On
Monday 28 February 1977 I travelled with Miss Glenholmes from Westland Row
railway station, Dublin to Dun Laoghaire port, and then by ferry to Holyhead in
Wales, and subsequently by train onwards. Miss Glenholmes alighted at Crewe,
England. We kissed on parting. I carried on to Coventry.
We did not know each other then. We do not know each other now. The young lady
sat down alongside me on a bench seat in Westland Row railway station and
opened up conversation. We remained in company up to the point when she left
the train at Crewe.
From 1955 to the present day I have made surely more than one hundred single
ferry crossings of the Irish Sea. Most memories of people met on those
traverses have been erased by time. The same was once so of the crossing with
Evelyn Glenholmes.
A fleeting memory of her came to me in a place named Kerikeri in North Island,
New Zealand in September 1983. It came with a first sighting of an American
woman named Cheryl Bonney.
(Some may find that claim strange.
Lest anybody should hold that the aforegoing writing is subject to
retrospective juggling, this piece of spiritual understanding has been in note
form since the 1980' s. It is not a unique experience.)
The meeting with Miss Bonney, an across
my path encounter, was an introduction. The importance of Cheryl Bonney lay
in the future. The initial meeting took place two weeks after the Belfast
arrest of Evelyn Glenholmes.
But to regress a bit.
1) Tuesday 6 September 1983 – Miss Glenholmes is arrested under the
Prevention of Terrorism Act.
2) Wednesday 7 September 1983
– Northern Ireland Secretary grants an extension order to detain Miss
Glenholmes for a further five days.
3) Thursday 8 September 1983
– The date on the D. Hurd M.P. Home Office letter to me (picked up at Mount
Eden youth hostel, Auckland, New Zealand on Sunday 02.10.83).
4) Friday 9 September 1983 –
Miss Glenholmes is fingerprinted.
5) Monday 12 September 1983 –
Miss Glenholmes is formally charged with being a member of Cumann na mBan
(women’s section of IRA).
6) Monday 12 September 1983 –
The date on a covering letter from John Butcher M.P., accompanying the D. Hurd
M.P. Home Office letter.
7) Friday 16 September 1983 –
(8.15p.m.) The date of posting Mr. D. Hurd's letter of 8 September and Mr. John
Butcher's covering letter of 12 September.
Miss Glenholmes was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Why? There
must have been a reason. Was the intent of the exercise to secure her
fingerprints? It seems not to have been an uncommon malpractice. I quote from a
report in the Times of 28.10.87, at
the end of a court case: "He was held under the Prevention of Terrorism
Act by the security forces...the object of his arrest was to take his
fingerprints."
From the tempo of interest surrounding me the mistaken implications of those
U.K. events, compounded by other erroneous deductions, had reached Down Under by weekend Friday/Saturday
16/17 September 1983, and maybe before.
British, Australian and American interest intensified. Back in Britain a letter
from John Butcher M.P. is backdated. It is the covering letter dated 12
September – posted 8.15p.m. Friday 16 September. Mr. Butcher's secretaries had
a record of typing and posting letters on the same day, or, at the most, one
day later. That letter is the sole exception to the rule.
Miss Glenholmes was arrested consequent of, it is alleged, accusations from a
so-called supergrass (informer). For
five weeks following the formal charging of Glenholmes all was quiet. Then...
Tuesday 18.10.83 – Wellington, New Zealand. As was done in a preliminary
form the night before, I report an intelligence agency attempt to murder me in
Abel Tasman National Park to the central police station. The report was also
made to the Deputy High Commissioner at the British High Commission and by
telephone within the national parliament building to a junior member of the New
Zealand government.
Wednesday 19.10.83 (12.30a.m.) – Robert Lean supergrass escapes. Describing his escape,
"Lean said: 'I went to bed in Palace Barracks and took the (car) keys
(left on the fireplace by a policeman). I shaved a growth off and went out the
window. I took his car and drove by the main entrance. I was waved on by the
sentry and drove on and landed with my family in Belfast.'" – The Irish Press, Thursday 20.10.83.
Lean remained with his family for the night. The following morning he went to
Mr. Oliver Kelly, solicitor, with whom he drew up an affidavit "retracting
his evidence against 28 people.”
"While Lean appeared at the Sinn Fein press conference (in the) afternoon
a lawyer delivered the affidavit to the DPP's office." – The Irish Times, Thursday 20.10.83. The
same report said: "Police and soldiers surrounded the press conference
building. About 15 minutes after the press conference ended, Lean left the
building with Mrs. Eileen Kelly, a barrister, but two police (officers) came to
the car and took Lean out. One said, 'Come on Robert, you're being arrested
under section 12 of the Emergency Provisions Act as a suspected
terrorist.'"
“South Antrim Official Unionist Assembly man, Mr. Frazer Agnew, called for a
full scale investigation into Lean's 'escape'. He said security was becoming a
real laughing stock in Northern Ireland.....He demanded that the two RUC
officers who were guarding Lean and the two soldiers on checkpoint duty at the
barracks should be suspended from duty immediately.” – The Irish Press,
Thursday 20.10.83.
Friday 21.10.83 – “27 named by informer to be freed." They were
duly released this day. Miss Glenholmes alone was released on bail of £150 to
appear at the remand court the following week, where it was indicated to her
counsel charges would not proceed.
Monday 24.10.83 – I report by telephone from the ground floor of Queen
Anne's Gate building, London to the office of Douglas Hurd M.P., Minister of
State, Home Office, on an intelligence agency attempt to kill me while abroad.
Tuesday 25.10.83 – The scheduled day for formal withdrawal of charges
against Miss Glenholmes.
Wednesday 26.10.83 – Close to midday I call on my Coventry solicitor,
Mr. A.V.N. Richards of Richards, Heynes and Coopers, Solicitors, 101/103 New
Union Street and report an intelligence agency attempt to kill me while abroad.
Mr. Richards advised I take up the matter with John Butcher M.P. and if in time
he could not help I should return to him.
Wednesday 26.10.83 – RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) release Robert
Lean.
Wednesday 26.10.83 – I draw from the
Times two days on: "Explosives find linked to the IRA." The chance discovered cache, located near
Pangbourne, Berkshire was said to be “massive”. "On Wednesday night
members of the anti-terrorist squad lay hidden watching the spot."
Even a police cadet dunce would treat incredulously such a course of action,
the immediate public disclosure of the cache, were it not to have an ulterior operational intelligence motive.
Indications are that the Pangbourne cache was under official control from April
1983, or before, when items from the hoard were removed for the Weeton army
camp conspiracy to bomb mission. Is this why it was deemed an easy forfeit to
make a telling point in October 1983?
Later it would be alleged that prints from Miss Evelyn Glenholmes were found on
items in the hoard. Also, the initial use if not the laying down of the cache
is credited to the December 1980-January 1981 London bombing team. The final
action in that series was the planting of a bomb in an airmens accomodation
block at Royal Air Force Uxbridge in late afternoon Thursday 8 January 1981. It
was the same active service unit, or part of, with whom I inadvertently
travelled on a train journey to Pembroke, Wales, and then by ferry across the
Irish Sea to Cork, Ireland, on the night of Thursday/Friday 8/9 January 1981.
That night, though not appreciative of events leading up to the crossing, I was
alert to a republican group aboard the ferry. At no time did I have association
with them. Some were suspicious of my passage. They enquired where I lived and
were told.
Though the authorities are aware of the identities of the full IRA team
involved in the London bombings of December 1980 and January 1981, no charges
have been laid. Would that be related to the inviolability of the Mount Gabriel
radar domes and other sensitive considerations?
Your attention is drawn to a revealing statistic. Of the five major forest/wood
found arms caches in England of those years four were declared to have been the
result of good intelligence work. Pangbourne was no different. A common thread
runs through all of them.
The manipulative propensities of the security services, Irish and British,
would have some (including the IRA) believe otherwise. A case of not seeing the
wood for the trees?
(If the full story of the Pangbourne cache and the Weeton conspiracy to bomb
mission were told, it would have in political terms an explosive impact equal
to that which devastated the Grand Hotel in Brighton. It is about a failure in
security methodology of enormous proportions.)
"On Wednesday night members of the anti-terrorist squad lay hidden
watching the spot." (The Pangbourne cache). Held under surveillance for
one night? The suggestion is risible. It should have been laughed out of court.
Come to think, why wasn't it?
I further draw your attention to a report in the (Belfast) News Letter of Friday 28.10.83. "(The cache) was found on
Wednesday (26th) by two estate workers....Dr. Edward McLellan, a Harley Street
consultant surgeon whose home overlooks the cache site....added that something
disturbed his dogs at the week-end. 'Last Sunday night when I was in the house
alone my two labradors started to bark and their hair stood on end. It was a
sign they had heard something strange. I put on a thick dressing gown and
switched on all the lights both inside and outside and had a good look around.
I didn't find anything but the dogs must have heard something to make them
behave like that.'"
The activity at the cache site took place when I was into the tail-end, the
final hours, of my flight from Australia to England.
From departure from Wellington, New Zealand on Tuesday 18 October 1983 to
arrival at Heathrow, London on Monday 24.10.83, a distance of about 14,000
miles was covered. It was a precipitate flight. On only one of those last six
nights did I sleep in a bed.
The report made direct to the Home Office in London, and in the same week to a
solicitor and a member of parliament in Coventry, on an intelligence agency
attempt to murder, one would learn fifteen months on, was recorded as a
complaint on surveillance. A reply was filed against that false charge but was
not at the time forwarded to me.
That grave and shameful act of deception was in keeping with other happenings
up to that time. It will help explain the extraordinary events that follow.
Friday 19.10.84 – A week after the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing I
visited the constituency office of John Butcher M.P., naming two people working
for security agencies in west Cork. The information was pertinent to the time
and was given in generous and truthful context.
MI5 evidently thought different; they saw it as an act of gamesmanship. It
wasn't.
The day following my report to Mr. Butcher a preliminary and exclusive leak on
Evelyn Glenholmes is given to the Sunday
Times by the security services. It concerned the raising of warrants for
her extradition to Britain.
The information on Glenholmes appeared as an insert in the main report in that
weekend's newspaper. It did not however indicate the name or sex of the person
about whom they were writing. It simply presaged, a-la-hush-hush, the mounting
of an event of importance.
The same Sunday morning, 21.10.84, a little man with a taste for pin-striped
suits who is index-linked pensionable, shares my table in a club house tea
room. Two pals lend moral support. They seat themselves around the odd man out
– me. The little man asks what type of work I am interested in. A terse reply
asserts my priority: "Justice...j-u-s-t-i-c-e."
Wednesday 31.10.84 – A small arms and explosive find is brought to
public notice. It is another chance
and fortuitously timed discovery. The find was in Ferndale Road, Tottenham,
London. At least some of the returning IRA active service unit on the
train-ferry crossing on the night of 8/9 January 1981 stayed at Tottenham.
Wednesday 31.10.84 – Nine warrants are raised for the extradition of
Evelyn Glenholmes from Ireland to Britain.
Imagine puppeteers pulling strings with puppets dancing to their every whim and
you have a picture of how the secret state of the supposed Free West operates. I report to the police in Wellington, New
Zealand, on an intelligence agency attempt to kill me. About one day later a
supergrass is facilitated with an opportunity to escape and does so. As a consequence he retracts statements and
Evelyn Glenholmes and others are released from police custody. I then report
the same charge to the Home Office in London and two days on to my solicitor in
Coventry. Some hours later the Pangbourne arms and explosive hoard is chance found. It would transpire that
people with whom I had direct circumstantial communion were involved in the
initial use and maybe the laying down of the stores. It was later alleged that
prints from Miss Glenholmes were found in the hoard. Then comes my giving two
names of people known to me to work for security interests in west Cork to John
Butcher M.P. One day on an exclusive leak on Glenholmes is given to the Sunday Times
In March 1986, Douglas Hurd M.P., Home Secretary, speaking in the House of
Commons on the November 1984 Glenholmes extradition warrants exposé, said the
flight of Glenholmes was due to details of the extradition request being
"disclosed in the press". That is untrue.
His reference was to a Sunday Times
report of 11.11.84 – a report that had its origins in a leak to the newspaper
by MI5, an agency in Mr. Hurd’s own department. But contrary to the Home
Secretary’s assertion, Glenholmes was not tipped off by the Sunday Times report or by its journalists.
Mr. Hurd was at least half right. She was tipped off.
A long time ago, without the benefit of the following research, I independently
described the events surrounding the November 1984 Evelyn Glenholmes
extradition warrants exposé as a tip off. A page 14 cartoon in the Irish Times of 14.11.84 jests likewise.
The suggestion also comes up in the News
Letter of Monday 26.11.84, which is headed, "Eire silent in tip-off
row" – a reference to a Sunday Times
report of the previous day. In time the Observer
would make the same point.
Who did the tipping off?
It was a man who traipsed about Dundalk, Co. Louth questioning people about
Evelyn Glenholmes. He was a member of MI5. Not only is his identity known to
the Sunday Times, he admitted to
being in Dundalk and specified the days when there – see Sunday Times, 25.11.84.
The secret service man was not on a covert mission. Apart from making his
presence known to Glenholmes’ neighbours, he wore a three-piece suit, carried a
tape recorder and spoke with an English accent.
Left behind was the deerstalker, the bloodhound and the magnifying glass!
At the time of his visit to Dundalk, Miss Glenholmes was in Belfast with her
family. She was not bothered by the R.U.C. who were not informed of her
supposed wanted status.
On return to Dundalk the following day, Thursday 08.11.84, and told of the
enquiries, Glenholmes left town. The basis for her alleged wanted status was
derived from evidence found in the Pangbourne cache and actions resulting from
its stores, specifically the autumn 1981 London bombings.
The contents of the Pangbourne cache are on public record as being in the
control of the authorities from Wednesday 26.10.83. The reality is that they
were known about much earlier.
The whereabouts of Glenholmes was no secret. She lived openly in Dundalk. She
made periodic visits to her family in Belfast.
An arrest could have been made on any one of the visits.
There was no need for politically contentious extradition warrants to effect
the detention of Miss Glenholmes. The simple expedient, given a sincerity of
intention, would have been for the London authorities to inform the R.U.C.
The failure to inform the R.U.C. is just another of those singular omissions.
It asks the perennial question: why?
(For the record, the Sunday Times
journalist, a freelance, arrived in Dundalk on Saturday 10.11.84. He was Irish
and spoke with an Irish accent. His report was published on Sunday 11.11.84.)
Dail Eireann, Tuesday 13.11.84 – An Ceann Comhairle (Chairman or
Speaker): "Deputy Haughey has been given permission to put a Private
Notice Question to the Minister for Justice." Mr. Haughey: "My
question was addressed to the Taoiseach (Dr. FitzGerald). I find it of deep
significance that it has been transferred to the Minister for Justice in view
of the fact that the matter was handled personally by the Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) and the Attorney-General who is attached to his office." The
subject was the Evelyn Glenholmes extradition warrants.
Mr. Haughey was angry and showed it by four times making the point of Dr.
FitzGerald's failure to answer the questions. Did Dr. FitzGerald take the
cowards option because he dared not unfold the truth of the matter? On Monday
24.03.86 such an evasion took place in the House of Commons when Douglas Hurd
M.P. substituted for the Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers M.P. A strategem
that angered many M.P.'s.
Mr. Haughey said: ".....this matter was handled personally by the
Taoiseach and the Attorney-General who is attached to his office."
He was implying that clearance and cooperation was at the very highest level in
the Irish and British governments.
Extradition warrants for the arrest of Evelyn Glenholmes were available from
Wednesday 31.10.84 but were not transferred to Dublin until Monday 05.11.84. It
was the same day as the return to Ireland of Dr. FitzGerald, who the day before
landed in London on board a Royal Air Force VC10 aircraft from New Delhi with
Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher, where they had attended the funeral of Mrs.
Indira Gandhi.
The return flight from India of an Taoiseach at the invitation of Mrs. Thatcher
was described by Irish sources as a "warmly courteous gesture."
Was it?
The measure of esteem held by Mrs. Thatcher for an Taoiseach was perhaps better
reflected a couple of weeks on at an Anglo-Irish Summit meeting when she
handbagged him three times. A rude awakening for Dr. FitzGerald who learned
that Mrs. Thatcher exacted a high price for give-a-way meals and long distance
flights. What did she want from the obliging Dr. FitzGerald?
The extradition warrants which flew in to Dublin on 05.11.84, flew out again
the same day. The Irish authorities requested minor adjustments. One nuance had
to do with Glenholmes’ name. The first set of warrants described her as Evelyn
Glenholmes. The Irish authorities asked that they be altered to Mary Elizabeth
Evelyn Glenholmes. This and other minimal changes were incorporated into the
second set of warrants.
Sir Michael Havers M.P., Attorney-General, described the alterations sought by
the (Irish) Director of Public Prosecutions as "the right doubts about
mistakes." The District Justice in Dublin, at the March 1986 hearing,
didn't agree. He observed that the (Irish) prosecution documents titled Miss
Glenholmes as "Evelyn Glenholmes" and not the pedantic "Mary
Elizabeth Evelyn Glenholmes" that the same Irish authorities had requested
from their British counterparts.
The game of name semantics would right itself in the third (and never
activated) set of extradition warrants when the lady in question reverted to
the more utility Evelyn Glenholmes. Was it a procedural exercise with a
purpose?
It allowed for the allegedly unsworn second set of extradition warrants to be
returned. In-built defects – just in case?
Ask yourself two questions. Are the British authorities so stupid to leave
unsworn extradition warrants that demand by their wording they be sworn? Or are
they so corrupt that would declare them so in order to defeat a perceived
threat of gravely embarrassing political proportions?
Evidence confirms that Miss Glenholmes was not tipped off by the Sunday Times report of 11.11.84, as
later claimed by Douglas Hurd M.P. in the House of Commons, but was tipped off
days earlier by a member of the Security Service. What then was the purpose of
the exclusive leak to the Sunday Times?
It made the threat of extradition against Glenholmes public. The warrants were
available. They could, like a stick in a cupboard, be taken out and used.
Another immediate question is: what did the respective authorities do to
prevent the Sunday Times from
publishing the report? The Irish acted out a game at which they are expert:
they played dumb and pretended ignorance.
(If there are forty shades of green there are as many and more ways to lie and
official Ireland knows them all.)
What did the British authorities do about the story? It was cleared "at
the highest level in the British Government," we are told by Andrew Neil,
editor of the Sunday Times. He should
know.
Manipulation of the story began relative hours after my giving two names to
John Butcher M.P. of people known to me to work for the security services in
west Cork. Publication of the story took place three weeks on.
The story was leaked for a purpose. Publication was sanctioned for a purpose.
Who was it who gave sanction?
We return to C.J. Haughey T.D., (Dail Eireann, Tuesday 13.11.84): "...all
the indications are that this story was planted in the Sunday Times by someone high up in British Government circles,
probably the Attorney-General, for whatever motive he may have had in
mind." It was Sir Michael Havers M.P., says Mr. Haughey.
Sir Michael was the right man in the right job at the right time.
A closer look at the extradition warrants will help explain this. The nine
warrants related to the Pangbourne munitions cache and the autumn 1981 series
of London bombings.
The man publicly alleged to be the chief planner and quartermaster of that and
other mainland Britain bombing missions is the same person who called at my
west Cork farmhouse on the first of November 1981.
After his west Cork visit the final bombing in the autumn 1981 London campaign
took place. It was on the night of 13.11.81, when two bombs exploded outside
the Wimbledon home of the Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers Q.C.
Sir Michael and wife were not at home on the night, having gone on holiday some
hours earlier, and so evaded injury.
The Pangbourne arms dump. Evelyn Glenholmes. The IRA man who called at my west
Cork home. Sir Michael Havers. A star studded cast.
It has been alleged that Sir Michael had close ties with the Security Service.
One of his responsibilities as Attorney-General was the office of the Director
of Public Prosecutions.
Eminent and "clubable" – a man of influence with a wide range of
contacts. Who better to have up front?
The Sunday Times report of 11.11.84
did no more than bring down the shutters on the Evelyn Glenholmes extradition
warrants saga for a time.
