Humiliating the IRA was a fatal mistake

It was said that Reginald Maudling, as home secretary, once boarded a plane in Belfast and immediately requested a stiff drink, muttering: ‘Get me out of this awful bloody country!’ This does not appear in Ian Cobain’s compelling, interwoven narrative about a killing in Lisburn, near Belfast, in April 1978, but it emblemised some of London’s attitudes to what was sometimes called ‘Ulster’.

Even during the height of the Troubles, with daily shootings, bombings and killings, the Province was frequently ignored at cabinet level: the spirit of Maudling prevailed in both Conservative and Labour administrations. By Cobain’s measure, Labour’s Roy Mason was as bad as any Tory. His hardline swaggering approach provoked the IRA into ever more intense terrorist activity.

Cobain’s main focus is on a particular killing on a particular day: the carefully planned homicide of the off-duty policeman Millar McAllister at home. The act itself, carried out by Harry Murray, a Protestant who had joined the IRA (and previously served in the RAF), is described in almost filmic detail, as Harry, supported by getaway car and a young woman accomplice, makes his way towards the location. Touchingly, the victim was a pigeon-fancier — most harmless of hobbies — and it was through his despatches for Pigeon Racing News and Gazette that he was located.

Cobain is surely right that it is humiliation, not deprivation, that often prompts terrorism

The shooter engages in conversation with the target at his bungalow door. It’s awkward that the policeman’s young son is by his side. But the ‘op’ must be done. Harry takes aim, shoots McAllister in forehead, sternum and left and right of chest: he called this ‘the sign of the cross’, as it were ‘blessing’ the dying body.