HC Deb 25 May 1972 vol 837 cc1785-96

11.21 p.m.

Mr. James Kilfedder (Down, North)

I do not intend to say anything in this debate which will engender hate or excite or inflame animosities. The Irish Republican Army has done that for itself. How well it has succeeded! The majority in Ulster, who do not want to be coerced into an all-Irish republic, have been pursued with a fury unparalleled by the armed advocates of Irish unity. Not only have the majority suffered danger, injury and death; they have also had to endure systematic and mischievous misrepresentation.

People in Northern Ireland no longer say "If there is civil war…". They talk about "When we have to face civil war…", though I pray that all people will continue to show the restraint which the Secretary of State called for in his statement today.

After three years of agony this is what we have come to. This is the measure of the success of the IRA. Our hospital wards are crammed with the mutilated bodies and ghastly, human wreckage of the victims of the IRA—Protestant and Roman Catholic. Thousands have been wounded; hundreds are dead. Those who have been executed by the IRA have even been denied dignity in death. When the black hood, which is the insignia of the executioners, is passed over the head and tied tightly round the throat, one cannot guess the thoughts which pass through the victim's mind.

Every fresh horror breeds a new spate of rumours. The most appalling stories of brutality, torture and mutilation after death are widely canvassed and generally believed. Naturally, they put an impossible burden on the law-abiding community, which has shown so much restraint.

So the truth should be told, and told immediately after each atrocity. God knows the truth is horrific enough. There is the case of one man who had his tongue cut out before being finally executed by the IRA. Others have been treated in an equally fiendish way, their bodies pumped full of bullets or subjected to electric shock torture. I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to give the facts tonight as far as he can. The least that most of the executed victims have suffered was a beating followed by death.

Let those who would deny that such treatment is torture ask themselves how they would react to the final terrified hours that an IRA victim lives through —brutally beaten or kicked, then the agonising seconds when, hooded, he is shot in the back of the head.

Let the truth be told for another reason. Let the whole world, for a change, see the true character of the IRA, which has systematically attacked the interrogation methods of the police and the Army. The true character of the IRA was shown, albeit belatedly, by the late Stormont Government in a pamphlet called "The Terror and the Tears". It is a pity that this Government have chosen to suppress this publication which was doing so much to show the suffering of the victims and tell the facts of IRA brutality.

The IRA has made full use of the mass media. Its campaign has been a propaganda masterpiece. No one would deny the IRA its success. But what a dismal reflection on the values of today! The world's Press laps up the IRA's wild allegations, televises it, and especially its funerals with full rites—marching men and youths, gun volleys over the grave.

Whenever a policeman or a soldier is murdered—some have been callously murdered in front of their families—the IRA machine enlists the support of the gullible everywhere. It alleges that the victims were executed in the name of civil rights and Irish unity or in response to alleged military repression. Where were the civil rights of the three teenage Scottish soldiers, two of them brothers, who were shot one by one in the back of the head after being lured on to a lonely Belfast hillside in March last year by an IRA execution squad, and kicked after death. What does the IRA say about these practices and about this criticism? There is a Mr. Fennell, apparently a public relations spokesman for the IRA, who stated in a recent article in a Dublin newspaper: The IRA campaign as a whole has been conducted with great humanity and with regard for civilian life as compared with other guerrilla campaigns. In that article he castigated a very distinguished Roman Catholic clergyman who is also a professor. It is not the first time that the IRA has attacked members of the Roman Catholic Church who have been brave enough to speak out against its vileness.

Let us look at a few of the examples of the IRA's alleged humanity. Take the case of one man, Private Harper, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. He is alive today and alone can tell the treatment which was given to him in the course of IRA interrogation. He was kidnapped from his home in Co. Londonderry last week. He was tortured with a lighted cigarette in the backs of his hands. He was shot in the back of the leg and was interrogated for some time and asked about the UDR.

Then there was the Guards officer, Mr. Marcus McCausland, a Roman Catholic and a former High Sheriff of Co. Londonderry, who had been a captain in the Ulster Defence Regiment. He was also abducted by the IRA. According to an IRA spokesman, he was interrogated by the Command Staff of the Official IRA for four hours. We read in the Press that: Throughout this time he systematically lied and the information elicited from him was already known. It was established through interrogation that he was actually working for British Intelligence. We know that Mr. McCausland was hooded, beaten up and was, so my evidence reveals, in a very bad way before being shot. That is a measure of the IRA humanity.

Then there is the case of Corporal James Elliott, a member of the UDR who was kidnapped on 17th April. On 19th April his body was discovered at Crossmaglen on our side of the frontier. A 200 lb. bomb was attached to his body and claymore mines were placed in the vicinity in order to cause havoc to those who came to rescue the corpse. Numerous bullet wounds were in the body and the head and there were wounds in the hands. All this showed that the man had experienced great agony.

One of his relatives said that they were horrified at the look of torture and agony still visible on the face. The fingers of both hands were blackened to the knuckles and holes were punched in the finger tips. Handfuls of grass and earth were clutched in the hands. One side of the face was smashed by what could have been either the heel of a boot or a rifle butt, to the extent that the nose was broken and displaced to one side. Both arms seemed limp and the genitals had been kicked until swollen out of all proportion. The teeth were smashed, he was shot through the wrists, the mouth, the neck, the throat and several times in the chest.

Rev. Ian Paisley (Antrim, North)

Is my hon. Friend aware that in this tragedy an attempt was made to cover up what the relatives themselves had seen and visits were paid by the security authorities to leading clergymen in the district to ask them to make a statement from their pulpit that no such atrocities were carried out on this man's body, and that this has caused deep resentment and deep feeling?

Mr. Kilfedder

I appreciate what my hon. Friend has said, and perhaps I should explain that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) would have liked to be here to make some comment about Corporal Elliott's death, but he is in hospital recovering from an appendicitis operation.

I will move on to a soldier who came from Eire, Private Martin Bremmer, a member of the Third Queen's, who visited his girl friend in Dundalk. He was abducted by the IRA, hooded and shot in the head, and before he was shot he was severely beaten. His brain and skull were smashed in. As I understand it, his brains were exposed. Perhaps my hon. Friend can tell us something about that unfortunate man's case. It looked as if, to use the jargon of the times, he had been beaten with a pistol butt. There was considerable bruising on his face.

There is the case of Mr. John Rocks. On 22nd November last year he was abducted by the IRA in Belfast and tortured apparently by means of a red hot poker applied to his private parts and his anus.

On 18th January of this year Mr. Sidney Agnew, a man of 40 years of age, a father and a bus driver, was due to give evidence on the following day for the prosecution against three members of the IRA who were charged with the possession of guns. As he sat in his home on the evening of 18th January a gunman entered and killed him in front of his own family and wounded his 82-year-old-mother, who went to his assistance. That, again, is a measure of the humanity of the IRA.

Then there is the case of Sean Russell, a Roman Catholic. The IRA does not distinguish between Protestants and Roman Catholics; its violence takes in everyone who stands up against it. Mr. Russell was a steel erector and a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. We are all proud to have members of the Roman Catholic faith serving in the Ulster Defence Regiment. Not sufficient praise can be given to those who take the risk of serving in the regiment. As Mr. Russell sat in the living room of his home in Belfast with his five children around him the bell rang. One of the children answered the door and a masked man burst in and shot Mr. Russell dead. Again, this man was shot dead in front of his own family. One of the gunman's bullets wounded the eldest child—a girl of 10.

On 16th February this year a Mr. Callaghan, a bus driver and a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, was driving his bus along the Creggan in Londonderry in the afternoon when he was hauled from his cab by a gunman. Three hours later his body was found, hooded. He had his hands tied behind his back. He had been shot through the head. I understand that there was severe bruising of the body.

On 13th February of this year Private McCann of the RAOC was beaten up by the IRA when on leave in Dublin visiting his mother. His body was discovered hooded. He had been shot in the head and had obviously been kept prisoner for some time. The evidence is pretty clear that he had been given a severe mauling. There was bad bruising of his body. There is no doubt that he had been subjected to torture.

The IRA does not restrict its activities to the hale and hearty. A deaf mute was tarred and feathered and severely and savagely beaten, and when the police found him the blood was streaming from his head.

The whole purpose of the activities of the IRA is to create a Protestant backlash. We have had numerous bomb explosions. There was the explosion at the offices of the Electricity Board in Belfast when a young man—a constituent of mine—was killed and numerous office girls were severely injured. Some of them were maimed for life. Then there was the bomb which exploded recently at the Bluebell Bar, in Sandy Road, without any warning, injuring many people.

There was the bomb that was accidentally exploded in Kelly's Bar. The IRA did not wish to own up to the fact that it injured its own men. It was prepared to put about allegations that this was a Protestant plot.

But we all welcome the glimmer of hope presented by the women of the Creggan. It was a brave act of theirs to protest to their tormentors and plead for the restoration of peace in the Province, although it is sad that it took the tortured and murdered body of a 19-yearold Roman Catholic soldier to do it.

Ranger Best had never served in Northern Ireland, but that did not matter to the IRA. He was born and grew up in the Creggan. That did not matter to the IRA, some of the members of which were undoubtedly at school with him. Ranger Best had been, I understand, a vigilante in 1969 in Londonderry, but that did not save him from the IRA. Why had he been kicked, beaten and tortured, hooded and finally shot by a.45 in the back of the head? His only crime was that, having joined the Army, he dared return home on leave from Germany. Ranger Best and all his family may be the most ardent Republicans for all I know and care. But what I do care is that he, like many others, died in this mean and pointless way. I mourn his death as I mourn the death of everyone who has died in Northern Ireland since August, 1969. I know that this House extends sympathy to him and to his family. But I think his death may bring about a meeting place for Protestants and Roman Catholics who see the violence as a means of destroying Ireland, North and South.

Did the IRA feel repentant or rebuffed as a result of the women's protests in the Creggan? Not at all. One of the IRA leaders is reported as saying that in a week the women of the Creggan will have forgotten Ranger Best. That sounds callous and stupid. Callous, certainly, but stupid, no. The IRA will have contrived, as it has done often in the past, to create an allegedly Protestant atrocity or a murder allegedly committed by the Army. The news media will bring the incident and the false allegations into every Republican home, and so the hate will be renewed.

Both wings of the IRA profess that they are in the "no-go" areas only to defend the people there. But it is not realised that it is the women and the children in those areas who defend the IRA, because while the women are there the Army cannot take the action that it would ordinarily take.

How many of the IRA's innocent victims can the people of this country recall to mind? Few, I fear, of the hundreds who have died as a result of terrorist activity since August, 1969. I should like to see a park or community centre built by the Government, with contributions from public subscription, dedicated to the memory of the victims and bearing their names.

That is for the future. We still have to defeat the IRA to obtain peace. A few days ago a Stormont Republican MP publicly told the IRA to get off the backs of the minority. But the IRA will not quietly dissolve. It retains its grip on Republican areas by terror, and it does not hesitate to make an example of anyone who may defy its Nazi jackboot rule.

Last month Mrs. McGucken refused to store ammunition in her home in Springfield Avenue, Belfast. A few days later three men and two girls, all wearing masks, burst into her house on a Sunday, and in front of her three young children cut off her hair. Mrs. McGucken was pregnant, but these thugs dragged her out from her home and her children into the street, where they tied her to a lamp post and poured paint and feathers over her. That was not sufficient. They then beat her with hurley sticks, breaking her shoulder bone. This obscene deed was carried out in the street in which the unfortunate woman lived.

Earlier this month two masked men entered the home of the Hyland family in the Lower Falls area of Belfast. When the terrorists identified Elizabeth, one of the daughters, aged 15, they threw a coat over her, lifted her bodily out of her chair and bundled her into a waiting car and drove off. That was on a Friday evening. Her mother, sister and young brothers never set eyes on her again until five days later. During her imprisonment she was moved around four different houses and was repeatedly beaten on the face and body. I understand that she was given bleach to drink. Her final humiliation was to be stripped of her clothes and forced to put on a pair of old trousers and shoes. Then she was taken outside into the street, which was only a few yards from her home, and tied to a telegraph pole. Her hair was cut and tugged out, and paint and feathers were poured over her. This punishment was carried out, allegedly for spying—in front of a mob of 200, many of them women, her neighbours.

The list of the victims of the IRA is long. The actions of the IRA are obscene. The IRA makes many allegations about the British Army and the police. It does not like the truth being told about its own actions, which disgrace the name of Ireland. The sooner the IRA goes, the sooner Protestant and Roman Catholic may live together in peace and for the good of all in the community.

11.41 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. David Howell

We should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) for directing the attention of the House and the public to the continuing horror of IRA terrorism and to the cases which he has cited, with the appalling suffering caused to the victims.

There is a danger that, after two years of IRA terrorism, we could become inured to the almost daily toll of murder, wounding and misery. My hon. Friend is right that we should not forget the suffering. He is right that we should strive in every possible way, at home and abroad, to expose the savagery of this series of indiscriminate attacks on men, women and children and the coldly calculated murders of soldiers, policemen and civilians. It is this type of exposure which the IRA fears most, and rightly so. Above all, it fears exposure to the anger of its own community.

Here, may I correct one point which my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North put wrongly, unintentionally I am sure. He said that the Government had suppressed the pamphlet "The Terror and the Tears". That is not so. It is available and obtainable. It is true that much has happened since the publication of that document, appalling in its message, and new IRA horrors have crowded out the old, alas. We believe that there is no lack of publicity for such incidents, and there must be no lack of publicity. Television and Press reports have made the incidents plain when they occur. We see at first hand the horror and pain and sorrow—it is present in our homes—and I believe that this is the best way forward in this respect. If my hon. Friend presses me on the matter I shall consider whether a fresh booklet or something of that kind would be required. But we believe that we are achieving the necessary impact through the publicity which we have in the Press and other news media.

Mr. Kilfedder

I hope my hon. Friend will reconsider the question of printing another publication so that the people will know the truth. They hear too many lies. If the facts are set out properly, they will see the truth.

Mr. Howell

As I say, we shall look at that. But we believe that through getting the facts—the horrific facts—into the Press and other news media of the world we are adopting the best way of putting out the message.

The people of the Creggan and the Bogside have recently, and very bravely, expressed more forcibly than we can, since they speak from personal grief, their horror and revulsion at the callous murder of one of their own kith and kin, the murder to which my hon. Friend referred. I suppose it could be that the cold-blooded decision by some IRA leader to murder Ranger William Best will in time prove to be the decision which showed beyond doubt that the rule of the gun will bring no peace to Ireland. IRA brutality is no substitute for justice. The shooting of its victims in the legs as a punishment for offending the IRA is no substitute for law and order. There is nothing noble in these acts, nothing to do with idealism. They are deeds which blot the book of Irish history, deeds of squalour and barbarism. Let us be clear about that.

My hon. Friend asked me today, as he has before by Questions, about cases in which IRA victims have been tortured and then murdered. I have replied that the IRA has been guilty of torture in many cases and my hon. Friend listed some of them in detail. I have replied that we have a long list of murders by the IRA. I have also replied that it is difficult to prove that any particular murdered man was tortured before he was murdered.

My hon. Friend mentioned the case of Corporal Elliott of the Ulster Defence Regiment and this is an instance of this difficulty. It was widely reported at the time that Corporal Elliott had been tortured before he was shot. As my hon. Friend knows, the inquest into the cause of death will be held tomorrow, 26th May, and the evidence that has been accumulated will be submitted for consideration by the coroner. I do not think I can say any more than that now but I can say that if my hon. Friend wishes to approach the coroner or the Ministry of Home Affairs and seek help in gaining a view of the pathologist's report he should certainly do so. I will personally see throught the Ministry that we do all we can to help.

At the moment I am still awaiting a report on the kidnapping and murder of Ranger William Best. The preliminary findings indicate ill-treatment before death. When these findings are made public as they will be it will then be for the House to judge whether this amounts to torture—whether we can distinguish in this case.

There are a number of other cases in which it has been reported that IRA victims have been tortured before being killed. For reasons which I think will be obvious—and there are close relatives and friends of the victims whom we must consider—I cannot and do not wish to go into the question of the nature of the injuries suffered by IRA victims in this category before they were killed. Furthermore, in most cases the evidence is very difficult to assess. The injuries caused to the bodies of IRA victims by gunshot wounds from which they die can easily be interpreted, understandably so. as torture. We know definitely that the IRA has been guilty of torture. My hon. Friend knows it and he has specified instances. We know too that it is guilty of many brutal murders but the evidence linking the two in many cases dies with the victim and this is the difficulty.

In the few remaining minutes may I put to the House the question which my hon. Friend put to it. It is right for us to ask: what does the IRA wish to achieve by this brutality? Is it an Ireland economically flourishing with jobs for all? Its activities have been directed to debilitating the Province. We all know of the deliberate destruction of factories and commercial premises, with appalling consequences. Is it a workers' republic the IRA is after or is it, as someone has said more eloquently that I, a widows' republic? There cannot be a workers' republic if there is not enough work, if all the opportunities for work have been smashed up. These are the questions we must put again and again if we wish to make clear the true message of IRA brutality.

We all know of fathers killed in the presence of their wives and children, of children shot down while they are playing in the streets or of young girls who are the innocent victims of indiscriminate attacks which have left them scarred and maimed for life. These are the horrific facts of the victims of the IRA.

This debate has shown all too painfully who are the victims, which families have suffered. It must be our policy and it is the policy of this Government to reverse this horrific trend. The purpose of the initiative by my right hon. Friend has been to create conditions in which there can be and must be a civilised and profitable discussion between all those concerned over the future of Northern Ireland. We ask a good deal of the people of Northern Ireland but they have shown that we are not asking too much. The members of the community who took down the barricades last weekend have demonstrated that they can overcome fear. terror and brutality and opt for law and order.

Those people in Londonderry who showed their city and the world what they thought about the IRA campaign of terror have made a first start. The people who overcome the degradation and horrific brutalities of the IRA in this way are no longer the victims; these are the people who are showing the way to peace in Ireland. I welcome the opportunity my hon. Friend has given us tonight to say something and to say something angry and firm about those brutalities. These are the things we should know and know definitely and utterly reject for the sake of Northern Ireland.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at ten minutes to Twelve o'clock.