Milltown Cemetery attack

Milltown Massacre
Part of The Troubles
The funerals, minutes before the attack
Location	Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Coordinates	54°35′0″N 5°58′38″W
Date	16 March 1988
Weapons	RGD-5 hand grenades; Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol; Ruger .357 magnum revolver
Deaths	3
Injured	over 60
Perpetrator	Michael Stone

The Milltown Cemetery attack (also known as the Milltown Cemetery killings or Milltown Massacre) took place on 16 March 1988 in Belfast's Milltown Cemetery. During the funeral of three Provisional IRA volunteers killed in Gibraltar, a Ulster Defence Association (UDA) volunteer, Michael Stone, attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols. As Stone ran towards the nearby motorway, a large crowd began chasing him and he continued shooting and throwing grenades. Some of them caught him and began beating him, but he was rescued by the police and arrested. Three people had been killed and more than 60 wounded. The attack was filmed by television news crews.

Three days later, at the funeral of one of Stone's victims, two non-uniformed British soldiers drove into the funeral procession. They were dragged from their car and shot dead by the IRA.

Background

On 6 March 1988, Provisional IRA members Daniel McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar. The shootings caused outrage in the Irish republican community, as the three were unarmed and allegedly shot without warning. They were due to be buried in the republican plot at Milltown Cemetery on 16 March. For years, republicans had complained about heavy-handed policing of IRA funerals, which had led to violence. In a change from normal procedure, the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) decided they would pull back from the funerals of the 'Gibraltar Three' and keep watch from the sidelines. This followed negotiations with Catholic church leaders.

Michael Stone's mission was "to take out the Sinn Féin and IRA leadership at the graveside". He told journalist Peter Taylor that his attack was retaliation for the IRA's Remembrance Day bombing four months earlier. Taylor wrote, "He said it was symbolic: the IRA had attacked a British cenotaph and he was taking revenge by attacking the IRA equivalent". Stone claimed that a "senior member of the UDA" had given him the organization's "official" clearance for the attack and claimed he was given a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol, a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver and seven RGD-5 grenades the night before the funeral.

Attack

The funeral service and requiem mass went ahead as planned, and the cortege made its way to Milltown Cemetery, off the Falls Road. Present were thousands of mourners and top members of the IRA and Sinn Féin, including Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Stone claimed that he entered the graveyard through the front gate with the mourners. However, some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Stone enter the graveyard from the M1 motorway with three other people (two men and a woman). The others walked across the graveyard and later left on the Falls Road side. As the third coffin was lowered into the ground, Stone threw two grenades—which had a seven-second delay—toward the republican plot and began shooting. There was panic and confusion as the grenades exploded near the crowd and shots rang out. People took cover behind gravestones. Stone began jogging toward the motorway, several hundred yards away, chased by dozens of men and youths. He continued shooting and throwing grenades at his pursuers. Three people were killed while pursuing Stone: Catholic civilians Thomas McErlean (20) and John Murray (26), and IRA member Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh (30). Many were injured. In the 19 March issue of the Irish Times, columnist Kevin Myers, a steadfast critic of republicanism, wrote: "Unarmed young men charged against the man hurling grenades and firing an automatic pistol [...] The young men stalking their quarry repeatedly came under fire; they were repeatedly bombed; they repeatedly advanced. Indeed this was not simply bravery; this was a heroism which in other circumstances, I have no doubt, would have won the highest military decorations".

A memorial in Milltown Cemetery to the 'Gibraltar Three' and to the three men killed in the attack on their funeral

Stone claimed that a getaway car, driven by a UDA member, was waiting for him on the motorway but the driver "panicked" and left. By the time Stone reached the motorway, he had seemingly ran out of ammunition, and he was caught by the crowd. Some of them beat him unconscious, but RUC officers quickly arrived, "almost certainly saving his life". They arrested him and took him to Musgrave Park Hospital for treatment of his injuries. The whole event had been recorded by television news cameras.

During the attack about 60 people were wounded by bullets, grenade shrapnel and fragments of marble and stone from gravestones. Among those wounded was a pregnant mother of four, a 72-year-old grandmother and a ten-year-old boy.

Aftermath

Immediately after the attack, the two main loyalist paramilitaries—the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)—denied responsibility. The leader of the UDA's West Belfast Brigade, Tommy Lyttle, said that Stone was a rogue loyalist acting without orders from the UDA, though he did not condemn the attack. Lyttle told other UDA leaders to keep to this line. However, UDA member Sammy Duddy said: "After Milltown, two UDA brigadiers from two Belfast battalions telephoned the IRA to say they didn't know Michael Stone [...] But Michael was UDA, he was a travelling gunman who went after the IRA and Republicans and he needed no authority for that because that was his job. Those two brigadiers were scared in case the IRA would retaliate against them [...] so they disclaimed Michael, one of our best operators".

Sinn Féin and others "claimed that there must have been collusion with the security forces, because only a small number of people knew in advance of the reduced police presence at the funerals". Stone later claimed he had assurances that British soldiers and RUC officers would not be deployed in the graveyard. He also claimed to have had detailed information about British Army and RUC movements. Stone wrote that, the night before the attack, he was "given his pick of weapons from an Ulster Resistance cache at a secret location outside Belfast" and was "driven back into the city by a member of the RUC". According to journalist Martin Dillon, the weapons he used were given to him on the orders of UDA intelligence chief Brian Nelson, who was later revealed to be an undercover agent of the British Army's Force Research Unit (FRU).

Three days after the Milltown killings, one of Stone's victims, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, was being buried when two plainclothes British Army Corporals (Derek Wood and David Howes) in an unmarked car drove into the path of the funeral cortege — apparently by mistake. Some of the mourners, believing the soldiers to be loyalist gunmen, surrounded and attacked their car. Corporal Wood drew his service pistol and fired a shot in the air. The two men were then dragged from their car before being taken away, beaten and shot dead by republicans. The incident is often referred to as the corporals killings and, like the attack at Milltown, much of it was filmed by television news cameras.

The Browning pistol Stone used during the killings was stolen by the mob on the day of the attack and was eventually used by an IRA unit to ambush a combined RUC/British Army patrol in Belfast on 13 October 1990. A constable was shot dead and another badly injured.

Stone was convicted for the three murders at Milltown and for three paramilitary murders before. He received sentences totalling 682 years, but was released after serving just 13 years as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. Apart from time on remand spent in Crumlin Road Prison, Stone spent all of his sentence in HM Prison Maze. Michael Stone later published an autobiography, None Shall Divide Us, which included an account of the attack. He also stated that he deeply regretted the hurt he had caused the families of those he killed, and paid tribute to the bravery of two of the men who had tried to disarm him at the cemetery, John Murray and Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, whom he shot. Stone said in the book "I didn't choose killing as a career, killing chose me".

In November 2006, Stone was arrested while attempting to gain entry to the parliament buildings at Stormont while armed with an imitation handgun, three knives, a hatchet, a garrotte and several crude homemade bombs, which failed to explode. He was charged with attempting to murder Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

See also

• Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actions
• List of massacres in the United Kingdom