The surge of attacks was featured on the front page of the launch copy of An Phoblacht/ Republican News, a weekly Sinn Féin newspaper which had just amalgamated the two main publications of the Provisionals.188 Clann na hÉireann in Britain condemned the bombings and claimed: ‘The strategic placing … show that they are quite prepared to wipe out hundreds, and even thousands of British workers at one fell swoop’.189 This negative analysis, derived from often lethal factional hostility, was belied by the IRA’s selection of high value, comparatively remote economic and communications targets, and their demonstrable ability to detonate substantial devices in virtually any location. Warnings had been phoned to the Press Association ahead of attacks, which cost in excess of one million pounds’ worth of destruction. However, no casualties were inflicted. The Metropolitan Police, who defused one of the three London carbombs emplaced in December 1978, incurred additional costs by deploying ‘hundreds of extra officers’ in central London.190
Ray McLaughlin attended trial from Wakefield where the atmosphere remained particularly tense after months of direct and indirect clashes with staff. By January 1979 the immediate demands of the IRA group had narrowed to four points: normal visiting conditions, removal of four men from the E-List, access to educational programmes and use of the gym.191 Agitation took many forms in the early months of the year, including the use of incendiaries. This also occurred in Parkhurst where the IRA were suspected without being directly credited of carrying out a series of destructive attacks. On 1 March a fire was started in the pantry, followed by another more serious blaze ten days later which ‘swept through the library’. Newport firemen responded and contained the conflagration within forty minutes, although its occurrence three hours after lock up suggested the use of timed incendiaries, an IRA hallmark.192
Physical fitness emerged as a major preoccupation of republican prisoners, primarily for the inherent aerobic and anaerobic benefits of maintaining health. Training was also used to foster discipline, self-regulated routine and bodily strength, qualities which imprisoned republicans wished to display to their captors. When McLaughlin returned from a month long ‘lie down’ in Armley in May 1979, his comrades pressed him to take a ‘strenuous’ one-hour run around the small prison yard with the ultra-fit Belfastman Tony ‘Red Flash’ Clarke. He recalled that the IRA wanted to establish that ‘irrespective of whether they excluded us from the gymnasium or sent us on coolers, we intended to stay in top shape’.193 Clarke was regarded as one of the best long - distance runners in the English prisons, while McLaughlin and Jimmy Ashe were also very athletic. Other Wakefield prisoners, not least Vince Donnelly and Paul Norney, were physically powerful and utilized their prowess when necessary.194
Brian Keenan
The IRA suffered a blow on 20 March 1979 when a car carrying GHQ member Brian Keenan was intercepted by the RUC near Banbridge, County Down, on the Dublin to Belfast road. Although reported in terms of a chance occurrence, it was actually a planned operation under the remit of ‘Operation Hawk’, a major RUC Special Branch drive against the upper tier of the IRA.195 It was claimed that seventy members of the Special Branch and Special Patrol Group were involved, not counting British Intelligence resources.196 Martin McGuinness was travelling south in the car behind Keenan and was detained for several days along with two companions. It has been claimed that Keenan had come into focus due to the heavy surveillance on McGuinness, and that the decision to spring the trap in Down arose from the availability of a warrant under the Explosives Substances Act, which had been secretly processed by the police in England.197 Writers Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston noted the improbable theory that Keenan had been set up for arrest by associates and that his detention paved the way for Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams to overcome internal opposition to the winding down of the Armed Struggle.198
Keenan had a markedly different interpretation of what occurred outside Banbridge and believed that he had survived an assassination attempt: ‘They tried to write me off with a truck’. He averred that supporting police vehicles only deployed to pull his car over when an emergency defensive driving manoeuvre avoided a potentially deadly collision.199 It was subsequently reported that Keenan’s fingerprints had been found in a London safe house used by Brendan Dowd’s ASU in 1974–5 and he was regarded as the director of the intense IRA offensive then underway in England. Following fruitless questioning in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre by the notorious Harry Taylor of the RUC Special Branch, Keenan was flown in a military helicopter to London on 23 March.200 The flight to a Battersea landing pad was not without incident, and Keenan was amused when two RAF fighter jets buzzed the helicopter as it crossed the Irish Sea at low altitude.201 Interrogation in Paddington Green, during which he remained silent, took an unusual turn when he was questioned about links to Russian Special Forces, Libya and the Algerian air force. This proved to be a line of argument advanced by the prosecution at trial to present him as a highly dangerous man connected to an ‘axis of terror’. Brian Rose Smith and Michael Mansfield acted for his defense.202 Bow Street Magistrates Court remanded him in custody on 26 March to answer charges of ‘conspiracy to cause explosions’ in England, and he was sent to Brixton to await trial in June 1980.203 Keenan was posthumously described as being ‘the principal organizer of the bombing campaign that rocked London in the mid-1970s’.204
Other factors connecting Keenan to the 1970s’ England campaign were explicitly commented on following his death in May 2008. In 2010, retired RUC Detective Superintendent Alan Simpson elaborated on his previously more guarded published references to Keenan by naming him in relation to the December 1973 abduction of prominent West-German industrialist and consul Thomas Niedermayer from his Belfast residence. Niedermayer was seized by the IRA to increase pressure on the British Government to repatriate the ‘Belfast Ten’ group, several of whom were on hunger strike in the Dispersal System following sentencing for the March 1973 car-bomb attacks in London. In an unexpected and drastic turn of events, the unfortunate German perished from natural causes when in IRA