----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Revolutionary Communist Group  -  Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

MURDER ON THE ROCK: How the British Government got away with murder

by Maxine Williams



First published as a pamphlet in May 1989 by Larkin Publications,
London WC1N 3XX  (ISBN 0-905400-10-0)


DEDICATION

This booklet is dedicated to the memory of Terry O'Halloran who died
on 23 January 1989. Terry's help and political advice were invaluable
in writing the booklet, and he also wrote one chapter of it. We are 
proud to dedicate this work to the memory of a comrade who, all his 
adult life, fought for solidarity with the Irish people.

The Terry O'Halloran Memorial Fund has been established in his honour.
It will be used exclusively for the provision of books and other
publications for prisoners in gaols in Britain and Ireland for whose 
rights Terry campaigned so vigorously.

Contributions can be sent to:   The Terry O'Halloran Memorial Fund,
                                c/o BCM Box 5909,
                                London WC1N 3XX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Gary Clapton who compiled and wrote the appendix on British
shoot-to-kill operations in Ireland.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

                         MURDER ON THE ROCK

           How the British Government got away with murder


                           Maxine Williams


INTRODUCTION

When IRA members Mairead Farrell, Daniel McCann and Sean Savage were
shot dead by the SAS on a sunny afternoon in Gibraltar their deaths
were immediately welcomed by the British government, the Labour Party
and the press. They acclaimed the killings as a 'victory' against
terrorism. The bodies of the three were flown back to Ireland and
there too the enemies of Republicanism hounded them to their graves.
The RUC and British Army obstructed the passage of their coffins
through the mourning Six Counties. A Loyalist gunman attacked the
funerals, killing three people.

In the six months before the inquest into the Gibraltar shootings
began the question of whether they had been victims of a British
shoot-to-kill operation was debated. The controversy was fuelled by
witnesses and evidence flatly contradicting the British version of
events. The British government responded with an unparalleled
cover-up.

Six months later, when the inquest jury returned its verdict of lawful
killing, there was intense relief in Downing Street. Mrs Thatcher's
government had meticulously planned and worked to ensure that this was
the verdict reached. It is not surprising that they should attach such
importance to the Gibraltar inquest. It was one of the rare occasions
on which British activity against Irish people had been subjected to
such serious international scrutiny.

Had the inquest decided that the three were murdered, the effects for
the government and its strategy in Ireland would have been
incalculable. Not only would the British government and its forces
have been made to account for their murderous actions in Gibraltar,
but also the questions that remain unanswered from previous
shoot-to-kill operations and the Stalker affair would have been placed
at the centre of public debate. The British government simply could
not allow this to happen.

Barely had the spent cartridges been gathered from the streets of
Gibraltar before the government began its campaign to prevent such a
disastrous outcome. The machinery of disinformation swung smoothly
into operation. The next day's newspapers were full of the
government's story. The Daily Telegraph was typical:

    'British soldiers... shot dead three high ranking IRA
    terrorists... in Gibraltar yesterday, shortly after the gang had
    planted a massive car bomb... shooting broke out when the three
    were challenged.'

The government had made sure that the public's first and most
significant impression was that three armed IRA members had been shot
having just planted a massive bomb.

Only on the day after the shootings did the House of Commons hear
Geoffrey Howe admit:

    'those killed were subsequently found not to have been carrying
    arms. The parked car... did not contain an explosive device.'

But first impressions count. The non-existent IRA guns and car bomb
formed the first of many layers of distortion used to cover up the one
undeniable fact: that three unarmed people who had not planted a bomb
had been shot down in a hail of at least 25 bullets in broad daylight
on public streets. Howe produced the story that the SAS shot the three
because they made threatening movements when challenged.

In the six months before the inquest began, many other layers were
added. A special Cabinet committee was set up to ensure that nothing
was left to chance: the military and intelligence background to the
killings was excluded from the inquest; the media were pressurised;
the Spanish government was persuaded to prevent Spanish police
attending the inquest; the one civilian injured during the events was
paid a reported 10,000 compensation; the date of the inquest was
changed to coincide with the parliamentary recess. Anything or anybody
that could not be controlled was the object of sustained attack the
witnesses with inconvenient testimony, the Death on the Rock
television programme, Amnesty international. This is British democracy
in operation.

The inquest was the final and most difficult event to control. Even
vetted juries are unpredictable, as the two dissenting jurors showed
at the inquest. So the British government carefully stacked the odds.
The very terms of the inquest precluded the truth from becoming known
and the murderers from being revealed. Whilst the M15 and SAS hid
behind a curtain, their masters hid behind a thicker veil - Public
Interest Immunity! Certificates. No questions could be raised about
the intelligence that enabled the SAS to claim they thought the three
were armed and in control of a bomb. Nor about the decision, made by
Thatcher herself, to use the SAS. Yet it was this decision that sealed
the fate of the three. Neither the eyewitnesses who saw the three
finished off while on the ground, nor the forensic evidence with its
cold scientific portrayal of Sean Savage shot in the head whilst
immobilised on the ground, could alter the outcome of such a carefully
managed event.

The inquest did not hear the full story but enough of it is now known
to show what really happened. The political background is clear
enough. Following the Enniskillen bombing Mrs Thatcher declared that
there would be 'no hiding place' for the IRA. At that time she already
knew of the IRA unit's presence in Spain, as did British intelligence.
Thatcher has made no secret of her view that Britain is at war with
the IRA. Indeed she has said that civil liberties such as freedom of
the press and the right to silence must be sacrificed in this war.
What better opportunity could there be to put the war strategy into
operation? Tipped-off that three senior IRA figures were engaged in
preparations for an operation in Gibraltar, the British government
took the decision to eliminate them in as public and terrifying a
fashion as possible. Murder, pure and simple, is what happened in
Gibraltar. In this pamphlet we will show the overwhelming evidence for
this and show who the murderers were.

We will also show how it was possible for the British government to
get away with murder. The British government is responsible for murder
but it is the British Labour Party and the British media who acted as
their accomplices in the subsequent cover-up.

The Gibraltar murders are not unique. Nor, except in its scale, is the
government's subsequent cover-up unique. Since 1982 at least 53 Irish
people have been shot dead by British forces in disputed
circumstances. The only British soldier convicted for one of these
killings was released in 1988 after serving less than three years of a
life sentence. He returned to service with the Army.

There is indeed a lot to hide about British strategy and operations in
Ireland. And there are very good reasons for hiding it. If the full
truth became known about the extent of British repression in Ireland
the British public would see what the Irish people have seen for the
past twenty years: that Britain can rule Ireland only by murder,
intimidation and suppression of all basic rights. British rule means
the spilling of blood in Ireland as surely as it was spilt in
Gibraltar.

Successive British governments since 1969 have been engaged in a war
in Ireland. Their basic aim - the annihilation of the IRA and
revolutionary Republicanism - has remained constant throughout. Their
political and military strategy has been geared to this aim at every
stage. Sustained repression, house raids, searches, arbitrary arrests
and beatings have been directed against the nationalist population
with the specific aim of wearing down their resistance and their
support for the Republican movement. Alongside this a series of
measures has been aimed at identifying and eliminating Republican
activists. Internment, Bloody Sunday, torture and assassinations have
all been used by British imperialism. When one method becomes publicly
embarrassing they will move on to another. Internment without trial,
used in the 1970S, became a liability as world attention focused on
its victims. In the 1982183 period when Sinn Fein made considerable
headway in the Assembly elections, informers and show trials were used
to judicially intern hundreds of Republicans by railroading them
through juryless Diplock courts on perjured and bribed testimony. At
the same time there was a spate of shoot-to-kill murders of targeted
activists by the Army and RUC.

Frank Kitson (then Brigadier Frank Kitson) has made the ruling class
thinking behind this strategy clear in his book Low Intensity
Operations. An expert on counter-insurgency, he served in the Army in
Ireland between 1970 and 1972. He argues that it is necessary
ruthlessly to 'discover and neutralise the genuine subversive element'
whilst at the same time strengthening 'moderate' elements who support
the state. His strategy puts emphasis on intelligence-gathering and
includes the use of psychological operations against the opposition:
the use of the media to put over the government case; dirty tricks;
agents provocateurs; and finally, where necessary, assassinations.

The Gibraltar operation fits well into this British strategy. It
represents the other side of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. On the one
hand, the Agreement strengthens the 'moderates', the bourgeois
nationalists of the SDLP, by holding out the promise of reform. On the
other hand, the British government tracks down and eliminates
revolutionary opposition.

The Gibraltar murders caused an enormous, angry response in the Six
Counties. The nationalist people were ready with resistance as they
have been at every outrage directed at them by the British state. But
here in Britain there was barely an outcry at the murderous actions of
the British government. Not only does this lack of solidarity with the
Irish people strengthen the hand of the British state in Ireland, but
also it leads inexorably to the erosion of the democratic rights of
the British working class. The lessons of repression learned in
Ireland are being applied to working-class struggle in Britain. It was
no accident that during the harsh repression directed against the
miners during the 1984-5 strike, the miners themselves talked of
'Belfast' coming to their small communities. By failing to build a
movement of solidarity with the Irish people, a movement which demands
Irish self-determination and the immediate withdrawal of troops, the
British working-class movement is making a rod for its own back.

When Mairead Farrell came out of prison in 1986 she said:

    'I'm a socialist definitely and I'm a Republican. I believe in a
    united Ireland: a united socialist Ireland, definitely socialist.
    Capitalism provides no answer at all for our people, and I think
    that's the Brits' main interest in Ireland.'

It was revolutionary nationalism itself that the British were trying
to murder in Gibraltar. Mairead Farrell, Danny McCann and Sean Savage
were gunned down and buried amidst lies. This pamphlet cannot match
the resources of the British government and the British media. But it
can tell the truth about the Gibraltar killings and the British
shoot-to-kill strategy. In this way we not only pay tribute to the
Gibraltar Three but also warn the British working class about how its
government will act against those who threaten British imperialism.

