Fatalities in Northern Ireland and British Military Personnel

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[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.