Following eight months of internal wrangling between the Army and the RUC, the police had their way. Sergeant Clive Graham Williams (25) was taken to Townhall RUC Station and charged with the attempted murder of Hugh Kenny, Joseph Smith and James Patrick Murray, and with maliciously wounding Thomas Gerard Shaw, Both Sergeant Williams and a Captain James Alistair McGregor (29) were charged with possessing a Thompson submachinegun and eight rounds of ammunition under suspicious circumstances and without the authority of the Secretary of State. When arrested and charged Captain McGregor replied: "That ammunition had nothing to do with me. The ammunition belongs to the police at Castlereagh and was issued by the Special Branch.* That was on 26 February. Both men appeared in a Belfast Magistrates Court on 28 February and were remanded on bail of £1,500 each after the British Army gave an assuranoe that the men would turn up at any subsequent court hearing. The British press reported that the men would be belt under open arrest at Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn.
A pall of secrecy surrounded the orains of both men, and the British Army refused to say what unit they had been attached to on the day of the shooting. But the Army List, which names all British Army officers and gives their regiment, states that Captain McGregor was commissioned in the Parachute Regiment on 2 August, 1969. The Army spokesman at Lis burn was adamant that no unit of the Parachute Regiment was stationed in Northern Ireland on The Ministry of Defence in London still claims that no unit of the S.A.S. has operated in Nortbern Ireland. It is now known that at no time were either of the two men under any form of arrest and, in fact, both have been engaged on active duty since their arrest.
The reason given by the Army for not releasing the name of the regiment of the two men was It is a policy of the RUC and the Army not to disclose che unit because in court cases the pris oner is to be regarded as an ordinary serviceman, and not an officer, until the cuse is completed. After the investigation is completed the name of the unit may be released. DISCOVERY Let us look at what, in fact, happened, On 3 May the two men appeared again in a Belfast Magistrates Court, and it was suddenly discovered (despite the eight month invescipation by the RUC before the charges were brought) that the Thompson sub-machinegun had. in fact, been carried with the authority of Mr. Whitelaw. The brave (and still unidentified) Captain was allowed his complete freedom, but the Serpeant was remanded on bail on charges of attempted murder, causing grevious bodily harm, malicious wounding and with possession of a Thompson sub-machinegun 'under suspicious circumstances".
Mr. Alasdait Frazer, for the Crown, told che Magistrate, Mr. John Adams, that information had been provided by the British Army Authorities to the Director of Public Prosecutions, which showed that a Thompson sub-machinegun was officially held and accounted for as an item of Army equipment.
Why was the suspicious circumstances' part of the possession charge dismissed against Captain McGregor and rerained against Sergeant Williams? Why was there no information regarding the complicity of the Special Branch at Castiereagh?
The Sergerol will appear again in court later this month. The whereabouts of Captain MiGregor, who was awarded the Military Cross for valour, are not yet known. British Army gunmen at work. Shown here is Sean Rowntree, injured, being searched by Britash soldiers. An hour later he acas in hospital with serious gun shot wounds inflieted by ha captors. His friend Mundo' O'Rowe lay shot dead after alegedty resisting arrest.
saw puzzles, to assemble- clues and discern PaTERS Yet practical lessons are to bo found. At the purely trade union level, Dai Dan Evans and Edgar Evans, from the South Wales pits, detail precisely the reconstruction of the minurs union in sparate localities after the rost of 1926 (in the vicoux circumstances of company