The death and disappearance of Captain Robert Nairac GC
Northern Ireland. The mid-1970s. The Provisional Irish Republican Army, PIRA, is now structured, trained, and more effective than ever before. The British Army is developing tactics and practices for this new type of warfare being fought in streets and countryside not unlike that of the homes of the soldiers’ patrolling them. Lessons from previous counter-insurgency conflicts such as Kenya, Borneo, Malaysia and others are implemented with a key focus on intelligence. And, more importantly, intelligence gathering. The Security Service, MI5, learning early on that plummy accents and Oxbridge mannerisms didn’t work particularly well when attempting to engage on the streets with hardened West Belfast republicans. The well-trodden route of ‘turning’ arrested IRA men during interrogations bearing less fruit since many of those arrested had now been trained in how to conduct themselves during interrogations so as not to give anything away or provide the police or military with any leverage.
A counter-insurgency operation, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In this case, the gap that the Security Service working in Northern Ireland could not cover was filled by shadowy intelligence gathering units and organisations, primarily from the military. Covert and clandestine operations conducted by men and women dressed in civilian clothes and venturing into the heartlands of PIRA and its supporters. Surveillance, Agent Running, and rudimentary Technical intercepts combining to create an ongoing intelligence picture of PIRA and its members. To PIRA, these undercover soldiers represented the greatest threat to their security and consequently designated them as premium targets for capture and killing. PIRA and these covert units would find themselves confronting one another at various times with no quarter expected or given. The nature and actions of both sides of the fighting at this time providing an accurate and long-lasting moniker that labelled the conflict:
The Dirty War.
There are many examples of horrific and unjustified killings throughout this period but one that comes to mind because of recent developments is that of Captain Robert Nairac GC.
A captain in the Grenadier Guards, Nairac was something of a golden boy. Boxing Blue at Oxford University, gifted athlete and scholar, personable and charismatic. Nairac’s association with the island of Ireland began well before his military career when he would regularly visit Dublin and the West of Ireland and soak up the language, culture, and history of the country. On joining the British Army, he attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, the regiment who had sponsored him. It is telling of his deep interest in Ireland that, on conclusion of his training at Sandhurst he undertook post graduate studies at Trinity College Dublin before returning to the mainland and joining his regiment. Nairac’s first tour of Northern Ireland was in Belfast in 1973 and alongside his principal duties of searching suspect houses and arresting wanted IRA men, Nairac also appointed himself as a community relations activist to The Ardoyne Sports Club. This was a social hub in a staunch republican area and, while little evidence is available as to what Nairac was attempting to achieve here, it is likely it was a well-intentioned, if flawed, attempt to foster better relations between the Army and the locals. Looking at it objectively and with, of course the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to imagine anyone from the community even engaging with Nairac, either out of innate hatred for the British Army or fear of PIRA reprisals for anyone caught fraternising with the enemy.
Highlighting once again Nairac’s deep interest in the Northern Ireland conflict, after his tour with the Guards had finished, Nairac stayed on in Belfast as a Liaison Officer to the incoming regiment. This in itself was by no means unusual as most regiments conducted a similar continuity element to assist the incoming regiment on hitting the ground running so to speak. But it is notable that Nairac volunteered for the role and clearly regarded himself as something of an authority on the operational area and its inhabitants. On his return to the Guards, Nairac learned that the battalion was to be posted to Hong Kong and while this was regarded as a plum posting for any Army officer, it was not where he wanted to be. During his time in Belfast, Nairac had crossed paths on several occasions with ‘the long haired brigade’ – the covert intelligence operators cutting around the city at large. Wasting no time, Nairac volunteered for Special Duties, the all encompassing moniker for the work being carried out by undercover soldiers in Northern Ireland.
The special operations unit to which Nairac was deployed to had several names, both formal and informal but in the main was generally referred to as either 14 Int or 14 Company. 14 Int had developed out of necessity, a collection capability in an unforgiving environment. Its operators trained in all aspects of surveillance in both urban and rural environments. They were proficient in CQB; Close Quarters Battle, engaging and killing multiple targets at close range and under high stress circumstances. Fast and evasive driving. Covert communications. Covert Methods of Entry or lock picking to you and I. In essence, the operators were trained to penetrate the hardest republican areas and get themselves out of trouble without relying on back up or support.
They were also subject matter experts in the personalities and geography of their operational areas. They had to blend in with the local population as they carried out their tasks and so mimicked dress, mannerisms, driving habits. PIRA was always looking for these covert operators and briefed and trained local residents on what to look for and how to report any suspicious sightings in their areas. PIRA would also set up armed checkpoints in the streets, stopping cars and checking IDs, looking for those who didn’t belong in the area.
Nairac’s official position with 14 Int’s South Detachment was that of Liaison Officer between the unit, the SAS, the British Army brigade within the operational area, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). There has been much speculation over the years that Nairac was an SAS officer operating undercover in Northern Ireland but this is not the case. He was never an SAS soldier and is not listed on any SAS memorial as one of their fallen. As part of his liaison duties he did however, work in close proximity with the SAS and was a conduit between the military special forces and the RUC’s Special Branch.
It is clear that, from the off, Nairac operated far outside the scope of his liaison duties. He conducted surveillance operations, interviewed young republicans who had been arrested by the RUC, frequented known PIRA haunts. Those in the security forces who worked with or knew Nairac at the time were divided on exactly what it was that he was meant to be doing. And that went for the locals in South Armagh as well. A leading Official rather than Provisional republican, Seamus Murphy from South Armagh, remembered Nairac on patrol in Crossmaglen with a British Army unit. And, while he was in uniform, Nairac stood out from the other members of the patrol due to elements of his attire; cowboy hat, trainers, and carrying a Wingmaster shotgun which he was happy to show to anyone interested. Murphy recalled Nairac engaging with everyone he met and being keen to discuss politics and Irish history of which he was clearly knowledgable. Nairac stood out as an exotic personality; a handsome, posh Englishman with Irish roots who was chatty and funny. But he was still a Brit. Still the enemy no matter how charming and charismatic he was.
Murphy’s recollections gel perfectly with what we know of Nairac at the time. Nairac was openly critical of the military intelligence collection efforts and in particular how they failed to positively engage with the local population. He had concocted a theory about PIRA recruitment and referred to it as a pipeline where the military intelligence efforts wrongly focussed on the middle of the pipeline rather than the beginning. This explains his interest in interviewing young republicans that had been arrested by the RUC. These individuals were at the start of Nairac’s ‘pipeline’ and he was keen to put his theory into practice by engaging and forging good relationships with them.
Nairac also fostered an obsession with South Armagh PIRA, viewing them as the most capable and professional element of PIRA and where the military intelligence focus should be. He felt that South Armagh PIRA were so effective due in part to the insular geography and close knit familial ties of those residing there. Nairac disagreed with conventional Army thinking that South Armagh could not be won by hearts and minds due to the comprehensive support for PIRA in the region. He believed that with a different approach and attitude, hearts and minds could work to turn the people away from default support for the armed republican fight. Nairac recommended that soldiers deploying to South Armagh should be specially selected and trained specifically for working there. He would tell anyone who listened about his theories on South Armagh PIRA and in fact would write an Army paper titled Talking to people in South Armagh. For anyone interested in reading it, the only copy I have managed to source is in an Appendix in Toby Harnden’s seminal work ‘Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh.’
It is, in my opinion, well-intentioned but juvenile in both content and context. There are elements of the paper which put forward some minor valid suggestions but in the main, it’s pretty naive. There’s a reason that, almost 30 years after Nairac’s death, South Armagh was still the enclave of republican resistance. Hearts and minds were never going to be possible in bandit country regardless of who was leading the charge. But Nairac was clear that it should be him to lead the charge and turn the residents of South Armagh away from PIRA and their support for the armed struggle. He also wrote in detail about the type of officer needed to carry out covert intelligence gathering in South Armagh. Their background, personality, training and skills. How they should operate and conduct themselves. At the end of his recommendations he stated that such an officer probably only had a 50% chance of surviving such an operational tour. Whether by accident or design, Nairac had just written his own job description.
The accountability of Nairac’s operational behaviour seemed vague to those who worked with him. No one quite knew who was authorising or had oversight of Nairac’s actions. Even the SAS men raised their eyebrows at some of his activities. Solo missions into the badlands of South Armagh. In uniform one day then civvies the next in the same area. On more than one occasion, a Crossmaglen local accustomed to seeing the flamboyant Nairac in uniform would observe him in another town in civilian clothing masquerading as someone else. He was also known to have headed out on patrol dressed and armed as a PIRA member, complete with Thompson sub-machine gun and easter lily on his head dress.
What was becoming clearer was that Nairac was conducting unilateral operations, informing Command of little more than his movements. On more than one occasion, SAS soldiers reported their issues regarding Nairac’s operational activities but found their concerns closed down without explanation. Opinion was also divided on the actual value of intelligence that Nairac was providing. Senior officers and hierarchy seemingly awed by Nairac’s actions and accepting of whatever he pushed up the chain. At the ground level however, there were far more challenges to the narrative of the lone wolf doing what nobody else could. Among the SAS, with whom Nairac worked alongside, there was a respect for his bravery as a lone operator working in the highest threat areas. But there was also the recognition that he was a maverick, operating in ways that even experienced SAS soldiers wouldn’t countenance.
Nairac had also started frequenting hardcore republican haunts in South Armagh, often alone and with nothing more than a perfunctory radio message back to base to inform them of his whereabouts. He would get up to sing in bars and pubs, and was noted for having a good voice and the ability to carry a tune. Favourite Irish folk songs along with nostalgic republican ballads, he was a popular singer and often found the band requesting him for another song. But once again he was drawing attention to himself in a major way. The complete opposite of what a covert intelligence operator should be doing. He affected a Belfast accent and assumed the identity of one Danny Mcerlaine. There was a real Danny Mcerlaine who Nairac was aware of as being on the run in Ireland at the time and unlikely to be putting his head above the parapet anytime soon. Mcerlaine was a member of the Official IRA, the organisation from whom PIRA bitterly split from in the early 1970s so this gave Nairac some republican credentials to anyone interested.
And interested they were.
Questions were asked about the tousle-haired, handsome mechanic from the Ardoyne. It wasn’t usual for Belfast men to show up in the pubs and bars of rural South Armagh with the frequency that Nairac did. Counter-intuitively, this might actually be what stopped him being compromised for such a length of time as, with the best will in the world, no Brit could possibly master the nuances and syntax of a West Belfast accent to the point of fooling a native. But to those who had limited contact with people from West Belfast, he probably got away with his charade for far longer than he should have. Which, in my opinion emboldened Nairac and encouraged him to push his already minimal operational boundaries even further.
Based on what I have learned about Nairac at this time, I believe he was starting to come under pressure to deliver tangible results from his high-risk enterprises. It’s now 1977 and the security forces in Northern Ireland have tightened up their game. The shadowy intelligence gathering units are far more accountable and given clearer direction on their roles and what is expected of them. And more importantly, what is not expected of them.
Senior military officers rotated in and out of Northern Ireland and as time went on became more accountable for the men and the operations being carried out under their command. It takes little imagination to picture a General or even a Colonel being briefed on Nairac’s activities and demanding safeguards and limitations on how Nairac operated as well as quantifiable results from his efforts. This would have been unacceptable to Nairac, completely against how he saw himself and the value of the operations he conducted. To bolster this opinion is the fact that individuals who worked alongside Nairac at the time stated that he began trying very hard to recruit a Source within the republican movement in South Armagh. Again, I believe that Nairac went down this route as, while he could report sightings and movements of republican personalities, exploitable intelligence leading to the disruption of attacks and the arrest of active PIRA members was what was expected. And a Source within PIRA was the best option to provide this. It should be pointed out at this juncture that Source/Agent Handling was not part of 14 Int’s operational remit. Another military intelligence unit was responsible for that from the Army side, and the RUC’s Special Branch from the police side. MI5 was also running Agents and had oversight of all the intelligence that both military and police Sources produced. So Nairac really had no remit to be recruiting Sources other than under his own motivations. But, I believe he was feeling the pressure to justify his actions and knew that the recruitment of a well-placed, productive Source would achieve this.
It is also probably what got him killed.
On the night of the 14th May 1977, Nairac drove his red Triumph Toledo to a PIRA watering hole in Drumintee, South Armagh called The Three Steps.
There are varied theories as to why The Three Steps in particular but the one that holds the most weight for me is that he was there to meet a Contact; someone who he had either met or spoken to before and wanted to recruit as a Source. Harnden’s book mentions details from an unnamed security force member who recalled that Nairac had met with a man in Newry the day before and arranged to meet again at The Three Steps that same night but the man never showed. The next day, while Nairac was fly-fishing over the border in Ireland, the security force member stated that a man with a South Armagh accent called twice asking for ‘Bobby’. When Nairac returned from his illegal jaunt over the border later that day, he was called a third time and this is when he arranged to meet his Contact that evening at The Three Steps. The fact that Nairac had not been challenged on that previous occasion undoubtedly encouraged him to return. And to turn down the offer of SAS back up from the SAS Operations Officer whom Nairac had informed of his intended movements.
We know from official records that Nairac radioed in when he arrived at The Three Steps, left his vehicle and entered the bar around 10pm. A popular band was playing that night and consequently, what would normally have been a local crowd was swelled to around 200 by people who had travelled from neighbouring towns and villages. Including Nairac’s uniformed stomping ground of Crossmaglen. It is highly likely that someone in the crowd recognised the handsome mechanic from The Ardoyne as also being the charismatic soldier who patrolled Crossmaglen chatting to the residents and flirting with local girls. Witnesses to the events that evening also remember some unusual behaviour from Nairac. Standing at the bar he drew attention to himself, causing a bit of a commotion as he loudly proclaimed that someone had lifted a pack of cigarettes he had bought and asked other customers if they had seen his fags or taken them by mistake. It’s difficult to ascertain what Nairac was trying to achieve here but one possibility is that this was a prearranged signal to his Contact that all was clear and they could meet. Admittedly, it’s a very, very overt method of doing so but Nairac was not a trained Agent Handler and was probably winging it as he went along. Whatever his aim, it drew attention to him and was remembered long after the events of that evening.
At one point, the band announced that there was a request for Danny Mcerlaine from Belfast to give them a song. Nairac duly stepped up and performed renditions of a couple of popular republican songs. As before, his singing was well received but his cover story wasn’t. As a self-regarded authority on all things republican, Nairac should have known that an Official or ‘stickie’ IRA man such as Danny Mcerlaine would not be welcomed in a Provisional IRA bar. His extended cover story of mentioning the name of another ‘stickie’ from Crossmaglen to establish further bona fides would also have tripped him up as that individual had been officially warned by PIRA not to darken the doors of their drinking dens. Between his ill thought-out cover story and the locals’ recognition that he had been in uniform around Crossmaglen, it was only a matter of time before Nairac was challenged hard over his identity. And on one of his trips to the gents, he was accosted by two men and asked who he was and what he was doing in the pub. Nairac stuck to his cover story of being Danny Mcerlaine and that he was there to meet with the ‘stickie’ from Crossmaglen.
The men and their friends had been studying Danny Mcerlaine with intense scrutiny for some time that night. Word had reached the group of the jarring details concerning the singing mechanic from West Belfast and while some punters may have had questions for the Ardoyne man, this group had far more than questions in mind. It should be noted at this juncture that this group were not PIRA but men from local towns and villages. The leader of the group was a tough former boxer called Terry McCormick. McCormick had boxed in Belfast clubs and immediately identified that Danny Mcerlaine’s accent was suspect. He informed the group that he believed Mcerlaine was an SAS soldier operating undercover. What happened next is not clear but the general consensus based on witness testimonies is that McCormick told people in the bar that Nairac was an SAS man and that he was going to take him outside and give him a good beating. McCormick approached Nairac, said something to him then Nairac and McCormick left through the front door. A witness stated that the scene seemed to suggest that McCormick had asked Nairac to step outside for a fight, to which Nairac obliged.
When the Guards’ Captain walked out into the car park of The Three Steps, he was probably pretty confident that, as an Oxford Boxing Blue, he could take care of himself against some local yokels. Unfortunately, this was not to be a gentlemanly contest governed by boxing rules and regulations. The group had checked there was no military or RUC presence nearby and were waiting as Nairac exited the bar. McCormick was behind Nairac and pulled a large scarf over the soldier’s face and he and another man proceeded to beat Nairac with fists and feet. Nairac fought back as best as he could but when his pistol flew out from under his jacket, the weapon was grabbed by his assailants and pointed at his head. He was then bundled into a car between two thugs and sped away from the bar followed by a second car with others from the group.
The cars were across the border in under 10 minutes and pulled over, the injured Nairac hauled out in a field next to the River Flurry. The group split up at this point with two of the men driving into nearby Dundalk to locate a PIRA member to come and deal with Nairac in an official capacity. As civilians, this was not something that they could take upon themselves as there would be severe reprisals. The men who drove to Dundalk knew of a South Armagh PIRA member who was living there; Liam Townson, on the run from the security forces in the north. The pair located Townson who had been drinking all day but agreed to come and take care of the SAS man. On the way back to Nairac, Townson asked the pair to pull over so he could retrieve a revolver from a hide.
When they reached Nairac and the rest of the group, McCormick was beating and interrogating Nairac on the bridge. Townson assumed control and grabbed Nairac, hauling him through the field, firing questions at him and telling him he was going to die. Nairac, recognising this was his last chance, fought back hard and even managed to grab his Browning pistol from Townson. The assailants threw themselves to the ground but one of them grabbed a fence post and battered Nairac over the head with it. Questioned again on his identity, the almost unconscious Nairac stuck to his cover story. He was pistol whipped across the face and told by Townson that he was going to be killed. Nairac asked if he was going to die, as a man of the catholic faith, could he have a priest? Townson saw the soldier was in a bad way and whispered to McCormick to pretend that he was a priest and try to elicit a confession from Nairac as to his true identity. As bad a shape as he was in however, Nairac stuck to his cover story. Townson lifted Nairac’s pistol, pointed it at close range to Nairac’s head and pulled the trigger. Click. Surprised, he pulled it again. Click. Enraged he tried a third time, screaming at the kneeling Nairac ‘Fuck you, it’s only blanks.’ before pulling the trigger a fourth time and killing Nairac with that shot. And in a damp, boggy field near the River Flurry in County Louth, Captain Robert Nairac, Grenadier Guards and 14 Int, was murdered by a drunken PIRA member and a gang of republican thugs.
When Nairac hadn’t returned to the base at Bessbrook Mill by midnight, two SAS operators were sent to drive past the Three Steps and see if the intelligence officer was still there. They reached the car park of the bar around one o’clock in the morning and saw Nairac’s Toledo still parked up. One of the soldiers got out and approached the Toledo on foot, noting damage to the exterior of the vehicle and coins and cigarettes scattered on the ground near the door; clear signs of a struggle. But there was little more the men could do that night. The Toledo might have been rigged up with explosives. A PIRA ambush team might be laying in wait to take out any British soldiers coming to retrieve the car. For all the SAS men knew, it might just have been a fight over a woman and a drunken Nairac was cuddled up in bed somewhere with her. Later that morning however, an extensive air and ground search began under the premise that Nairac had been abducted.
PIRA released a statement later saying that they had arrested and interrogated Nairac and that, after he admitted being an undercover SAS soldier, he was executed as an enemy spy. But they never dumped his body or said where it was. This was unusual as, footage of the corpse of an ‘SAS man’ captured and killed by PIRA would have been worldwide news and a massive publicity coup for PIRA. But this didn’t happen and as the years went on, PIRA would still not release details of Nairac’s burial location. Some sources believe this was down to the severity of the injuries inflicted upon Nairac but PIRA routinely dumped the naked bodies of ‘interrogated’ informers complete with burns, gouges, slashes, and broken bones in public places so this doesn’t really seem to hold much weight. In my opinion, the most likely explanation is . . . they just don’t know where Nairac is buried.
When the group who abducted Nairac went looking for Liam Townson, Townson had been staying with a senior PIRA member called Liam Fagan and intelligence sources maintain that after Nairac’s killing, Fagan had been given responsibility for the burial of Nairac. At this point, Fagan probably told his superiors roughly where he had buried Nairac. Another piece of information that came to light in later years was that, some time after Nairac’s death, animals had disturbed the ground where he was buried. Apparently, a hasty exhumation and re-burial was conducted, again under Fagan’s oversight. Some time later, Fagan switched allegiance from PIRA to Republican Sinn Fein and a few years after that, he died. And the location of Robert Nairac’s final burial place went with him.
In August 2024 new searches were conducted near Dundalk as a former PIRA member volunteered information he claims was given to him years before by some of the men responsible for Nairac’s death and burial. Unfortunately nothing was found of the Grenadier Guards Captain. Perhaps too much time had passed, memories corrupted and faded, recollections uncertain. But Robert Nairac is still out there somewhere among the cold peat bogs and undulating moorland. Probably a stone’s throw across the border from the bandit country of South Armagh that consumed him to the point of fatality.
What of the individuals who carried out the kidnap and murder of Robert Nairac? While all of those involved were identified and several charged and imprisoned for varying lengths of incarceration, Liam Townson was convicted and jailed for the actual murder of Robert Nairac. But even Townson was unable to identify the location of the grave. Terry McCormick, the former boxer who had instigated the kidnap and beating of Nairac, fled to the USA where he struggled with mental health issues for the remainder of his life, consumed with the guilt over what he had done to Nairac.
It’s perhaps too easy with the spotlight of modern sensibilities and the benefit of hindsight to criticise Nairac and the manner in which he operated. That, back then at a time when intelligence gathering organisations were formalising their tactics and methodologies, much more latitude was given to individualistic practises. I agree that some latitude would have been permitted but at the end of the day and regardless of his position, a soldier still belonged to a unit that was ultimately responsible for him and his safety. Even from a colder, pragmatic angle, a 14 Int operator disappearing into the heartlands of South Armagh on solo missions represented a serious threat of compromise to the unit if he had been captured and interrogated properly by PIRA. The intelligence and information that could have been tortured out of him would have had a serious impact on 14 Int and the other agencies and organisations that it worked alongside. But the hard truth remains that Nairac did operate in a unilateral and maverick manner that at some point was going to come crashing down on him. On his later tours of duty, the SAS men he worked alongside warning both Nairac and his superiors, of this inevitability.
In February 1979, Robert Nairac was posthumously awarded the George Cross for his bravery during operations in Northern Ireland and his courage in surrendering nothing to his captors. The citation can be read here and even contains a quote from Townson regarding Nairac’s bravery on that fateful night in 1977. Over the following years and decades, rumours of Nairac’s associations with death squads and loyalist paramilitaries have abounded but on each occasion definitive evidence has proven that he was not involved. There were also rumours that Nairac’s body had been disposed through a mincing machine at an abattoir in Dundalk but this also, was untrue. What is true seems to be that with the death of those directly involved in the burial and the huge amount of time that has passed, it’s unlikely that, other than through an accidental find, we will ever locate Captain Nairac’s body.
So, a sad end to a sad tale albeit one that remains ongoing as efforts continue to locate the bodies of Nairac and the other Disappeared from the Northern Ireland conflict. And, as is usual in these cases, it is Nairac’s family, in this instance his sisters, who bear the pain and suffering of being unable to give their bright, brave brother the christian burial he rightly deserves.
