The British Prime Minister and his Killer Gang

What the British Prime Minister was told about his killer gang, the Military Reaction Force (MRF).

Paper Trail is publishing a secret minute and comprehensive note to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, in late November 1972. These regard the history, formation and eventual rolling up of the unit.

The MRF left in its wake a trail of murder and mayhem.

Paper Trail documented many of these crimes in its publication, Shooters: Britain’s Military Reaction Force, which redacted the names of its killers and handed the unredacted files to police investigating another murder.

Files on seven former British soldiers were sent to the Public Prosecution Service but one of the most infamous killers, Clive Graham (Taff) Williams went to his grave without giving account for a litany of attacks on civilians including murder.

You can read about his escape from justice here >> and some of this charity’s MRF work here >>

I also tracked down the second commander of the MRF to his home in a seaside town in Kent a number of years before the BBC doorstepped him. It will be interesting to see whether James Alastair (Hamish) McGregor will appear as a witness or defendant or indeed his old age or infirmity exempts him like it did a couple of others.

Files that I have been tracking for a number of years and publish here prove that discussions and decisions regarding the MRF went to the top of the British political establishment – their Prime Minister.

Remember too that the British authorities are telling families that all files relating to the MRF were destroyed in 1973.

SECRET MINUTE

In a letter dated 28^th November 1972, the British Defence Secretary, Lord Carrington [i] addressed a top secret minute directly to the Prime Minister Edward Heath regarding the need to reorganise the MRF and create the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU).

He summarised the use of the covert British Army teams to gather intelligence in “hard” areas, to help to forestall terrorist activities and to carry out arrests.

Murdering random civilians does not appear on the MRF duty list here and nor does Lord Carrington care to record the fact that MRF squads had murdered and maimed many innocents that year.

He only mentions “mistakes” and measures these not in body count but in bad publicity:

“there has been little adverse comment on their activities in the Press.”

The main reason that Lord Carrington wrote to Heath was to get his assent on the controversial use of the Secret Air Service (SAS) Regiment to train the new unit evolving from the MRF – the SRU.

The attached note gives a handy summary of the evolution of the MRF and an appraisal of it and its antecedent, the “Bomb Squad”.

The Bomb Squads were formed after the bombing campaign of Easter 1971 “to gather intelligence about terrorist activities and remedy the lack of admissible evidence to the courts.”

They were joint Army/RUC but failed “largely owing to difficulties over sharing intelligence.”

After Internment in August 1971, the RUC withdrew and the teams were reformed and expanded as the MRF. Each of the 3 Brigades had MRF teams whose tasks we are told “were to carry out covert operations, including surveillance, protection, counter-hijacking and arrests.”

Most of the men [and women] were drawn from units already in Northern Ireland “but the teams are not properly established or specially trained and are run on an ad hoc basis.”

The note delves deeper into these failures:

“This system is unsatisfactory for the following reasons:

Men so recruited are inexperienced and lacked the necessary security consciousness and expertise for this type of employment.

The men are continually changing over as parent units come and go.

Although the MRFs are under the overall control of the Commander Land Forces (CLF) there is no provision for detailed command and control and no administrative support for the Force as a whole.

There is therefore a relatively high risk of mistakes and exposure and elements of the existing force have been compromised.”

High risk indeed. This is a pithy and prosaic British Ministry of Defence disclaimer for the few short but bloody months of the MRF’s existence as it murdered innocent civilians, had operatives killed and its agents “disappeared”.

Lord Carrington’s minute was written in the month after the Four Square Laundry attack and the execution and burial of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee. Wright and McKee’s remains were only recovered in 2015.

📖 Read: Secret British MOD Files Record MRF’s Failure to Protect Freds >>

I had pointed out in a previous MRF study, Smoke and Mirrors: The Mysterious Case of Ranger Hammond, that these failures of British Army command also impacted the health and safety of its own people.

Kevin Winters of KRW Law is the legal representative of the family of Sapper Stuart who was killed in the IRA attack on the Four Square Laundry van operation (as well as the family of Patrick McVeigh shot dead by the MRF).

In this article he said:

“The military pursuit and control of intelligence were driven to such an insane level that life – anyone’s life – was expendable.”

No doubt the upcoming court case will discuss these failures but it will be the foot soldiers in court and not their commanders. Note too that the Attorney General in 1972 was also in the copy list of this MRF minute and note.

The note though argued that the MRF was responsible for a large amount of intelligence and had proved that their techniques were effective. The Army’s reappraisal sought:

“... to bring these operations under closer, more coordinated and more centralised control, to regularise the administration of the operational teams and to achieve a higher standard of training among the members both of the force both for the task and for the personal safety.”

Hence, the “New Proposals” for the SRU to:

“… come under the direct command of CLF. The Director and Controller of Intelligence (DCI), who is in agreement with the new proposals, will direct policy and, through his representative at HQ Northern Ireland, will be able to keep a professional eye on the security aspects of the unit.”

The key to the success of the SRU remained the selection and proper training of the new recruits. Lord Carrington agreed that the SAS should be used although:

“SAS uniform will not be worn and every means will be taken to conceal SAS involvement.”

The main proposal ends with a promise:

“Special care will be taken to operate within the law.”

Two days after Lord Carrington’s minute, Christopher Roberts from the British Prime Minister’s office replied to Ronnie Custis at MOD that Heath’s Gen 79 Committee had agreed that morning that the SAS should assist in the development of the SRU. Roberts emphasized:

“The Prime Minister thought it particularly important that, as envisaged in paragraph 7 of the note attached to your Secretary of State’s minute, special care should be taken to operate within the law.”

Paper Trail proved that the British Army failed again.

📖 Read: Special Forces… and a Casual Cover-Up >>>

📖 Read the archives below.