minutes, although its occurrence three hours after lock up suggested the use of timed incendiaries, an IRA hallmark.192
Physical fitness emerged as a major preoccupation of republican prisoners, primarily for the inherent aerobic and anaerobic benefits of maintaining health. Training was also used to foster discipline, self-regulated routine and bodily strength, qualities which imprisoned republicans wished to display to their captors. When McLaughlin returned from a month long ‘lie down’ in Armley in May 1979, his comrades pressed him to take a ‘strenuous’ one-hour run around the small prison yard with the ultra-fit Belfastman Tony ‘Red Flash’ Clarke. He recalled that the IRA wanted to establish that ‘irrespective of whether they excluded us from the gymnasium or sent us on coolers, we intended to stay in top shape’.193 Clarke was regarded as one of the best long - distance runners in the English prisons, while McLaughlin and Jimmy Ashe were also very athletic. Other Wakefield prisoners, not least Vince Donnelly and Paul Norney, were physically powerful and utilized their prowess when necessary.194
Brian Keenan
The IRA suffered a blow on 20 March 1979 when a car carrying GHQ member Brian Keenan was intercepted by the RUC near Banbridge, County Down, on the Dublin to Belfast road. Although reported in terms of a chance occurrence, it was actually a planned operation under the remit of ‘Operation Hawk’, a major RUC Special Branch drive against the upper tier of the IRA.195 It was claimed that seventy members of the Special Branch and Special Patrol Group were involved, not counting British Intelligence resources.196 Martin McGuinness was travelling south in the car behind Keenan and was detained for several days along with two companions. It has been claimed that Keenan had come into focus due to the heavy surveillance on McGuinness, and that the decision to spring the trap in Down arose from the availability of a warrant under the Explosives Substances Act, which had been secretly processed by the police in England.197 Writers Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston noted the improbable theory that Keenan had been set up for arrest by associates and that his detention paved the way for Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams to overcome internal opposition to the winding down of the Armed Struggle.198
Keenan had a markedly different interpretation of what occurred outside Banbridge and believed that he had survived an assassination attempt: ‘They tried to write me off with a truck’. He averred that supporting police vehicles only deployed to pull his car over when an emergency defensive driving manoeuvre avoided a potentially deadly collision.199 It was subsequently reported that Keenan’s fingerprints had been found in a London safe house used by Brendan Dowd’s ASU in 1974–5 and he was regarded as the director of the intense IRA offensive then underway in England. Following fruitless questioning in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre by the notorious Harry Taylor of the RUC Special Branch, Keenan was flown in a military helicopter to London on 23 March.200 The flight to a Battersea landing pad was not without incident, and Keenan was amused when two RAF fighter jets buzzed the helicopter as it crossed the Irish Sea at low altitude.201 Interrogation in Paddington Green, during which he remained silent, took an unusual turn when he was questioned about links to Russian Special Forces, Libya and the Algerian air force. This proved to be a line of argument advanced by the prosecution at trial to present him as a highly dangerous man connected to an ‘axis of terror’. Brian Rose Smith and Michael Mansfield acted for his defense.202 Bow Street Magistrates Court remanded him in custody on 26 March to answer charges of ‘conspiracy to cause explosions’ in England, and he was sent to Brixton to await trial in June 1980.203 Keenan was posthumously described as being ‘the principal organizer of the bombing campaign that rocked London in the mid-1970s’.204
Other factors connecting Keenan to the 1970s’ England campaign were explicitly commented on following his death in May 2008. In 2010, retired RUC Detective Superintendent Alan Simpson elaborated on his previously more guarded published references to Keenan by naming him in relation to the December 1973 abduction of prominent West-German industrialist and consul Thomas Niedermayer from his Belfast residence. Niedermayer was seized by the IRA to increase pressure on the British Government to repatriate the ‘Belfast Ten’ group, several of whom were on hunger strike in the Dispersal System following sentencing for the March 1973 car-bomb attacks in London. In an unexpected and drastic turn of events, the unfortunate German perished from natural causes when in IRA captivity and was secretly buried.205 Simpson’s RUC and British Intelligence sources underpinned an additional claim that Keenan had in 1973 travelled to ‘Libya, Lebanon, Syria and East Germany in a quest for arms. He spoke with Colonel Gaddafi’.206 Similar points were made at his London trial seven years later, although nothing of substance was then established, and the well-travelled Keenan regarded the more fanciful assertions as ‘crazy stuff’.207 Former IRA Chief of Staff Eamon Doherty and Denis McInerney had carried out many of the international activities solely attributed to Brian Keenan.
Rise of the Conservative Party
The IRA had spent much of the 1970s waging a violent campaign against unstable Labour governments. Few within the leadership of the Labour Party dared to grapple with the Irish crisis and Tony Benn, one of the most outspoken figureheads, created some disquiet in early 1979 when he privately raised the prospect of a ‘fundamental review’ of British strategy in a letter to the Prime Minister. Callaghan’s advisors suggested
that a public debate of a ‘Troops Out option’ was highly dangerous in an election year and might invite an escalation of IRA attacks in England.208 The discussion demonstrated the continuing concern in British government circles regarding local aspects of the conflict in Ireland. In this instance, the lexicon of debate was that formulated by British-based allies of Irish republicans.
James Callaghan’s government fell on a vote of no confidence on 28 March 1979, heralding a General Election which Labour had little chance of winning. While the tide of support was inexorably running out for the Labour administration, the trigger for its dramatic fall was centred on the maltreatment of Irish prisoners. The appearance of the Bennett Report in March 1979 discomforted the generally amenable Gerry Fitt MP who cited its findings on the systematic brutalization of suspected republicans by the RUC as the reason for his abstaining during the crucial vote.209 Frank Maguire also abstained on 28 March, as he had long threatened, in order to protest the manner in which IRA prisoners were being treated by the British authorities in England and Ireland.210 The net result was that the Labour Government collapsed in 1979 on its handing of Irish political prisoners less than two years after an Irish Labour/ Fine Gael Coalition had been rejected by the Twenty-Six County electorate due to similar grounds.211 Although only one of several factors in play, the formerly automatic pro-Labour votes of the Irish MPs for all intents and purposes equated to the balance of power.212 Election events
