitty’ nappy from her child who was in a pram and slapped me with it right across the side of my face. It was open, and the contents were across my face and down the front of my clothes. I looked at her in shock as she just walked off. I asked a soldier near me if he saw what had happened and he just shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t see a thing’. All I could do was clean myself up, apologise about the smell and continue with the investigation.

OFFICER 25

When I passed out I was posted to Oldpark in North Belfast, covering the Ardoyne, which was quite a tight area where there had been a lot of killings, a lot of shootings, and bombings. It was a very small area and in fact in the first week, on the eighth day I was there, I arrived on the Saturday and not the following day, but the following Sunday, we were involved in a big ambush where five soldiers were wounded. It could easily have been our Land Rover that was opened up on. Two of the lads died, one of them almost died in my arms, it was a brutal area, but again even there, there was no sectarianism. I think the area was half Nationalist Catholic, half Protestant Loyalist and I really did see the impartiality of the force. It was very refreshing because we had as many or more problems from the Loyalists as we did from the Catholics. Even though it was a hard green Republican area, once the door was closed, and I often think about this, we would have done numerous searches and I would have accompanied the Army on numerous searches, because they always had to have a Policeman with them, the IRA were very active at that stage still but once the door was closed, the Catholic people would have put breakfast on for you, but they were terrified themselves; if the door was open or they were in the street, they wouldn’t even look at you. They just looked away, they averted their eyes; people were just terrified of these ‘hard men’ around their area.

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My Army service had a massive, massive influence because the good thing about the Oldpark area from a Policing point of view was it was half anti-terrorist and half normal policing. There were some of my colleagues from the Training Centre who went to areas like Bangor and Donaghadee where it was just normal policing and they didn’t get an insight or a foundation into the anti-terrorist side. Others went to hard, hard areas, where they never got any normal policing, whereas in Oldpark I got an ideal mixture of both. So, I had lots of files, lots of experience, but the Army influence was big because, (a) there were lots of things we couldn’t do without the Army, there were certain areas we couldn’t go into without the Army. The problem for us was our inexperience, in my section we had a Sergeant who probably had seven or eight years’ service and five men, maybe six men at the most and one woman. The ‘Senior Man’ had just come out of his probation the week I arrived there, so the inexperience was massive; the only training they had was the twelve weeks initial training, so the problem we had was a wildly inexperienced Section. All the Sections were the same, I’m not sure there would have been more than six Constables who were out of their probation, and here we were in a very hard area, and, the only people who really knew how to handle weapons like rifles or sub-machine guns, were the ex-Army boys, and, there were very few of us. There was maybe one per Section and I think we made a big difference. We only had two rifles and two sub-machine guns, but I always made sure I had one of them.

The area was bad, and I can remember ‘The Branch’ coming back to us on one occasion and saying they had intelligence that the IRA had tried to ambush the Police, and, the only reason they didn’t open fire was one of the boys with a rifle looked like he knew what he was doing with it, and it put them off opening fire. I think it must have been me, because it was my Section on duty that morning, and I was the only one with a rifle. Also, on things like first aid and patrolling, walking properly, getting out of the vehicles and dispersing quickly, it was me who was saying, get over there, do this, do that because of my Army training; it was purely down to my Army training, I wasn’t born like that and the Police training was based on a civilian syllabus laid down by Lord Hunt. So, you did your twelve weeks in ‘The Depot’, the Training Centre, then up to Belfast for a week of weapon training, which was totally inadequate, and then for those who did the driving course, it was four weeks in the driving school, and that was it. So, in no way, were we trained in any paramilitary tactics, any anti-ambush drills or anything. When I arrived there, the Sergeant and Inspector had been shot dead a couple of months before, we had one vehicle out all the time and a second vehicle, which we could only man if the Part Time Reservists came in.

The first aid training was by St John’s Ambulance, it was basically a triangular bandage over a dislocated shoulder or collar bone and that was it. I remember going to the Station Sergeant and saying, ‘look Sarge there’s no First Aid kits’, and I remember him telling me he had put a First Aid kit in the vehicle one time and a few months later it had all disappeared as people had used the bandages for various non-first aid things. I think I forced him as he reluctantly went and opened up a big walk-in cupboard and there were about ten first aid kits, we put one in each vehicle but there wasn’t even a shell dressing, so it needed the Army support. The Army influence was big, and we actually could have done with a bit more.

The Army influence reduced over time as our training became more realistic and developed. We had the Operational Training Unit, OTU, running courses at Ballykinler and Magilligan, doing a lot of anti- ambush training and so on. But yeah, the Army influence was good, and I don’t think in any way it was a negative influence, I think it was a very positive thing.

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In my first couple of months there was a shooting incident every day, the most dangerous time was going to and from work because you could be followed. There was really only one way into Oldpark Police Station, we had to approach up the OIdpark Road as the other route was really totally out and the one we used, no matter what way we approached, we were funnelled for that last several hundred yards. So, you drove into work with your Walther pistol under your thigh and your seatbelt off and you made sure you were alert all the way. We always paraded for duty, there was a half hour built-in overtime every day and most stations were like that I think, so you got in fifteen minutes early to get tooled up and briefed and to be ready to cover the boys finishing duty. And then of course the other vulnerable thing was ‘come-ons’ and we did have several ‘come-ons’, where the IRA tried to draw us into an ambush by making a false crime report.

On average a Constable in Oldpark and most Belfast Stations, certainly in the hard areas you pretty much had a hundred hours overtime a month. Now, the hundred hours overtime was made up, you had half an hour every day, minimum, if you were on ‘Earlys’, the Early turn ran from 7.15 am – 3.15 pm but you rarely got away before 4.30/5.00 pm. On the ‘Lates’, you started at 2.45pm, sometimes you would have come in early, you rarely got away at 11.15 pm, maybe some days you did, but it could be one, two or three in the morning. Night duty you started at 10.45 pm and finished at 7.15 am, but again, sometimes you were asked to come in early, and, very often were held on after 7.15 am if there had been some incident during the night, or an arrest or something like that. You were scheduled eight Rest Days a month but were rostered to work four of them. If you wanted any of those Rest Days off, you had to go and ask your Sergeant, and, then sometimes you had to ask the Station Sergeant because he actually detailed your duty. Some of the Rest Days could be fourteen hours long, but the beauty of that was you got fourteen hours at time and a half so by the time you added the 100 hours overtime to your normal working hours, there wasn’t very much time for socialising. If you were on ‘Earlys’, you couldn’t go and drink the night before because you were getting up at 5.00 am or 5.15 am in the morning to get to work, if you were on ‘Lates’ there was no socialising, and if you were on ‘Nights’ there was no socialising because you couldn’t go out and cut away at 9.30 pm to go to work, so actually there wasn’t a huge amount of socialising. I was lucky I played Rugby for one of the Police teams, so I got away on a Saturday for four hours, but, socialising very much revolved around drinking, and, you obviously only socialised in certain areas. I think the whole Police Force gravitated to certain safe areas in South Antrim, North Down and places like that. So, your socialising was very much curtailed.

For me personally, there was a great deal of pride in being in the RUC. I had a great deal of pride in doing a job which I sincerely believed was worthwhile and I got confidence from that. I made modest rank, I could have made more I think if I’d gone to Uniform, but I didn’t want to go back to Uniform. I was in Special Branch and then CID for twenty four years or thereabouts. I enjoyed Uniform very much, in fact I loved my two and a half years in Uniform, absolutely loved it, and one of the reasons I loved it was because I put so much effort into it and I got to know my law and my procedures, and I got to know all the bad people. I used to volunteer to do cases, to do files which ordinarily should have been left to CID and I would say, if you show me how to do this, I’ll do it and your confidence grows from doing those things. I enjoyed Uniform Police work very much but felt that there was something more to be done, and that was in Special Branch, where I spent over twenty years doing about five different major jobs, so I had a great deal of experience it was a good feeling because I felt I was doing something worthwhile.

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It was worthwhile in terms of saving life, and, Special Branch saved a huge number of lives in Northern Ireland throughout ‘The Troubles’. It was beautifully put to me by a former Head of CID in Belfast, who said, ‘the role of CID is to investigate this morning’s murder, the role of Special Branch is to make sure that this evening’s murder does not take place’, and, throughout my service the Branch was exclusively doing that, it was constant operations. So, I think it was worthwhile, our primary function was not to arrest and put terrorists before the Courts, that was a secondary function after saving life. Our primary job was to thwart the terrorist and then capture them in circumstances where CID had enough evidence to get them convicted in Court. And when that happened, there was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction because it was hard done, it was hard, hard done. The returns on the effort were like one per cent, two per cent, that’s how hard it was.

It was a great experience, I loved it. There was very, very close comradeship between the guys in the section. We didn’t tend to socialise together a tremendous amount, when we did it would have been at an Annual Dinner Dance in some safe hotel somewhere. I mean we had to go a distance, I remember we had to go to Donaghadee from Oldpark which is, in Northern Irish terms, a long way to get a safe location. So you had your dinner dance once a year, you’d have a Section ‘Do’ once a year, maybe with the wives and girlfriends, but we would have a drink together maybe once a fortnight or whatever, but because of the time element and because of where we all lived, there was a ‘bomb burst’ after work, with boys going to South Antrim, to Lisburn, to North Down, it wasn’t convenient, and we didn’t live in each other’s pocket the way you would have done in the Army. In the Army you worked together, you played together, and, you slept in the same dormitory, but the police wasn’t like that, although the comradeship was still great. We had an armoured Land Rover, it was the first long-wheelbase prototype and we would have been in the back of this thing for 14 hours, so the craic was powerful, and you always got a laugh. The great thing about uniform duty is it’s so varied, while CID and Special Branch duty is actually very serious, that’s the big difference I found. You didn’t get so many laughs in Special Branch or CID, you got some laughs, but you didn’t get the same number of laughs. In Uniform you had a laugh every day, a really cracking experience every day.

In Uniform we dealt with Road Traffic Accidents, old ladies being locked out, a cat being stuck somewhere, family rows, a lot of family rows, and rows between neighbours, interestingly I don’t think there was ever a family row or dispute where alcohol wasn’t involved. There were petrol bombings and the aftermath of murders, unfortunately I was at a few of those, the aftermath of bombings, searches with the Army, occasionally searches without the Army, vehicle checkpoints, VCPs all the time, that was how we built up our local knowledge. I was lucky in that my second Sergeant, the first Sergeant was good enough, but the second Sergeant was incredibly enthusiastic and if we weren’t doing anything, we would just throw in a VCP for five minutes, stop four or five vehicles, note the people, get to know them and then lift it and move on somewhere else. And we would be doing that all the time, that built up a tremendous knowledge and then when they brought in this system, the CI1s, the Criminal Intelligence Forms 1, to record the driver of the vehicle, the passengers and so on and put them into a Collator and that encouraged us even more. My Section put in more CI1s in the first few months than all the Sections put together simply because of the Sergeant’s enthusiasm, we built up a local knowledge which made our work a hell of a lot easier. Local knowledge definitely makes your work easier, you recognise people, their cars and who associates with who.

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I dealt with a thing one time, it was slightly out of our area, the Divisional Boundary ran down the middle of a street, on the other side of the street there had been a particularly bad incident, in which a young girl had been indecently assaulted and one of the family’s pet dogs had been killed and some guns stolen from the house. The young girl was about 11, the parents were out at the time and although it wasn’t our area we responded to it but weren’t needed because the local station had provided people. But I went down, I knew that just round the corner there was a Brothel, I went round the corner and it was in the dark, I knocked on the door and I said to the lady who ran the place, there had been an incident round the corner and asked had she or any of her girls seen anything, and they had, they saw a car with one headlight sitting on some waste ground adjacent to where they were; they couldn’t describe the car other than it had one headlight. I went over and shone the torch and I could see the tyre tracks. I told the Inspector from the other Division ‘there’s a car somewhere about, with one headlight’ and he thanked me, in fact he did something very good at that point because he said thanks. I walked off, he followed me about 30 yards and called me back and said, “Constable, thanks”. And that was good leadership, because I was a Probationer Constable, as we all were, and there he was saying, well done, that’s the sort of thing leaders should do. He put out an all stations bulletin, and, the car was stopped about five minutes later with the guys in the car, with the guns. We got the result because of local knowledge.

Funny enough that brothel, the first couple of times I talked to that lady, I had no idea it was a brothel, in my naivety I thought her nieces from the country were coming to stay with her. It turned out she was the widow of a Major who had been in one of the Irish Regiments in World War II and she was a very distinguished lady. I used to talk to her at the garden gate and I would see these smiling faces up at the window and I thought, ‘oh she’s got some lovely nieces’, it was only later it dawned on me that it was a ‘whore house’. You can’t get enough local knowledge and that’s why people should stay in an area, get out of their cars and get on foot, because you’ll never pick it up unless you’re stopping and talking to people even if it’s for 60 seconds.

The IRA feared people talking to the Police, absolutely, the IRA, that’s why I mentioned earlier about the intimidation that there was in the Ardoyne. I mean the people there were terrified, Martin Meehan would have been one of the main IRA men there at the time, but there were others and they had the local population totally cowed and you can’t blame them, because they had to live in the area. They wouldn’t help us at all overtly, covertly they helped us a very great deal.

The IRA threat had quite a bad influence on our attempts to deliver normal policing because we were cooped up inside the armoured Land Rover, so one of the main ways we got to know the people was through vehicle checkpoints, another way was just walking on foot and stopping and talking to people where we could, but in the likes of Ardoyne, hard Ardoyne, they wouldn’t talk to you in daylight. The other way we got to know people was when they called for us, when we got a call, and there were all sorts of reasons for calls, car broken into, trailers stolen, house burgled, son had been assaulted or to deliver an accident message. I remember one time going to a house, it was a Sunday morning I think quite early, we had just taken over on the Early turn, maybe about 7.30, we knocked on the door, the family were up and I was about to deliver a message that their son had been in a car accident and was lying in the hospital with a broken leg. I remember this man opening the door, I had no family at the time so I didn’t fully appreciate what it means to have a child, he was in a dressing gown and his wife was up too, obviously they been up all night because their son hadn’t come home, and of course, the worry in those days was it could be a sectarian incident. I don’t

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know, I think possibly they were Protestants, but it didn’t matter because people were being murdered all over the place, I remember as the man opened the door the look of dread on his face when he saw my uniform and the peaked cap, and he just said, ‘Oh Christ Constable, it’s not my son is it, it’s not my son?’ and I immediately burst into a big smile to allay his fears and I said, ‘Oh he’s fine, he’s fine and look, he’s all right, he’s all right, he is in hospital and he’s broken his leg, but that’s all’; the guy nearly kissed me, he nearly broke down with emotion and relief and I remember thinking, God, that must be what it is to be a parent, to be worried about your son like that. So, you got to know people, but you couldn’t meet them where the paramilitaries could see, you had to meet them somewhere where you weren’t being observed, because the people were terrified.

Did the terrorists tried to exploit our willingness to deliver a policing service? Absolutely they did and that’s why the come-ons were always a big worry. When we got a call somewhere, we immediately thought could this be, I mean every single call we got, could this be a come-on? Certainly in the Oldpark area, and it didn’t have to be in the ‘hard’ areas, it could have been in the ‘middle of the road’ areas where there were lots of streets, nice houses with gardens, mixed areas, that’s the sort of place that you had to worry that there was a car bomb waiting for you or something like that, or a sniper. Up in Oldpark, you immediately thought, could this be a come-on? Then you thought, how urgent is it, do we have to go straight away, or, do we let it soak for a wee while? And, what route do we take to get there? Could the come-on be on the route, or at the end? One that really springs to mind is, we got a call one dark winter Sunday night around about 9 o’clock. On the Oldpark Road there was a Co-Op store and the obvious way to this place was to go from the Station down the main road, which by that time had become exclusively Nationalist, it used to be Loyalist on the left, but the Loyalists had all pretty much moved out and Nationalists had moved in. I was the ‘Observer’ so I was in charge as there was no Sergeant on duty, and I said, we’ll go the long way round, we went round the way of Cliftonville Road and Rosapenna. Once again my military training kicked in and I said ‘Stop the vehicle about 100 metres short of the junction’, I got out and I went forward and I looked at this suspect device in the doorway of the Co-Op store, I looked at it from well in cover, I was well back, I mean I’m talking at least 50 yards away, but the main Oldpark Road was up to the right and I was standing well back from that, I went back to the boys and I said, ‘I don’t like this, we’ll get the Army’. One of them said, ‘ah are you sure? it will take ages’, getting the Army meant, they would deploy perhaps a company of troops out from Flax Street, they would spread out, and soak the entire area. Now this exposed the Army to danger, but it had the effect of suppressing terrorist activity because the IRA then didn’t know where the Army was, where all the patrols were, and, they didn’t know if they opened fire where the other Army patrols would be and if they could get away. But the problem with getting them was, it could take up to an hour for them to deploy and that would mean, by the time we got them out and got the ATO out, the Ammunition Technical Officer, to disrupt this thing, we could be going well beyond midnight here. I insisted we get the Army, so we put the call in and we waited.

The Army deployed and eventually the ATO came and disrupted the suspect device which turned out to be an elaborate hoax. Whilst we were doing this, about, maybe about an hour, an hour and a half into the operation, we got word on the radio that a well known IRA man had been spotted moving from up on our right, back into the Ardoyne proper and then another one, and then another. The next day Special Branch told us that these boys had been up the street with a Garand Rifle and an Armalite waiting to shoot a Policeman walking across to this hoax device. So, if I’d been stupid enough to walk up to the thing, or, approached from a different route they would probably have

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shot me dead. I wouldn’t say it was a sixth sense, but you do get a sense of danger if you’re doing enough of this sort of thing, you get a sense of what could be dangerous and what’s a calculated risk.

OFFICER 26

The 14 women in my Squad all went to Belfast where we were attached to the Belfast Police Commissioner’s, now ACC’s, Office. We dealt with incidents involving women and children, did court duty, and traffic duty in Belfast city centre. At that time the traffic flowed freely through the city centre, we did the traffic crossings because there were no women attached to Musgrave Street or Donegall Pass at the time. When we paraded for duty at Castlereagh Woman Sergeant Lyons gave us tokens to travel into town to do duty, sometimes the bus conductor didn’t take the tokens from us, so we could use them other times. We walked from our flat to the Commissioner’s Office, because to use the bus meant travelling into the city centre and getting another out to Castlereagh. Of course, we didn’t have the money for that either, so we walked, sometimes it was a brisk walk and sometimes it was a run, but luckily, we were often able to get lifts and used all sorts of transport, that was before ‘The Troubles’, so there was no bother. I worked with an experienced Woman Constable to learn the ‘job’, we mostly dealt with women and children offences and that type of thing.

My first pay in Enniskillen was £54 a month, out of that I had to pay for food, so there was much left, and then when I got the flat I had rent to pay, which was maybe £20 a month, it worked out that I was left with just a couple of pounds a month.

As vacancies arose in other stations we were distributed out, after a few months I was told I was going to Newtownabbey where there were no women police, so with another Woman Constable from Tennent Street we were the first women police in Newtownabbey. It was strange, the men there had never worked with women and I think they didn’t know what to do with us. Anyway, at the time we mostly dealt with offences dealing with women and there were quite a lot of those. There were no woman police in Carrick or Larne, so we covered those areas too as well as Newtownabbey and Glengormley, it was busy. We had Rathcoole which was the biggest housing estate in Europe at the time, and there was a lot of work from it, nevertheless, looking back it was very good. When I moved to Newtownabbey, I had no car and had to travel by 2 buses, or get a lift, eventually I think I was classed as an ‘incoming worker’ and that’s how I got a flat in Rushpark. Travelling by bus was OK, it was only for a short time before I got the flat. I didn’t travel to work in Newtownabbey wearing uniform, but I did when I was working from the Commissioner’s Office at Castlereagh.

The other girl I worked with in Newtownabbey had about 10 years service, it was good being busy as you got plenty of practice and experience. After a couple of years the other girl moved to Carrick and a girl from Enniskillen arrived to replace her. I was in Newtownabbey until 1972, in 1971 I was talked into doing the Sergeant’s promotion exam, I did it, and was successful. I knew I wouldn’t get promoted so I waited a year before applying, and, I was successful and promoted to Musgrave Street in 1972.

In Newtownabbey we were accountable to the local authorities, a District Inspector was in charge with a Head Constable. Newtownabbey wasn’t part of Belfast, it was part of County Antrim. In the Woman Police pool at the Commissioner’s Office, there was a female DI and Head Constable, and,

DOING POLICING Page 99 of 109 there were Woman Sergeants in Hastings Street and Mountpottinger. In Newtownabbey we did the same duties as the men, we did SDO and were out as Observer in the car, it was different in Belfast. The station was completely open to the public, anyone could walk in, there was nothing around the station at all. We covered such a wide area that we were called out to deal with offences involving women and children in Carrick and Larne. At the time the men were in Londonderry and Newry, so we did everything, at times the SDO was the only person in the station, and, many times I was the only person in the station, and, that was after ‘the Troubles’ had started. There weren’t many radios, what there were were massive, we had one in the station and one in the ‘car’. I remember one time when I was SDO, there wasn’t another person in the station, it was the time when there was a bounty on foxes, people brought in their tongues, and this man came in with a bag of them, I just took the bag, I wasn’t going to count them, I just filled in the forms and passed them on to the Station Sergeant.

We didn’t have big numbers either, there was probably about 6 CID, women didn’t do ‘Nights’, we were on call and the other policewoman lived in Belfast while I lived just down the road in Rushpark, so I was the first called out. Nearly every weekend there were dances in Carrick and usually early Sunday morning I got a knock on my door, we had no phones in those days, so if you were needed they just sent someone to knock on your door. There was no overtime, we just had two days off a month, there was very little time off. Each shift was about 8 hours, but it could last longer depending on what you were doing, and of course starting time could vary as well. There was no paid overtime, everybody was working on, you were working for free, I think we did that because we understood the position, that we had to do it, and, we did it, we accepted it, we had chosen a career and that was part of it really.

‘The Troubles’ had started, Newtownabbey wasn’t really affected that much, obviously ‘The Troubles’ started in 1968, and at the time a lot of the men were being used at Londonderry and Newry. For a time, there were so many men away CID were put into uniform, and, it was just them and us, the two policewomen, to run the whole Newtownabbey area. It was difficult at the time, I remember the men going up to Londonderry and coming back after 2 or 3 days, they had no change of clothes and we wondered how long the trouble would last, and, obviously they lasted quite a while. So, we weren’t really involved, Newtownabbey, as regarding terrorism was relatively quiet, so we had few problems that way, but it was our colleagues coming back with injuries, and, they had no facilities to stay over for the 2 or 3 days they were away. That was very difficult for them.

There was no training for the men who went to Londonderry, I think it was just their initial training. When ‘The Troubles’ started there was virtually no warning what was going to happen, we were thrown in at the deep end and there was nothing we could do. The men were coming back injured, their shirts covered in blood, they had no change of clothing, and, very little food was provided to them, so it was very difficult. They didn’t have any equipment, I remember when they came back from Newry, they were using the old tenders, the driver handed the Station Sergeant the keys and told him that the tender had been taken and burned by the rioters. Nobody had any warning of what would happen, we were thrown in at the deep end. While the Policewomen weren’t involved, we were left to look after the area, dealing with everyday things like accidents, burglaries and all the rest of it.

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In any station I have been I have never seen the police do anything sectarian, and, I have always worked in areas with mixed communities. In Tennent Street you had the Ardoyne and the Shankill, we were between the two, one side didn’t love us much more that the other. I think the Loyalists thought we were more inclined to overlook things on the Republican side and vice versa.

While I worked in Belfast there were times we left at 330am to go and do searches in Londonderry. Sometimes there was a convoy of vehicles going up there, there were so many searches to do they needed us to go up there to help because they wanted to do the searches all at the one time. There is no doubt that ‘The Troubles’ added a level of complication to policing, we had to learn to look at our security, we had to look at it in two ways, what we had to do, and, take into consideration all the things around the situation and the security of the people we would be going to help as well.

1972 was the most violent year, by then I was in Musgrave Street and we spent our days going from one incident to another. There were lots of bomb scares and there were a lot of hoax calls, but we couldn’t take any chances, so we spent a lot of our time clearing offices, public places, putting in cordons and keeping the public back. I suppose it is still the case that the public want to get as close as possible to see what is happening. There were bombs going off, the worst was ‘Bloody Friday’, I was there, it was the worst, I think that is one of the things I will never get out of mind.

‘Bloody Friday’ started off, I think it was in Oxford Street where the first bomb exploded, that was the site of the bomb you saw Police and Army going ‘round with plastic bags picking up pieces of the people killed and injured using shovels and brushes, it was a long time ago, but it still sticks in the mind. There were so many bombs going off that day you didn’t know where the next was going to be. Because it was a Friday people had come in for the Market, so the Oxford Street area was busy and there were a lot of extra people about the city centre, and, they were going frantic. We were trying to control the crowds, deal with people in shock, we took them to Musgrave Street and made them tea, and, tried to get them settled, then another bomb would go off, you heard them all, Belfast is a small place, so you could hear them all going off. It was very difficult because we didn’t know where the next one was going to be, we were just trying to protect the people. The number of bombs made it very difficult for us to deal with them all and protect people, we called police out of the courts, the Police Office in Musgrave Street, from Queen Street and a few other stations if they could spare anyone. But the bombs were going off all over Belfast, so personnel had to deal with those in their own areas before sending help anywhere else, I think there were something like 20 bombs that went off within an hour and a half. I remember around Musgrave Street bombs were just left on window sills, and, the whole building shook when they went off, it was very frightening, it was frightening for the public too, and you don’t know how people will react when they are frightened.

We were clearing one area and didn’t know if we were moving people towards another bomb, and because of the number of bombs that was invariably the case when you had so many going off, there weren’t many buildings in Belfast City Centre that weren’t bombed. We were trying to clear an area and didn’t know if there was a secondary, and, often there was, you just didn’t know if there was a secondary planted. By this time, the IRA had started to use secondaries, to try and kill police and soldiers as we cleared the area.

It was difficult in the Shankill during the Shankill Butchers time. You were going into work listening to the radio in the car at 6.30 in the morning to find out what you could be going into, or after briefings

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were done and everybody was out the calls came in ‘body found’, that was awful for everybody the families and the state of some of those bodies, battered by breeze blocks and knifes. I was at some scenes, how human beings could do that, no matter how ‘cold’ you are, how could somebody do those things to other human beings, it was awful, it was very difficult time. Investigators might have had an idea who was involved, but that’s not enough, it’s the case of having evidence to take people to court. I remember Lenny Murphy coming into the station to sign bail, and, to see him knowing what he did was just awful. I suppose he got his ‘come-uppence’ in the end. But it is very frustrating knowing who these people were, but we needed the evidence and there was some great work by CID to get it to make arrests and get them into court. That was good work, but it wouldn’t bring back those killed, they were innocent people walking home cutting across from North Belfast and West Belfast or a taxi driver, it was just awful.

Back then we didn’t have the time and all the scientific support they have today. I worked with some great detectives, but in some places one serious incident was coming in one after the other. Where else but here would you get a Detective Constable dealing with a murder? Hindsight is a wonderful thing and DNA is wonderful, but there was nothing like that back then, nothing. What was available as forensic was used, I don’t think any blame can be put on anyone for any less of an investigation because of that, things were investigated, but there was an awful lot of pressure on investigators, they would investigate one thing until something else came in. I know in Tennent Street they had a murder squad, but everybody was working flat out, you couldn’t get a ‘Rest Day’ off because we were working all the time. We wanted time off to spend with family and friends, but we didn’t have that choice, we had to work.

What drove what we did was our desire to keep people safe along with all the things we were taught in ‘The Depot’, to save life and property and so on. I think everybody tried to comply with those, and sometimes it was difficult to do those things. Sometimes there were directions given and you wondered why? I suppose that somebody higher up thought doing something differently would be better and passed the direction down, and the majority off the time it was done for the best, but we did have limited resources.

Outside initial training, we had ‘schools’ to help us keep up with changes in the law and legislation and things. I think we went to calls and dealt with them just on our experiences, once you dealt with something you knew what to do the next time, we learned from past experiences. We learnt as went along, there wasn’t much to help tell us what to do, it was just from experience, common sense and good leadership to help us. I think an awful lot depended on our leaders, we learnt a lot from them, the majority of our leaders were level headed and made good decisions.

OFFICER 27

I saw the police working in different situations, in my naivety I didn’t think of the danger of any of it, it was just the excitement. Once the die was cast and you were in the comradeship and discipline in the Training Centre, I didn’t find it a problem, I had been a member of boy’s organisations growing up, and, I was old enough. I think a thing that stood to me was I was 23 coming 24 when I joined, I was slightly more mature than some who joined at 18. I had seen a little bit of life and understood a little about people, I think that stood to me as well. So, the process in the Training Centre was a bit of a challenge, I was a bit overweight and had to go to the Gym 3 nights a week for training, I knew what they were trying to do, and, I just got stuck in and got through. When you went into the

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Training Centre you suddenly realised you were part of something that had been going for a while, there was a great sense of what you were carrying on.

I think most people didn’t expect ‘The Troubles’ would go on for so long. When you were out on the street meeting people, I like people, if they are decent and you’re trying to help them they understood and that gave a great feeling when you were trying to help. In all the circumstances throughout my service there was always people like that, some of them lived in areas where they couldn’t have done it openly, couldn’t have said they did because of the attitudes prevailing around their communities, but it was enough to know you could help in some circumstances. There was no doubt about it, even in the worst of times there was a sense you were helping people, because in the police, by and large, you don’t come into contact with people unless there is some crisis, it may not be a big crisis in your view, but it’s a big crisis in their lives.

Very early on in my service, in fact months after leaving the Training Centre, a colleague was shot dead in a police vehicle. We were on Night Duty, earlier that day 2 officers had been shot in the same area while travelling along one of the roads, and, we were told we weren’t to leave the station except in response to an emergency call, and, only then with a military escort. The Station area was quite small and was surrounded by other areas which were considered more normal, had a lesser threat. I suppose this guy felt confined not being able to get out, and, had prevailed on the Sergeant to allow the car to go out, and, he agreed the car could go out, not in our station area, but further away into other Station areas. I was writing up a report on a road traffic accident on the typewriter when this guy came in and said, ‘Come on we’re getting out in the car’, I said ‘Give me a minute to finish this off’. A couple of minutes later I was finished, I put my tunic on and the old rubber coat and flak jacket ready to go, when I went out the car had gone, they didn’t wait. Within minutes there was a radio transmission they had been attacked close to the station and this guy had been very seriously wounded, by the time they got him to the Mater Hospital he was dead, he was only 19 years old.

Considering all the circumstances, I could have been sitting where he was sitting or sitting beside him, if they had waited would it have been different, maybe it wouldn’t happened? I came to realise that to ponder on those things too deeply was going to give me trouble mentally, so I had to accept that was the way it was and to get on with doing what I was required to do, and, that was the view I tried to take by and large.

The early part of my service was probably the most hectic because I was in Uniform. We were out day and daily facing shootings, attending shootings, dealing with the victims of shootings and bombings. You never knew what exactly what was coming next as we cleared areas pulling people away from bombs.

If you had any reservations about your own safety, or, had a sense you didn’t want to be there you couldn’t have done the job, so you just had to get on with it. I think it was 74, memorable because there were 2 General Elections that year. I think it was the evening of the second of the two elections, there were a series of calls to bomb calls and vague locations given. We checked the various areas, I was with the Sergeant, we checked one area where there were a number of cars. Foolishly in those days you went and looked at them to see if there was anything you could call suspicious. He looked at a car sitting at the bottom of Little Donegall Street at the junction with Royal Avenue, on the corner outside the Belfast Telegraph offices. I remember it was a Volkswagen, and, it appeared that the contents of the glovebox were lying on the floor, the car was unlocked, and

DOING POLICING Page 103 of 109 he called me over asking what I thought, I went over, it was an old Beetle the one with the boot at the front and the catch in the glovebox. I could smell what I thought was petrol, we were being trained all the time and had been told to look out for the smell of fuel oil, I said ‘I think this is the real thing, I think we would be best to leave this alone’, we backed off, clearing the area as we went along and informed ‘Control’. Anybody around we pushed them back, it was night time so there wasn’t a big crowd about. There was a Catholic Ex Servicemen’s Club nearby, we warned them, and got them to evacuate. Later, it was a considerable size of a bomb, it went off and blew the corner off the Telegraph building, again if you sat and thought, if that had gone off earlier we wouldn’t be here wondering what could have happened, and, what would have been the result? I tried not to dwell on those things, because if I had I probably wouldn’t have been able to do what I was required to do. So, I suppose I just boxed those thoughts off in a corner of my mind and moved on to the next thing grateful it wasn’t me and did what I had to do. I found there wasn’t a lot of help, that was sort of my way of dealing with things, boxing them off.

In Uniform it was busy from the start. I mentioned earlier the economic aspects for me joining the police, in my trade I had reached the position of site foreman in charge of a site, and, my take home pay was something like £40 a week; my first month’s pay in the police was £70, so far from being an economic achievement, joining the police was actually an economic retrograde step. I think I must have been more thinking of the long-term implications and the pension, and, hadn’t thought of the short term. So, there was a necessity to do a bit of overtime and there was plenty available, it was busy from that point of view. They were always looking people to do overtime and there were always lots of extra patrols. I can remember starting ‘Earlys’ at 7am working to 3pm then joining another patrol until ‘Stand Down’, which was at 1am then going home for a couple of hours sleep and going back in again for 7am. It was busy, there was always something going on, there was an element of excitement.

Also, in those early days I found there were people, I served in a relatively ‘Hard area’ where the people there were being conditioned not to deal with the police and to shun the police. This was an area which just a few years earlier the police walked the ‘Beat’ alone at night. There were still officers in the station who were well known to the residents and had helped many of them, you would find yourself talking to these residents wary they could be hostile towards you only to find they would be asking about Constable ‘So and So’, asking how he was. They remembered, quite fondly the older police officers who had been there pre-Troubles, but ‘The Troubles’ were changing things and the younger people were absolutely hostile towards us.

There was a lot of ordinary police work done, like Road Traffic Accidents. The first accident I dealt with was at what you could call a ‘pimple roundabout’, it was an experimental thing. It was my first day, I started at 7am on ‘Earlys’ out in the car when I was sent to the roundabout where 3 cars had collided. There was a lot of chat in the car about which ‘Beat’ covered it, we were all detailed ‘Beats’ for administrative purposes, we didn’t walk them anymore because of the Threat, but the idea was whoever was assigned to a particular ‘Beat’ dealt with whatever came up in it. When we got to the scene I was handed the tape and pushed out to the car being told ‘This one’s is yours young fella’. All I could do was take a gulp and get started, I did my best, I always found it best just to get stuck in. I came to realise the more you did the more you know, and, the more you know, in some circumstances, the better able you are to deal with things.

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It was quite busy, and I didn’t shun work. In the early days you could say I was ‘shafted’ to do work that wasn’t mine, but still I learnt from it and there was great comradeship in the Section, they were good guys, I still know some of them. I was always busy, we did all the ordinary stuff, and, we were always patrolling for bombs, dealing with bomb threats. I think the introduction of ‘Control Zones’ banning unattended parking helped, we patrolled those areas, but there were only 1 or 2 streets in our area that where regarded as City Centre where we could walk the ‘Beat’. If you did the ‘Beat’ it was relentless round and round this small area watching out for terrorist offences, and, there were lots of those, some of the streets were blown out of existence time after time.

I don’t think I was ever conscious of ever serving the greater public good, if you are walking down the street, as happened one night, and you saw a guy driving with a Guinness label on his windscreen as a tax disc it was a small personal triumph to spot something that like, everybody was paying their tax why shouldn’t this guy? In those days there weren’t any computers, you had to look out for those things, you needed your wits about you to spot things that weren’t quite right, people driving cars, people giving wrong answers to your questions and stuff like that. I took a personal satisfaction finding out things like that. If you were evacuating a building you knew you were helping to save lives. I didn’t think about serving the greater public good as such, I was on the street doing the things I was doing, detecting Road Traffic offences, clearing areas around bombs, searching, finding incendiary devices in shops, it was just what you did.

The thing was getting the ‘bad guy’, the guy who wasn’t doing the right thing. As a Uniform constable on the street the ‘bad guy’ was the ‘shoplifter’ or the driver with no insurance or no tax, that sort of thing. But we couldn’t get away from the security aspect, but whatever you came across you dealt with it. I had one particular episode, looking back now I wonder, ‘how did I ever get out of that?’

My father in law was a widower living alone in an area which had more than its fair share of ‘The Troubles’. We didn’t see him so much because we were living in North Down, although we did visit him once a fortnight and he stayed with us a night or two. One night, by this time I had been posted to CID in East Belfast, and, was perhaps relishing the freedom that gave me. If it was quiet in an evening and nothing was going on, you weren’t too hard pressed, you could slip away for an hour, however if there were things going on it was frantic. Anyway, this particular night, it was quiet, so I slipped across town to visit him, on my way back to the Office I had to go down the Cliftonville Road into the old area I served in, and past a famous or infamous Pub, depending on your point of view, on the Antrim Road. I saw two guys, one of whom had a firing position, he was a tall guy in a long bluish coat, he was in a two-handed firing position, and I heard cracks and realised he was shooting at the Pub. They climbed into a car, coincidently if was exactly the same as mine, and they drove off down the Antrim Road with me after them, we didn’t have radios or mobile phones in those days. I followed, thinking I would just see where they went, they went through Carlisle Circus into Denmark Street, but they couldn’t get through because of the ‘Dragons Teeth’, and, came back out again. I saw a two vehicle military patrol and stopped them, I pointed out the car and told them ‘there are gunmen in that car’. The first Land Rover sped off after the car, I followed, and the second Land Rover followed me, we went up the Crumlin Road and turned into Agnes Street. As you go down Agnes Street there is a wee dog leg kink to the left, when I rounded that there was no car just the Land Rover sailing on down towards the Shankill Road. I looked down Perth Street, one of the side streets and there was the car turning right into another street, so I turned left and followed, foolishly

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thinking the other Land Rover would follow me, but it didn’t, it just followed after the first Land Rover. So, I turned right and there was the car sitting abandoned with a gun on the back seat, and, just me standing looking at it. The area was being demolished, there were lots and lots of empty houses, derelicts sites and there were a few people further down the street in what would have been the Lower Shankill starting to show interest, the driver had run down that way and people were starting to gather. As I was standing there, there was a small narrow entry opposite me leading down the back of some derelict houses, two guys came walking out of the entry and I immediately recognised the taller one, he was one of the gunmen, he had no coat on, but I knew it was him. I pulled out my Walther pistol and told them to go back into the entry and get down on their hunkers, which they did much to my amazement because if they had run off I wouldn’t have shot them. So, I am standing there at the mouth of the entry with my gun out and these two guys hunkered down in front of me. The crowd down the street start to realise what is happening and are shouting at me to, ‘Let them go. They are Loyalists. They are the same as us’ and all of that. The next thought I had was the Army patrol coming ‘round the corner, and if they saw me standing with a gun in my hand they would take me out, so I stood there with the gun under my coat. Two ladies came walking up the street towards me, I think it was probably out of nosiness to see what was going on, I says to them ‘Missus will you go over to Houston and Williamson Funeral parlour and ring the police please?’ In those days Funeral Parlours were manned 24 hours and they walked across the waste ground to the Parlour and rang the police. I think the RMPs arrived first and the police followed to my relief, they searched the entry and found the blue coat along with a Sten gun and a revolver, the guys were arrested and went for trial.

Before they did I had to face an internal inquisition into what I was doing out of my area, why was I in North Belfast when I should have been in East Belfast etc etc. but because it worked out so well I was given a ‘bye ball’. I was in CID and this reinforced to me that we needed people to help us, we didn’t have radios and mobile phones, and if that crowd had turned hostile I was probably going to get a severe ‘hiding’ at best and be lucky to get out of it alive. But I think the people knew these guys were probably gunmen, I was a police officer and they were still prepared to help me.

JOINING CID

I considered myself to be most observant with a good memory. In my early days I tended towards trying to find out how to deal with petty criminals and Road Traffic offences, and, going to court, I enjoyed all that and that drew me towards CID.

In Uniform I took an interest in crime, I liked going to court and being involved. I observed a couple of things that sparked my interest, I was walking down the street one day and there was a guy in front of me, who as he passed a doorway caught a brown paper parcel, it was clearly by arrangement, I stopped him. The parcel contained a suit, his mate was stealing suits from this place and throwing them out to him and I saw it happening. It was a theft, and in those days we could, if we arrested somebody for theft, we could interview him, put together a Brief of Evidence which was the statements and a summary of the evidence, and, if he signed a form waiving his right to a jury trial and accepted summary trial we could take him before the court the next day and have it dealt with.

The first couple of Briefs of Evidence, I asked people in my Section ‘how do I do these?’ nobody knew how, I remember speaking to my Sergeant he wasn’t sure and eventually it was the Chief

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Inspector in the Station who sat down with me and showed me how to do it. Once I had it done, I thought I know how to do that, and I had a few cases like that. This work gave me an interest in CID. When I had 2 years service, they advertised vacancies in CID, even though the cut-off date was literally a day or two before I completed two years service I applied. The local CID Chief called me up and told me he didn’t think I would get in and if I didn’t he would bring me in as a ‘MOLE’ on a temporary Aideship for 3 months, but I did get in and was posted over to East Belfast.

As new CID man I dealt with all the minor stuff, small thefts, wee robberies at Corner Shops by boys with toy guns, stuff like that but then you had the serious stuff. It was a quieter area, not too much terrorist activity but there were murders. In those early days I wasn’t involved in murder investigations, instead myself a few others held the ‘fort’ dealing with the ordinary stuff while the more senior people were drafted into Squads to deal with the murders, it was always busy. It wasn’t as hectic as being in Uniform, it was easier too in the sense we were travelling back and forth in plain clothes, but it really whet my appetite for CID. At the same time, I was studying and was fortunate enough to get the Sergeants Exam and was promoted to Uniform Sergeant before I completed my Aideship in CID. I stayed in East Belfast, where it was a bit more normal than some places, it is what people would call PUL, Protestant Unionist Loyalist, area, but the problems were still the same, after a year I moved back into CID. My first few days back were a real eyeopener, I was just back when there was murder, I got the phone call at home and went to the scene where the Chief told me ‘this one is yours’. So, I just dealt with it, grabbed a couple of Constables and did what we could, so that was a very busy time.

In the Station area next to ours, it was relentless, they had over 400 murders, the area was nicknamed the ‘Murder Mile’ there were so many. Eventually in my station they had to organise a small Squad, 1 DI, 2 Sergeants and 7 Constables to try and get a more formalised approach, and that Squad investigated something like 44 murders in a relatively short space of time. Later the Murder Manual was published saying how many officers you should have for the various types of murders, which was at least 30 officers for terrorist murders, but in those days, you just did what you could with what you had. We cleared quite a few murders, I think by the mid-70s the Headquarters Crime Squad, or ‘A’ Squad had been formed to give a more formalised approach to very serious crime. But at the local level where you might have had about 6 detectives, maybe less, you could still be extremely busy, for some cases you might have got a bit of assistance from some of the Squads for a short period, but by and large, the ‘donkey work’ was done by local officers.

We couldn’t afford to dedicate a team to only one murder. I remember there were 3 murders in the one day, it was just the case of getting the initial responses, sealing the scenes, which was becoming an art form, and, there were instances where people were attacked, and booby traps left and so on at scenes. Everybody was learning, individuals were learning, the Force was learning, the terrorists were learning, so we had to approach the initial scene work with care, identify the body, call in Forensics. But when you get 3 in one day, there weren’t 90 officers to deploy 30 to each case.

Forensics wasn’t as developed then as it is now, there was no DNA, the SOCO system did work well. There were some very very good SOCOs, they were very dedicated, they were learning at such a rate because of what was going on, they were developing their skills all the time, and, they did some very thorough and skilful work.

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The courts were always very tense, the Diplock Courts had been introduced by the time I was giving evidence in murder cases. Regardless of what anybody says about a Diplock court, a non-jury court, being detrimental to justice, I don’t think that is the case at all. The Diplock courts were far more focussed, you had a judge who was going through the evidence, letting nothing get past him, and, you weren’t going to get anything thrown in that could skew a jury’s decision or because of what the jurors had in their heads. So, I found Diplock courts very tight, and very very fair towards the accused.

When you were in the witness box giving evidence, you had to know your evidence, you had to be right. That was a learning curve too. I remember as an AIDE a person was stopped with a bomb in his car which was destined for a Catholic chapel, he was stopped en-route, the bomb was recovered, and he was arrested; I was given the case to deal with. There was no formalised procedure in those days like they have today with PACE, there were no Police Offices, no procedures and patterns for interviewing or any of that, you just dealt with everything in the Station in the same way be it a simple theft or as in this case a bomber. So, I dealt with the case, the ATO had some technical point he wanted to ask the suspect about and I allowed him to meet the suspect. The suspect was in the cell, I was outside the cell and didn’t make a note of the conversation which became a point of friction in the court. Lord Justice Jones gave me such an ‘emptying’ in the Box it was terrible, he went through me for a ‘day’s work’ for not having made notes of the conversation between the ATO and the suspect.

For a CID Aide who was trying to be thorough, trying to do his best with little support and guidance that court experience frightened me so much. That day, after I got out of the witness box I sat outside the court and didn’t go back in to hear the evidence, I just didn’t want anything more to do with the case. One of my colleagues came out after the Judge did his summing up and told me that the Judge mentioned that he may have been unreasonably harsh on the young Detective Constable, which to my mind eased things slightly, but the lesson I learnt was to dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s, and, make sure things are done right. If you are sitting in the witness box it’s a very lonely place to have your work taken apart. All the guidance and protocols, training and all the rest on investigation and evidence and procedure came later.

Everybody was learning at that time, the older people in CID hadn’t dealt with what they had to deal with. Some might have been able to refer back to 56-62 IRA campaign experiences, but very few detectives had any experience of day and daily dealing with serious crimes on such a vast scale, the level of viciousness and the level of expertise being developed by the terrorists, particularly Republican terrorists. No matter what you think of the IRA, the Provisional IRA, they became very skilled, very brutal and very harsh. The police had to do a catching up process to deal with them. And we did catch up and deal with things, in many cases we had great success against the terrorists. To make it difficult for us they recruited Human Rights organisations and others from that side to fight their case to make things easier for them to do what they wanted by doing away with the things we were doing that they thought were hurting them. Everybody was learning, senior officers, junior officers – everybody was learning. As the years went on those who had worked at the ‘coalface’ came up through the ranks, and some of them were very good, some were great technical detectives. Forensics improved and there was greater guidance from the Forensic Lab, we had more experience, and, in later years the National Bodies at Bramshill started providing Good Practice guidance on investigating crimes. It was a giant learning curve for everybody.

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My career diverted me away from Divisional CID into specialised areas where the learning curve was steeper to deal with all the various aspects of terrorist crime particularly paramilitary finance. Things changed over the years, in the early years the terrorist crimes were ‘crude’ crimes like robberies before they started using more complex frauds and financial frauds to make and hide money. It wasn’t always about the money collected by leaving a tin on the shop counter.

My attitude was if people did wrong and the evidence was available they should be dealt with by the courts. I was always a great believer, despite my harrowing experiences of giving evidence in trials, I always believed in the courts and the properness of things being dealt with by the courts. I found it sad on occasions that the courts didn’t always seem to be a place where those who worked in them, barristers, solicitors, were keen to establish the truth. It was more the case of them making a point or finding a loophole, but nevertheless my view was the courts were the proper way of dealing with crime.

I have dealt with police officers accused of crime and seen them through to court, so I had no difficulty with bringing people who did bad things to court. I think, to their credit the police maintained, in those areas where it was possible to maintain ordinary policing, by and large, throughout ‘The Troubles’. And, in those areas where there was a high ‘threat’ they did their best, and, in some areas trying to maintain ordinary policing came at a cost in officers lives, we learnt that we were dealing with something very different and dangerous.

I spent a period of time in the West of the City, there were two lads killed in the Sections I was in charge off, basically as they went about doing ordinary policing, one was attending an alleged burglary which was a set up. If you look back and thought throughout Ulster, Northern Ireland, if the police had made the decision to abandon ordinary policing and gone into protective or defensive mode there might have been fewer officers killed. But I think we tried to provide a police service to those who wanted it, but it was at the cost of officers killed and injured.

Basically, all we had was the Criminal law and the Policing Principles which were hammered into us in the Training Centre. As a recruit you learnt them off ‘by heart’, and they were your guiding light in all things. Legislation today has taken policing a long way from where it was when I first started. By and large, if you take the situation of Doctors, Bankers and other professionals who had carte blanche indemnity to refuse to speak to the police claiming client confidentiality, now the police can go with a court order and seize everything they have. There has been a change, but in the early days when there weren’t all those powers, particularly anti-terrorist legislation, we were largely guided by the Principles of Policing. The Police Service gained vast experience dealing with that vicious campaign spearheaded by Republicans and to lesser extent Loyalists, who on many occasions were reacting to Republicans, and, sometimes were worse.

While I was learning at a personal level, the police service was learning those things it needed to do or do differently. The only Act that was anyway out of the ordinary was the Special Powers Act, it was hated. After it was repealed more specialised law came in in response to the situation as it developed, but in the early part of my service we were ordinary police officers backed up with the ordinary laws to deal with an extraordinary situation.

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