Gangster Bulger behind Provo arms haul aboard seized trawler: Spotlight
bombers had rented a house opposite the barracks, there wasn’t apparently enough evidence to bring anyone to court.
He adds: “This case continues to be subject to extensive review and if any further new information is received, this will be looked at. We continue to appeal for information that may help us identify new lines of inquiry.”
The stark reality, however, is that few people in Deal are holding their breath for a breakthrough.
Three months after the bombing two IRA men were captured by police at an arms dump on an isolated beach in Pembrokeshire, south Wales.
Damien McComb and Liam O’Dhuibhir were caught after a seven-week stakeout called Operation Pebble. Semtex from the cache was said by police to have been used in the Deal barracks bombing.
The Royal Marines Association has also called for a full inquiry into the bombing, saying the carnage is “unfinished business”.
Ken Funston of the victims’ group South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF), which has offered support to the people of Deal, says the barracks bomb “remains an open sore”. Others have said there are still unanswered questions over the gaps in security which allowed the Provos to smuggle their deadly device into the barracks, which was guarded by a private firm.
The passage of time also means that yesterday’s memorial service will probably be the final one, according to Derek Lindars.
He explains: “People are getting older and this will probably be the last occasion when we draw so many people together to remember our 11 friends.”
Derek, who’s 63, retired from the Royal Marines Band in 1996 after 24 years during which time he progressed through the ranks to become the bandmaster.
The trust he chairs helps with the maintenance of the bandstand in Deal, which was built as a memorial to the 11 dead Marines whose names are inscribed on plaques around it. Jay O’Neill’s name could have been on the bandstand too. The now 62-year-old colour sergeant was in the foyer of the Coffee Boat and the blast, which he compares to a hurricane, blew him out of a window and trapped his legs under a collapsed roof.
Incredibly, eye-witnesses spoke of seeing Jay sitting upright and organising the rescue operation.
He eventually recovered from his serious injuries but the thoughts of his dead colleagues are never far from his mind.
“The band service was like a family, the men became your brothers and we looked after each other,” he says.
To the anger of many in Deal, the Royal Marines’ School of Music was moved from the town in 1996 to its old base in Portsmouth, where there’s a memorial to the 11 bandsmen.
Among the items on show is a Marine’s shattered watch stopped at 8.22am, when the bomb went off.
The condemnation of the bomb was swift. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who narrowly escaped death in an IRA bomb attack 100 miles away in Brighton five years earlier, condemned the Provisionals’ “monsters” and said their targets weren’t fighting men but rather musicians.
But the most outspoken criticism of the IRA came from Lt General Sir Martin Garrod, who was the Commandant General of the Royal Marines.
He called them “thugs, extortionists, torturers, murderers and cowards, the scum of the Earth”.
The Duke of Edinburgh went to Deal shortly after the blast and in a rare interview said the attack had been senseless and appalling. “It certainly won’t help the IRA to win anything.”
Standing by the duke’s side was the Vice-Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Countess Mountbatten, who had survived the IRA bomb which killed her father Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore in the Republic just over 10 years earlier. A CLAIM that notorious Boston crime boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger was involved in a shipment of arms for the IRA is set to be aired.
The allegation concerns the Marita Ann trawler, which was intercepted off the Co Kerry coast by the Irish Navy on September 29, 1984.
It resulted in the seizure of seven tonnes of arms.
Bulger (right), one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals, was on the run for 16 years before he was caught in 2011. In 2013 he was convicted of 11 murders.
He was found dead in a US federal prison in West Virginia last year in what police are investigating as a homicide.
The latest episode of the new BBC Northern Ireland series Spotlight On The Troubles: A Secret History will link Bulger to the IRA gunrunning operation. Those interviewed on the programme, which is set to air next week, include New York-born former US Marine John Crawley, who went on to join the IRA.
He said that he was ordered to set up a new IRA arms network in the United States.
“I wasn’t given any advice on anything, you know, just get weapons. I was given a $5 note that’s cut in an erratic way, and I was to meet somebody in Boston who had the other half of this note,” he tells the programme.
The torn $5 bill led to Patrick Nee, described in the programme as an IRA arms supplier and associate of Bulger.
In autumn 1984 the seven-tonne arsenal of weapons was delivered to Gloucester, northeast of Boston, for shipment to Ireland on board a fishing boat that the south Boston mob gang had bought and renamed the Valhalla.
“Total cost was in the $1.2m region over a two-year period, the boat being the most expensive. I think that cost $400,000,” Mr Nee told the programme.
The programme will allege that Bulger was parked nearby and used a radio scanner to check police calls as the boat was loaded. However, the weapons did not reach Ireland after an informer tipped off Irish police, and after the weapons were transferred to the Marita Ann, the shipment was intercepted.
The third episode of Spotlight On The Troubles: A Secret History will be shown on BBC One NI tomorrow at 9pm.
❝ The band service was like a family. The men became your brothers and we looked after each other