Policing Ireland’S Twisted History

By Inspector Alan M Wilson

Ireland has long been a country of conflict. More than 400 years ago, the occupying English planted pre-Celtic Scots in the northern province of Ulster and divested the native Irish Celts of the land their ancestors owned for 2,000 years. This created a deep-seated enmity between the English and Irish, Protestant and Catholicand it finally exploded in the Troubles.

Author Alan M. Wilson was on the front lines for the bloodbath that tore Northern Ireland apart from the late 1960s through the first years of the twenty-first century. Policing Irelands Twisted History reveals Wilsons remarkable, true story of growing up in Belfast and serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary as an inspector and as a member of an elite anti-terrorism unit. Wilsons only goal was to help protect the innocent on both sides. Unfortunately, he became a target himself.

Brutally honest and unflinching, Wilson traces his experiences serving Irelands divided society for nearly ten years. From watching friends die to the tit-for-tat murders occurring on the streets to staring death in the eye more than once, Wilson reveals the deep, gut-wrenching search for the meaning of it all in the midst of the worlds longest-running terrorist situation.

A firsthand look at the Northern Ireland conflict, Policing Irelands Twisted History offers an eye-opening, intimate examination of this devastating struggle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462064694

Inspector Alan M Wilson

Alan M. Wilson retired in 2006 after 25 year as Director of Engineering for a major US Foods manufacturing Corporation. He had studied and practiced engineering in Ireland but when terrorists chose to kill his friends and neighbours he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary where he served for almost ten years in the most dangerous places in Ulster’s bloody Troubles. He now enjoys living in cottage country in Ontario Canada.

Book preview

Policing Ireland’s

Twisted History

Inspector Alan M Wilson

Royal Ulster Constabulary (Retired)

GC GSM (NI) MTS

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Policing Ireland’s Twisted History

Copyright © 2011 by Inspector Alan M Wilson Royal Ulster Constabulary (Retired) GC GSM (NI) MTS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6467-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6468-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6469-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011919779

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/18/2011

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Conclusion

Appendix

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

My wife Lorrie and children Lynn, Jo-Anne, Richard, Michael and Billy for living with the effects of my Irish Policing experience has had on me. Your love means everything to me and your patience with my ceaseless doings is appreciated. And my friends Rev Frank Patrick and Captain RCAF (retd) Bob Ough for somehow understanding what I am thinking through my life lens dulled by suspicion yet illuminated by faith.

Preface

* Is Ireland doomed to future generations of slaughter as the older political and religious agitators fade into retirement or die off in the undeserved sleep of natural passing?

* Is the peace process real or is it just a buyout of belligerents at the expense of a weary populous?

* Has Ireland and most particularly Ulster arrived at a place of social justice for all, and one which will remain intact for future generations?

As a former inspector in the Royal Ulster Constabulary I have often wondered what I had left behind when I moved on from a life amid the murderous ignorance of a small percentage of the Ulster population to a new life in my original profession in Canada. I had seen and been touched by much too much of the murderers’ craft.

I think there has been too much innocent blood, too much violent death, unnecessary anger and abject ignorance, and far too many troubled people to believe that the legacy of the last forty years of anger and terror can somehow evaporate into the mist of the beautiful island of Ireland.

There are now too many dead, too many injured, and too many mentally and emotionally scarred by the carnage of evil inflicted on their bodies, minds, and souls.

Such evil does not evaporate. It only lingers, seeking another awakening, unless life can change fundamentally and begin to allow decades of healing to permeate the minds and souls of the people of Ulster.

I served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (Northern Ireland’s Police service) during those bloody, awful, brutal, sadistic times, and I saw far too much of the dark side of life.

The process of developing this book has led me along an unexpected path. The most vivid memories were easy to recall, although I had forgotten the intensity of many of them. I have often had to probe my mental filing system for those events and emotions that had crawled into the crevices of my mind and hidden in dormancy, allowing me some escape from their legacy.

I have signed the British Official Secrets Act, and I had to be mindful of the limitations it placed on me; however my anger at successive British governments has made me willing to go farther than the government might wish.

I asked myself if I should tell every story whether or not it might embarrass governments or people. Might the British government object to a former officer – part of its Police Anti-terrorist Unit – telling his candid story of intrigue, danger and the incredible dedication of those entrusted with national security and intelligence?

As a former police officer who maintains connection with officers in Ulster and Canada, writing with such detail has forced me to be cautious.

I have avoided naming most living persons not in the public arena who could be at risk from today’s IRA. Conscious of the British Official Secrets Act, I have avoided revealing certain secrets that might compromise the Irish or British Security Services or their activities. Accordingly many sensitive operations have not been included in this book.

I am fortunate to have my original police notebooks with the recorded names, dates, and places of every event I attended. Some memories made me shudder as I recalled the darkness of human evil and the suffering of victims again and again. However, some recollections were actually pleasant, as light did appear in the darkest of places and reinforced for me the innate goodness in much of humanity.

I began with the intention of recording personal experiences and lessons learned from my service in the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve in 1971 and 1972, and in the Royal Ulster Constabulary from 1973 till 1980.

But something unexpected happened. These memories took me deeper and deeper into my Irish and Ulster psyche while I attempted to place them in a context of the history of Ireland, Britain, and Europe. I wanted to understand why such evil existed in Ireland, and most particularly in my home province of Ulster. I have become an ardent student of European History, most particularly since leaving my homeland to immigrate to Canada, then working throughout North America and Europe and later living in Brussels. These travels have exposed me to Irish Celtic and Ulster Irish people in places as far apart as Belgium and California.

In the places where I have lived and visited Ulster Protestants and Irish Catholics, settlers now live in peace and claim a common ancestry along with a common celebration of the patron saint of Ireland. Every individual outside of Ireland with Irish roots, whether from the north or south, is Irish on Saint Patrick’s Day. And yet in Ulster three-quarters of the population claimed, when I lived there, to be British ahead of any Irish connection.

I ask myself why a connection with Saint Patrick could not be common in all of Ireland and particularly in the North, where as a slave boy the saint shepherded sheep and then received his call from God to a spiritual relationship that would eventually lead to his saintly service.

Perhaps the greatest mistake of some of this Irish Diaspora is to romanticize the Irish Troubles, which began in 1969, into something less barbaric than it has actually been. Some observers still justify the carnage caused by one side while condemning that of the other.

I submit that killing is killing is killing.

None is justified in an unjust war, particularly when the end result in 2011 is identical to that offered in 1972. Democracy could have solved the problem in a bloodless way as put forth in the 1960s by willing politicians such as Catholic John Hume (teacher, civil rights leader, and politician) and Protestant Captain Terence O’Neill (Prime Minister of Northern Ireland).

I contend that not a single soul needed to perish in the Troubles. Not one of the three thousand men, women, and children needed to die nor did any of the over one hundred thousand wounded need to carry the scars of violence on their flesh.

I hope that the killers on either side of Ulster’s blood war seek God’s forgiveness. I pray that the victims on both sides receive peace in their souls as they cope with the agony of the loss of loved ones or the damage inflicted on their bodies and minds and, in all too many cases, both. May factions disappear and the inhabitants of Ireland’s Northern Province find common ground in the example of Saint Patrick. It is my fervent wish that understanding and forgiveness replace ignorance and evil.

Introduction

Big boys really don’t cry in British Ulster. And yet I did.

Peeling off the layers of life’s scars as I wrote this book allowed me to try to understand the how and why of Irish terrorism as it affected not just those who chose to kill and destroy but also those who attempted to live on the sidelines, watching, yet not able to avoid the effect of bloody terrorism.

I have been where no-one should have to go. I have both witnessed and also been the target of hatred, anger, and attempted murder for no logical reason other than centuries of irrational justification. Evil behaviour and evil acts create a broad wake as they trawl through society.

Ireland is a lesson for the world as to how and why terrorism starts. Could my story help provide guidance which might help us to understand other troubled places? As I wrote, I hoped it could it be used as a case study and help to provide solutions for the rest of the world.

I have many friends and colleagues who are on the lists of victims of the dead and damaged. These numbers, however, miss the hundreds of thousands who have also paid the price in Ireland’s war of terror.

To put the 1969 to 2009 Irish Troubles in context, the over three thousand people murdered in Ulster is one in five hundred citizens. This equates in proportion to the population, to the death by terrorism of five hundred thousand Americans or one hundred and twenty thousand English or sixty-six thousand Canadians.

It is clear that many have physical scars and all too many have died in Ulster – but who are the other victims? They are those with hatred or insecurity or mistrust or just plain ignorance in their hearts and souls. They are those who have fallen foul of Ulster Loyalist and Irish Republican propaganda and who view their fellow citizens as enemies. I suspect Ulster’s victims actually accumulate from nine hundred years ago, continue to this day, and will do so for generations to come.

My life journey began in Belfast as a child living in a mixed community, which in Irish terms is the unusual experience of Catholics and Protestants living side by side as friends. In historical steps, my journey of reflection reaches back to the times of Saint Patrick and seeks to suggest that a better future might be possible by re-creating the good things of those early times in Ireland when the great saints like Patrick and Brigit led the Irish people to be their best selves.

I have now retired from a successful business career in Canada and Europe but I have never escaped the emotional scars from my homeland nor lost personal interest in it. My recent path of learning and reflection through research and soul searching opened both old wounds and also new thoughts. I had buried these deep in my soul as I applied a British stiff upper lip to deal with the memory of the slaughter and abuse of friends and innocent acquaintances in Ireland.

Riots, bombs, and bullets create a distinct unease in the human mind that never really finds rest. I, like all my police colleagues, lived in danger twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, at work or at home.

Why did we do it? How did I become willing to die or kill in the name of defending society from those who resorted to violence to gain political ground?

I wanted to know, and as I wrote I came to understand myself better. I had honestly tried my very best to serve all of the troubled souls I came across in Ulster’s communities while myself suffering the effects of terrorist and political misinformation and propaganda.

This was emotionally damaging. My emotions ended up like a tightly coiled spring. Ulster’s angry evil chilled my soul. I needed to write this to purge my soul of the guilt of leaving my country folk, even though I knew that staying would have accomplished little except, most probably, my early death.

I wish to God people would read this and realize they should stop fighting.

Chapter 1

Politics and Policing

Let it be remembered that the repression of crime – its prevention if possible, its detection when committed – is a vocation than which there is none more honourable or useful; none more essential to the well-being of the community society; none more certain of securing, in the right discharge of its duties, the approbation of every right minded person. J Stewart Wood, Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary (1866).

Ireland was the first place in the British Isles where policing passed from magistrates to a police force when the Dublin Police Act 1786 legislated a fulltime uniformed police. The Dublin Metropolitan Police was soon followed by the Belfast Town Police. Sir Robert Peel, Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1814, drafted a plan for policing the entire island, and in 1822, the Irish Constabulary was formed. The prefix Royal was added to the name by Queen Victoria as a reward for the performance of its duties in suppressing the Fenian Rebellion in 1867.

The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) badge – the harp and crown – was conferred on the service in recognition of the award of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick and was adopted by royal permission in 1922 by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Ulster on the devolution of government in what would then be referred to as the Irish Free State and the abolition of the RIC. The Order of Saint Patrick is the third highest order in British heraldry.

The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) policed all of Ireland outside of the city limits of Dublin from 1822 until 1922. Belfast and Londonderry had their own city forces until 1870 when both were disbanded because of the intensity of sectarian violence in those cities. The RIC replaced them. The RIC was predominantly Catholic since the majority of the people in Ireland were Catholic.

The RIC was a respected, organized and disciplined professional police service that led the way in modeling police practices and structure. It was instrumental in putting down repeated rebellions by movements intent on separating Ireland from the British Empire.

The Ribbonmen of 1858 and the Fenians of 1867 are probably the most famous antagonists in Irish history before the formation of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the early 1900s and their derived forms since then. The final push (referring to the conflict of that period) for Irish Independence (1918-1922) by the Irish Republican Army, under the command of Michael Collins, saw systemic attacks on the RIC with the loss of much life: 725 RIC officers were killed in the line of duty at the hands of Irish terrorists in its hundred year history, and 550 killed between 1916 and 1922.

This shocking statistic is worsened by the fact that these men were neighbours of those who killed them as they were drawn from the community they policed and were co-religionists: Catholic freedom fighter-terrorists killing Catholic police officers. They had attended school, played sports and attended church with each other. They were in many cases extended family.

The Republican movement saw that Britain’s danger in WWI was Ireland’s opportunity. How much the intensification of the Irish War of Independence in 1918 came from soldiers returning from the war is unknown but is not considered a likely factor. Some had fought in British Uniforms in WWI and used the skills they had learned in the battlefields of Europe to expel the British from the twenty-six counties now referred to as the Republic of Ireland.

The intensification of terrorist attacks on police in what was to become the State of Northern Ireland in the Irish Province of Ulster resulted in the formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) in 1920 to support the RIC and then the RUC, as the slaughter of officers continued. One in twenty RIC was killed, and one in nine seriously injured, resulting in a number of Catholic officers resigning because of the difficulties of living in Catholic strongholds. The exclusively Protestant USC served with distinction from a government and pro-British perspective, but was a thorn in the side of the IRA and generally disliked by the Catholic population.

Black and Tans

Another force that was to become notorious was recruited in 1920 on the British mainland. The Black and Tans was a force of Englishmen, all former soldiers, who were drafted into the southern portion of Ireland. This created disaster as men who were equipped physically and emotionally for war in the trenches of Europe were deployed into a rural and urban civil war where the real enemy could not be easily identified. The RIC understood the Irish situation since they were part of it in every possible way, but the Black and Tans could neither be expected to understand or even care about the subtleties of Ireland’s religious, class and socioeconomic difficulties.

The IRA literally terrorized by hitting and running in the frequent gun battles fought in the cities and countryside of Ireland. IRA men could blend into the local population, but Englishmen fresh from the war defending English interests were frequently guilty of roughhousing innocent Irish men, women and children. IRA attacks in the countryside were mostly aimed at killing police officers, soldiers, and government representatives and would be carried out by flying columns of seasoned IRA volunteers.

The Black and Tan Militia wore the black trousers of a police uniform and the top of a green army uniform: hence the name. They were supplied with basic troop transportation, and a WWI rifle and pistol. Picture truckloads of unruly angry and undisciplined soldiers roaming the cities, towns, and countryside of southern Ireland hunting an unidentifiable enemy: poor equipment, no real intelligence, no real direction, control, or mission. This unwilling (although they were escaping poverty in post-war England) volunteer army is hated by Irish Catholics to this day.

Croke Park Massacre

One of many horrible examples of official slaughter of innocent civilians is the Croke Park Massacre when the Black and Tans killed fourteen innocent spectators at a Gaelic football game. They drove into the stadium and opened fire with machine guns on the unsuspecting spectators to avenge the execution of nineteen British Secret Agents the previous night by the IRA in Dublin.

The Black and Tans are an example of what not to do in response to civil unrest. The subtleties of public order policing used now were unheard of then when governments the world over tried to bludgeon their populations into submission. It did not work then and it does not work now. Desperate circumstances often result in desperate decisions by public figures, but always with long-term consequences.

The Black and Tans returned to England when the Irish Free State was created in 1922, but the USC became an essential element in the security of British Northern Ireland. The USC is credited with defeating the IRA on numerous occasions. Catholic historian Tim P. Corrigan writes that, The B Specials (the part time element of the Ulster Special Constabulary) were the rock on which any mass movement of the IRA has floundered.

Efforts to create political change peacefully through Home Rule Bills in the British Parliament from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries floundered time and again. Political debate had been going on for years without resolution –similar to the period from the 1960s through to the early 2000s in Ulster. Tony Blair, former prime minister of Britain, is reported to have said that a history degree would have stood him in better stead than his law degree, the point being that knowledge of history provides the possibility of not repeating the frequent mistakes of the past.

My father, besides holding his fulltime job with Belfast City Corporation, was a part-time officer in the Ulster Special Constabulary for almost forty years. In 1922 the USC numbered forty-eight thousand men; in 1969: fifteen thousand, many with previous military experience. Their primary function was to guard such targets as electrical substations, judges and government officials, police stations, and the homes of threatened police officers. They also served as a very successful information and intelligence base as their members performed regular jobs in every possible vocation. The USC wore a police uniform similar to the RUC but had a separate officer and NCO structure reporting within its own ranks. Their local commanders reported to the local RUC Commander.

I remember the weapons Dad had at home when I was a boy: shocking by today’s standards. He always had his personal protection issue .45 revolver, but when I was a pre-teen, he also had a rifle or a sten gun (old version of a submachine gun). The guns were all stored in his bedroom wardrobe with the ammunition in boxes on the top. There were thousands of rounds.

By the time Dad died in 1965, the IRA had declared a ceasefire some three years earlier; the rifle and sten gun were gone, but the revolver was still there. To my surprise no one came to get it despite my frequent calls to the station. Three months later I walked three miles to the Spiers Place Station and returned the gun. The ammunition was picked up later the same week, along with his uniforms. The failure to promptly remove the weapon and ammunition and indeed the very fact as to how much was there, shocks me to this day. It certainly could not have happened during my time in the RUCR or RUC.

I am proud of my father’s service in the USC regardless of the propaganda of the IRA. The existence of the USC must be seen in light of the murder of five hundred and fifty (mostly Catholic) Royal Irish Constabulary officers by the IRA in six short years prior to Irish partition in 1922. The Ulster state needed additional resources to help the police and the USC was the appropriate choice.

Life is lived in context and civil war can create situations in society which would be abhorrent in normal times. My dad’s moderation served me well as I observed the attempts to change Ulster politics by violent means.

Even in high school I was interested in the politics I saw developing around me. I did not understand them, but I knew something big was happening. What I did not know was that it had all been tried before in British All-Ireland pre-1922. I was witnessing a continuation of the same problems: discrimination and social injustice.

I remember my father’s friend and fellow USC officer telling stories of the Second World War when he had driven an American Sherman tank. He would puff on his pipe, and enthral me with his recollections. The Sherman had a flame thrower as one of its weapons – a fierce weapon that was used effectively to burn out the enemy from brush and bunker alike. This man’s crew would not use it because it did not seem fair in a fight. What a concept: fair fighting rules in the bloody war against the Nazis! Dad never talked about his service but I remember one of these fireside talks when my mother had a story to tell. During the Second World War the Nazis bombed Belfast, and my mother recalled fleeing with my two brothers (then four and five years old) to the hills which surround the city on three sides. She took them to the Cave Hill and from there watched the Nazi bombers pound Belfast. On one particular occasion she saw into the cockpit of one of the planes as the aircraft turned to leave the city valley. She said the pilot looked like he was just a boy in his late teens. This vivid image was imprinted on my young mind.

Belfast was as far as the fuel that a German bomber could use and still get back home, so the Germans were anxious to drop their bombs on the first run and avoid any RAF fighters. Thousands were killed in what was supposed to target the industrial areas but was an indiscriminate slaughter. Belfast had German bomb damage right up to the start of the Troubles; some of the damage broadcast across the world by international journalists was in fact from the Nazi bombings of WWII.

War and the Troubles: many of the same Ulstermen stepped up for both. My dad was one of them. Dad died of a heart attack at fifty-eight not long after his colleague and best friend Mr. Hermon died at the same age. War and terrorism: perhaps too much stress was the cause as they had lived their whole lives in the context of war: as children during WWI, as participants in WWII, and during the continual IRA campaigns from 1916 to the end of their lives. They, like so many Ulster men, women and children never saw peace and rarely talked about war.

Members of the RIC, the RUC, and the USC served as ordinary people doing an extraordinary job in the uniform of the state. They