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Supporting victims
February 4th 1992 was a Tuesday. It was also a typically cold
though dry day. Martin McGuinness and I left the Sinn Féin office at Sevastopol
Street, just off the Falls Road, around 12.30pm. It was a dangerous time. Sinn
Féin offices were being regularly targeted for raids by the British Army and
RUC. Following a south African arms shipment a few years earlier, facilitated
by British intelligence, the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance were now well armed
with high-powered assault rifles, RPG’s, hand grenades and pistols.
The impact of this weapons shipment, which the British
knew about from their senior agent Brian Nelson in the UDA, and from other
agents in the north, as well as in South Africa, was significant. In the three
years prior to receiving this weapons shipment the loyalist death squads had
killed 34 people. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224 and
wounded countless scores more. There was also a dramatic rise in the number of
Sinn Féin activists and family members killed.
So, bringing senior activists together in a Sinn Fein office was rartely
done. Locations for meetings were constantly changed. On that day we were
meeting in Conway Mill.
Shortly after 1pm Richard McAuley, who was due to attend the meeting and
was typically late, left Sevastopol Street with Fra Fox. The two of them walked
down to the Mill. Just as they arrived word came through that the office had
been hit. Richard immediately ran back up to Sevastopol Street. When he arrived
the paramedics were navigating a stretcher, on which lay Pat McBride, out of
the reception office and through the narrow front door. Pat died a short time
later.
55 Falls Road was an old terrace house. There was a reception room on the
left as you entered and an advice centre behind it. Upstairs was an interview
room for the media and our Prisoner of War office. Stuck in a tiny attic was
the press office.
Richard went into the side reception room. On the floor lay Paddy
Loughran. He had been shot in the head. On the floor opposite was Pat Wilson.
He was sitting with his back to a bench. Pat was clearly very badly hurt but
his eyes were open and he was looking at Richard. Michael O’Dwyer, who Richard
didn’t know, was sitting on the bench behind the door. Richard went to him but
it was obvious that he too was dead. Nora Larkin who had also been injured and
had been in the advice centre was already on her way to the hospital.
Richard went over to Pat and knelt beside him. Louise from the POW office
was also there. The two spoke quietly to Pat as they waited for the paramedics
to arrive to lift him out. After they did Richard and Louise went upstairs.
Michael O’Dwyer’s two year old son had been in his father’s arms when he was
shot and was being looked after by some of the staff. For the O’Dwyer family this
was the second tragedy to shatter their lives. Michael’s mother Sadie had been
killed in a UVF bomb attack in North Belfast in 1976.
At that point we all assumed that it was an attack by either the UDA or
UVF. As it turned out it was an RUC officer called Allan Moore, who then drove
to the shores of Lough Neagh and shot himself.
As he left the building Moore was grabbed by Marguerite Gallagher, a
stalwart of the Green Cross Art Shop next door. Holding Moore, Marguerite was
dragged by him round to his car which was parked on Sevastopol Street. He told
her to ‘fuck off’ as he pushed her away and drove off.
I arrived up from Conway Mill to a scrum taking place outside the door of
the office. The RUC wanted to close the building and the activists inside were
refusing. They weren’t going to be intimidated by anyone. Later when some of those in the building got back into
the reception room to clean it they discovered shotgun cartridges and the bag
in which Moore had carried his shotgun. The RUC’s forensic examination of the
scene clearly wasn’t serious.
The attack on Sevastopol
Street was not the first on that building or other Sinn Féin offices. In all 20
members of Sinn Féin, as well as family members – wives, sons, brothers were
killed in this period, mostly by unionist paramilitaries in collusion with
British state forces.
Within 24 hours of the Sevastopol Street attack two UDA members entered
Sean Graham’s bookmakers shop on the Ormeau Road in South Belfast. They opened
fire killing 5 customers and wounding 9 other people. The youngest to die was a
15-year-old schoolboy, James Kennedy, the eldest a 67-year-old father of three,
Jack Duffin, together with Christy Doherty (52), William McManus (54) and
18-year-old Peter Magee.
Relatives
for Justice later exposed the extent of the collusion between the RUC and the
loyalists who took part in this attack. The hand gun used was allegedly
'stolen' from a UDR base by UDA killer Ken Barrett who gave it to UDA
quartermaster William Stobie. Both of these men were agents working for the RUC
Special Branch. They were also part of the gang that killed human rights lawyer
Pat Finucane.
State
collusion in the murder of citizens has been a fact of life in the northern
state from its foundation. Under British control it was part of the
institutional apparatus of its counter insurgency strategies. Reports by the
Ombudsman’s office into killings in north Belfast and most recently Loughinisland,
in County Down, and other reports by groups like Amnesty International, have
revealed the extent of state collusion.
The
British do not want those truths from becoming known. That is why they have
obstructed the agreement reached at Stormont House two years ago into legacy
cases. It is why they refuse to fund legacy inquests. It is also why they want
immunity for British soldiers and others who were responsible for beatings, for
torture, and for murder.
But the British aren’t alone in this. The DUP and
the UUP have joined forces in attacking the Public Prosecution Service and the
Lord Chief Justice. They too are only interested in protecting British
soldiers, the UDR, and the RUC. Does the SDLP share this position? That’s a
question that needs to be asked also. Because that party is calling on
nationalists to transfer their votes to the UUP. If the UUP can, they say, they
will block investigations into British state killings.
For the families of those killed 25 years ago in
Sevastopol Street and the Ormeau bookies the weekend commemorations were
poignant events. I am very conscious that it is replicated on other
anniversaries by other victims and survivors of the conflict.
The narrative here is one story. One narrative.
There are others. Each must be respected. The British government and most
unionists know that. But they rarely, if ever, acknowledge or concede this
truth. This may be understandable when it comes to victims or survivors. But
for British politicians like James Brokenshire it is cynical. It means that the
past will distort and impede how we as a society shape our future. And that is
one of the reasons why Brokenshire and his ilk say and do what they say and do.
For them the war is not over. They live in the
past, in their own version of what happened. We cannot be limited in that way.
Our priority must be to support victims and to stay focussed on the future.
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