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Times Online - Ernest Bond - obituary

Times Online - Comment

Founder member of the SAS who went on to combat terrorism with the Bomb Squad of the Metropolitan Police



It would be wrong to say that Ernie Bond first made his name as commander of the Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad, since in its early days the press knew him simply as “Commander X”. But he had played a leading role in forming the squad in response to the threat posed by the self-styled Angry Brigade in the 1960s. Although anarchical and chaotic, this group unintentionally rendered the country a service by providing the Bomb Squad with useful forensic experience before the IRA mainland bombing campaigns that followed.
Few, if any, of Bond’s colleagues in the Met knew that he belonged to that tiny handful of men known as “the originals” — recruited by Colonel David Stirling to form “L” Detachment of the Special Service Brigade in Egypt in 1941, the founding group of the SAS Regiment. There was no great secret about this matter — it was just that Bond didn’t talk about it.

He was serving with the Scots Guards on the outbreak of war, and in 1940 accompanied the 1st Battalion on the ill-judged Allied intervention in Norway intended to forestall the German invasion which in the event it precipitated.

On his return to England, he volunteered to join No 8 (Guards) Commando. This unit formed part of the Layforce brigade of special service units sent to the Middle East under the command of Colonel (later Major-General Sir) Robert Laycock in 1941. When No 8 Commando was disbanded, Sergeant Bond joined 2nd Scots Guards with the Eighth Army confronting Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert.

It was there that he and other members of the “originals” were recruited by Stirling for parachute training at Kabrit in Egypt in anticipation of his first operation. This was launched during atrocious weather conditions against the Axis airfields of Gazala and Tmimi on November 16, 1941. The aircraft flying Bond’s group to their objective crash-landed in the desert. At this point, Bond was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.

Demobilised on his release, he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1946 and served for two years on the beat until he was transferred to the CID. Promoted to detective sergeant in 1957, he began to develop a reputation for his discerning skill as a detective and progressed quickly through the Fraud Squad and Flying Squad to the Murder Squad. The early activities of the Angry Brigade, beginning in 1967, led to his attachment to the newly formed Bomb Squad.

Insofar as the anger of the Angry Brigade was susceptible to analysis, it appeared to centre on a rejection of what was judged “the good life” of the 1960s. It was not that its members lacked the financial means to join in — some came from upper-middle-class families and had education and intellect enough to earn good salaries — but they did not like what they saw of that lifestyle and resented its manifestations.

Their protest took many forms, including living in absolute squalor, disparagement of men (it was thought that more than three quarters of their estimated strength of 200 were women), social security fraud and straightforward theft. Early intelligence indicated that they planned to kidnap either a prominent politician or a foreign diplomat in order to oblige the Government to repeal legislation which they identified no more precisely than as being “imperialist”.

Two developments gave Bond the leads to track down and arrest key suspects. Unwisely, the Angry Brigade began to associate with professional criminals and to undertake attacks on property in the Metropolitan area using plastic explosives. The attacks on property, together with a number of stray shots fired at London embassies, were judged pointless by the professional criminal element, which encouraged the police informers among them to cash in their information.

Bond also discovered that the plastic explosive used came from France, which had its own Angry Brigade.

The breakthrough came when four key Angries were arrested in early 1972, shortly before Bond left the Bomb Squad, and were jailed for ten years for plotting explosions. Before moving to take charge of the Met’s Regional Crime Squad, Bond had identified a range of further suspects in the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic and in continental Europe. Co-operation between the Met and relevant foreign police services quickly threw the Angry Brigade on to the defensive.

Bond’s work with the Bomb Squad, which later became the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Met, had been exclusively in the forensic science field of tracking down suspects rather than dealing with explosive devices. His success was rewarded by the Queen’s Police Medal in 1972 and his further promotion to Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Operations) at the end of that year.

It was while in this post that he masterminded the handling of the Balcombe Street siege in December 1975. After shots had been fired into Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, four men from an active service unit of the Provisional IRA were chased and trapped in a flat in Balcombe Street, Marylebone. They took hostage an elderly man and woman as the flat was surrounded by hundreds of police.

The stand-off lasted six days while the terrorists demanded safe passage to Heathrow and a plane to Ireland. Working under Bond’s directions, two Special Branch officers resolutely made clear that the IRA men’s only option was surrender with the hostages unharmed. The negotiators were Peter Imbert, later Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and now Lord Imbert, and Jim Nevill, who later headed the Anti-Terrorist Branch. Their tough line was successful. The IRA men surrendered on the evening of the sixth day, having previously released the hostages.

Bond remained Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Operations) until his retirement in 1976, when he was appointed OBE.

Ernest Radcliffe Bond was born into a close-knit Cumbrian community in Barrow-in-Furness and served as an apprentice French polisher before enlisting in the Scots Guards in 1935 at the age of 17. It had been his intention to serve only a short regular engagement before joining the police, but the outbreak of war intervened. When he finally achieved that objective, his work absorbed him completely, and he received no fewer than 12 Commissioner’s Commendations during his service.

His wife Mabel predeceased him. He is survived by two sons and two daughters.

Ernest Bond, OBE, QPM, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police 1972-76, was born on March 1, 1919. He died on November 20, 2003, aged 84.

November 21, 2003 at 07:24 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home