State Violence (24 page)

Arrow marks spot where Danny Barrett was killed

When Danny was shot, there was panic among the children and neighbours who had been drawn to the doors by the rioting and shooting. There had been some running to and fro by parents to bring children away from Brompton Park. When Danny was shot, some others in hysteria thought they had been shot too. Some ran into Mrs Veronica Clarke's house next to Barrett's. Some were screaming.

Patrick Clarke, husband of Veronica, says that on 9 July he went to the local disco at around 8.45pm to bring home his eight-year old son. On his way home he saw two RUC land-rovers driving up Butler Street. A third land-rover was further down the street. He reached the junction of Butler Street/Flax Street at the same time as the land-rovers. He heard shots being fired from the direction of Etna Drive/ Brompton Park at the land-rovers. He grabbed his son and ran back to the old houses at Butler Street. The third land-rover came racing past him to join up with the other two. He heard a second number of shots which sounded different from the first firing and he assumed this was the RUC returning fire. The RUC land-rovers went into Ardoyne Avenue. Patrick crossed the waste ground and went home. He heard a lot of people shouting that a child had been shot. He saw young Danny Barrett lying on the ground; some neighbours were beside him; they were waiting for an ambulance. When it came, he went with Danny to the Mater Hospital. He realised that Danny was dead. Halfway down Flax Street, they were stopped by the British army. He was questioned as to who Danny was and all the details. This took about three minutes. At the bottom of Flax Street, they were again stopped by the British army who wanted to know details. The ambulance crew protested at the delay. They had to give all the information again and this took three minutes. The soldiers then said they would escort the ambulance to the hospital. One hundred and fifty yards down the Crumlin Road they were stopped by the RUC. The soldiers, who were in front of the ambulance, drove on. They had to give the RUC the same information again. The RUC went with them to the hospital. When they reached the Mater Hospital, the doctors were waiting at the gates. They came into the ambulance and pronounced Danny dead. The RUC asked Patrick to identify Danny. He did that and then they went to the morgue.

At the time of the shooting, Danny's mother, Mrs Margaret Barrett, was visiting her friend Lily Canavan at Strathroy Park, Ardoyne. James went to the house to tell her. He was pale and shocked. Mrs Barrett was sitting with her back to the window. Lily Canavan said, ‘Here's your Jimmy coming. There must be something wrong.' Mrs Barrett said, ‘Jimmy, what's wrong? Is it our Danny?' He shook his head and she ran out and down the entry. He followed her and said, ‘Danny was shot'. People were out of their homes. Mrs Barrett did not know Danny was dead. She saw the British soldiers and the RUC. She wanted to go to the hospital. She saw the priest at the hospital. She ran away. She knew he was bad. The priest told her he was dead and she came back home.

Immediately after the shooting, the RUC and the British army came on the scene and searched the Barrett home. They looked through Tina's schoolbooks. The officer in charge said they were looking for arms and not to go through trivial things. They searched through the yard, bin, coal-bunker and back-garden. They searched all the bedrooms and cupboards upstairs and down. They also searched Mickey Holland's home, Danny's chum. There was no one in the house at the time and they broke the back lock and window.

The next morning, 10 July, around 6am, the RUC, British army and forensic experts came to the outside of the house to examine a bullet hole in the next door neighbour's house. James Barrett went out and spoke to them. They were pointing in the direction of the high-rise building in Flax Street which is a British army base. There is an observation post on top of it. The forensic men told James that was the direction the shot came from.

Danny Barrett was buried after 10 o'clock Mass on 14 July 1981 from Holy Cross Church. Some statements have been made to the RUC but as yet there has been no inquest or any other development in the case.

Danny Barrett is another victim of the British/Irish conflict. His life reflects his own people, the oppressed Catholic nationalists of the north of Ireland. His father Jimmy Barrett was born and reared in Hooker Street. He married in June 1963. His wife came from Unity Flats. They bought a wee house in Hooker Street and were there during the whole ‘troubles' until the ‘peace line' went up. They went up to Gormanstown College in County Meath the night of internment but only stayed a night. During the years they were often kicked about just like their neighbours, sleeping in schools in bad times. They left Hooker Street in June 1980 and moved to Havana Court. Danny loved the new house because of the bathroom and plenty of room to bring all his chums. In all the ‘troubles' he never got hurt. James Barrett, his father, is forty years of age, an unemployed crane-driver. There are three other children, Susan (17), Conn (12), Tina (7). Mrs Barrett was always terribly afraid for Danny because of his age and the hunger strike. She kept him home from school the whole week before Bobby Sands died. His school, St Gabriel's, is on the main Crumlin Road and she was afraid of any thing happening. Danny's favourite pastimes were playing pool, discos and playing records. He was a normal boisterous lad of his age, liked the girls and had plenty of friends. He and his sister were due to go on holiday to Bray arranged by Ardoyne Youth Club each year. Danny was a member of Ardoyne Youth Club and around thirty children were going on the trip.

On 19 May 1981, five British soldiers were killed by a land mine in Camlough, South Armagh. On that day, about 4pm, his mother was called to where some soldiers had stopped him. They were accusing him of having hijacked a car. Danny told his mother, ‘The soldier is after saying to me – “You see the soldier in the observation post; if he identifies you as the one who hijacked the car from Brompton Park, you'll be sent away for a right spell.”' It was from the same observation post Danny was shot. In July 1980, he was arrested with two others for alleged rioting. It went to court and the case was thrown out.

Who will take an interest in the case of Danny Barrett shot by the British army? Is he to join the 11 other completely innocent men, women and children killed by the British army and no justice follow? Are we silent too long?

I wrote this account in November 1981 for the pamphlet,
Danny Barrett
, published by Mgr Denis Faul and myself in January 1982.

Amnesty International celebrated its thirtieth birthday in 1991. People involved in the campaign for human rights in Northern Ireland are grateful to them for their interest in the protection of citizens of the north from the illegal acts of those in charge of the law. One calls to mind their reports of February 1972 and June 1978 on ill-treatment of those detained under emergency laws in interrogation centres, and reports in 1988 and 1990 on Killings by Security Forces in Northern Ireland. In their report of 1991 entitled
United Kingdom
:
Human Rights Concerns
Amnesty International condemned British government secrecy in police and military investigations. It renewed its call for an independent judicial inquiry into disputed killings by security forces in Northern Ireland. The report said that Amnesty ‘believes that such an inquiry is vital to help prevent future unlawful killings and to ensure that all disputed killings by security forces are promptly investigated and publicly clarified'.

The British government has held inquiries before, but it is clear that they do not want to reveal the truth. On 30 January 1972, in Derry, British paratroopers shot dead 14 unarmed citizens in cold blood. Nevertheless, the inquiry under Lord Widgery into the events of Bloody Sunday did not fault the actions of the soldiers.

In May 1984, John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of the Manchester police force, was appointed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) to investigate three incidents in 1982 when 6 unarmed people were killed by undercover policemen. This did not result in the uncovering of the full facts surrounding these murders. The administrative cover-up became known as the Stalker Affair. Stalker was digging too deep, discovering damaging new evidence. He was suspended from the police on trumped up charges and removed from the case. The Stalker Affair clearly indicated that the authorities have something sinister to hide.

In 1989 Cambridge Deputy Chief Constable John Stevens conducted an inquiry into collusion of security forces with loyalist paramilitaries. His report touched only the surface of the iceberg. Its scope was deliberately limited.

Harassment, brutality, ill-treatment, torture, internment, severe prison conditions sanctioned or tolerated by the state have for 20 years distorted the face of Northern Ireland. The non-jury Diplock Courts, the acceptance by these courts of fictitious verbal statements, the use of supergrasses, the blackmailing of young people by the security forces, semi-official assassinations, the widespread and deadly use of plastic bullets and official shoot-to-kill policies have eroded confidence in law. The argument for this abuse of law is that the end justifies the means. Faced with the atrocities of the IRA and INLA the illegitimacy of the action of the security forces is blurred by public statements and pleading from the RUC, British army and British government that such counter-insurgency is justified in a warlike situation.

From the deaths of Samuel Devenney and John Gallagher in 1969 at the hands of the RUC to the shooting dead of Peter Mc Bride in Belfast by the British army in 1992, one can list some 150 direct administrative killings, many unjust killings and scores of indirect killings manipulated by the British Intelligence system.

In August 1992 the death-toll in Northern Ireland officially reached 3,000. Other compilations gave the figure as 3,022. I would regard the following killings in 1991–92 as unjust:– Colm Marks shot dead by the RUC in Downpatrick; Pete Ryan, Tony Doris and Lawrence McNally ambushed and shot dead by the SAS at Coagh, County Tyrone; Kevin McGovern shot dead by the RUC in Cookstown; Gerald Maginn shot dead by RUC in Belfast; Kevin Barry O'Donnell, Seán O'Farrell, Peter Clancy and Patrick Vincent ambushed and shot dead by the British army at Clonoe, County Tyrone; Peter Mc Bride shot dead by the British army in Belfast.

The forces of the state have been responsible for unjust killings, direct murder and indirect unjust killings and murder by collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. Mr Ed Moloney in an article in the
Sunday Tribune,
9 June 1991, stated that since the 1982 killings investigated by John Stalker 67 civilians and paramilitaries had been shot dead in ‘Shoot-to-Kill' operations. Twenty of these were civilians and 47 paramilitaries, of whom only two were loyalists. He wrote then :

‘A large proportion of the victims were unarmed when they were killed. Twenty-six, or 39%, had no weapon when shot, while four were carrying imitation handguns or rifles. Of the 37 who had access to arms there were claims afterwards that nine were in no position to use the weapons, mostly because they were on their way to arms dumps when killed'.

After the security forces kill people they seize the initiative by gaining a first story in the media. This is very hard to counteract. For example, when the British army shot dead an innocent young man, Daniel Rooney, in Belfast in September 1972 the commanding officer said he was a gunman, that he was engaged in a shooting incident at the time he was shot, that he got his just deserts. All these assertions were untrue. Even children killed by plastic bullets have been slandered. Now there is a distinct pattern – when the British army and RUC execute armed or unarmed IRA men, when they could have arrested them, they issue statements giving unsubstantiated and lurid potted biographies recounting the notoriety of the dead men and list the number of murders attributable to the weapons found on the scene. The idea is to show that they deserved to die, to divert attention from their own violation of the law, and to intimidate churchmen and politicians from criticising their action of shooting them.

There are four categories of killings carried out by the security forces:

1.
A ‘bad' soldier or ‘bad' policeman who kills from a motive of revenge, hatred, bigotry, racism. He can prove to be an embarrassment to the senior people in the army, police and government, but because of the policy not to injure the morale of the forces the crime will be covered up and he will receive protection.

2.
Murders and unjust killings by front-line regiments like the marines or paratroopers who do not relish the role of ‘peace-keepers'. They are eager for trouble. From the beginning of their tour of duty they harass, abuse, beat and threaten civilians. The senior district policemen do not deter them. On their rota these soldiers usually assure themselves of a kill. Their harassment inevitably ends in tragedy. Knowing that, the government still retains the paratroopers and marines on the rota tours of duty of British regiments in Northern Ireland. When they kill innocent civilians they are most often than not protected by the authorities.

3.
Civilians executed in error by the SAS, other undercover soldiers, or the RUC when they enter an ambush. This is also an embarrassment but it is covered up.

4.
Cold blooded ambushes of republican paramilitaries. No challenge, no arrest contemplated. These murders have the official backing of the British government. It is administrative policy. The Gibraltar murders are an example of that. The government will go to great pains to cover up the truth. The Prime Minister and cabinet ministers will lie publicly.

In November 1990 I published
The SAS in Ireland
. It may seem a narrow focus, a fraction of the state killings, but I wanted it to be symbolic of all the state killings. The SAS is an assassination squad, like the South American death squads, and it is acting outside the law. They kill persons when they have opportunities of arresting them and they are well known for shooting wounded and incapacitated persons lying helpless on the ground. Such actions are contrary to the moral law, the law of the land and the rules of war. There is no declared war in Northern Ireland between recognised insurgents and state forces. The law therefore is eminent and dominant and must be obeyed by every body including the forces of the law. The SAS are not therefore justified in killing civilians or IRA members in planned ambushes.