Kate Ewart-Biggs was just eight-years-old and playing outside on a sunny day when she heard an explosion from her then-home, which was the British ambassador’s residence in Glencairn, south Dublin.
In her innocence, she continued playing, not realising the person killed was her father Christopher Ewart-Biggs (54), the British ambassador to Ireland.
Ewart-Biggs was a second World War veteran who lost an eye in combat. He was in his post just two weeks when he was assassinated.
He was on his way to visit then-minister for foreign affairs Garret Fitzgerald that morning when the IRA blew him up with a landmine planted in a culvert outside the residence.
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The bomb killed Ewart-Biggs and a young British civil servant Judith Cooke (25). The driver, Brian O’Driscoll, and a senior civil servant, Brian Cubbon, were badly injured in the explosion.
O’Driscoll’s son, Eoin, was playing with Kate in the garden of the residence when the bomb went off.
Her mother, Jane, was left a widow with three children. She made an extraordinary speech two days after her husband’s death calling for peace not vengeance. She died in 1992.
“The one regret is that my mother did not live long enough to see the [Belfast] Good Friday Agreement signed,” said Kate.
Nobody was ever arrested or convicted as a result of the double murder. “I have never thought about them. I don’t have any feelings anyway,” she said of her father’s killers.
“I was brought up in an environment where it wasn’t about that. It was about what happens next and what good things could come out of it.”
She recalled being able to spend some precious time with her busy father on the morning he was killed.
“He was a gentleman. He didn’t want to go to war, but, like many young men of his generation, he had no choice,” she remembered.
“He believed very passionately in diplomacy and in negotiation. He was a gentleman. He wasn’t designed for the military at all.
“He was a really fun, clever man, and touched many people in his life. I’d like him to remember him as a person rather than a person who died.”
Kate spoke at an event in the ambassador’s residence Glencairn on Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of her father’s death. She visited the ambassador’s residence with her daughter Marlie Ewart-Biggs who also spoke at the event.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin also spoke at the event. He echoed the comments of his predecessor at the time, Liam Cosgrave, who described the murders as an “atrocity [which] fills all decent Irish people with a sense of shame”.
“His words remain true today. These were murders that appalled both countries, in a year already beset with horror and strife,” the Taoiseach said.
“To murder a diplomat is the ultimate rejection of dialogue and peacemaking, and of the rule of law in international affairs.”
He contrasted the atmosphere at the time with the “warm, positive call” he had with new British prime minister Andy Burnham on Tuesday afternoon.
“We did not arrive at this point of good relations by accident,” he said. “It took the work of countless individuals and countless acts of generosity and grace.”
The assassination caused one of the most serious political crises in the history of the State and culminated in the resignation of then-president Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.
The assassination was the second shocking incident in a week in which the Provisional IRA sought to challenge the ability of the State to protect itself.
On July 15th of that year, five Republicans escaped from their holding cells at Green Street courthouse by blasting a hole through a doorway with concealed explosives.
Four of the five were quickly apprehended, but the episode was an embarrassment for the government.
In response, the coalition government introduced the Emergency Powers Bill (later Act) into the Dáil. Cosgrave said the legislation was necessary to defeat the “conspiracy of hate and evil” represented by the IRA.
The bill’s major provision was to allow for the detention for up to seven days of suspects involved in terrorism.
The Dáil passed the legislation which then went to Ó Dálaigh for his signature. Instead of signing it into law, Ó Dálaigh referred it to the Supreme Court.
The Government was furious. The Supreme Court upheld the legislation and the president announced that he would sign the Bill into law on October 16th, 1976.
On that same day, the IRA detonated a bomb which killed Garda Michael Clerkin at a derelict farmhouse in Garryhinch on the Laois-Offaly border and injured four others.
The government blamed Ó Dálaigh’s actions for the incident.
It prompted the then-minister for defence Paddy Doneghan to describe Ó Dálaigh as a “thundering disgrace”. Ó Dálaigh subsequently resigned when Cosgrave refused to accept his resignation.
The investigation into the assassination of Ewart-Biggs unearthed a scandal when a botched fingerprint analysis of a helmet found at the scene found its way into The Irish Times.
To date nobody has charged or convicted of the crime.
