Where Grieving Begins by Patrick Magee;

Author:Patrick Magee;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

*Statistics from Sidney Elliott and W. D. Flackes, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968–1999 (Blackstaff Press, 1998).

10

Capture and Trial

And you dare to call me a terrorist

While you look down your gun

When I think of all the deeds that you had done,

You have plundered many nations, divided many lands

You had terrorised their peoples, you ruled with an iron hand

And you brought this reign of terror to my land

–Brian Warfield, ‘The Ballad of Joe McDonnell’

Brighton alone, albeit extremely important in terms of the specificity of its targeting – for we were striking at the heart of government – was only one attack in what was envisaged as a long-term campaign. We had to be able to sustain the pressure; prove that as long as Britain maintained its criminal, oppressive hold on the six counties there would be resistance. That meant more bombs in England.

By the spring of 1985 I was again across the water, part of an ASU tasked to mount a series of operations later that same year, subsequently dubbed by the British press as the ‘seaside bomb blitz’.

The plan was to detonate sixteen small devices concealed mainly on beaches, and a few planted in seaside hotels, around the English coast, apart from one (the only one actually planted), which was secreted in the Rubens hotel, Buckingham Palace Road, London. The devices would have been set to go off one per day. Each would consist of between three and five pounds of gelignite. There would be warnings given in all cases. The idea behind the operation was to commercially damage the British tourist industry. Basque separatists had previously used this tactic to target the Spanish holiday trade. The complexity of the campaign required meticulous logistical planning.

Our plans were curtailed when I was captured, along with Gerry McDonnell, Martina Anderson, Ella O’Dwyer and Peter Sherry, at a flat in Langside Road, Glasgow, on 22 June 1985. That morning I had set off from my base in London to rendezvous with Peter Sherry in Carlisle. Unfortunately, Peter was the subject of a heavy surveillance operation (led by Ian Phoenix, an RUC Special Branch undercover operative, later killed in the Chinook helicopter crash in the Mull of Kintyre, 1994). I walked into the trap and, in turn, we were followed to Glasgow, where we were arrested with the three named above. Within days, a follow-up search in a basement of a block of flats in James Gray Street, less than a mile away from where we were arrested, would net a considerable haul of explosives, timers and several assault rifles.

A knock at the door interrupted our meal. It seemed that the landlord had come by for the rent. An envelope containing the money was on the mantlepiece in the front room. I opened the door to two burly strangers, immediately realising that they were police. If memory serves, I asked, cooperatively and with an English accent, ‘Can I help you?’, buying precious seconds but also in hope that they were there making some general

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