Original subtitles

I remember sitting on the rocks down at the beach,

in my mind going over August 27th,

August 27th, and I kept saying 1979,

I'll never forget this date, and I don't.

Every year, that date comes round and we remember it.

40 years ago, Lord Mountbatten,

the great-uncle of Prince Charles,

was blown up at sea by the IRA

at Mullaghmore,

off the west coast of Ireland.

By killing Mountbatten,

you sent ripples around the world,

in a way in which no other assassination could have achieved.

No member of the British royal family

had been murdered

by terrorists, within living memory.

At the time, I could not imagine how

we would come to terms with the anguish

of such a deep loss.

Three others were killed on the boat, including two teenage boys.

There was an almighty bang,

a huge crack like thunder,

and I immediately said...

"Paul is dead."

The day was marked not just by

the Mountbatten bomb,

but by a second IRA attack

that killed 18 British soldiers

at Warrenpoint, across the border

in Northern Ireland.

The IRA couldn't believe their luck.

For the nationalist population,

we were monsters.

This is the story of that day...

..told by those directly affected by it.

It is hard, when you see the wounds

that never really got sewn up,

from that day and that tragedy,

and that is hard.

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

MUSIC: This Is Your Life theme tune

In a few minutes from now,

I'll know whether or not we're going to succeed in telling

the exciting story of a man whose courage and daring in the war

and far-ranging influence on peace

have significantly contributed to

the shaping of this century's history.

The man I'm after has no idea that I'm going to be there...

I remember going to the studio

and I remember the dress, I had to wear my sister's

hand-me-down dress, always a hand-me-down dress.

And my thanks to Lord Brabourne, John Barrett...

We even had Princess Anne's underwear, I remember one year

was handed all the way down to us.

Admiral of the Fleet, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma,

tonight, this is your life.

What do you mean?

LAUGHTER

I don't know what you mean!

Inside here, we have a whole host of surprises for you...

Amazing that they managed to pull that off.

APPLAUSE

Now, India, that's an unusual name,

isn't it? How did you get that?

Because my grandfather was the last

Viceroy of India.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Because my grandfather was the last Viceroy of India!

Of course, nowadays, people say, what's a Viceroy?

As Viceroy, he was the last

colonial ruler of India.

He was also Admiral of the Fleet,

second cousin of the Queen,

and mentor to the Prince of Wales.

The Earl Mountbatten of Burma

was, for half a century, one of

Britain's leading public figures.

Can you bear having hot milk in it,

or would you rather not have milk in it?

In retirement, he spent

more time with his family,

but he still enjoyed the public spotlight so much

that he allowed an ITV crew

to record his annual summer holiday in Ireland,

even if it meant compromising the family's privacy.

I've found some more milk...

Every Easter, every summer,

every Christmas, every single holiday,

we were together with our cousins.

One, two, three... Whoopsie!

Classiebawn was always in the summer, a month in August.

The twins, where are the twins?

For all of the fact that it was called Classiebawn Castle,

essentially, it wasn't. It was a Victorian mansion, with some turret

built onto the end of it.

Lord Mountbatten inherited Classiebawn Castle from his wife,

Lady Edwina, who died in 1960.

There were so many wonderful traditions.

The heart of the holiday was

going out on the boat.

I would go a lot on the boat,

we all did.

India, come on...

The building of the dams, that was absolutely a tradition,

and taken very seriously.

Everybody knew what they had to do.

LORD MOUNTBATTEN: Give it to me, I'll show you. Make the hole here.

There it is, see? From here,

then you start doing the dam.

Yeah. Out of the way...

You see, he was, um, admiralling, wasn't he?

No, put it this way.

Go on, do as you're told.

Do as you're told.

That'll do it.

There we are. There you are...

It would be hard to be

Chief of Combined Operations and then not be in charge of

the family dam, let's face it.

That way...

The Mountbattens were generally viewed by the locals as benevolent,

well-meaning, helpful people, who it was nice to have around.

The neighbourhood benefited as a result of their presence.

Each summer, the Mountbattens would take up residence

at Classiebawn Castle,

overlooking the pretty fishing village of Mullaghmore.

The family's visits brought a touch of glamour,

and jobs for the locals.

This photograph, here,

was in the dining room of Classiebawn.

It's a dinner. That is me there.

When you look back, so many years ago,

it's now 40 years, you can always say,

the memories of them are happy ones,

and that's the most important thing of all.

Do you remember this, Mother?

Louis gave you this book. Yeah.

"To Mrs Barry, with grateful appreciation,

"Mountbatten of Burma, Classiebawn Castle. August, 1978."

And it was Barbara Cartland's Book of Useless Information.

So, my mother treasured that very much.

I think that's the last thing he gave to her.

The Mountbattens were not alone in their attachment

to Mullaghmore.

There are my three children at Mullaghmore.

That was Paul and his two sisters.

Mullaghmore was a popular holiday destination

for families from Northern Ireland,

as well as the South,

and the Maxwells, from Enniskillen,

had their own cottage there.

We went down there during summer holidays for two months

every year, and the children enjoyed it immensely.

I particularly like this...

this one of Paul.

That summer, 15-year-old Paul Maxwell

landed his dream job - looking after

Lord Mountbatten's boat, Shadow V.

I think they had a nice relationship.

Paul would sometimes

stay on the boat afterwards with

Mountbatten and they would talk.

And he told Paul about going into the Navy. And he said,

"You know, I went into the Navy when I was 12 years old,

"and I saw active service when I was 16."

And Paul said to him, "Were you not frightened, My Lord?"

And he said, "Yes, but you didn't show it."

And you can see...

Classiebawn in the background there,

in the distance.

Classiebawn itself had been a fairly early example of what you might call

English colonisation,

in a sense that, quite clearly, they were intruders.

The Irish obviously resented Britain, as such, and wanted us out.

The Mountbattens' summer retreat

was in County Sligo,

in the Republic of Ireland.

Mullaghmore was only 13 miles

from the border with Northern Ireland

where, in 1969,

a bloody conflict broke out.

EXPLOSION

Catholics in Northern Ireland

resented being treated as

what they saw as second-class citizens,

and the IRA took up arms against the British state.

Despite the nearby Troubles,

the Mountbattens kept coming

to Classiebawn.

They enjoyed protection from the local police,

the Garda, but it was all kept

very low-key.

The families themselves were

very rarely targeted at all

and there was very little personal animosity.

I don't believe the Garda,

more than anybody else, believed

that actually, there was a serious threat.

Judging the appropriate level of security for the Mountbattens

was a tough call.

My grandfather was very keen not to have the intrusion of

an overly protective force around,

which is funny when you think that

on the mountainside, there was a big painted sign, "Brits go home".

You arrived for your summer holiday and that's the welcome.

A reminder that while the fishing village

of Mullaghmore itself may have welcomed the Mountbattens,

County Sligo had deep roots in

the Republican movement.

Mountbatten would have been seen by

people in the IRA leadership as a...

cultural icon of the British establishment.

Anthony McIntyre joined the IRA in Belfast in 1973.

He wanted to get the Brits out

and create a united Ireland.

Although he later fell out with the IRA,

he understood their mind-set at the time.

BAND PLAYS

He would have been targeted,

and his targeting justified

on the grounds that by taking him out,

there was a blow being administered

to the very heart of the British establishment.

HE SHOUTS COMMAND

It turns out that throughout the 1970s, Lord Mountbatten

had been a potential target for the IRA.

Kieran Conway had risen through the IRA's ranks to become

its Director of Intelligence by 1975.

He reveals, for the first time, that an attempt on Mountbatten's life

had been actively considered four years before

the successful assassination.

In the mid-Seventies,

there was an operation cleared to kill Mountbatten.

He was to be ambushed either exiting or entering his castle.

Four or five men,

a spotter car somewhere distant,

then walkie-talkie communication between the people with the guns

and the car to say he's on his way.

You'd know roughly how long it was going to take,

and, er, then open up on the car.

The mind-set in '74-'75, the early '70s,

would have been operational, you know? Like, kill them. Ha!

Without too much reflection.

I think he would have been astonished if told that there were

IRA members in Ireland who were interested in his existence,

let alone wanting to murder him.

The 1975 plot did not get the go-ahead from

the IRA's Army Council,

and Kieran Conway temporarily left the IRA later that year.

EXPLOSION

But the military campaign against

the British security forces

did not let up.

In Crossmaglen, it takes all the professional skills of the Army

to make it safe enough for the Royal Ulster Constabulary

to walk around the town where

they're charged with maintaining law and order.

Two of them have been gunned down here.

By 1979, the British Army had been in Northern Ireland

for ten years.

Around 30,000 troops were lined up against

an estimated 500 IRA volunteers,

yet 324 soldiers had already been killed.

And things were particularly dangerous in South Armagh,

which runs along the Irish border.

Bombings and shootings.

South Armagh had a fairly notorious reputation as being dangerous.

More dangerous, perhaps,

than any other battalion area.

Of course, South Armagh adjoins the Republic...

..so life on the border was, um...

..er, challenging.

The South Armagh Brigade was, er, beyond belief.

Just its ability, their operational efficiency.

They were, erm, visibly beating the British.

In the summer of 1979,

the South Armagh Brigade

was plotting two of the most

ambitious attacks of

the IRA's campaign so far.

One in Warrenpoint,

the other just south of

the border, in Mullaghmore.

There, during the night of the 26th of August,

the IRA planted a remote-controlled

50-pound bomb on

Lord Mountbatten's boat, Shadow V,

sitting unguarded in the harbour.

I went on duty at 6am...

..up at the castle here.

9:00-9:30, Lord Mountbatten

and his family

came out from the castle and informed us that they were

going down to the pier.

So, we got into a patrol car

and we escorted them.

In this unique photograph,

taken just 24 hours earlier,

showing the family and staff

outside Classiebawn,

all the members of

Lord Mountbatten's boat party are present.

His son-in-law, Lord Brabourne,

and his daughter, Patricia,

their 14-year-old twin sons,

Timothy and Nicholas Knatchbull,

and their 83-year-old grandmother, Doreen, the Lady Dowager.

The only non-family member on board

was the 15-year-old Northern Irish boat boy, Paul Maxwell.

The day itself comes to me in flashes,

rather like small explosions.

I remember distinctly sitting in the library with my brother.

My grandfather and the others had gone out on the boat,

and Ash and I were watching - on this crackly, fuzzy

television screen - Laurel and Hardy.

On that day, August 27th, 1979,

I was sitting on the back patio, with

Paul's father and Lisa.

Paul said, "Goodbye, Mum, see you in the evening."

I didn't think that was the last time I would ever see him alive.

Beautiful morning, it was.

The sun was shining.

They left Mullaghmore Pier and

travelled out to

where they had some lobster pots.

This is where we were.

Yes, looking out here. Because...

you can see the boat as it came along.

Dennis Devlin was a 15-year-old,

whose family came to Mullaghmore every summer.

Their caravan was parked

just off the coastal road.

As they came in, I could hear them talking.

Talking among themselves.

As the boat pulled up,

I remember the young fella over the side of the boat

pulling in the lobster pot, and slowly pulled it in.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a loud bang.

You could see the boat had just disintegrated.

It was obvious that a bomb had gone off.

There was an almighty bang.

A huge crack, like thunder.

And I immediately said,

"Paul is dead."

And I knew he was dead because I felt a part of me go.

My brother, sister and I were taken

into the study and, before anything,

we were asked to take these pills, with a glass of water.

I'd never taken a pill in my life before.

And that, to me, was more surprising than anything of that day.

I couldn't understand why I was being made to take a pill.

Again, I think it's so reflective of the era that they were in,

in the 1970s, that someone would have had Valium on them,

for God's sakes, and said, let's give it to the children.

I mean, dear God, would you give an 11-year-old a Valium?!

I, for some reason, left the castle

and ran down to the beach,

which wasn't helpful at all,

and incredibly inconsiderate of me, now I look back.

I remember sitting on the rocks

down at the beach, in my mind,

going over - 27th of August, 27th of August.

And I kept saying, 1979, I'll never forget this date.

And I don't. I don't.

VOICE BREAKING: Every year, that date comes round and we remember it.

Um... And, erm... And, er...

And it was just such an incredibly beautiful day.

And on the rocks, this incredible view.

And yet, you know, destruction.

I'm so sorry, I don't...

I don't normally get upset.

SHE CHUCKLES

I remember it very vividly,

every moment of it, really.

From the very start

to the very end of the day. And I think I'll always remember it.

Lord Mountbatten's boat had exploded.

So, immediately, I got two friends

and we went out on the boat to see what we could do.

And, erm, we arrived there and there was other boats

that were in the near vicinity, they were already...

lifting the survivors.

I think when we actually took him from the boat

that he'd been brought ashore in and brought him to the ambulance.

That's the first that I realised that

he had actually been one of the fatalities. He was one of the first

that was actually taken ashore.

It was a perfectly ordinary day, that August Bank Holiday.

I was helping to put together

the lunchtime bulletin for Radio Ulster.

Nicholas Witchell was a trainee reporter at the time,

in the BBC newsroom in Belfast.

We received a tip-off from somebody we knew,

suggesting that there had been

an explosion reported at Mullaghmore,

in the Republic of Ireland.

I do remember forming the words on my pad, "Mountbatten, dead".

By now, all but one of the bodies of the boat party

had been recovered.

Lord Mountbatten and Paul Maxwell

had been killed instantly.

The 83-year-old dowager, fatally injured.

The parents of the twins were also seriously wounded,

as was 14-year-old Timothy.

His twin brother, Nicholas, was still missing.

You could see this beautiful

blue azure sea, just off to

the north end of the little peninsula which Mullaghmore is.

We could see a lot of debris.

Splinters of wood. It was fine debris.

Quite fine debris, it was.

I was winched from the rescue helicopter...

..and I was placed into the water,

beside what looked like the bubble of an anorak.

I placed my hand and pulled it,

and it didn't yield very easily.

And I pulled it a second time,

and it was then the head came up with the jacket as I pulled,

and I realised it was a child.

Imagine what those

thick Aran sweaters must have felt like,

clogged with oil and water, being lifted out of the ocean.

You know, how long had Nick been floating in the water, you know?

It was the first child

that I handled in death.

It came as a terrible shock to me, I can tell you,

but I'm in rescue mode.

I need to get him out of that water.

I need to give him over to his family.

14-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull's body

was returned to Mullaghmore Harbour.

It's the last photograph we have of Paul.

That's Paul.

And that is...

Nicky and Timmy.

So, one boy survived,

and the other two were killed?

He survived because he was up on the roof.

Mountbatten was in the middle, between

Paul and Nicky.

And so, they got the full blast.

Later that afternoon, I had a phone call from

a contact I knew within

the Republican movement, who asked,

most unusually, to drive up to the Falls Road to meet him.

Opened the door, he got into the car,

sat down beside me, we drove on.

Then he reached into his mouth...

..like that,

and drew out a small scrap of paper,

which was wrapped up in clingfilm,

unwrapped it, and this was the...

a telexed message which contained

the IRA claim of responsibility for, as they put it,

the execution of Lord Mountbatten.

The choice of the word "execution" is very deliberate.

It is an attempt to imply that there was some kind of a justification.

I mean, execution implies a judicial process.

Clearly, you know, absolutely inappropriate.

By killing Mountbatten, you sent ripples

around the world, in a way which probably,

no other assassination could have achieved.

While people were still reeling from the news that

a member of the royal family

had been killed at Mullaghmore,

the IRA's operations that day were not yet over.

Now, the British Army was in their sights.

Later that afternoon,

over 100 miles away, members from

another South Armagh unit were

lying in wait by the Newry River,

on the southern side of

the Irish border. They were hoping

to blow up a British Army convoy,

travelling along the road from

Warrenpoint, across the river,

in Northern Ireland, by detonating

two radio-controlled bombs

that they'd planted earlier.

One - a 700-pound device hidden

in a lorry piled high with straw -

was parked in a lay-by. The other -

£1,000-worth of explosive -

hidden in a nearby gate lodge.

So, I went down. I remember

messing about with a car behind us.

Tom Caughey was a local boy from Newtownards,

who had joined the Parachute Regiment at 18,

as his father had before him.

That day, he was a passenger

in the lead vehicle of the two-truck convoy.

We had a packed lunch,

and we'd oranges, and we made little teeth out of the orange, you know.

And there was a car with...

a lady and kids in it.

We were smiling at them, you know, that type of banter.

Ten minutes later, we were blown up.

EXPLOSION

BLEEPING

Not a bang, just a rumble.

And I had the sensation of flying.

Coming... Not even coming to, just...

looking about, sitting there, and everything's just a mess.

I came into the roundabout

and you couldn't see past the roundabout.

Totally obscured with smoke.

Peter Maloy was a freelance photographer at the time,

who just happened to be passing.

I got out, grabbed the cameras,

and just as I'm going into it, a policeman's coming running out

and he's screaming. He says,

"Don't go in there, they're all dead."

I just put the camera into autofocus

and I just shot generally.

The first thing I saw was a long wheelbased jeep,

and there were soldiers in that, and...

one look told you they were obviously dead. And the heat,

you couldn't really go too close to it.

Everything was burning.

And my legs were on fire.

No, I couldn't move.

And the next thing,

the guys were on me.

They were pouring water, you know, trying to put me out.

And one of the guys, er,

give me his red beret to put over my face,

to keep the sun off it.

And I can remember lying there and...

voices...

Dead. He's dead. He's dead. They're dead, they're dead, they're dead.

And voices getting closer to me.

And whether I imagined this, I don't know,

but I vividly remember it. I remember saying, "I'm not dead."

You know, and taking the beret off, you know?

It was like a roll call of the dead.

Seven of the nine Paras travelling

in the first truck had been killed.

Tom Caughey, along with his friend,

Paul Burns, were the only survivors.

But the carnage didn't end there.

A very fine English voice shouted,

"There could be a second bomb! Take hard cover!"

And they all went over

towards the gate lodge.

Across the river, the IRA bombers

were lying in wait,

ready to detonate the second bomb.

They'd predicted correctly

where the surviving British troops

were likely to regroup.

I remember getting put in a chopper,

and Paul Burns being put in.

I remember the look on his face, and he was like

something out of Tom and Jerry.

When the cigar goes off in your mouth and your face is black.

And we'd all little...

He was like a strawman. You know...

Bits of straw stuck in his face.

And then...

Boof! Bang, it goes again.

Boom!

I was thrown back

and I got up again

and it was over.

Basically, it was over.

August 27th had started badly for Mike Jackson.

The news came through of

the Mullaghmore bombing

and the death of Earl Mountbatten, amongst others,

which was obviously very shocking.

Now, as the news broke that his fellow Paras had been ambushed

at Warrenpoint, Jackson himself

was called into action.

The Brigade Commander looked at me and said,

"Mike, what are you doing here?

You go down to the site and secure it,

and take on all the aftermath."

So, I gave out some rapid orders,

um, and...

got on the first light helicopter

I could.

There's no communication,

all telephones are cut off,

so you're waiting for word to come back from your own...

from your own lads to what actually is going on.

Is there a bit of you thinking, that's my mates? Yes.

Absolutely. And you want to know who it was, because you know that

some of your mates were being killed, were killed.

So, yes, you did want to know.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

A further 11 British soldiers

had been killed in

the second explosion.

I get to Warrenpoint

and, um, it's a pretty grim site,

as you can imagine.

There were body parts, um,

pretty much everywhere.

In the trees, everywhere.

Um, and, er...

those who had survived,

um, were in shock.

It was absolutely obvious,

right from the earliest point,

that this was

a death toll on an exceptional scale.

It transpired, of course, that 18 soldiers

had lost their lives - the greatest single loss of life

that the British Army had suffered

in Northern Ireland.

Theirs were not the only lives lost

that afternoon at Warrenpoint.

Barry Hudson had been getting ready to go to work

at the family's funfair business in Omeath,

on the southern side of the border.

He had been joined that summer

by his 29-year-old cousin from England, Bill.

All of a sudden, we heard this...

thump, right? And, erm, I remember Bill saying, "Oh, what was that?"

And I said, "It sounded like a bomb."

He said to me, "Could you bring me down? Let me have a look."

In the mayhem following the two bomb blasts,

the surviving Paras spotted the figures of Barry

and his cousin, Bill, on the other side of the river,

and wrongly imagined them to be

the IRA bombers.

For a time, we could see the soldiers coming in,

along the road there, in the jeeps.

We could see their red berets and that, you know? And...

I heard the ground being struck.

And then I felt my arm, like a stone hitting it.

I thought it was something, a stone maybe, or whatever.

And it was bleeding.

And then, there was more.

So... That's why I turned,

and Bill was standing over there,

the car was just parked up there

and he was standing to the right, we'll say.

And I shouted at him then to get down.

And then you could hear more guns and branches cracking and that.

So, I ran...ran like hell...

HE CLEARS HIS THROAT

..and zigzagged up that lane.

I've seen it in war films.

I always thought it was a load of baloney, really,

because you couldn't escape death,

but I did.

Then it all stopped. Dead quiet.

So, after about a minute or two,

I thought my cousin should be coming up now.

I just thought he'd get up

and come back up.

I looked around the corner and, um,

well, I've seen him lying on his back...

..and, er...

blood, a lot of blood. And, erm...

..I, er...

I ran down to the car.

I knew when I'd seen him,

there's nothing anyone can do for him.

The lad that pulled the trigger,

I'm sure he was shell-shocked. It didn't enter his head,

for one instant, you know, not to pull that trigger.

And, er, I think we would all have done the exact same thing

in that situation.

It was left to Barry to report

the tragic news to Bill's father.

Ironically, Bill Senior worked in Buckingham Palace,

as one of the Queen's coachmen.

I said, "I've terrible news, Uncle."

I said, "Bill's dead."

"Oh, dead? What happened? How is he dead?"

And I said, "He got shot."

He said, "How did he get shot?"

Terrible. Terrible, just...

One of the worst moments in my life, actually.

Something I wouldn't want anyone to have to do.

The Army later acknowledged

that Bill Hudson was an innocent civilian, mistakenly killed.

This multiple killing, the worst the security forces

have ever suffered in Northern Ireland,

coming as it does after the Mountbatten tragedy,

must serve to only further heighten tensions in Northern Ireland.

Word quickly spread of how meticulously planned

the IRA operation at Warrenpoint had been.

Anthony McIntyre was an IRA volunteer, locked up in

the Maze Prison at the time.

I thought it was impressive.

I thought it was ingenious.

Because not only did they detonate the first device,

they had to wait until the British Army back-up arrived

and position themselves behind the gateposts,

and then detonate the second one.

So, it took nerves of steel for the volunteers

to sit there and do that.

It was absolutely militarily fantastic, brilliant,

I don't want to say the word fantastic but,

you know... But the big bonus that they had

that they didn't normally have was...

they were in a different country. They'd no need to run away.

Yeah. They were in the South. They were in the South.

And that's why they could take their time.

You take advantage when you can, and they did.

Will you please stand still?

And I will move.

The attacks on Lord Mountbatten

and the British soldiers made a deep impression on Mrs Thatcher,

who had been Prime Minister for only four months.

Within 36 hours, she landed in Northern Ireland

on an unscheduled visit,

to investigate what had happened

and to offer her reassurance.

When she went to Northern Ireland,

I remember the walkabout

in the shopping mall,

erm, which I thought was an extremely brave thing to do,

not because there was much risk of being shot in that environment,

but simply because there would be a lot of people

in the shopping mall who didn't like her very much.

She was a very feminine person.

And it was like for a while, you just fell? Yes, basically...

She was profoundly moved.

I broke my leg...

She didn't blub, but tears came to her eyes.

It could have been a lot worse...

She only very rarely wept,

erm, to my knowledge, anyway.

And when she did, there was good reason for it.

She's not everybody's cup of tea, I know that,

but she was able to relate, and they to her, to the soldiers.

Boadicea. A very doughty lady.

I think in terms of significance

for Margaret Thatcher,

knowing as we do what we do about her personality,

I'm sure that it actually made her even more determined to resist.

Mrs Thatcher's flying visit

did not extend to the scene of

the Mountbatten bombing, over the border,

in the Republic of Ireland.

Here, too, the events of that day had made a huge impact.

While it was recognised that the IRA

had pulled off two audacious military operations,

in PR terms, opinion was divided.

Almost everybody spoke with regret

and shame about what had happened

to Mountbatten. And that sense,

this is our territory, how dare they do this on our territory?!

But there were a number of people,

I won't say a majority, but there were a number of people

who said what happened to Mountbatten was wrong but,

as far as the British soldiers are concerned, listen,

those that live by the sword die by the sword.

This feeling was reinforced by the fact that 16 of the 18

British soldiers killed at Warrenpoint were from the Paratroop Regiment.

The Paras were deeply unpopular on both sides of the Irish border

thanks to an infamous incident that had taken place

seven years earlier.

THEY SHOUT

There is no other single incident in Northern Ireland that unites

nationalists of all colour, north and south, like Bloody Sunday does.

GUNSHOT

Because, to us, it was the deliberate killing

of peaceful protesters on a march in Derry.

SCREAMS

13 civil rights protesters were killed

in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

GUNSHOT

Here was the British Army turning its guns

on the people it called its own citizens.

And the soldiers responsible for Bloody Sunday...

Were the Paratroopers.

So, there was a particular feeling of general dislike

towards the Paratroopers.

This dislike was felt particularly strongly by the IRA volunteers

locked up in the Maze Prison at the time.

And how do you characterise the reaction of you and your fellow

prisoners to hearing about the Warrenpoint news?

Exuberance, exhilaration.

All our Christmases had come at once and come early.

The IRA couldn't believe their luck.

For the nationalist population, we were monsters.

We were quite ruthless, quite callous, quite indifferent

to the suffering of the relatives and found the Parachute Regiment,

absolutely anathema.

They were celebrating - of course they were. You know...

They had a good day.

And doubly good in a sense with the memory for them, the memory of...

Bloody Sunday, yeah. Of course, yeah.

That's where the old saying came out, you know,

13 dead, not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten.

There's support for you. Very good.

THE LAST POST

That funeral was extraordinary.

And I think my grandfather has masterminded every moment of it,

understandably, and it ran to perfection.

The whole family of Europe seems to be here.

Lord Mountbatten's State funeral, the largest of its kind

since Winston Churchill's, provided a vivid reminder

of the personal nature of the blow dealt to the Royal family.

Two granddaughters and the girl that bears the name of India and...

We know my grandfather's murder was a complete shock

and very devastating to the Prince of Wales because he fulfilled a role,

and that role was then taken away.

So I think he probably felt that more than most,

the loss, my grandfather's murder, and in such a brutal way.

The murder horrified him and,

in a way, marked him for life.

It left a sort of sense of uncertainty, if Mountbatten,

the invincible, the almighty, could be snuffed out like that,

then what was left certain in life?

Within a week of the funeral, 11-year-old India found herself

sent off to Gordonstoun, the boarding school

in the north of Scotland.

Here was she was given a painful reminder of the very public nature

of her grandfather's death.

I remember feeling desperately lonely going off to boarding school

without my mother, and the first night someone,

after lights out, saying a joke.

And maybe we can't even put this in because it's too horrific,

but she said, "How did they know Lord Mountbatten had dandruff?"

And no-one in the dorm at lights out knew the answer.

And the answer was, of course,

"Because they found his head and shoulders on the beach."

Um...

It was a pretty staggering moment.

Later that autumn, two IRA men were put on trial

for the murder of Lord Mountbatten.

One, Thomas McMahon, was convicted.

Thomas McMahon, did you know him by reputation?

I knew him both by reputation and personally and he was a very,

very fine IRA volunteer.

Very fine indeed.

He would be the most outstanding figure to come out of South Armagh.

Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison,

but no-one higher up in the IRA leadership chain was ever held

to account for the bomb.

Somebody knew children were going on that boat.

Not necessarily the guys who put the bomb on or the guys that made

the bomb, but the people who planned it certainly knew

about the children.

Although Anthony McIntyre has since fallen out with the IRA,

back in 1979, he was still very much an insider.

I think given the political sensitivity around Mountbatten

and the fallout that the IRA leadership, the political thinking

people in the IRA leadership would have anticipated,

I would have imagined there was a decision taken

at the most senior levels.

Kieran Conway, who temporarily left the IRA in 1976,

is in no doubt as to who was in charge at the time

of Mountbatten's assassination.

I have absolutely no difficulty in saying in '81 when I rejoined,

and I wouldn't have said that until Martin died,

that McGuinness was Chief of Staff.

And your clear understanding is that he had been since '78? Yeah.

Ultimately, as Chief of Staff, it would be McGuinness'

responsibility, that operation? Yeah, that's right, yeah.

That's the way it works. I mean, if you are the boss, you are the boss.

You take responsibility for whatever goes on.

Meanwhile, no-one was ever put on trial for the bombs

at Warrenpoint, let alone convicted, despite the arrest on the day itself

of two IRA suspects near the scene of the carnage.

Well, of course it's frustrating.

The event is one of murder.

Mass murder.

And it is a source of great regret

that nobody was brought to account for it.

In these past few days, the irresistible force,

the political will, has met the immovable object,

the legacy of the past, and it has actually moved it.

It took another 20 years after the Mountbatten

and Warrenpoint killings, but peace was finally established

in Northern Ireland by the British and Irish governments

at the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

This agreement is good for the people of Ireland,

north and south.

APPLAUSE

As part of the peace process, the IRA's prisoners were released,

including Thomas McMahon, the sole IRA member

convicted of the killings.

The idea of reconciliation has lain at the heart of the peace process.

And there we get a first glimpse of the Queen.

In 2012, the Queen came face-to-face with the man said to have been

ultimately responsible for the assassination of her second cousin.

You really did have to just pinch yourself and think,

can this actually be happening?

That the head of state of the United Kingdom

and the man who without doubt it was one of the leaders of the military,

the offensive side of the Republican movement,

who may well have had a hand in planning Mullaghmore,

or certainly signing off on it...

That they were standing together was remarkable.

The symbolic strength of that shaking of hands

was enormous - one of the most powerful things that she could do.

And she did it even though personally

it may have cost her something.

But it was terribly important that that was done.

Only she could do it, and she did it.

She is the more admirable person in the transaction,

I think, you know?

I think it was more difficult for her than it was for him.

Like mother, like son.

Three years later, the Prince of Wales made his own

gesture of reconciliation.

The events of 1979 had come as a double blow to him.

He was Colonel in Chief of the Parachute Regiment

which had lost 16 of the 18 soldiers killed that Warrenpoint.

And at Mullaghmore, he had also lost to the mentor

who meant so much to him.

At the time, I could not imagine how we would come to terms

with the anguish of such a deep loss, since,

for me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had.

The poet Yeats once wrote that I shall have some peace there,

for peace comes dropping slow.

As a grandfather now myself, I pray that his words can apply

to all of those that have been so hurt

and scarred by the Troubles of the past.

The problem with peace is you have to keep working at it.

It's not a passive thing.

It is always going to be a continuing responsibility

on all of us in these islands to make sure that the conditions

in Northern Ireland do not encourage the break-out again

of sectarian tensions.

We do not want to go back to that.

So it is not a matter of peace coming, dropping slow -

peace has to be worked at damned hard.

Two years ago, Martin McGuinness, the man widely believed

to have been the IRA Chief of Staff at the time

of the bombings, died.

According to Buckingham Palace, the Queen sent a private letter

of condolence to his widow.

Today, for the most part, normal life has returned

on both sides of the Irish border.

But the sense of shame in the village of Mullaghmore lives on,

especially among those who had had close ties to the Mountbattens.

There was a terrible sense of shock in this village,

and disbelief.

And there was a dark cloud over the area,

over the village, for years afterwards.

People didn't talk about it.

They did in their own houses hushed talk about it,

but not out in the open.

People felt so bad about what happened,

and embarrassed about it.

As with the town, so with the individuals themselves.

They too are still struggling to come to terms with the tragic

events of 40 years ago.

I never took another picture since.

That's 40 years ago.

Why did you never take another photograph?

I...

I just couldn't face it.

I was literally shaken.

I watched the firemen and I thought,

"That's what I should have been doing."

And the following week, I applied and I joined the Fire Service then.

Loved it. Loved it.

I see that young boy's face over and over and it doesn't go away

and it doesn't get any more blurred as it did from 1979 to today,

because I can still see it.

I'm OK with all that because I brought that kid home.

That's 40 years ago now.

There hasn't been one day, I'm sure, that it hasn't

crossed my mind sometime.

And that's a long time for something to stick in your mind.

Didn't feel lucky at the time,

didn't feel lucky for ten years after it.

I wanted to be with them.

Why did I survive?

It was like a day that would never end and then went on to weeks

that would never end and years where grieving would never end.

And it hasn't.

I will always grieve for Paul.

I carry him in my heart everywhere I go.

I asked my mother about doing this and she said,

"Yes, absolutely, it's important to keep talking."

I think, in trauma and in death and in survival,

there is so much that is unsaid, and there is unfortunately no path,

there is no written text book of healing.

And so, in amongst my seven cousins, who I am, and remain,

close to, and my own siblings, everybody coped very differently.

And some didn't cope well and of course we are seeing

the side-effects of that even to this day,

and the damage that was done

was so much deeper than any of us could ever have imagined,

and adult lives are still being horrifically disrupted.

I certainly try not to hold resentment in any way,

and that's hard.

But forgiveness, I think, is important.

One has to move on.