MADE in Sauchie was the trademark on the bombs which would have
devastated six English city centres last year had a truly frightening
IRA plot succeeded.
The master bomb maker, 43-year-old Robert Fryers, a 23-stone
Ulsterman, was manufacturing the Semtex triggers in the house at 25 Loch
Brae, Sauchie, a quiet backwater in a former mining village which is
itself a quiet backwater, to detonate massive home-made car bombs
capable of enormous destruction.
Sauchie was the home of his key accomplice -- Hugh Thomas Jack, 36,
the youngest of a large, well-known family in the Clackmannanshire
village. In the terminology of the security services, Fryers was a known
player. For years, he had been under surveillance, always evading
detection and arrest. Jack was the unknown quantity, the new-style IRA
recruit, and his home village the unlikely setting for an IRA safe base.
Jack was recruited through a relative and introduced to Fryers.
The case of Jack illustrated the bottom line of modern Provisional IRA
philosophy which sees the religious divide in Northern Ireland as
nothing more than a convenient excuse. The reality is that they recruit
by ideology rather than by religion.
Hugh Jack -- Shug or Tommy to all and sundry in Sauchie -- was a black
sheep, a nuisance to the local community, to his relatives, and to the
police. His father, who died in his 70s in March last year, was a local
man and a Protestant in what is a strongly Protestant area with an
Orange tradition.
Mrs Jack came from Donegal, arriving first in Scotland, as so many
decent Irish people did, as an agricultural worker. Now also dead, she
was a Catholic -- yet some of the children, including Hugh, attended a
local Protestant school and then went on to Lornshill Academy, Alloa, a
non-denominational school.
Others went to Catholic schools. For a period when the children were
young, the family moved briefly to Bradford as Mr Jack tried,
unsuccessfully, to find work. Their neighbours in Sauchie thought the
world of Mr and Mrs Jack.
A local teacher, Mr John Gallacher, said it was a blessing she did not
live to see her family shamed. ''She was a charming, friendly, and very
loving mother,'' he said.
The other Jack family members are scattered -- elder sister Frances in
Alloa, Robert in Sauchie, James, the eldest, in Alloa, and Allan in
north London.
After the death of their parents, Frances took on the mothering role
and moved into the parental house at Park Crescent, Sauchie. Allan moved
to London in 1982, living in the Irish community and working for Thames
Water Board. He had adopted his mother's Catholicism and had become a
die-hard Celtic fan. Prior to the case involving his younger brother,
Allan Jack had been held and questioned by the security services and
police on a number of occasions.
Hugh Jack, however, became something of a local waster, a
ne'er-do-well who ran up a string of minor convictions for breach of the
peace and assault, including assault on the woman to whom he was briefly
married.
From the age of 16, he had been committing small offences. His
marriage broke up in 1990. He was known as a drunken, foul-mouthed,
dirty, and violent man, in his youth an ardent Rangers supporter. By
associating with Fryers, he jumped from the third division into the
premier league.
By 1988, Hugh Jack had found some form of reasonably regular
employment, starting first as a casual worker at the local Gartmorn
turkey farm and, when not there, buying scrap cars and rebuilding them
for sale. His employer at Gartmorn, Mr Roger Lucy, recalls Jack as a
volatile hard man with a brutal streak.
''He had this reputation for getting back up again in a fight,'' said
Mr Lucy. ''If you needed a hard job done, such as smashing up concrete,
Tommy was your man. He would go at it with a hammer, no gloves, and his
hands skinned, until the job was done. He had a wild look in his eye
which somehow people respected.
''At the same time, he liked to feel important and I think that the
idea of being associated with the IRA would give him that feeling. He
was a good worker, very thorough, and he could be trusted to do a task
-- but when he had a drink you kept well away from him.''
Locals recall Jack as never having two pennies to rub together but,
when he did, it went on drink. However, with no visible means of
support, he suddenly sobered up, began wearing new and expensive
clothes, and changed his car.
People thought he had been stealing. The fact that he had enough
Semtex stored in his council flat to devastate the entire village is not
being forgotten or forgiven.
A neighbour told The Herald: ''He put all our lives at risk. He had no
political leanings. It must have been for money.''
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