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Heath Marred Lives of a Generation
We awoke to screams and the banging of bin lids. I ran down the stairs and out into the street which was packed with neighbours. Someone was shouting hysterically, “They’ve introduced internment! They’ve introduced internment!”
The air was acrid with the smell of burning vehicles and tyres. At the top of our street we rioted as the Brits tried to prevent local youths from building barricades. They scattered the crowd with live rounds – first over our heads, then into the huge Guinness advertisement at the top of Iveagh Parade, then at body level, by which time we were on the ground crawling towards the entries for cover.
At 8am I listened to the news. Hundreds had been arrested out of their homes; one soldier had been killed and there was rioting in all nationalist parts of Belfast as well as in Derry, Newry, Omagh and many other towns. But within the space of a few days the death toll was to dramatically rise to over twenty, and the injured in the hundreds, as civilians, soldiers, RUC men and IRA Volunteers were killed or seriously wounded.
Just as the Falls Curfew one year earlier had alienated huge swathes of the nationalist community, the bloody introduction of internment on 9 th August 1971 was to see the conflict rise to new levels. Only nationalists were interned. Reports soon emerged of torture being used against prisoners – and was confirmed by the Irish government which took the British government to the European Court on human rights abuses.
Recruits flocked to the IRA and there was an exponential explosion of activity.
Meanwhile, the man who had cleared the introduction of internment, the British prime minister, was getting a nice tan. While men, women and children were dying on the streets of the North over which hung the darkest clouds, he was sailing his yacht, Morning Cloud, to victory in the British Admiral Cup. The closest he came to Ireland was off Mizen Head in County Cork as he sailed past Fastnet Rock.
Ted Heath’s election as British Conservative prime minister in June 1970 was a disaster for the nationalist community. Within three weeks the Falls Curfew was imposed. Under his rule the British military had more say than ever.
A few days before Bloody Sunday on 30th January 1972 Heath received a memo from his most senior civil servant, Sir Burke Trend, recommending that he review the activities of the Parachute Regiment. The Paras, “have gratuitously provoked resentment among peaceful elements of the Roman Catholic population,” wrote Trend who was concerned about what they would do next.
Heath met with unionist Prime Minister Brian Faulkner and discussed the forthcoming anti-internment march in Derry but the details of their conversation and that of the military strategy committee were withheld when state papers were released under the 30-year rule. Nor were they given to the Saville Inquiry.
Heath announced an inquiry into Bloody Sunday under the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery. Many years later it emerged that Heath had secretly met Widgery before the inquiry and said: “It had to be remembered that we were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war.” He also asked that the Paras be allowed to give their evidence first, so as to establish a lead in terms of defence and the perception of the facts. Widgery subsequently largely exonerated the soldiers, saying they fired in self-defence.
Heath appeared before the Saville Inquiry and was asked a simple, black or white question by Michael Lavery QC, representing the victims’ families. He asked him several times if innocent people were murdered on Bloody Sunday. With typical arrogance Heath said he had not made a statement about that issue at the time and would not do so now.
Heath died, aged 89, last Sunday. He was described as “a man of great integrity and great courage”; “a political giant”; and “a very great man and an enormous patriot.”
I wondered was I thinking about the same person and then realised, yes, but only if the working-class dead don’t count, mean nothing, remain anonymous, and can be airbrushed from history.
Even An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in his eulogy, made no mention of a Fianna Fail administration taking Heath’s government to an international court on torture charges. Instead, “Sir Edward will be remembered with particular affection in Ireland because it was he who negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 which in many ways was the model for every subsequent effort to bring about peace and stability on the island of Ireland.”
It’s true that Sunningdale was negotiated by Heath. Does that absolve him from everything else? He also sanctioned William Whitelaw, the first Secretary of State after direct rule was introduced, to secretly talk to the republican leadership. Whitelaw’s successor, Tory MP, Francis Pym, released me from internment for which, under Bertie’s criteria, presumably, I should be eternally grateful.
Richard Weight, author of ‘Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940-2000’, tells a story about his mother, Angela (a young Labour supporter) and Heath. On the first day of Heath’s premiership she, along with 4-year-old Richard, mingled with the crowd of admirers outside 10 Downing Street (in the days before there were security barriers). As Heath stood outside the front door she threw a bucket of red paint around him, splashing his blue suit. Police jumped on her and Heath said: “That was a stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?” Whitelaw (who was forever described as being ‘avuncular’) hissed at her, “You fucking bitch!”
She spent a few nights in a police cell and was fined.
Years later Richard Weight was interviewed by Heath who was looking a principal researcher as he wrote his memoirs. Wright told him who he was and Heath began laughing and told him he had got the job. Later, he invited Angela Weight to his home where they were ‘reconciled’ – although that’s too strong a word for what I’m trying to say, but it might say something a little positive about a man whose first day as prime minister was marred.
Nevertheless, Ted Heath was responsible by commission or omission for the curfew, internment, the torture of the hooded men, Bloody Sunday and Operation Motorman, to name but a few of the infamous events which marred not just one day in the life of the nationalist community but the lives of a generation.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison