Fatalities in Northern Ireland and British Military Personnel

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

That speech by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) was astonishing and deeply moving. Thank you.

This is personal to me. I am one of the 300,000 soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. I completed seven tours there as an infantry officer. I spent three years there. I first went in the early months of 1970 as a 20-year-old second lieutenant. To be honest, I was utterly shocked that on my first tour I was operating on the streets of my country with weapons. That was not the sort of soldiering I had expected. After all, I had been at Sandhurst since 1967. We withdrew from Aden in 1967, we had a year of peace in 1968, and then the British Army was sent into Northern Ireland in 1970. I was very uncomfortable about it.

When I went to Northern Ireland just after the start of 1970, we were deployed to Londonderry, principally to protect the Catholics. I even had a Catholic girlfriend for a time. I was unmarried. [Laughter.]

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

We’re a confessional.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; he always gets me.

In my seven tours, I certainly witnessed bombings and fatality shootings involving military personnel. I want to centre on how we felt and how we approached it. Our approach started with our instructions, which were called, “Instructions for Opening Fire in Northern Ireland”—the so-called yellow card. I have mine here. This is the 1980 version. It is meant to fit into a pocket, so that soldiers have it with them the whole time. The problem is, when a soldier is in contact, they cannot get the card and think, “Oh, what can I do?” It has to be remembered. It has to be built into a soldier what he or she should do in a case where they might use firearms. It has to be instinctive.

So that people understood the rules, there were huge instructions on pre-operational tour training. The rules were clear and pretty precise as to what a soldier could and could not do. Let me read them, because they are on one piece of paper. This had to be in a soldier’s mind: we were to use minimum force in all situations, and open fire only as a last resort. No live rounds were to be carried in the breech, unless we were ordered otherwise or were about to fire. Challenges were always to be given before firing, unless to do so would increase the risk of death or grave injury to us or anyone we considered was being engaged by terrorists. Challenges were to be clear: “Army. Stop or I fire!” We were ordered to open fire only if someone was committing an act likely to endanger life and there was no other way to stop them.

There are examples on the yellow card of when a soldier can open fire:

“Someone firing or about to fire a weapon; someone planting, detonating or throwing an explosive device, including a petrol bomb”.

in the early 1970s, petrol bombs on William Street in Londonderry put a third of my platoon in hospital with burns before any firing took place. We did not fire; we did not even consider it. We did not even draw our batons.

The next example is

“Someone driving a car at a person, and there is no other way to stop him.”

Some hon. Members may be old enough to remember the case of Corporal Lee Clegg, who was convicted of murder in 1993. He fired at a car as it approached him, and as it passed by he turned around and shot through the window. The yellow card is precise: he was not in danger any more, so he should not have fired. I will return to that.

The examples continue:

“Only aimed shots were to be fired; no more rounds than necessary were to be fired; and be careful not to hit anyone who is innocent.”

Those rules were put into all of us. We practised them. We spent ages in a classroom learning them. We also practised scenarios in exercises, and were judged on whether we had done the right thing.

To decide whether to open fire was an enormous decision, and often—I saw it several times—indecision and worry about whether to open fire resulted in it not happening until it was too late. Fire could have been returned. We all knew that shooting incidents would be investigated, and we had to justify what we had done.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. and gallant Friend is giving moving first-hand testimony on soldiering in Northern Ireland and the issues surrounding that. He is describing a situation where something has happened. What impact does that have on the soldier concerned?

[Bob Stewart]

Soldiers were frightened sick of going to court. They would much prefer to be in the field than to face some sort of judicial procedure. In 1986 I was the lead Army witness in Belfast Crown Court for the Ballykelly bombing. I had a string of my men going into court behind me, and although they had not opened fire and they had not done anything wrong, they were absolutely petrified about going to court. Luckily, in the end, I gave evidence, we had lunch and the plea was changed. My men did not have to give evidence, but in answer to my hon. Friend’s question, they were petrified and loathed it, simply because it is so far out of their ken.

The trouble is, decisions to open fire had to be made in seconds. That is against the background of a poor soldier, sometimes only 18 years old, having to think all the time, “Am I making the right decision? Is this right? I don’t want to kill someone.” We are human beings. Soldiers are not brutes. If they are, they should be out of the Army.

Those questioning soldiers’ decisions to open fire always have the luxury of ample time to examine what has happened, normally from a warm, comfortable room rather than an operational situation. So often, soldiers who open fire are frightened sick and having to make a decision very quickly. Of course, they are often in real danger of losing their own life.

In all fatality shootings that I was involved in, the soldiers had to prove that they acted within the law—often in court. The Army, and the special investigation branch in particular, were not nice to them. There was no cosying up. The interrogations—that is what they were— were not cosy. In 1978, I remember telling two soldiers that they were to be investigated and possibly charged with manslaughter. They had just saved their own lives by using their pistols to extricate themselves from a deadly situation, and they were shaking from the experience. They accused me, their officer, of abandoning them, and they used pretty ripe language about me. I felt rotten, as I totally understood how they felt. I explained that they had to be investigated to prove that they had acted legally and that the matter would then be over forever.

I believed then that that was right, but in recent years I have become increasingly worried in case I was wrong. In that case, I let my men down badly by what I said at the time. As politicians, we have a duty to ensure that soldiers such as my two men in 1978 are protected from retrospective investigation, especially into events that we believe were fully investigated at the time and are long in the past.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this matter, Sir David. I thank hon. Members who have spoken, and in particular my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). He is a friend, and we share a bit of banter on many occasions, but we have also had the opportunity to serve in uniform, and that is something we both recognise. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), who made one of the best speeches I have heard in a long time—one that resonated with all of us, because it was straight from his heart. Well done to him.

I also thank those who produced the report. Its high quality and the hard work that has gone into it are evident, and on behalf of the right-thinking people of Northern Ireland, and those who served Queen and country there, I thank the Committee for investigating with an impartial eye, for not being swayed by propaganda, and for seeking to do right by those who laid their physical and mental health on the line for the safety of every corner of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I declare an interest, having served in the Ulster Defence Regiment for three years and in the Territorial Army for 11 and a half years as a part-time soldier. I was pleased to serve in uniform; it was something I wanted to do since I was a young boy, and when the opportunity came when I was 18, I did it. The report is clear that between August 1969 and July 2007, over 300,000 soldiers served in Northern Ireland as part of Operation Banner, the longest continuous campaign in the history of the British Army. Those soldiers were deployed to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary and other security forces, and at the height of the campaign more than 27,000 military personnel were operating out of bases in more than 100 locations across the whole Province. I am proud to have been one of those men in part-time uniform. Operation Banner resulted in the death of 1,441 serving personnel, 722 of whom were killed in paramilitary attacks. Over the same period, British soldiers were responsible for the deaths of around 300 people, some of whom were civilians. That fact sets the scene very well.

Imagine that all around you, your brothers in arms are being blown up, trapped or beaten to death. You are under command and order, and you know that the only way of surviving is to keep your head down and follow orders. You do that. You see the unbelievable and touch the untouchable, and 30 years later, you have flashbacks of the unforgettable face of death and destruction. You rebuild your life, raise your children and grandchildren, and try to return to civilian life and forget what you have seen. You get to your state pension and settle into retirement. Then, one day, you get a knock on the door: someone is preparing a case to prosecute you for following those orders.

If they asked for a description of your colleague’s last seconds as he gasped for breath in your arms, having been blown up, you could easily describe that; it is irrevocably, indelibly imprinted on your mind. However, asking for details of individual outings and cases will be very different. You followed orders; that was the only detail you really needed to know. The hon. Member for Beckenham outlined exactly what a soldier does, in case we needed real, live evidence of that. He put it succinctly: soldiers followed orders. They did not question an order or ask for a brief on it; they followed it. That was the job they did.

By interviewing these men, we are not seeking justice but allowing a minority of people to seek vengeance, not against specific perpetrators, but against anyone who dared to wear a uniform. That was the only crime: being British and serving the Queen. To this day, that is enough for some people to want to destroy someone. The question is why some people are facilitating that, and how we can stop it. Figures show that investigations into former Army personnel account for a minority of legacy investigation branch cases, but that is still a disproportionately high number—some 30%—given that the total level of Army involvement in killings stands at 10%.

I have asked before in this Chamber why the life of someone killed in a skirmish with the Army is worth more time, effort and money than the life of someone killed by a unrepentant republican terrorist, who is walking around with a mayoral chain around his neck. We all know cases where that has happened; I named a very clear one in the House of Commons in the last term. That life is not worth more; it should not be. We must cut off the ability of those with a litigious republican agenda, who are determined to rewrite history, to weave a web of conspiracy theory and collusion, and make it seem like it was ever okay to bring workmen out of a van, let one of a certain religion run, and murder the rest in cold blood. The Kingsmill massacre has been very real in many people’s minds over the last period of time.

Those are the people whom some seek to appease through this continued attack on service personnel. It has to end. For the sake of real justice it has to stop. By all means, if soldiers lured civilians into an area by means of a honey trap and murdered them, let us investigate that, regardless of the uniform. But that is not the way it was; it was the other way around for those three Scottish soldiers. I tabled an early-day motion for them just a short time ago. I ask: where is their justice? There is not a level playing field, and it needs to be levelled.

Lexie Cummings’s family, from Strabane in West Tyrone, need the closure that has been given to those who sought the investigation into Bloody Sunday. My cousin Kenneth Smyth’s family mourn still. Do they not deserve the time that has been wasted on dragging old men out of their beds on the mainland and asking them questions that were above their pay grade, when they simply followed orders in a country where possibly half the people despised them for their uniform, and perhaps half of those people were willing to do something about it?

[Bob Stewart]

I want to pick up on one point that the hon. Gentleman— my very good friend—said. He said that soldiers followed orders. The decision to open fire was an individual matter; in the vast majority of cases, soldiers did not open fire because someone ordered them to. I cannot think of any cases where people opened fire on an order. They opened fire because they made the decision, based on the yellow card.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Clearly, the yellow card was given by the British Army for guidance on what to do, and soldiers followed that, so the soldiers on the ground followed the rules. There was not a man over their shoulder saying, “Right, fire now.” They made the decision based on the rules, which were clearly laid down for them. I had a yellow card myself, and I still keep it—as a bit of a keepsake, if for no other reason.

I will say it again: if soldiers stepped beyond their role and knowingly and willingly committed offences, then that is very different from what is happening here. I ask everyone to please see the difference.

I support the Committee’s recommendations, and appeal to anyone with any sense of decency and natural justice to do the same—except for a few minor parts that my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East and others have mentioned; for that reason, we would not endorse everything that the Chair of the Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), said.

The Government need to act. I appeal to them to respond to those who wore a uniform. As one who still lives under threat—not of prosecution, but because of my British service life, as other gallant and very gallant hon. Members have said—I ask the Government to please make best use of their resources. That means not persecuting—I use that word deliberately—men who did no more than wear their uniform and follow orders while under guerrilla and open warfare. Minister, decent people have had enough. People who were in the RUC, Prison Service, UDR or British Army and their families have been traumatised enough. I ask him to please stop appeasing the minority of people who cannot be appeased until they get what they wish for and we are wiped from their sight, and to do what is right and honourable for those who so honourably served Queen and country.

I apologise, Sir David, for the fact that I shall shortly have to retire; I have already asked permission of you, the Minister and the Shadow Minister.