Maj-Gen Pat MacLellan, officer and public servant indelibly linked with Bloody Sunday – obituary

Major General Patrick MacLellan, who has died aged 98, had a distinguished career in the Army and enjoyed a retirement of notable public and charitable service; inevitably, however, his record was overshadowed by the events of January 30 1972 in Londonderry, known as “Bloody Sunday”, in which 13 people were shot dead and at least as many were injured.

The introduction in 1971 of internment without trial for men suspected of being members of the IRA led to rising sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Barricades were erected, petrol bombs were thrown, gunmen were using rioters as cover and, a few days before Bloody Sunday, the IRA had murdered an RUC sergeant and a constable.

But the Army policy of containing violence in “no-go” areas and carrying out limited arrest operations was proving ineffective, and as the day approached for the January 30 civil rights march through the Bogside, political pressure was mounting for tougher action.

MacLellan, then a brigadier, commanded 8th Infantry Brigade, which was to be deployed along the defined route of the march, tasked with preventing rioters breaking through the cordon into the city centre and the predominantly Protestant district.

Major General Robert Ford, operational commander of land forces (CLF) in Northern Ireland, ordered an additional unit, 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, to be sent to Londonderry to deal with any rioting that might take place after the march. Unusually, Ford was on the ground, in the city, that day.

Brigadier (later General Sir) Frank Kitson, who had wide experience in counter-insurgency and uncompromising views of tactics to be employed, agreed to 1 Para’s deployment, but there were reservations among other units in the Army.

There were worries that 1 Para, commanded by Lt-Col Derek Wilford, might not have enough time to familiarise itself with the district and that, if the unit lived up to its reputation for toughness, an already volatile situation might become a dangerous one.

The decision on whether to order an arrest operation and the form that it might take rested with MacLellan. At 3.55pm that Sunday afternoon Wilford, who was at his position near a church, radioed MacLellan in the operations room at Ebrington Barracks and asked for permission to send men over the barrier on an arrest operation.

At 4.07pm, MacLellan radioed back with the go-ahead. He was satisfied from reports that there was adequate separation between peaceful marchers and rioters, but he was adamant that the two should not get mixed up and insisted that Wilford’s men should not “chase people down the streets”.

The Saville Inquiry, set up after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, found that Wilford did not inform MacLellan that the situation had changed. The rioting had died down, people were moving away from the area and he had decided that the only prospect of making significant arrests was to send an additional company in vehicles into the Bogside.

The inquiry further found that the limited arrest operation which MacLellan had authorised did not involve soldiers going into the Bogside, and he had no reason to believe that it ran the risk of causing death or injuries from unjustifiable firing by soldiers.

Some of the events that followed are disputed, but there is no doubt that 1 Para’s Support Company, with its snatch squads, was sent into a dangerous, unfamiliar area where they were on their guard against lethal attacks from republican paramilitaries. As the Saville Inquiry pointed out, people were pursued down the streets and, in the noise and confusion, there was virtually no means of identifying those who had been rioting from the innocent people who had simply been taking part in the civil rights march.

The outcry over the civilian casualties led to the first inquiry, presided over by Lord Justice Widgery in 1972. MacLellan became a target for the IRA and had armed bodyguards for the rest of his military service.

Andrew Patrick Withy MacLellan was born in Dunbartonshire on November 29 1925 and educated at Uppingham. Always known as Pat, he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in 1944 and posted to the 3rd Battalion, where he formed and trained a sniper platoon in preparation for the Guards Brigade taking part in the invasion of Japan.

After the Japanese capitulated, he accompanied 1st Guards Brigade to Palestine, where it became involved in internal security duties. During the Palestine campaign, he was posted to the School of Infantry to instruct in counter-insurgency tactics.

After a spell in Egypt as adjutant, he commanded a company of the 1st Battalion in BAOR. He spent two years in Germany as Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quarter Master General of 4th Guards Brigade Group, and from 1961 to 1964 he was Military Assistant to the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma. He was appointed MBE (Military) at the end of this exacting appointment.

MacLellan was the Army member of the Defence Planning Staff at HQ Far East Command during the Borneo Campaign. In 1968 he assumed command of the 1st Battalion. Its main role was Arctic warfare and training took place in Norway and Turkey.

On relinquishing command, he moved to Cyprus as Colonel GS (Chief of Staff) at HQ Near East Land Forces and as a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Six months after Bloody Sunday, on July 31 1972, Operation Motorman, the largest British military operation since the Suez crisis, was launched, with the objective of clearing the IRA barricades and “no-go” areas. MacLellan organised the operation in Londonderry with complete success.

In 1974 he became Chief of Staff and Deputy Commander of London District. His final appointment was as President of the Regular Commissions Board. He left the Army in 1980 and in 1984 was appointed Resident Governor and Keeper of the Jewel House at the Tower of London.

In 1989 he was elected member for the Walbrook Ward in the Court of Common Council, the governing body for London’s Square Mile, and he was chairman of the Police Committee (the Police Authority for the City of London) from 1995 to 1997.

From 1979 to 2005 he was a member and, subsequently, chairman, of the Advisory Council of The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps) and was credited with restoring its fortunes. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Royal Humane Society from 1990. He was appointed CB in 1981 and CVO in 1989.

Pat MacLellan married, in 1954, Mary Bagnell, who survives him with their son and twin daughters.

Major General Pat MacLellan, born November 29 1925, died April 19 2024