It had to come out eventually. This week “soldier 027” gave testimony on the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry. He is under careful protection for now so his buddies won’t get a chance to silence him.
Those events of long ago were target practice. The Para’s were told by an officer before they went out “they might get kills”. And they did. They opened fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators and killed thirteen people. Intentionally. With careful aim. Soldier 027 said he believes one soldier was responsible for up to ten of the body count. While his buddies were dropping demonstrators, he was scanning the line of them with his scope, unable to find any threat.
His buddies agreed to a story. His own statements after the event were modified without his knowledge. This shows his superiors were involved and culpable.
It is as if the US National Guard sent to Selma, Alabama did so in hopes of either getting their first kill1 or adding to their tally, shot a bunch of civil rights workers… and then Johnson claimed the unarmed NAACP demonstrators fired on them… and then by the time an inquiry of “appropriate persons” was convened, the US Army had forged the written record to back up the claim of innocence.
One must note the Paratroop Regiment simply did not belong in Derry. They are an elite war-fighting group intended for serious kill or be killed combat, not police work. I should like to see the persons responsible for that deployment tried and hung for the cold blooded murder of 13 people and the responsibility for all of what came after.
It is not hard to understand why a community would rally around those who would fight back, and I know from discussions over beers in West Belfast that back in those early days of the insurrection the Para’s were particular targets.
And they brought it on themselves.
1 = Unfortunately the Ohio National Guard corrected this oversight. The State is not your friend.
Well thanks for the IRA’s view on what happened that day, complete with the misnaming of the city of Londonderry as Derry.
One soldier’s story does not equal the facts. These events were nearly 31 years ago. If he were trustworthy, why would he wait this long to say anything?
What about the bullet that hit one British soldier in the boot long before any conflict occurred? Who fired that?
30 January 1972 was certainly a dark day for the British army, but I don’t believe for a moment the IRA myth that somehow British soldiers went on a rampage. Remember too that for everyone shot by the army by insufficiently-disciplined troops on Bloody Sunday, Republican terrorists murdered about 100 men, women, children, police officers and soldiers. Let’s not have these 13 innocents upheld as any more important than all those people killed by the IRA vermin who won government from their bombing and kneecapping, and who – God willing – will not get it back with disbanding their terror network.
‘Soldier 027’ was a radio operator who was kicked out of the Para regiment a few years later for completely unconnected reasons. He has had a grudge ever since.
As no governement forces were able to examine the area until 24 hours later, there is only the word of Republicans that there were no weapons on the other side.
Every single person shot was a male between the ages of 16 and 30, so therefore Dale is correct – it wasn’t random shooting it was at least shooting aimed at those who could have been gunmen.
For those who like their consipiracies, the first three people shot were all members of the Civil Rights movement who were resisting IRA/Sinn Fein attempts to take over the movement. Who had the most to gain from their deaths? The British Army has always maintained that it did not fire the first shots.
Oh Dale. I grew up hearing this stuff from my dad, who always said he was there. According to my Ma, if he was he was probably too pissed out of his skull to remember much. And anyway, I have met dozens of people who ‘know what happened’, most of who were probably 6 years old back then. It is all shite and now that we have the advantage of looking back over the years at what the people who claimed to be ‘innocent’ are like (Gerry Adams and IRA man Martin McGuinness for Christ sake), how can you actually belive one side over the other? It is all mostly myths now. That is a polite word for ‘complete shite’.
David H.
davha_personal@hotmail.com
http://www.aitch64.fsnet.co.uk/
After David Carr put himself into the mind of a braindead Idiotarian Guardianista journo, Dale Armon writes an article imagining himself to be a morally-bankrupt quasi-Marxist IRA/PLO supporting toerag. Good one, Dale, you really had me going – I had to keep checking the address bar to check I hadn’t been redirected to An Phoblacht without my noticing.
“He is under careful protection for now so his buddies won’t get a chance to silence him.”
I reckon he might be up for a kicking if the mates that he’s betraying ever get hold of him, but no worse. It’s the IRA who go for the torture and murder of their own. Patty Flood, for example. John McAnulty for another. Columba McVeigh. Caroline Moreland. Et cetera.
“Those events of long ago were target practice.”
I don’t think so. I’ve done some target practice in my time. Figure 11 targets never throw bricks or molotovs; there’s never any worry about some extremist Fig. 11s being armed and wanting to take a potshot at you.
“The Para’s were told by an officer before they went out ‘they might get kills’.”
This means nothing. NI is an ‘operational zone’; there are groups and individuals trying to kill each other, and it’s the British Army’s job to try and stop that – and defend themselves when necessary. This statement could reasonably be said by any commander to his men before every patrol, every guard duty, every operation of any nature; but will most often be said whenever intelligence warns of an increased likelihood of upcoming enemy activity. You have to be exceptionally twisted to translate “might get kills” as “go out and shoot civilians”.
How many soldiers on duty that day? Nearly all armed with an SLR with 20-round magazine attached, plus however many spare mags. If the British Army had desired to perpetrate a massacre there would have been a huge number killed – casualties in their hundreds at least (see Amritsar for example). That there were only 13 dead is testament to the discipline and professionalism of all the British soldiers present.
“he was scanning the line of them with his scope, unable to find any threat.”
Maybe he wasn’t as sharp as the others?
“One must note the Paratroop Regiment simply did not belong in Derry.”
The Parachute Regt. as a component of the British Army can be deployed anywhere within the United Kingdom at the request and discretion of appropriate civil authority.
And, guess what? Londonderry is within the United Kingdom. Londonderry is British. We own you. We. British. Own. You.
“They are an elite war-fighting group”
No, they’re infantry with a specialised role; when not being used in their designed role they are used as normal infantry – which includes taking their turn at tours of various trouble-spots. That’s life in the PBI, no matter what colour your beret is.
“intended for serious kill or be killed combat, not police work.”
That’s true of the armed forces as a whole. However the armed forces have nonetheless always been available for public order duties. Up until the last couple of decades when society started fetishizing criminals and the enemy at the expense of our own people, it was acknowledged that using the military was a double-edged weapon. They were effective, but harsh. A few skulls would get broken, the odd person shot – but order would be restored.
Unfortunately, now, we put the welfare of society’s enemies ahead of those who would defend it. Our soldiers are ludicrously hamstrung with regulations. One result of this is reduced availability of operational units as those coming back from NI tours have to undergo refresher training in conventional warfare. It’s not healthy for the long term future of the army either – the keenest and best leave, unhappy at not being allowed to do their job properly; justifiably worried at the prospect of being jailed for no more than doing an exceptionally difficult job in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
“I should like to see the persons responsible for that deployment tried and hung”
No worries, Dale, rest assured that being hung in the British Army is part of the entry requirements. It’s not for nothing that the NI Catholic birthrate has been skyrocketing ever since the Army hit town, if ya know what I mean.
Oh, wait, you mean ‘hanged’. One really should endeavour to write the Queen’s English correctly; we’re Her Majesty’s subjects after all. British.
While others are upset and angry about the over 180 dead in Bali who were doing no more than enjoy themselves on a night out, and the almost 3,000 dead on 9/11 whose only crime was turning up for work, you get het up about 13 demonstrators? They rolled the dice and took their chances – 13 of them rolled snake-eyes. Does your heart bleed as much for Palestinian ‘demonstrators’?
“for the cold blooded murder of 13 people”
What a bunch of crap.
“and the responsibility for all of what came after.”
Oh, that’s right, it’s all somebody else’s fault. The 2,054 deaths by Republicans to date (579 of them civilians[1], 177 of them other Republicans) – the 108 OAPs, the 61 children, the Australians (Stephen Melrose, 24, and Nichola Spanos, 28) – all the B-R-I-T-S fault. Absolutely not the fault of the Republican terrorists who pulled the trigger, or pressed the detonator. No, no, poor little oppressed diddums, can’t be held responsible for anything, can they? Obviously it was the fault of the British/Israelis/Americans/Society/Big Bad Business/J-E-W-S/Whatever. Yeah, right. And for my next trick, watch while a military operation against armed insurgents becomes, hey presto! the Massacre of Jenin. Roll up, roll up, come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed. That British soldier looking at me through his susat – did you see him repressing me? Oooooohh, he repressed me with his eyes, I could feel it.
“It is not hard to understand why a community would rally around those”
I know, some people will find any excuse to behave like thugs; natural born lowlifes, I guess.
“And they brought it on themselves.”
Wait…that phrase sounds familiar…I can’t quite place it…but I have a definite memory of thinking at the time that the people who said it were lowlife ratbag gnat-sputum. Was I wrong? Did they have a point after all?
Millions of people who have served or are serving in HM forces: patriotic, believing in personal responsibility and hard work, initiative and effort; robust responses to threats personal and national – the sort of views that make fertile ground for spreading the conservative-libertarian-minarchist message. And any who see that article – if they’re not familiar with such as Perry de Havilland, Adriana Cronin (thank you for your words) and Sean Gabb – are likely to dismiss libertarians as IRA/PLO/SWP f***tards. Even I’ve started wondering if I’m backing the wrong side.
As Norah Vincent wrote, “pick a side, folks; there are only two.”
On one side the British Army – amongst the last people in the UK believing and living the ideals that once made Britain the freest and greatest nation on Earth. On the other, the IRA – murderers of civilians, including OAPs and women; proponents of Marxism; known associates of the PLO.
Dale, you recently commented on a post by Perry de Havilland, and it sounded awfully like the moral-equivalency arguments put about by the idiotarian Left. But this post is worse – nothing less than blatant Sinn Fein propaganda. I’ve enjoyed and agreed with much on Samizdata, a little I’ve found to be very out there; but I never expected to see an article such as this.
Cheers, Peter.
And thank you also, Molly, for your words of common sense. It’s why I look back on my time in NI with fondness – some of the best and friendliest people I’ve ever met were found in the ‘hardline catholic’ areas. Not everybody hated us by any means, even in the Creggan and Rosemount – I always regretted that by not guaranteeing their security from Republican gangsterism we let down the ordinary decent catholics who wanted no more than to be allowed to get on with their lives, mostly careless of which flag they lived under, although some were as pro-British as the most diehard of Fountain residents.
Some reading I came across in reference to Kent State:
Proof to Save the Guardsmen by Alan Stang
[1] Although Malcolm Sutton lists 1060 killed by Republicans as “British Security” this is a fairly wide category, including people such as Donald Farrell who was 56 and retired from the British Army, and Prison and Police Officers (armed police officers have an ambiguous status in reality, nevertheless they are legally civilians; but if Prison Officers are part of the Security Forces then so are Firemen and Traffic Wardens).
I’m afraid there is a rather extreme lack of comprehension of the nuances of the local politics. I would not be seen as an IRA supporter by any stretch of the imagination… however I would (locally) be seen as a rather mild Irish Nationalist, somewhat in the range of John Hume’s, although with different ideas about capitalism.
I’ve seen far too much and heard far too much to accept the Statist line on what happened over here. People whom things happened to are my friends. And they were not armed combatants.
To quote myself:
“Q: How can you tell when a bureaucrat is lying?
A: It’s lips are moving.”
I also think something like the US Posse Comitatus Act of 1872 would be a very good idea here.
A Darwin award for anyone foolish enough to throw rocks at armed men. And for anyone who feels that gunfire is a disproportionate response, a rock in a sock on the nose.
Peter:
This may the IRA version of events on Bloody Sunday; unfortunately it is also the version beleived by a lot of the anti-Republican Catholics in Derry mentions in his contribution. The advantage of holding such an enquiry is that questions such as the one you and Adriana poise should also get the answers they deserve.
BTW, on that Derry/Londonderry thing; there’s a good illustrative story here).
Molly:
How can you actually believe one side over the other?
The answer is fairly simple. You can’t unless a trusted body, above reproach, is able to sit on this issue, examine it, arrive at a judgement and consign this issue to history once and for all.
David H:
A soldier’s response. And within those terms I have no problem with anything you have said. But I would say that having been in a near-state of Martial Law, NI is now moving towards civil peace. And in such circumstances it is right to put things right.
The enquiry will decide if the soldiers in question acted beyond their rules of engagement. It is important for that to be cleared up if the people living in that city are to move on and take up their place in the world.
Having been a ‘legitimate’ civilian target of Dale Amon’s fellow Irish Nationalists during much of the 1970’s and 80’s, at least according to the Special Branch Officers who used to visit my family home with urgent warnings of local IRA activity [my father was a socialist union leader and a JP – I was a child] I can’t say that I’m overly impressed with his opinion on this particular issue.
But then, even as a child, I always regarded the IRA’s apologists as lower than the IRA themselves.
It seems to be forgotten that the British army was put on to the streets of Ulster to PROTECT THE NATIONALISTS – your friends were LOSING in their fight with the Unionists (a fight the “nationalist community” had started.
Back in the 1960’s the R.U.C. (including the B. Specials) and the Ulster Defence Regiment could not only have wiped out the “nationalist resistance” but wiped out the army of the Republic of Ireland (had it decided to get more involved) as well.
London never wanted to protect the Unionists (that is the “big lie” shown up by what has happened to the Unionists living in the border areas), they wanted to PREVENT THE UNIONISTS WINNING THE WAR – the not so hidden agenda of London has long been to back stab Ulster (as it tries to back stab people loyal to the Crown where ever they are in the world – London would have even done that in the Falklands if it had not been for M. Thatcher).
In my opinion the British army should NOT have been put on the streets. Then you would have had no “bloody Sunday” to be upset about – of course you would also have had no “Nationalist Community” either (if they had decided to carry on fighting). After all who cares about the fate of the Unionists who were left in the South after partition – if the “Nationalist Community” do not like living under the Crown they should live in the Republic.
Paul Marks.
Paul
I agree with some of what you say. And I am not about to provide an apologia for the IRA and their manipulative activities of the early ‘troubles’.
But I have to call time on this:
“…put on to the streets of Ulster to PROTECT THE NATIONALISTS – your friends were LOSING in their fight with the Unionists (a fight the “nationalist community” had started).”
Of course this depends what you call a fight? If you want to define that as murder, then surely you’ve got to put Gusty Spence and his UVF colleagues in the frame for the Malvern Street murders in 1966.
Protesting for civil rights is NOT by any stretch of the imagination a FIGHT!
It may be convenient to blame Nationalist agitation over civil rights of creating tensions within the Unionist population – and I am sure it did do that. But that is NOT equivalent to starting the trouble.
You are trying to shave these tragic events of their circumstances. This fight did not begin as some colonial difficulty between two wild tribes. The NICRA was a cross community movement that set up to highlight serious democratic and economic deficits.
Deficits made all the more galling to the local citizenry because they did NOT exist anywhere in Britain.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle….
Meanwhile loyalists issued a warning on Monday to the British and Irish governments that if there was any move to enhance Dublin`s say over the affairs of Northern Ireland in the wake of the suspension of devolution, it would impact severely on their support for the peace process.
The Ulster Political Research Group, which provides political analysis for the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association, said while it still supported the peace process it was “diametrically opposed“ to the Good Friday Agreement.
Expressing “deep concern“ over the suspension of devolution, the UPRG said it believed: “If there is an attempt over the next few months to have joint authority or an even greater role for the Irish government in the affairs of Northern Ireland, that loyalist paramilitary organisations would review their position within the so-called peace process.“
Souvenirs anyone?.
I would never defend the “loyalist” paramilitaries (in the language of Ulster – “loyalist” and “unionist” mean very different things of course) – many of them are socialists and even the ones that are not socialists are criminal scumbags.
One of the most “amusing” things about the some of the “loyalists” is that they went for training to some of the very same middle eastern training camps that the Republican terrorists went to.
As for the Civil Rights people. Certainly many of them (perhaps most of them) were nice people. However, right from the first the organisation was used by the Republicans (and I do not mean the American Republican party of course). The various factions of the I.R.A. (etc) have never been away or even sleeping – there were bombings even in the quiet 1950’s.
OF COURSE the “nationalist community” were discriminated against, and of course some of this was religious bigotary against Roman Catholics – but it was not just that.
Think about the name “nationalist community”. If the Roman Catholics in Ulster had been loyal to the Crown, over time the disgusting religous bigotary of some Protestants could have broken down – it was the fact that when these bigots said that Catholics were disloyal THEY WERE OFTEN RIGHT that was the root of the problem.
In the South the “Unionist problem” was got rid of quite swiftly. The vast majority of the Unionist population of the South was pushed out one way or another – this was not done in Ulster with the “Nationalist Community”. “Power Sharing” or even “Civil Rights” between two groups of people who do not even share the same basic loyality simply will not work.
Even in the United States the truth is not the story the history and politics books tell. Certainly the Southern Whites (and many Northern Whites) were racialist swine – but the “Civil Rights” people were not all nice guys either. Take “saint” Rev Dr Martin Luther King jr.
M.L.K. (as the F.B.I. tapes make clear) was no saint. He was an anti American socialist fanatic (basically Marxist – although he did not understand Marxism very well), who supported his nation’s enemies in time of war. M.L.K. did not oppose the Vietnam war because he loved peace – he wanted the other side to win. Nor was he much of a religious leader – in private his morals were similar to the average television evangelist.
As for “nonviolence” – simply a sensible tactic when you face an opponent that is stronger than you are (but lacks the ruthlessness to actually exterminate you – or is scared that Washington will not allow MASS killing).
That M.L.K. was murdered before he could be exposed was a terrible thing for the United States. Had he been exposed the gains of the Civil Rights movement would NOT have been underminned, but Conservative blacks might have gained (or rather regained) some political power. The situation today is that 95% of blacks can be counted on to vote Democrat (in spite of all the outreach plans and schemes). So how can even well meaning Conservative Americans look on them in an entirely “colour blind” way?
M.L.K. was not a feak – most of the top leaders of the Civil Rights movement in the United States were (and are) similar sorts of people.
Reds love broad “popular fronts” with noble objectives – they use them.
History may show that the United States will overcome its racial problems (although this is unclear as yet) and that people like M.L.K. did a lot of good (in spite of themselves). However, a similar story can never be told in Ulster – there the difference is not skin colour or even religion it is POLITCAL LOYALITY – “civil rights” movements are a waste of time in this context of cold or hot civil war.
However, the “nationalists” do have a secret weapon. Not the Catholic birthrate – that can (and I hear is) changing. No the secret weapon of the Nationalists is that Briain is a pile of shit. There must come a point when Unionists start to wonder why they want to be united with this overtaxed overregulated country – which has a government that endlessly seeks to back stab them.
For all its faults the Republic of Ireland is in many ways a better governed nation than Britian is.
Paul Marks.
Paul
I am not sure whether your last comment was a reply to my own, but let me take that it was. My central question remains unaddressed. Is there a moral equivalence between murder and protest?
However you do raise an interesting topic.
Think about the name “nationalist community”. If the Roman Catholics in Ulster had been loyal to the Crown, over time the disgusting religious bigotry of some Protestants could have broken down – it was the fact that when these bigots said that Catholics were disloyal THEY WERE OFTEN RIGHT that was the root of the problem.
I wish. And so did Carson and Craig, neither of whom were keen on Home Rule for Ulster. They knew from the start that they had been locked into a constituency that would make it impossible for their Catholic constituents to be accepted into mainstream and thus give them motivation to accept British rule there.
And then there was 1968/9.
Paul
I am not sure whether your last comment was a reply to my own, but let me take that it was. My central question remains unaddressed. Is there a moral equivalence between murder and protest?
However you do raise an interesting topic.
Think about the name “nationalist community”. If the Roman Catholics in Ulster had been loyal to the Crown, over time the disgusting religious bigotry of some Protestants could have broken down – it was the fact that when these bigots said that Catholics were disloyal THEY WERE OFTEN RIGHT that was the root of the problem.
I wish. And so did Carson and Craig, neither of whom were keen on Home Rule for Ulster. They knew from the start that they had been locked into a constituency that would make it impossible for their Catholic constituents to be accepted into mainstream and thus give them motivation to accept British rule there.
And then there was 1968/9.
To Mike Feality
The person formally known as B. Devlin long made it clear that for her (as for others) “nonviolence” was a tactic not a principle – had they felt themselves stong enough they would have slit every Unionist throat in Ulster, and many such people still would.
As for actual murder. True there was a time when the I.R.A. seemed rather restrained as regards murder (for fear of the back lash). Hence the breakaway of the Provos from the Offical I.R.A.
However, I must admit that my mind is coloured by knowledge of Latin America – there the “non violent protestor” by day tends to be the “revoultionary fighter” at night – things may have been different in Ulster in the 1960’s but I suspect “LiberationTheology” (etc) was already at work there.
Still murder is murder and I condemn. The old Death Squad saying “when they kill us it is “”social justice”” but when we kill them it is a muder” makes a point, but it does not excuse the killing of people who are really nonviolent (rather than people who are just pretending).
What could have prevented “the troubles”. Several things in history actually. For example all the great lords of Ireland supported the Yorkists in the “Wars of the Roses” that is why Henry VII refused to recognise their title to the land (long before his son’s problem with the Pope). So if Richard III had won at Bosworth – there might well be no “Irish problem”.
Or if Charles I had won the Civil War the Irish (Catholic and many Protestants) would have won as well.
If James II had not openly becom a Catholic (but just followed his policy of religious toleration) he would have kept his Crown.
There are so many “might have beens” in history. Often it comes down to a bad judgement or just plain bad luck.
If Fitzwilliam had won in his effort to allow Catholic landowners into the Irish Parliament and administration in the 1790’s (the restrictions on Catholic landholding had already been removed due to a series of Acts of Parliament pushed through by Edmund Burke), the divisions would have broken down with time.
Perhaps even Gladstone’s “Home Rule” would have worked. True the franchise terrified the Protestants (because they would have been so outvoted), but Irish Catholics were mostly fairly conservative minded back then – and so might not have gone in for the orgy of land confiscation (or “counter confiscation”) that Protestants feared.
Perhaps Ireland might have been spared some of the crazy British laws of the early 20th century – the Trade Union Act of 1906 (labour unions above the law of contract) or the National Insurance Act of 1911 (death to the friendly societies, largely replaced by Prussian style State worship).
It is hard to see a man like John Redmond going in for nonsense like this. Actually in legal and economic matters Redmond and Carson had a lot in common. I wonder if they understood that?
Paul Marks
I have long been obsesseed about Northern Ireland, something which is understandable if you consider that I have not a drop of Irish blood in me, live in New York, and am a Unionist supporter, to boot, which is tough in New York.
I have to admit that I wish that the loyalists and the British security forces had done a better job culling treue republicans and terrorists rather than Catholic civilians (especially by the Unionists whose explosive capabilities are pitiful). However tempting a target as that must have seemed (still seems??), it is unjustifiable. The statistics (security dead vs. IRA dead) speak for themselves.
The main problem is that the British government permitted natives of the “Republic” to continue to claim British benefits, long after they ceased being British subjects (1938) or Commonwealth nationals (1949), thus massively expanding the Irish fifth column and criminal gangs in mainland Britain. That of course does not refer to Northern Ireland, whose natives had the right to migrate to Britain because Britain claimed that territory, but many Irish migrants are from Donegal (which Britain should have kept despite its small Catholic majority), Mayo, and other points south of the Queens writ.
After the Troubles arose in the late 1960s, travel between both parts of the island of Ireland and Great Britain should have been controlled better, even to the point of moratoria, if necessary. As late as several years ago, a car laden with explosives was about to depart for Britain from Ireland on ferry when it was stopped by IRISH police (Gardai) — why were cars permitted to be sent given the evident risks involved?? And one cannot always rely on Gardai, considering that IRA moles in the Gardai led to the deaths of up to 12 people, apparently, including Lord Justice Maurice Gibson and his wife Cecily, and high-ranking RUC Supt. Harry Breen and his assistant, Bob Buchanan. All 4 of these people made the mistake of traveling from Northern Ireland to the “Republic” thru tens or hundreds of miles of hostile Irish territory to meet with Irish security forces, in whom they evidently placed far too much confidence. Breen and Buchanan were not even armed.
Another problem for the British government is that it permitted its fears of the U.S. Congress to interfere in anti-terrorism activities, and to restrain offensive and retaliatory measures which it should have been free to carry out. “War” is “war”, unless IRA supporters decide to force you to fight with one hand tied behind your back.
And I must add, since we are speaking openly, that the British Labour Party is a large part of the problem because it is the party of choice of the Irish Catholics in Britain (of all degrees of nationalism) and as such is protected from IRA activity. Make no mistakes there were no Labour party members’ names on the IRA hit lists uncovered in Britain in the last scandal which brought the N.I. Parliament down, and with only one exception was any Labour Party member ever targeted during the Troubles — former British Ambassador to the “Republic” of Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, killed by a car bomb in 1976. And with his monocle (he lost an eye in El Alamein during World War 2), and hyphenated surname, he probably was deemed an acceptable victim. Also 1976 is when the Labour Party got tough with the IRA and took away political designation, and this probably played a part in the assassination of Ewart-Biggs. Labour, however, left the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher holding the bag, since the Conservatives were hardly going to restore political designation (particularly after the murders of Airey Neave and Lord Mountbatten in the samme year of 1979), but might not have bothered about it with all the other issues in 1979, thus inevitably creating the Hunger Strike crisis of 1981.
In short, it was only the Labour Party that was ever going to be successful in negotiations with the IRA and Sinn Fein/IRA because of Labour’s standing within the Irish Catholic communities. what the IRA thinks of the Conservatives can be discerned by its attempt on the life of John Major — for no understandable reason — in the notorious mortar bombing of 10 Downing Street, despite the fact he had made political (albeit humiliating) overtures to the IRA, and had only permitted himself the luxury of concentrating on other matters (the Gulf War, for instance) and the IRA could not accept that, so they were willing to slaughter everyone in the building that night to get their point across.