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Tag Archives: Royal Corps of Signals


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Birth of Fr. Alec Reid, Facilitator in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Alexander Reid CSsR, Irish Catholic priest noted for his facilitator role in the Northern Ireland peace process, is born in Dublin on August 5, 1931. BBC journalist Peter Taylor subsequently describes Reid’s role as “absolutely critical” to the success of the peace process.

Reid is raised in Nenagh, County Tipperary, from the age of six following the death of his father. He studies English, history and philosophy at University College Galway.

Reid is professed as a Redemptorist in 1950 and ordained a priest seven years later. For the next four years, he gives Parish Missions in Limerick, Dundalk and Galway (Esker), before moving to Clonard Monastery in Belfast, where he spends almost the next forty years. The Redemptorist Monastery at Clonard stands on the interface between the Catholic nationalist Falls Road and the Protestant loyalist Shankill Road areas of west Belfast.

In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”

In 1988 in Belfast, Reid delivers the last rites to two British Army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood of the Royal Corps of Signals, who are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – an event known as the corporals killings – after they drive into the funeral cortège of IRA member Kevin Brady, who had been killed in the Milltown Cemetery attack. A photograph of his involvement in that incident becomes one of the starkest and most enduring images of the Troubles. Unknown until years later, he is carrying a letter from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams to Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume outlining Adams’ suggestions for a political solution to the Troubles. Adams later tells the BBC in 2019 that Reid also advised U.S Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith during the peace process, stating “He was talking to her on the side and she was talking to her brother Teddy.”

After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.

Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”

Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.


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Assassination of Sir Richard Sykes, British Ambassador to the Netherlands

Sir Richard Adam Sykes, KCMG, MC, the British Ambassador to the Netherlands, is assassinated by two members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) outside his residence in The Hague on March 22, 1979.

Sykes is born on May 8, 1920, to Brigadier A. C. Sykes. For his schooling he attends Wellington College before going up to the University of Oxford, where he attends Christ Church.

During World War II, Sykes serves in the British Army with the Royal Signals from 1940 to 1946. During his service he attains the rank of major. In 1945 he is awarded the Military Cross as well as the Croix de Guerre by France.

Sykes joined HM Foreign Service in 1947 and serves at the Foreign Office from 1947 to 1948. He then serves in Nanjing (1948–50), Peking (1950–52) and returns to the UK to serve at the Foreign Office (1952–56). His next overseas postings take him to Brussels (1956–59), Santiago (1959–62) and Athens (1963–66), before returning to the Foreign Office (1967–69).

Sykes’ first posting as an ambassador comes with a posting to Havana (1970–72) before moving to be a Minister at the British Embassy in Washington D.C. (1972–1975). From there he returns to the Foreign Office as Department Under-Secretary between 1975 and 1977. He is then appointed as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1977.

Sykes is leaving his residence in The Hague at 9:00 a.m. on March 22, 1979, and is getting into his silver Rolls-Royce limousine when he is shot. He is sitting next to Alyson Bailes. The car door is held by Karel Straub, a 19-year-old Dutch national who works at the embassy. Straub is also shot in the attack. The chauffeur, Jack Wilson, is uninjured and drives Sykes to Westeinde Hospital, where he dies two hours later. Straub is transported by ambulance to the same hospital, where he also dies.

Police report that the shots came from around 10 yards away by two assailants wearing business suits, who escaped on foot following the attack. Suspects for the assassination are Palestinians or Iraqis, although no evidence is ever put forward. It is ultimately confirmed that the IRA had carried out the killings.

The IRA claims responsibility for the assassination in February 1980. In a statement they say of Sykes, “[he was] not just a Brit propagandist, as are all British ambassadors, but because he had been engaged in intelligence operations against our organisation.”

The ‘intelligence operations’ mentioned in the statement relate to a government report written by Sykes following the assassination of Christopher Ewart-Biggs. Ewart-Biggs was the British Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland and was killed by the IRA in 1976. Sykes produces diplomatic security guidelines as part of his report.

Sykes’ position as Ambassador to the Netherlands had been strained due to certain Dutch groups, which were sympathetic to the IRA, and consequent arms smuggling activities.

There is a memorial plaque to Sykes in St. Michael’s Church, Wilsford, Wiltshire.

(Pictured: “Sir Richard Sykes” by Bassano Ltd., half-plate film negative, 20 January 1966, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing, Barrister & Politician

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Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing, British barrister and politician who serves as the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Hornchurch from 1945 to 1955, is born on July 24, 1909, at Craigavad near Belfast in what is now Northern Ireland.

Bing is educated at Rockport School and Tonbridge School before going on to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he reads history. He graduates with a second-class degree in 1931, before attending Princeton University, where he is a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow between 1932 and 1933. He is called to the bar from the Inner Temple in 1934.

Always a radical and a member of the socialist left, Bing is active in the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and the National Council for Civil Liberties. During the Spanish Civil War, he joins the International Brigades as a journalist, barely avoiding capture at Bilbao. He is also an early anti-Nazi.

During World War II, Bing serves in the Royal Corps of Signals, attaining the rank of major. A 1943 experiment with parachutes at the GSO2 Airborne Forces Development Centre leaves him disfigured and he bears the scars for many years.

At the 1945 general election, Bing stands for Labour in Hornchurch, winning the seat. He is re-elected in 1950 and 1951, serving until 1955. He serves briefly as a junior whip in 1945-1946 but this is widely thought to have been the unintended result of confusion on the part of Clement Attlee, who confuses him for another Labour MP of a similar name.

On the backbenches, Bing is, according to his Times obituary, “the unrestrained leader of a small group of radicals, never fully trusted by their colleagues and known as ‘Bing Boys.'” He takes a particular interest in the cases of Timothy Evans and John Christie, and he supports the campaign to overturn the conviction of Evans, which is ultimately successful. He supports Communist China and takes a keen interest in Northern Ireland, the brewers’ monopoly and parliamentary procedure.

Bing also builds a practice in West Africa. He becomes close to Kwame Nkrumah, the first post-colonial president of Ghana and is appointed Ghana’s attorney-general, a post he holds until 1961. When Nkrumah is ousted in 1966, Bing is arrested and ill-treated, before being sent home some months later. His memoir of Nkrumah’s Ghana, Reap the Whirlwind, is published in 1968.

Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing dies in London on April 24, 1977, at the age of 67.


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The M62 Coach Bombing

m62-coach-bombing

The M62 coach bombing occurs on February 4, 1974, on the M62 motorway in Northern England, when a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes in a coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members. Twelve people, nine soldiers and three civilians, are killed by the bomb, which consists of 25 pounds of high explosive hidden in a luggage locker on the coach.

The coach has been specially commissioned to carry British Army and Royal Air Force personnel on leave with their families from and to the bases at Catterick and Darlington during a period of railway strike action. The vehicle departs from Manchester and is making good progress along the motorway. Shortly after midnight, when the bus is between junction 26 and 27, near Oakwell Hall, there is a large explosion on board. Most of those aboard are sleeping at the time. The blast, which can be heard several miles away, reduces the coach to a “tangle of twisted metal” and throws body parts up to 250 yards.

The explosion kills eleven people outright and wounds over fifty others, one of whom dies four days later. Amongst the dead are nine soldiers – two from the Royal Artillery, three from the Royal Corps of Signals, and four from the 2nd battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. One of the latter is Corporal Clifford Haughton, whose entire family, consisting of his wife Linda and his sons Lee (5) and Robert (2), also die. Numerous others suffer severe injuries, including a six-year-old boy, who is badly burned.

The driver of the coach, Roland Handley, is injured by flying glass, but is hailed as a hero for bringing the coach safely to a halt. Handley dies at the age of 76 after a short illness in January 2011.

Suspicions immediately fall upon the IRA, which is in the midst of an armed campaign in Britain involving numerous operations, later including the Guildford pub bombing and the Birmingham pub bombings.

Reactions in Britain are furious, with senior politicians from all parties calling for immediate action against the perpetrators and the IRA in general. The British media are equally condemnatory. According to The Guardian, it is “the worst IRA outrage on the British mainland” at that time, whilst the BBC describes it as “one of the IRA’s worst mainland terror attacks.” The Irish newspaper The Sunday Business Post later describes it as the “worst” of the “awful atrocities perpetrated by the IRA” during this period.

IRA Army Council member Dáithí Ó Conaill is challenged over the bombing and the death of civilians during an interview and replies that the coach had been bombed because IRA intelligence indicated that it was carrying military personnel only.

Following the explosion, the British public and politicians from all three major parties call for “swift justice.” The ensuing police investigation led by Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldfield is rushed, careless, and ultimately forged, resulting in the arrest of the mentally ill Judith Ward who claims to have conducted a string of bombings in Britain in 1973 and 1974 and to have married and had a baby with two separate IRA members. Despite her retraction of these claims, the lack of any corroborating evidence against her, and serious gaps in her testimony – which is frequently rambling, incoherent, and “improbable” – she is wrongfully convicted in November 1974.

The case against Ward is almost completely based on inaccurate scientific evidence using the Griess test and deliberate manipulation of her confession by some members of the investigating team. The case is similar to those of the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, and the Maguire Seven, which occur at the same time and involve similar forged confessions and inaccurate scientific analysis. Ward is finally released in 1992, when three Appeal Court judges hold unanimously that her conviction was “a grave miscarriage of justice,” and that it had been “secured by ambush.”