18 JULY 2001

19 Jul 2001 12:00 AM

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR CHRISTOPHER EWART-BIGGS, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, 1976

It is now 25 years since the assassination of the then British Ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs on 21 July 1976. Judith Cook, a British civil servant travelling with him was also killed.

A memorial service will be held at St Patrick''s Cathedral in Dublin at 3.15pm on Sunday 22 July. Representatives from the British and Irish Governments, Diplomatic corps and representatives of non-governmental organisations are expected to attend.

Notes for Editors

An extract from Lost Lives (this year''s Ewart Biggs Memorial Literary Prize winner) by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton is attached and reproduced by kind permission of Mainstream Publishing.

Contact: Pauline Shodeke: 020 7270 3593

July 21, 1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs, Republic of Ireland Diplomat, 54, married, 3 children, British Ambassador

The newly appointed British Ambassador to Ireland, he was killed together with a civil servant, Judith Cook, in an IRA ambush. The attack took place 200 yards beyond the gates of his official residence at Sandyford, Co.Dublin, when his car was blown up by a landmine.

His death was one of the highest-profile assassinations of the troubles. His name was kept in public prominence by his wife Jane, who after his death remained highly active in peace and reconciliation work in both parts of Ireland and established a Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. He had been ambassador for only 12 days before his assassination. He was being driven out of his residence shortly before 10am in a car which had been fitted with armour plating when a bomb hidden in a culvert was triggered by command wire. The force of the blast threw the car into the air. After the explosion two men, both unmasked, ran to a car driven by a third man and were then seen having to push the vehicle to start it. It apparently broke down again later but the bombers were never apprehended.

The ambassador''s Jaguar car, part of a four-vehicle convoy on its way to the British Embassy in Dublin, took the full force of the 200lb device. He and Judith Cook were killed while the driver and a senior civil servant, Brian Cubbon, were seriously injured. The latter went on to become permanent secretary at the Home Office, one of the most senior positions in the British civil service.

Nine days before his death the ambassador met senior Gardai officers to discuss his security. He wrote in his diary: ''They are not very reassuring. They assess that I, but not Jane and the children, am distinctly at risk from the IRA. They do not seem to have given much thought to the scenario of attack. They thought for some reason that an attack on the car was unlikely - ''it hasn''t happened yet'' I ask them to keep us informed about any changes in their assessment of the risk''.

The IRA said the ambassador had been sent to Dublin ''to co-ordinate British intelligence activities and he was assassinated because of that''. In the aftermath of the assassination the Foreign Office sent the deputy under-secretary in charge of Irish affairs to make a report. He was Richard Sykes, who was himself to be killed by the IRA three years later when serving as British Ambassador to the Netherlands.

It later emerged that Merlyn Rees, then Northern Ireland secretary, had at the last minute been forced to cancel plans which would have meant he would have been travelling in the convoy. He had arranged to travel to the Republic to consult with the ambassador and Irish ministers, but postponed his trip after Margaret Thatcher, then opposition leader, refused to allow Northern Ireland ministers to ''pair'' their votes in a series of late-night Commons divisions. In his memoirs, Northern Ireland, a Personal Perspective, Merlyn Rees wrote that it seemed likely the IRA had known of his impending visit but were unaware of its cancellation.

A #20,000 reward was offered for information about the assassination. Subsequently a former Garda admitted in a Dublin court that he gave an official document naming a suspect wanted for the murder to John Lawlor from Tallaght, Co Dublin. John Lawlor was shot dead by the IRA in a Dublin pub in 1977.

According to one theory, his death was linked to that of south Armagh IRA member Peter Cleary, who had been shot dead by the SAS near Forkhill. The ambassador had reportedly visited the SAS unit''s base at Bessbrook in June, two months after Peter Cleary was shot.

The incident led indirectly to the resignation of the Irish president, Cearbhaill O Dalaigh. In the wake of the assassination, the Irish government declared a state of emergency and introduced a number of security measures aimed against the IRA. President O Dalaigh used his powers to refer part of the proposed new laws to the Irish supreme court for a ruling on their constitutionality. At an Irish army function he was denounced for doing this by Mr Paddy Donegan, the minister for defence, as a ''thundering disgrace''. This led to the president''s resignation.

Less than 24 hours before his death, the ambassador had met journalists in Dublin with the aim of what one newspaper described as ''wanting to show that his black monocle, double-barrelled name and aristocratic bearing did not mean that he supported attitudes which had long since departed''. He told the journalists that he wished to answer suggestions in the Irish press that he was a character ''bred out of a cross between Wodehouse and Kipling''. He explained that he wore a monocle because he had lost his right eye in what he described as ''a brief visit to an uncongenial spot called Alamein''. He concluded the briefing by saying: ''I have one prejudice, acquired during the war and reinforced again in Algeria - a very distinct and strong prejudice against violence for political ends''.

Garret FitzGerald, then Irish foreign minister and later Taoiseach, recalled in his memoirs All in a life, that he had met the ambassador for the first time several weeks earlier at a conference, finding him ''charming and unconventional''. The minister wrote: ''He was to pay a visit to me at 10am. Just as I had finished clearing my desk to receive him, I was told there had been an explosion near his residence. I was filled with horror at the atrocity, with shame that Irishmen had murdered the envoy of a neighbouring country, and with shock at our failure to protect him.''

Delivering an address at a memorial service a week later in St Patrick''s Cathedral in Dublin, Dr FitzGerald said: ''We in Ireland welcomed Christopher and Jane Ewart-Biggs with instinctive warmth, recognising their informed goodwill, their absolute sincerity, their quality as people and an element of humour and indeed gaiety which struck an instant chord amongst all who met them there. ''The tragedy of this moment in Ireland touches all. Ireland, shamed by the deeds of men with minds twisted by the myths that for too many in this country have displaced history, will not forget this moment. We are grateful that his widow, generous in spirit as he was, has found the courage and charity to understand and to maintain the full dedication of her husband''s commitment to peace in this island. We can humbly learn from her.''

Christopher Ewart-Biggs, who had three children aged 15, 13 and 8, was educated at Wellington College and University College, Oxford. He served with the Royal Kent Regiment during the Second World War, mainly in North Africa. Joining the Foreign Office after the war, he had been posted to Belgium, the Philippines, Algeria and most recently France. In Algeria he had received death threats from the Organisation del''Arme Secrete (OAS). He also, under a pen-name, wrote three novels which he described as ''a little bit sub-Graham Greene''.

In one of her two books of memoirs, Pay, Pack and Follow, Jane Ewart-Biggs wrote of hearing of her husband''s death on her car radio: ''My second life started at the particular moment in Birdcage Walk when, hearing the newsflash, I screamed my disbelief to the road in front and careered on with deadened mind towards the Foreign Office and the inevitable confirmation.''

Later that year she established the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Literary Prize, which was subsequently awarded to authors including Frank McGuinness, A.T.Q. Stewart and Father Michael MacGreil. She was created a Labour life peer in 1981. Up until her death in 1992 she maintained an active interest in organisation promoting reconciliation, including the Peace People and the British-Irish Association.

Judith Cook, Republic of Ireland Civilian, 27, Civil Servant

From the Victoria area of London, a senior civil servant with the Northern Ireland Office, she died together with Christopher Ewart-Biggs. Educated at Girton College, Cambridge, she had been promoted to the NIO two years earlier. The Northern Ireland secretary, Merlyn Rees, described her in his memoirs as young, exceptionally bright and ''someone we had all marked out for higher things''.

In an article in the Guardian a year after the killings, her mother spoke of her death. She said: ''I feel bitter towards the IRA, not towards the Irish people themselves, that they could take the life of a lovely young girl without hoping to do themselves any good. I sometimes worry if enough is being done to ferret the murderers out. It has spoiled so many lives. On one occasion it was given out that they thought they had the name of the person, but since then there has been silence. I''d be extremely pleased if they were caught, I must admit. Judy is never out of my mind for more than a matter of minutes.''

Her mother said she had expressed concern at her posting to Northern Ireland but that her daughter had ''laughed and said that the civil service hadn''t lost anyone yet. I said, ''No, but there''s always a first time''. Miss Cook had volunteered for the Northern Ireland post after spending two years in Customs and Excise. She had bought a flat in Victoria to be close to her sister who had recently had a baby.

END