rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_04d26967-0c35-53dd-8185-5828684fe621">173 As with the CPGB, individual CNH members who did not migrate into the IRSP in the late 1970s were far more sympathetic towards those waging the ‘armed struggle’.
The stance of the WRP contrasted with the unambiguous support offered by the PAC which, in a Republican News notice advertising the Bloody Sunday commemoration, declared its view that ‘only an unremitting struggle against British Imperialism will bring Peace and Justice for the Irish people’.174 The PAC message was printed directly above one placed by the IRA in Wakefield which expressed gratitude to those who participated in the commemoration and called for ‘all organizations to unite on the issue of supporting the war for national liberation in Ireland’.175 Inserts from the Irelande Libre group in Paris and the French Friends of Ireland could not cancel out the reverses sustained in relation to the English radicals. A subsequent assessment theorized that the PTA had minimized Irish engagement in political campaigns in England and ‘left the field clear for the representatives of small groups who had no base in the Irish population’.176 Certain ‘far left’ elements, it was claimed, retained an ‘anti-Republican prejudice’, which complicated the task of building support for the ‘troops out now’ position advocated by Sinn Féin.177
The National Joint Unit at New Scotland Yard, comprising detectives of the Metropolitan and detached provincial police Special Branches, coordinated ‘enquiries and applications from police forces in Great Britain concerning people held under prevention of terrorism legislation’.178 Liaisons with the Heathrow Airport - based National Ports Office, Home Office, MI5 and individuals within Ireland’s Special Branch provided scope for comprehensive surveillance, tracking and interdiction of known suspects. However, Irish communities in Britain believed that the danger of unjust convictions remained acute. This was illustrated on 26 January 1979 when thirteen Irish citizens were seized under the PTA in Braintree, Essex and remanded to Brixton. Those detained were members of the local ‘Irish Society’ whom the prompt combined efforts of lawyers Mike Fisher and Michael Mansfield ultimately kept out of prison. Fr. Brian Brady and Sr. Sarah Clarke responded with urgency to the situation while providing humanitarian assistance.179
Sr. Clarke mobilized many of her overseas contacts to intervene on behalf of those detained. A link provided by Fr. Faul in Paris alerted Rita Mullen of the Irish National Caucus in Washington DC. The INC was headed by Fr. Sean McManus, brother of Fermanagh ex-Republican MP Frank McManus. Such proactivity was not universally appreciated. Brixton’s security vetted Catholic Chaplain, Fr. Evans, accused the nun of ‘bringing the Catholic Church into disrepute’.180 It transpired that the arrests had been sparked by the hunt for Gerry Tuite, a leading IRA activist from Cavan held responsible for several major incidents in 1978. He had stayed with one of those arrested in Braintree and was linked to a car hired in the area which was later found laden with explosives. Two small explosions had damaged police property in Braintree on 11 May 1977, but none of those detained faced charges in this respect.181 Lack of physical evidence and confessions, as well as innocence of illegality, ensured that the Old Bailey jury rejected allegations that the thirteen were engaged in a conspiracy. Numerous persons charged in connection with IRA activities in England spent up to a year in maximum-security prisons prior to being tried and acquitted.182
Although less contentious in terms of media reportage in England, a wave of IRA attacks on prison officers in the North of Ireland was a major concern for imprisoned republicans and those by whom they were guarded. Ray McLaughlin was questioned about the IRA strategy in January 1979 in York Crown Court when giving evidence against Hull staff who had assaulted Irish and British prisoners. His argument that those working in the Six Counties were acceptable targets by virtue of being armed ‘mercenaries who had chosen to take part in the attempted criminalization of Irish political prisoners’ only marginally differentiated them from their colleagues in the Dispersal System.183 Ultimately, the IRA decided that killing prison staff in England was an inappropriate use of resources and would probably lead to the deaths of imprisoned comrades. The organization was certainly capable of taking such severe action at will. On 3 February 1979 the Belfast Brigade shot Patrick Mackin, a Liverpool-Irish former head of the prison officers training school in Millisle, County Down.184 There were then 350 IRA prisoners ‘on the blanket’ in Long Kesh enduring horrendous conditions of confinement, with many being routinely assaulted by staff.185
The IRA demonstrated that it had the personnel and ability in England to stage attacks of much greater complexity than close-quarter assassinations in early 1979. On the night of 17–18 January 1979, a bomb detonated at the Texas Oil terminal at Canvey Island, Essex, ruptured a tank containing 750,000 gallons of highly inflammable aviation fuel. Another bomb blasted a gasholder close to the Blackwall Tunnel, Greenwich, sending 300-foot flames into the sky. Secondary fires and explosions in the complex caused further damage; massive destruction was probably only averted at Canvey Island by the failure of the blasts to ignite the large quantity of aviation fuel which had flooded into a safety moat. Another bomb was found partly concealed on the M6 in Leicestershire, evidence of a considerable and diverse IRA offensive reach. A hoax warning, delivered with formal IRA credentials, threatened the Kennington Oval gasholder.186 Paul Holmes was among the IRA prison population who had persistently advocated such tactics: ‘They were an imperial power, and the only way that you could ever begin to rock them was to take the war to them’.187
The surge of attacks was featured on the front page of the launch copy of An Phoblacht/ Republican News, a weekly Sinn Féin newspaper which had just amalgamated the two main publications of the Provisionals.188 Clann na hÉireann in Britain condemned the bombings and claimed: ‘The strategic placing … show that they are quite prepared to wipe out hundreds, and even thousands of British workers at one fell swoop’.189 This negative analysis, derived from often lethal factional hostility, was belied by the IRA’s selection of high value, comparatively remote economic and communications targets, and their demonstrable ability to detonate substantial devices in virtually any location. Warnings had been phoned to the Press Association ahead of attacks, which cost in excess of one million pounds’ worth of destruction. However, no casualties were inflicted. The Metropolitan Police, who defused one of the three London carbombs emplaced in December 1978, incurred additional costs by deploying ‘hundreds of extra officers’ in central London.190
Ray McLaughlin attended trial from Wakefield where the atmosphere remained particularly tense after months of direct and indirect clashes with staff. By January 1979 the immediate demands of the IRA group had narrowed to four points: normal visiting conditions, removal of four men from the E-List, access to educational programmes and use of the gym.191 Agitation took many forms in the early months of the year, including the use of incendiaries. This also occurred in Parkhurst where the IRA were suspected without being directly credited of carrying out a series of destructive attacks. On 1 March a fire was started in the pantry, followed by another more serious blaze ten days later which ‘swept through the library’.
