Section:GDN 1N PaGe:15 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 20:29 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Guardian •
National^15
Forty years on, village still bears
burden of Mountbatten murder
Rory Carroll
Mullaghmore
The remembrance will be held today
on a grassy hill overlooking the Atlantic
waters where the IRA bomb exploded
on a clear sunny morning 40 years ago,
killing Lord Louis Mountbatten and
three people with him.
There will be prayers and hymns,
recollections and tributes, messages
and fl owers – a small, intimate aff air.
But for Mullaghmore, a village in
County Sligo on Ireland ’s northwest
coast, it may feel like the whole world
is watching. And perhaps judging.
“I’d prefer that we could be left
alone,” said Joe McGowan, 80, a his-
torian and author. “It’s like picking
at a scab, these anniversaries. And
it keeps getting resurrected again. It
shouldn’t be forgotten but it shouldn’t
be promoted either.”
Christy McHugh, the parish priest,
said Mullaghmore faced a dilemma.
“It should not be glossed over. It’s part
of our history and we shouldn’t let it
slide by. But it has cast such an awful
cloud over the place that we seem for-
ever associated with it.”
The IRA planted a bomb on Mount-
batten’s fi shing boat, Shadow V , and
detonated it by remote control. The
blast killed Mountbatten, 79, along
with his grandson Nicholas Knatch-
bull, 14, a boat boy named Paul
Maxwell, 15, and Lady Doreen Bra-
bourne, 83. Mountbatten’s daughter
Patricia, her husband John and their
son Timothy, Nicholas’s twin, were
injured but survived. The IRA called
Mountbatten’s murder an “execution”.
The death of the Queen’s secondcousin – the last viceroy of India – was
so shocking it attracted more global
attention than an IRA ambush that
killed 18 British soldiers a few hours
later at Warrenpoint, 120 miles away.
Mountbatten was royalty, a his-
toric fi gure, and he was targeted with
his family in a scenic idyll that had
seemed remote from the Troubles.healing history of these islands,” said
McHugh. “That fact that he came
showed things had moved on.”
Four years on, Mullaghmore knows
there is no escaping history. In the
run-up to the anniversary a BBC TV
documentary included testimony
from relatives of the victims, plus a
claim from a former IRA member that
Martin McGuinness, the late Sinn Féin
leader, was the IRA commander who
gave the green light.
The Mail on Sunday reported a sepa-
rate claim that an SAS hit squad tracked
down and killed Francis McGirl, one of
the alleged bombers, in 1995 and made
it resemble an accident.
Netfl ix is likely to shine a fresh spot-
light on Mullaghmore in the third
series of The Crown. Charles Dance
reportedly plays Mountbatten.
Tourists enjoying ice-cream by
the harbour last week said they were
aware of what happened in 1979.
“It’s still shocking. It makes you feel
very sad,” said Peter Torney, 52, from
Omagh, a County Tyrone town that
suff ered its own devastating bomb.
“What happened here was stupid-
ity,” said his wife, Michelle , 53. “It was
like everything that happened over
the years .”
There are physical memorials:
a small cross on a hillside, a bench
in a peace garden and a plaque in
Classiebawn Castle’s grounds. The
property passed to diff erent owners
but the gates still have the Mount-
batten initials.
It is right to remember Mountbatten
and his companions, said McGowan.
He has written about them on his blog.
But there was inequality in death, he
said. Margaret Perry, a young woman
murdered and buried in Mullaghmore
in 1992 , is a forgotten victim of the
Troubles, he said. “Who comes for
her anniversary? Do you need a title
to be remembered?”Thinktank to carry out pro-HS
study amid fears it may be axed
Josh Halliday
North of England correspondent
George Osborne’s northern power-
house think tank is undertaking its
own pro-HS2 review amid concern that
the £55.6bn project may be doomed
under Boris Johnson’s premiership.
The Northern Powerhouse Partner-
ship (NPP) said its study would make
sure the region is properly heard ahead
of the government’s own “go or no go”
review into the high-speed rail line.
The government’s review is being
jointly written by a leading critic
of HS2 , prompting concern among
northern leaders who have called on
Johnson to commit as soon as possi-
ble to the new line between London,
Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
Henri Murison, the director of theNPP , said: “The northern powerhouse
is of critical importance to the future
of UK prosperity, and without improv-
ing connectivity it will be diffi cult to
address the underlying reasons for our
lower productivity.”
The government’s review will
examine if the HS2 scheme should
be approved, amended or scrapped
entirely. It is expected to be completed
before the Brexit deadline in October.
The review is led by Douglas Oak-
ervee, a retired engineer who briefl y
chaired HS2 Ltd and worked with
Johnson when he was London mayor.
His deputy, Lord Berkeley, a railway
expert and Labour peer, is a critic of theproject who has repeatedly challenged
the Department for Transport’s (DfT)
cost fi gures and warned that budgets
were spiralling out of control.
Osborne has chaired the NPP since- The think tank said its review
would “off er a northern perspective”
and “make bold and realistic propos-
als” to support its view that HS2 and
an east-to-west high-speed rail line are
crucial to rebalance the UK’s economy.
The NPP report will be overseen by a
cross-party panel of politicians includ-
ing the Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake and
Nick Forbes, the Labour leader of New-
castle city council, both of whom are
vocal supporters of Hs2. The panel
▼ Lord Mountbatten fi shing with
his daughter and grandchildren
off the coast of Mullaghmore
PHOTOGRAPH: RALPH CRANE/GETTYwill include leading business fi gures
such as Sir Howard Bernstein , the
senior civil servant credited with lead-
ing Manchester’s reinvention.
A review of the HS2 scheme was
promised by Johnson in his campaign
to become Tory leader. The prime
minister has backed the east-to-west
Northern Powerhouse Rail, although
opposition to HS2 has been wide-
spread among the Tory grassroots.
Work has begun on the fi rst seg-
ment of HS2 , between London and
Birmingham, due to open in 2026. The
second phase to Leeds and Manchester
is scheduled by 2033. The fi rst trains to
test the line are due in 2024.The killers were outsiders from the
IRA’s south Armagh unit. There is no
evidence Mullaghmore residents had
any involvement. They helped the sur-
vivors and grieved for the dead.
“When I heard the bang I thought
maybe it was a gas cylinder,” recalled
Peter McHugh, 64, who was a friend of
Maxwell and knew the Mountbattens.
“We did what we could – took the
casualties from the water, brought
them ashore. We were in total shock,
we just reacted. You go on autopilot
and keep on going.”
Irish security forces, British police,
royal family representatives and the
world’s press descended, turning the
Pier Head hotel into an operations
centre. They left, but grief and an “air
of gloom” stayed for many years, said
McHugh. One symptom was the fall
in the number of Protestant holiday-
makers from Northern Ireland, he said.
“Things never went back to normal.”
Prince Charles helped draw a line
under the atrocity during a visit with
the Duchess of Cornwall and Timothy
Knatchbull in 2015. The prince spoke
of reconciliation and called Mount-
batten the grandfather he never had.
“That was a huge moment in the▲ A simple cross overlooking the
Atlantic, in memory of those who died‘I’d prefer that we
could be left alone.
It’s like picking
at a scab, these
anniversaries’Joe McGowan
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