Case Studies

Death on the doorstep

by Mark Rowe

A sniper attack on her armoured car that left her covered in blood; a bomb that blew her up while giving a speech at a lectern; in the recent BBC TV drama The Bodyguard, someone really wanted the fictional Home Secretary dead, and succeeded. Leaving aside how realistic the plot was, and how over-glamorised the work of close protection was, it did highlight the threat to politicians; or rather, the fact that relatively few in recent years have been assassinated.

Just as in any kind of security work, the fact that something bad doesn’t happen is taken for granted, not credited to good work by security people. Contrast the murder of Labour MPs Jo Cox in 2016 and the stabbing of Stephen Timms in 2010, at their constituency surgeries, with the Irish Republican bomb that killed Conservative MP Airey Neave in the basement car park of the House of Commons in 1979. The now veteran Conservative MP Ken Clarke in his memoir Kind of Blue recalls how he and fellow newly-elected MPs in 1970 had no idea how to get into Parliament, after the election. They went together for mutual aid and a ‘friendly elderly policeman’ at the gate knew them from photos he had of the new MPs to expect. As Clarke noted, that was all the security at Parliament at the time. The physical and personnel security that’s arisen around the Palace of Westminster has pushed people with grudges and maniacs away, to seek politicians elsewhere. MPs that reasonably want to meet their constituents (after all, the MPs want to get re-elected) run risks of letting through the door anyone. Ministers can justify creating distance, most famously the gates at the entrance to Downing Street.

The Luc Besson film Leon illustrates this. The anti-hero, the assassin played by Jean Reno, having taken under his wing a young Natalie Portman whose family has been killed by corrupt police, naturally trains the orphan to be an assassin also. He takes her to the top of a block of flats overlooking a park, with a sniper’s rifle. A politician is taking a morning jog, with entourage. Leon explains that to be sure of an assassination, you go in close, but that makes it difficult to escape; better to kill at long range; except that requires weaponry and skill. Leon shoots the politician with a paintball bullet; the politician is bewildered but unhurt; the assassin and apprentice go away undetected.

The most infamous assassinations have been at close range. At Sarajevo on Saturday, June 28, 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and his wife) were murdered by a Serbian. If we turn to the Times on the Monday after (on page eight!) we learn that the Archduke brushed a first nail-bomb off his car, on the way to a town hall ceremony. Incredibly, the official party went on to the ceremony, and against advice the Archduke wanted to go to the hospital to see one of the injured. On an unfamiliar route the car slowed on a corner, and Prinzip the assassin was able to close in and shoot. As the Times put it quaintly: “Considerable comment has been aroused by the fact that, in spite of the bomb attempt, the streets were not cleared.” What the newspaper called ‘the mad act of fanatical and political agitators’ sparked the 1914-18 war and millions of deaths. Other famous assassinations – of the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, on his way to work in Prague in 1942; and Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate – show that plotters armed with knives, guns or bombs need to get close, whether they can get near while the target is in transit, or because as senators they have intimate access to Caesar.

To take two more cases from history. On Saturday, June 24, 1922, the German foreign minister Walter Rathenau was murdered in his car on his way from his suburban Berlin villa to the German equivalent of Whitehall, the Wilhelmstrasse. As the Times reported on the Monday, the murderers must have studied the minister’s habits. “The car had not gone more than a few hundred yards … when it was overtaken by another. In it were three young men in grey waterproofs with grey military peaked caps which were well pulled down over their faces,” before the days of hoodies and baseball caps. As the cars drew level, two of the men fire long automatic pistols. They threw a hand grenade to make sure. The car without number plate made off. That Monday was the day of the funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, murdered by the IRA in London.

The Thursday afternoon before, Sir Henry had unveiled a war memorial at Liverpool Street station, and took a taxi home to 36 Eaton Place. According to the Times, as Wilson stepped from the pavement to his door, a shot was fired. Wilson ducked, and the bullet hit the door. Another shot came. “It is stated that with great intrepidity the Field-Marshal turned towards his assailants, and according to one witness he was seen to grasp his sword as if he were about to draw it.” More shots killed Sir Henry; his wife was among those who carried the dead man indoors. Police whistles blew and (armed only with truncheons) gave chase to two men who kept firing, sometimes while walking backwards. They were arrested in Ebury Street, near the modern Victoria coach station. A debate over whether to arm police arose. While tools may change – though not much, over the years – the principles of assassination and how to prevent it appear unchanged.

The two assassins of Sir Henry were found guilty at the Old Bailey a month later and sentenced to be executed.

Picture by Mark Rowe: 36 Eaton Place, London SW1, the scene of the murder of Sir Henry Wilson.

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