Conservative councillor’s secret past as an IRA gun-runner

insidecroydon

6 months ago

After 24 years on Croydon Council, Maria Gatland will be standing down at the elections in May, her explosive past still unknown by many of the residents she represents. PETER GILLMAN provides the inside story

Long service: councillor Maria Gatland

When Tory councillor Maria Gatland announced this week that she was stepping down from the council in May, she received a rare accolade.

Inside Croydon, normally grudging in its appraisals of elected representatives, commented that she was “generally respected and admired by her fellow councillors of all parties”.

Inside Croydon made another intriguing comment, referring to her as “Dublin-born former Maria Maguire” and a “one-time IRA gun-runner”.

Yes, Gatland’s career was all the more remarkable for its astonishing provenance.

Born Maria Maguire in Dublin in 1948, she was indeed once an active member of the Provisional IRA, who quit the movement and sought refuge in Britain. She fashioned a new life which lasted until she was outed at a council meeting in 2008. She was swiftly disowned by the Conservatives, but was reinstated, going on to chair a range of committees over the next 18 years and undertaking other good works.

Memoir: Maguire was declared a traitor by the IRA, who threatened to execute her

I had an intimate view of these dramatic events. I knew Maria from soon after she arrived in Britain and helped establish her cover. I would also like to record the importance in these proceedings of a local Sunday football team, the Earl Russell, sadly long-since defunct.

Maria had been a Spanish student in Dublin and was a committed Republican. She joined the Provisional IRA in 1971, when she was 23. Bright, energetic, fashionably dressed, she was soon enlisted for a gun-buying mission to Amsterdam with the Provos’ leader, David O’Connell, with whom she had an affair.

The mission failed when O’Connell’s identity was blown. Within a year, Maria became disillusioned by the Provos’ bombing campaign, which was causing civilian casualties, and she defected in the company of Observer journalist Colin Smith, who wrote an article revealing her disenchantment.

Not long afterwards, I was asked to help her write a memoir. The Provos considered her a traitor and warned that if she returned to Ireland, she would be executed.

Maria and I met the Special Branch anti-terrorist boss, Peter Imbert, who made clear that we should take the threat seriously.

My wife Leni and I found her refuge at the South Norwood home of Leni’s parents, political radicals who were active in the anti-nuclear movement and were accustomed to cloak-and-dagger activities. Both had Irish backgrounds, too. Maria stayed indoors during the day but slipped out at night, often with Leni’s father, to walk around South Norwood.

After we completed the book – To Take Arms, published early in 1973, disclosing more of the Provisionals’ secrets – it was time for Maria to move on, and we embarked on a search for a new safe house.

Republican: Maria Maguire in Dublin in the early 1970s

Enter the Earl Russell, a football team named after a pub in Gloucester Road that played other pub teams and their like on council pitches on Sunday mornings. I was the goalkeeper and we had two celeb members: the Private Eye cartoonist Barry Fantoni and Jamie Reid, the Sex Pistols designer who had played football at a semi-professional level.

A key member of the team was Mervyn Gatland, a bustling centre-forward who ran a gardening business and thus had a pick-up truck, with which he toured Croydon on Sunday mornings to collect team members, sometimes having to rouse them from their beds after a hard night’s drinking.

It was Mervyn we now asked if he would take in Maria, for two principal reasons: he was far from the radical ambience of Leni’s parents and he also had a large house in South Croydon.

Mervyn instantly agreed and, just as quickly, fell in love with Maria. After they were married in 1977, the new Maria Gatland felt a need to become involved in the Croydon community. Mervyn, once on the left, had traversed the political spectrum and joined the Croydon Conservatives. Maria emulated him and in 2002 became a councillor for Croham ward. When Mervyn died in 2004, Maria took over his business.

Happy family: Mervyn Gatland and his wife, Maria

Throughout this time, awareness of Maria’s former identity remained a secret among the Earl Russell football team.

Eventually, it was leaked (but not by me, guv) and was disclosed at a council meeting in 2008, when the topic under discussion was the Conservatives’ drive to set up academies in Croydon, including one with religious sponsors.

During a questions session at the Town Hall, a member of the public, Peter Latham, asked Maria if the council would ballot parents and teachers over the latest proposed merger. When she said no, Latham – pretending to make a slip of the tongue – referred to her as “Councillor Maguire”.

Her secret was out.

Maria, deeply shaken amid a press furore, was forced by the panicked Croydon Conservatives to resign her council role. She wrote an article for the Sunday Times, with my assistance, headlined “What a fuss over my IRA past”.

Before long, she returned to the council cabinet, going on to chair the health, scrutiny and licensing committees, most recently serving as cabinet member or shadow cabinet member for children’s services, and also winning the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service for her work as founder of the Friends of Croham Hurst Woods.

The Conservatives listed these achievements, and more, in Maria’s retirement citation this week.

Yet, for some reason, they made no mention of her colourful past.

Peter Gillman is a retired journalist who for many years was a member of the Sunday Times Insight team

Read more by Peter Gillman

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