The murder of Ross McWhirter

On the night of November 27, 1975, Britain was stunned by the shooting dead of household name celebrity, Ross McWhirter. He and his identical twin brother Norris created and compiled the world famous Guinness Book of Records in 1955 and both men appeared regularly on the BBC children’s show Record Breakers in the early 1970s.

Viewers were amazed by the ability of the cerebral twins to answer questions on any world record displaying incredible memory power. Then in 1975, Ross McWhirter’s murder was splashed across the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

He had been killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) after offering a £50,000 reward to those coming forward with information about the terrorist group. The fatal bullets were fired by an “active service unit” within the IRA dubbed the Balcombe Street Gang by the media. In a brutal killing spree that struck terror into Londoners in the mid-1970s, they notched up over forty bomb and gun attacks in and around London through 1974 and 1975 including the assassination of McWhirter.

So, how did the paths of a children’s TV presenter and a terrorist organisation come to cross?

Children’s TV presenter

For those of us who were kids in the early 1970s, Record Breakers was a hugely popular TV show presented by the actor and musician, Roy Castle. Each episode featured reports on breathtaking record breaking achievements and then a Q&A with the McWhirters in the studio. We were dazzled by their ability to answer any question about a world record naming the current holder and the relevant statistics.

This was a decade that loved pointless facts. Peak time TV included quiz shows like Ask The Family, Top of the Form, and Screen Test where showing off how much data you had crammed into your head on particular topics was held to be a mark of genius.

But the McWhirters were more complex than their Record Breakers appearances. Public school and Oxbridge educated sons of a top Fleet Street journalist, William Allan McWhirter, who broke a record himself editing three national newspapers in his life: the Sunday Pictorial, Sunday Dispatch, and Daily Mail. The boys excelled early on in writing, sports, and were legally trained. And they had a single minded obsession with right-wing politics – or the issue of freedom as they would have expressed it.

The political activism of the McWhirters

As middle aged men, the McWhirters got into their stride attacking the Left and organised labour. They were very much part of a new rightward drift in politics that accelerated in the 1970s. On both the far left and far right, there was a sense that the post-war consensus had to end. A cosy world where bosses, unions, and government ran society over beer and sandwiches. The far left wanted an end to capitalism. The far right wanted an end to trade union power. The McWhirters became – in effect – attack dogs for the far right. They foreshadowed the Thatcher government that would take power in 1979.

Norris McWhirter’s biography of his dead brother, titled Ross, was published by Churchill Press in 1977. I’ve got an old copy in front of me as I write. It detailed the twins’ drift to the political Right in their youth. During World War Two, they despised the Labour Party as, in their view, appeasers of Hitler. At university, they were basically a pair of sports jocks and after graduating, they set up a company “to supply facts and figures to newspapers”, very often on sporting accomplishments.

The two developed a passion for political activism coupled with allied legal action. In 1954, they dragged the Town Clerk of Holborn – a district in central London – to court because he had refused to register them as voters in that area. They felt that as business people with an office in Holborn, they had a right to vote. The McWhirters won the case and made sure that it was splashed on the front page of the Daily Mail. Activism backed up by legal action publicised in the national papers became their modus operandi. The causes they took up were always on the political Right.

In 1954, they were introduced to the directors of the Guinness brewing company by an old university chum and sportsman, Christopher Chataway. Guinness directors decided to fund an annual compilation of constantly updated world records. And so – The Guinness Book of Records was born. But while feverishly building the profile of this runaway success of a publication (an essential Christmas stocking filler in the 1970s), the McWhirters continued with their political campaigning.

In 1964, Ross McWhirter ran as a Conservative candidate in Edmonton, north London, without the prior approval of the party’s central office. Labour romped to victory in that general election and McWhirter was not elected as an MP. Undaunted, he slipped back into extra-parliamentary activism on right-wing causes.

Opposing Labour on abolishing grammar schools

In 1967, Ross McWhirter waded in to an issue close to the Labour Party’s heart – ending the three tier system of secondary education in Britain: grammar, comprehensive, and secondary modern. The eleven plus exam – taken at the end of junior school – determined if you were good enough to be “selected” for a grammar school. Supporters viewed it as a moment when good brains were sifted from bad – while opponents saw the exam as arbitrary and grossly unfair.

Enfield Council, a local authority, decided to scrap this system and impose non-selective comprehensive school education throughout the borough. Enfield Grammar School had never admitted boys without a degree of selection. When the council banned this, McWhirter launched his legal action. This successfully prevented the grammar school going comprehensive though in the longer term, the court ruling in McWhirter’s favour redoubled the resolve of Labour politicians determined to bring in a more egalitarian education system. In the 1970s, they got their way.

Labour Party and sinister “subliminal flashes”

On April 8, 1970, Ross rang Norris claiming that he had noticed something very odd while watching a party political broadcast by the Labour Party just shown on the BBC and ITV. He believed it contained subliminal brainwashing images along the lines of “Vote Labour” and “Vote Tomorrow”. This incident is detailed in the book, Ross, by Norris McWhirter. An Australian journalist then confirmed in the Daily Mail that the broadcast had indeed included three subliminal flashes. However, McWhirter failed to convince a rather sceptical judge to act but, refusing to back down, pursued his case to the Court of Appeal.

There, he had a much warmer reception from a judge who would become notorious as Thatcher’s attack dog in the courts. Lord Denning was Master of the Rolls and used his legal power to extend the remit of the courts issuing judgements that were highly politicised. In effect, he made law where parliament had left gaps. For a modern comparison – think of the way that Trump-appointed judges have acted on the US Supreme Court to curb abortion rights with Congress having passed any legislation. Denning became a figure of hate on the Left and in the trades unions – whose rights he set out to curb. The unashamedly political judge and the McWhirters got on famously from the outset.

Regarding the subliminal flashes, the Master of the Rolls and two other judges heard McWhirter’s appeal but Denning’s sympathy for McWhirter’s case was not echoed by his judicial colleagues and the broadcasters got a mere slap on the wrist – and were told to be more mindful in future. ITV assured McWhirter that subliminal messages would never be broadcast in the future but the BBC ignored the ruling. This fuelled a growing animosity between the twins and the public broadcaster. Even though they would become regular fixtures on one of its top shows for many years.

Freedom to ban TV programmes

As with many activists who claim to espouse “freedom” – the McWhirters were more than capable of being censorious. Ross McWhirter decided in 1973 that a TV programme by the photographer David Bailey about the artist Andy Warhol – titled Warhol – should never be broadcast on British television. He was spurred into action after reading a sensationalist piece in the tabloid News of the World in which the TV critic said of the upcoming documentary: “This TV shocker is the worst ever…millions will find its frankness offensive.”

The word “offensive” triggered McWhirter. He demanded access to the documentary but was told by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) – the regulator of commercial (non-BBC) television – to get lost. McWhirter’s attempt to set himself up as a public censor seemed to be going nowhere. The Attorney General refused to get involved and a judge blocked his injunction to prevent transmission of the offending film. With literally hours to go until Warhol was broadcast on ITV, McWhirter turned to a political ally: Lord Denning.

After an urgent phone call, Denning agreed to let the Court of Appeal sit late into the evening to consider the injunction. The IBA was entirely unprepared and failed to respond robustly as the court heard lurid details of a scene where a woman painted using her breasts; the user of four-letter words; and “the advocacy of copulation between a motor cyclist and pillion rider at high speed”. Denning banned Warhol from being broadcast four hours before it was due to go on air.

In an ill-tempered interview on ITV’s nightly News at Ten bulletin, Ross McWhirter was asked by a journalist how he could justify using the courts to censor TV in a democratic society. McWhirter replied that he was simply enforcing existing legislation covering decency and the obligations of broadcasters. Given his incessant claim to be a champion of freedom – this seemed logically inconsistent.

Invigorated by this legal win – the McWhirters turned their fire on trades unions and even attempted to reverse the United Kingdom’s entry into the Common Market – the forerunner to the European Union.

Image above: Lord Denning pictured on the left in his judge’s wig.

Measures proposed against Irish people

It was, however, the question of Ireland that would prove to be Ross McWhirter’s fatal undoing.

In early November 1975, McWhirter – through an organisation he had set up called “Self Help” – publicly put a price on the head of IRA terrorists, offering £20k to £50k to anybody coming forward with information that would lead to the conviction of an Irish Republican operative. This was a considerable sum at the time and he claimed to have raised it from about five thousand well-heeled people including three members of parliament.

Why did McWhirter decide to get into the bounty hunting game? As he told a reporter:

“When people have a price on their heads they are much more quickly brought to justice. That’s what happened in the Wild West, in Australia – and even to our own Special Operations agents in the war, who were sold almost to a man to the Gestapo in exchange for money.”

But the bounty was only one of several measures proposed by McWhirter that effectively stigmatised all Irish nationals working in the United Kingdom. McWhirter demanded compulsory registration of all Irish people living in the UK. Quite what he meant by this is difficult to say but in the 1970s it had a whiff of the registration of Jews in Nazi Germany. Were Irish people supposed to assemble at certain places to have their details taken? Again, hardly a very libertarian approach given his claimed attachment to freedom.

This characterised all Irish people as terrorist sympathisers and bolstered the anti-Irish prejudice that was all too common at the time. It ignored the fact that nearly all Republican and Loyalist terrorists during “The Troubles” were from the British province of Northern Ireland and not the Republic of Ireland. And as a fervent unionist, McWhirter rejected the idea of registering British citizens of Northern Ireland because that would imply they were different from citizens on the mainland. Which made the whole exercise rather pointless – and to Irish people working in the UK, it looked petty and vindictive.

Ross McWhirter conceded – in his own words – that “99.99 percent” of Irish people living in Britain were not sympathetic to the terrorist bombers. That would have included my own father and uncle who worked in British law enforcement and implacably opposed the IRA. So what was the point of over a million Irish nationals being forced to report their identity to police stations, landlords, banks, and other authorities? McWhirter responded that it would give the Irish an opportunity to declare their loyalty. In truth – it would have annoyed the hell out of thousands of perfectly innocent and law abiding people.

The IRA moves in on McWhirter

McWhirter’s decision to put a bounty on the heads of IRA terrorists led to his death. The IRA directed its most prolific active service unit in mainland Britain to take him out. There were four men – all in their early 20s – who made up the unit: Martin Joseph O’Connell; Edward Butler; Harry Duggan; and Hugh Doherty. They had been part of an aggressive strategy by the IRA to bring the war in Northern Ireland to mainland British cities.

On the night of November 27, 1975, two of the gang hid in the front garden of McWhirter’s house. He was inside getting dressed for a visit to the theatre. At around 6.45pm, his wife, Rosemary, drove up to the house in a blue Ford Granada. As she got out, the terrorists stepped forward and pointed a gun at her. She rang the front door bell and – according to her own filmed testimony – pushed past her husband and told him to deal with these men, who she did not seem to realise were terrorists. They immediately shot Ross McWhirter in the head and chest.

The killers then used Rosemary McWhirter’s car to escape from the scene of the crime. One early police theory shared with journalists was that the terrorists intended to kidnap Rosemary in exchange for the £50k ransom. However, in the 1977 trial of McWhirter’s killers, it became clear that the murder of Ross McWhirter had always been the aim.

Death penalty for terrorism

The murder provoked calls for a return of the death penalty from MPs who were well known enthusiasts for the gallows. These included Eldon Griffiths and the grandson of Winston Churchill – an MP by the same name.

In a debate in the House of Commons the following day, the Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher echoed McWhirter’s call to impose the death penalty for terrorism. She said: “I believe that those who have committed this terrible crime against humanity have forfeited their right to live.” It was barely a decade since the Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins MP had abolished hanging and many right-wingers wanted it back – as did a sizeable section of public opinion. Those who opposed capital punishment knew that bringing it back for terrorism – or “treason” – was just a first step to it being reinstated for all murders.

Unfortunately for Thatcher, the Home Secretary in 1975 – in charge of such matters – was none other than Roy Jenkins serving again under Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson – who was back in power for a second term of office. Jenkins’ other measures back in the 1960s, during Wilson’s first term, had been to decriminalise homosexuality, relax the divorce laws, liberalise abortion, abolish flogging in prisons (yes, it was really still happening) and get rid of theatre censorship. An increasingly active section of the political far Right in the 1970s was resolved to un-do all or most of these measures and Ross McWhirter was very much part of this movement.

With his usual calm and imperious disdain, Jenkins told MPs that the rope would not be coming back any time soon.

Norris McWhirter strikes back

One might have assumed that the fate of his brother would have encouraged the surviving twin to adopt a more cautious approach. But by December 3 – just days after the murder or Ross McWhirter – Norris announced a new “backlash” movement against terrorism. When journalists asked whether this was potentially suicidal, he responded: “I am resigned to being a target”.

What Norris McWhirter launched was a right-wing group, the National Association for Freedom, chaired by William Sidney, the Viscount De L’Isle. This old Etonian aristocrat was the last non-British Governor-General of Australia and was briefly a Conservative MP in 1945 before ascending to the House of Lords on the death of his father. The Freedom Association, as it became known, opposed the IRA but also came to prominence over its hostility to trade union rights and opposition to both sports boycotts of Apartheid South Africa and any publicity for the imprisoned black leader, Nelson Mandela.

Balcombe Street gang on trial

A year after the murder of McWhirter, his killers mounted a second attack on Scott’s restaurant on the very prestigious Mount Street in London’s wealthy Mayfair district. Previously they had chucked a bomb into Scott’s killing two people and injuring others. This time they fired several shots through the windows. But unknown to the terrorists, the Metropolitan Police had flooded the area with plain clothes officers. Police then chased them down to a property on Balcombe Street in London’s west end where a six-day siege began.

The Balcombe Street Siege was a live action, rolling news event on TV – the likes of which had never been experienced by viewers in the UK. A married couple were taken hostage by the IRA operatives in their living room while counter-terrorism police moved in from all directions. In what became a battle of wills, the terrorists eventually surrendered and were arrested by police. From then on this active service unit of the IRA was dubbed the Balcombe Street gang – even though their association with that street came right at the end of their campaign of violence and murder.

In 1977, the trial of the Balcombe Street gang at London’s Central Criminal Court – better known as the Old Bailey – revealed how the decision was made within the IRA command structure to kill McWhirter. One of the gang told the police during an interrogation: “That man McWhirter thought he lived in Texas. He put a bounty on our heads. He asked for it.” The order to shoot McWhirter dead came from “across the water” in Northern Ireland.

The gang received whole-of-life prison sentences but were eventually released in 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Norris McWhirter continued to be both a presenter on Record Breakers and a right-wing political activist. He died in April, 2004.