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Category Archives: Direct Rule (1972-1999)


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The Lisburn Van Bombing

On June 15, 1988, an unmarked military van carrying six British Army soldiers is blown up by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at Market Place in Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The explosion takes place at the end of a charity marathon run in which the soldiers had participated. All six soldiers are killed in the attack – four outright, one on his way to hospital and another later on in hospital.

Lisburn is the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Four of the dead are from the Royal Corps of Signals while the other two are from the Green Howards and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. A booby trap bomb is hidden under the Ford Transit van in which the soldiers are traveling, and is designed in such a way that the blast goes upward to cause maximum damage to the vehicle. Eleven civilian bystanders are injured, including a two-year-old child and 80-year-old man. The bombing is sometimes referred to as the Lisburn “Fun Run” bombing.

On Wednesday, June 15, 1988, at 8:50 p.m., an unmarked blue Ford Transit van carrying six off-duty British soldiers in civilian clothes drives off from a leisure centre carpark in Lisburn. The soldiers have just taken part in the “Lisburn Fun Run”, a 13-mile (21 km) charity half marathon held in the town. They leave the van unattended in the car park, which is the start and finish point for the run. It is there that an IRA active service unit (ASU), who has been following the van, hides a bomb underneath the vehicle. The half marathon and shorter “fun runs” are organised by Lisburn Borough Council, together with the YMCA, to raise funds for the disabled. There are 4,500 participants that day and at least 200 British Army personnel have been given leave to participate in the event.

Nine minutes later, the van stops at traffic lights at Market Place, in Lisburn’s town centre. As the van moves on, the seven-pound (3.2 kg) bomb detonates, turning the van into a massive fireball and instantly killing four of the soldiers as the vehicle disintegrates with the force of the blast. The Semtex device has been designed in a cone shape to channel the blast upward, thereby causing maximum damage to the vehicle and the soldiers inside. The area around Market Place is crowded with onlookers, including many teenagers and families with young children, although the biggest crowd is at the carpark. In all, about 10,000 onlookers have attended the charity run. There is pandemonium as frightened parents search for their children, while others rush to give aid to the dead and dying soldiers before fire engines and ambulances arrive.

Eleven civilian bystanders are injured in the attack, including a two-year-old child and an 80-year-old man. Another soldier dies on the way to hospital while a sixth soldier dies later that night after undergoing surgery for severe head injuries. The dead soldiers are stationed at Ebrington Barracks in Derry and are returning to base when the bomb goes off. Four of the men – Sergeant Michael Winkler (31), Signalman Mark Clavey (24), Lance Corporal Graham Lambie (22), and Corporal William Patterson (22) – are from the Royal Corps of Signals, while the other two – Corporal Ian Metcalf (36) and Lance Corporal Derek Green (20) – are from the Green Howards and Royal Army Ordnance Corps respectively.

Lisburn is a mainly Ulster Protestant town, 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Belfast. It serves as the garrison headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Six months before the van bombing, a booby trap bomb planted by the IRA kills Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leader John McMichael in the town.

The van bombing results in the greatest loss of life suffered by the British Army since eleven soldiers were killed in the Droppin Well Disco bombing on December 6, 1982.

In Belfast, on the same day as the Lisburn attack, the IRA shoots dead the Ulster Volunteer Force’s (UVF) East Belfast commander, Robert “Squeak” Seymour (33). This is retaliation for the UVF gun attack on an Irish nationalist pub in which three Catholics died.

On June 16, the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombing, promising to wage “unceasing war” against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams allegedly says that the IRA’s killing of the six soldiers is “vastly preferable” to killing members of the (locally recruited) Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The leisure centre is forced to remain shut for a time after the loyalist Protestant Action Force (a cover-name of the UVF) issues a warning that they regard Catholic staff working there as “legitimate targets,” inferring that they may have had a hand in the bombing. Lisburn mayor Councillor William Bleakes condemns the threats by the PAF.

That same day, Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, travels to Lisburn where he holds a meeting with Lieutenant General Sir John Waters, the British Army Commander in Northern Ireland, and senior RUC officers. They discuss the attack and proposals for heightened security. The soldiers had failed to follow proper security procedures, as they had left their vehicle unguarded for over two hours and had then driven off without having checked under it beforehand. After the Lisburn meeting, King flies to London where he reports directly to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who describes the attack as a “terrible atrocity.” However, she rejects demands from Conservative members of Parliament to bring back internment, regarding the proposal as “a very serious step.”

In his statement to the House of Commons, Tom King suggests that there would have been a much higher death toll had the bomb exploded in the carpark, where thousands of people had gathered after the run.

The Republic of Ireland‘s government also strongly condemns the killings and extends its sympathy to the families of the dead soldiers. The bombing is a topic of debate in the Seanad Éireann on June 16, 1988. Bishop Cahal Daly of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor denounces the bombers and the killings in the “strongest possible terms.”

Questions are raised as to how the IRA knew the soldiers were attending the charity run in Lisburn, how they recognised their unmarked van, and how the unit was able to plant a bomb in the predominantly loyalist town without being spotted, despite the number of people in the carpark. The RUC believes that the bombers may have been wearing sports gear as they mingled with the crowd that evening. They appeal to onlookers who had attended the event to hand over any film they may have taken of the “fun run” in an attempt to identify the IRA bombers.

The following Saturday, between 1,000 and 2,000 people gather in Lisburn town centre to attend a remembrance service for the six soldiers. A book of condolences is also opened.


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The Chlorane Bar Attack

The Chlorane Bar attack is a mass shooting at a city centre pub on June 5, 1976, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation, apparently in retaliation for the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing attack on the Times Bar on York Road, in which two Protestant civilians were killed. In the Chlorane attack, five civilian men are killed, three Catholics and two Protestants. The gunmen are militants from the UVF Belfast Brigade’s Shankill Road battalion. The assault is a joint operation by the platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar, drinking haunts in the Shankill Road district frequented by UVF members.

On June 5, 1976, a bomb explodes at the door of the Times Bar on York Road, killing two Protestants. The pub is frequented by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a legal loyalist paramilitary group. Irish republicans are blamed for the bombing. Shortly after, the UVF Brigade Staff (its Shankill Road-based leadership) decide to hit back by attacking the Chlorane Bar. It is a hastily arranged operation devised by its military commander “Bunter,” whom investigative journalist Martin Dillon refers to as “Mr. F.” The Chlorane Bar is located at 23 Gresham Street in Belfast’s city centre, near Smithfield Market. Its clientele is mixed (Protestant and Catholic), which is unusual during The Troubles. On August 17, 1973, the Chlorane Bar had been firebombed, however, no one was injured as the pub was closed at the time of the attack. Later that same month, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name sometime used by the UDA, claim responsibility for a car bomb which exploded in Gresham Street. Although there were no human casualties, a pet shop located near the bomb’s epicentre was damaged in the blast and a number of animals inside the building were either killed or injured.

The attack is planned and executed by the UVF platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar respectively. These are two pubs located on the Shankill Road and regularly frequented by UVF members. Dillon sometimes refers to the former platoon as the “Brown Bear Team” because the members generally meet at that particular pub, which faces Shankill Library on the corner of Mountjoy Street. To carry out the attack, along with the procuring of weapons and masks, a black taxi is hijacked by two young men outside the Long Bar on the Shankill Road to transport the gunmen to the Chlorane Bar. Taxi driver Mark Hagan and a passenger are held hostage at the Windsor Bar.

The Chlorane Bar is likely chosen for its nearness to the Shankill Road, affording the attackers a speedy getaway. There is not much of a security presence that evening in the area. The driver of the taxi, with four specifically chosen armed men seated in the rear of the vehicle in the manner of genuine passengers, makes his way from the Shankill Road to North Street and turns south into Gresham Street. Upon arrival outside the Chlorane Bar, the four gunmen don their masks, devised from yellow money bags, and exit the taxi.

At 10:00 p.m., the four masked gunmen storm through Chlorane Bar’s front door leading to the public bar. There are about sixteen customers inside the pub at the time. One of the four gunmen is Robert “Basher” Bates, a member of the violent Shankill Butchers gang led by Lenny Murphy, who is in police custody at the time the attack against the Chlorane takes place. Bates is the only one of the four to have been from the “Brown Bear Team.” The hit squad is commanded by a “Mr. G,” leader of the Windsor Bar UVF platoon, with “Mr. D” as his second-in-command and “Mr. C” completing the team. Entering the bar in single file, “Mr. G” orders everybody to stand up, and then asks the startled customers whether there are any “Prods” (Protestants) among them. William Greer, a Protestant, thinking the gunmen are from the Irish Republican Army, quickly flees to the men’s toilet where he places his feet up against the door. Customer Frederick Graham and his girlfriend, Pat Mahood, assume the same thing. “Mr. G” tells the customers to separate into two groups, with the Protestants standing at the bottom end of the bar, and the Catholics at the top.

When one man, Edward Farrell, admits to being a Catholic, the UVF men open fire. Farrell tries to run toward the toilet but is shot dead. The Catholic owner of the Chlorane, 64-year-old James Coyle, is standing behind the bar when he is hit at close-range. The bullet enters his heart and he dies instantly. The gunmen continue firing and two Protestant men, Daniel McNeil and Samuel Corr, are also struck by the hail of bullets. McNeil is killed on the spot and Corr is fatally wounded. Another Catholic man, John Martin, is shot and dies of his injuries on June 23. Several other customers are hit as gunfire is sprayed around the bar. One customer pretends to be dead, however, a gunman walks over to where he lay and deliberately fires three shots into his thigh, knee, and below the ankle. The man later recounts that he had then looked up to see “men lying shot all over the place.” William Greer, hiding in the toilet, is shot when one of the gunmen fire through the door. He survives despite being hit in the leg and neck. There are more customers upstairs in the lounge area, but although they hear the gunshots, the gunmen never go near them. Dillon maintains that it had not been the UVF unit’s intention to kill any Protestants.

“Mr. G” calls a halt to the shooting, saying “that’s it,” and the four-man UVF team nonchalantly walks out of the pub and re-enters the hijacked black taxi, which is parked so the driver has easy access to North Street. This route offers a quick return to the Shankill. After the four men get into the back seat, the driver (“Mr. H”) drives off. As the taxi passes by the Catholic Unity Flats area, three shots are fired from the vehicle. Two young men walking nearby get a look at the driver. He is described as being around 38 to 40 years old and having shoulder-length, black curly hair. Upon the taxi’s return to the Shankill, Mark Hagan and the passenger are released. They immediately go to the Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Station off the Shankill where they report the taxi’s hijacking. The shooting team proceeds to the Long Bar pub where “Mr. I” (commander of UVF 1st Battalion) procures a forty-ounce bottle of vodka for “Mr. G” and “Mr. D” – their payment for leading the operation.

Having heard the gunshots, a barmaid serving in the upstairs lounge goes downstairs to investigate and discovers the body of her employer, James Coyle, lying on the floor behind the bar and those of the other dead and wounded. The first policeman on the scene is Constable George McElnea, from the RUC Special Patrol Group in Tennent Street. He quickly notices the pile of bodies near the men’s toilet as Samuel Corr stumbles toward him, gravely injured. McElnea places Corr on a bench and offers what assistance he can but to no avail. Corr dies of his gunshot wounds before the ambulance arrives. Alan McCrum, a Scenes of Crime officer, appears at the Chlorane fifteen minutes after the shootings. He retrieves 24 spent bullet casings from the floor and determines that most of the shots had been fired at the rear of the pub. Later ballistic testing establishes that the weapons used in the attack were a .22 caliber pistol, a 9 mm pistol, and two .45 snub-nosed revolvers. Police believe one of the victims, Daniel McNeil, had tenuous UVF connections, although he is not an active member.

The hijacked black taxi is found by police the following morning in a cul-de-sac in Beresford Street, off the Shankill Road. A cyclist, who had witnessed the masked gunmen entering the Chlorane Bar, describes the four men as having been in the 20 to 30 age group, all about 5’10 in height and well-built. The last gunman to enter had shoulder-length brown hair. The witness had gone to a nearby British Army post where he told soldiers what he had seen.

Ten days after the gun attack, the Chlorane Bar is blown up by a bomb. Three weeks after the attack the Provisional IRA, using their sometime cover-name of the “Republican Action Force“, enter Walker’s Bar in Templepatrick and kill three Protestant civilians in retaliation for the Chlorane attack. As part of this series of deadly tit for tat attacks on pubs, the UVF responds by killing six customers at the Catholic-owned Ramble Inn outside Antrim.

No one is ever charged with the shootings. In February 1979, Bates is convicted of the murders he had committed as part of the Shankill Butchers, and given ten life sentences. In his statement to the police following his arrest in 1977, he recounts his role in the Chlorane Bar attack. He alleges while working as a barman in the Long Bar on the evening of June 5, 1976, he is approached by the UVF military commander, “Mr. F”, who informs him of a job in which he is to take part that same evening. It is decided to attack the city centre pub in retaliation for the IRA’s earlier bombing of The Times pub. Bates goes on to say that “Mr. I” provides the weapons which are used in the shooting and “Mr. J” (UVF Provost Marshal) procures the masks. Bates claims that his revolver malfunctions and therefore he never fires his gun during the attack. However, forensic evidence proves that two .45 revolvers had been fired inside the Chlorane. Upon his release from the HM Prison Maze, Bates is gunned-down in June 1997 by the son of James Curtis Moorhead, a UDA man he had killed in 1977.


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Death of Robin Jackson, Northern Irish Loyalist Paramilitary

Robin Jackson, also known as The Jackal, a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary and part-time soldier, dies at his home in Donaghcloney, County Down, Northern Ireland, on May 30, 1998.

Jackson is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a Banbridge Catholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.

Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.

Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World  is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.

After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.

Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.

(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Apprentice Boys Parade Ends Without Incident

An Apprentice Boys parade down the Ormeau Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, passes off without incident on April 13, 1998, after the organisers accept a ruling by the Parades Commission banning them from a nationalist section of the road.

It is the first parade of the marching season along the controversial route where nationalist residents oppose loyal order marches through their area.

One band and some fifteen members of the Apprentice Boys take part in the parade from Ballynafeigh to the Ormeau Bridge, where police have erected barriers across the road. The Apprentice Boys then board buses to go to the organisation’s main parade in Ballymena, County Antrim.

The police presence on the bridge is low-key as the Apprentice Boys previously said they would abide by the ruling and the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community group (LOCC) said it would not hold any protest.

The Apprentice Boys hand in a letter of protest to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Worthington McGrath, of the Ballynafeigh Walkers Club of the Apprentice Boys, saying they are “bitterly disappointed” they cannot walk into the city centre through the lower Ormeau.

“We have gone to great lengths to try and meet the wishes of the Parades Commission, and we have been rebuffed,” McGrath says. He hopes they might be able to walk down the Lower Ormeau Road on another occasion this year. They are having “ongoing meetings with the greater community in the Ormeau area” in an attempt to satisfy the Commission, he says.

Gerard Rice, of the LOCC, welcomes the Apprentice Boys’ action, but says the loyal orders will have to meet his group if the issue is to be resolved. “Turning away at the bridge will not resolve the issue. Direct dialogue is necessary.”

Rice says that if the Parades Commission followed its own guidelines, there could be no marches on the Ormeau Road in 1998 because the loyal orders refused to talk to residents.

The Parades Commission banned the march ten days earlier on the basis that it would have harmful effects on “relationships with the community.” In the ruling, the Commission says it hopes at least one parade will go ahead on the Ormeau Road this year.

The chairman of the Parades Commission, Alistair Graham, who watches the parade, says he is encouraged by the “mature and sensible action” taken by the Apprentice Boys. Alisdair McDonnell, a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor, says he welcomes the Commission’s decision and urges the Apprentice Boys and the Orange Order to talk to residents’ groups about future marches. The RUC’s sub-divisional commander in the area, Supt. Steven Graham, says the Apprentice Boys have shown “a high degree of integrity.”

(From: “Apprentice Boys parade passes off without incident” by Theresa Judge, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, April 14, 1998)


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Hunger Striker Bobby Sands Wins Seat in the British Parliament

On April 9, 1981, imprisoned Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Sands stands as a candidate of the “Anti-H Block” campaign – the section of the Maze prison in Maze, County Down, Northern Ireland, reserved for republicans and loyalists convicted of terrorist offences. He wins just over 52% of the vote in the Northern Ireland by-election compared to 49% for the candidate of the Official Unionist party, Harry West. His winning margin is 1,400 but over 3,000 ballot papers are spoiled.

Recriminations over his victory begin almost immediately. Unionist parties come under fire for not mounting an effective challenge. There is also sharp criticism of the failure of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to contest the seat. Many believe the absence of an alternative Catholic candidate ensures victory for Sands in a seat with a Catholic majority.

Sands’ election agent, Owen Carron, says the British Government has been sent a message. “The nationalist people have voted against Unionism and against the H-blocks. It is time Britain got out of Ireland and put an end to the torture of this country,” he says.

At the time of his election, Sands, 27, has served four years of a fourteen-year sentence for firearms possession. He began his hunger strike 41 days earlier to press the republican prisoners’ claim to be treated as prisoners of war.

The government has to decide how to respond to Sands’ victory.  It can try to have him expelled on the grounds that he is an “unacceptable member.” However, unless he starts to eat again, he is not expected to live for more than another few weeks. He has already lost two stone and is too weak to leave his bed in the prison’s hospital wing.

Sand’s victory is the second time the voters of Fermanagh and South Tyrone have elected a republican prisoner as their MP. The first, Philip Clarke, in 1955, is disqualified because the law then does not allow convicts to take up political office.

In spite of attempts by the European Commission of Human Rights to mediate, Sands dies on May 5, 1981. He is the first of ten republican prisoners to die after hunger strikes. They attract international media attention and sympathy for the republicans.

The hunger strikes come to an end in October 1981. However, the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher grants the republicans only a few minor concessions.

(From: “1981: Hunger striker elected MP” on “On The Day 1950-2005,” BBC, news.bbc.co.uk)


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Death of Gerard Steenson, Leader of the IPLO

Gerard Steenson, an Irish republican paramilitary and a leader of the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation during the Troubles, is killed in an ambush in Ballymurphy, Belfast, on March 14, 1987.

Steenson, a Catholic and the son of Frank Steenson, is born in 1957 and raised in heavily republican West Belfast. He is nicknamed “Doctor Death” by the media and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) for the multiple assassinations he purportedly accomplishes according to The New York Times. However, Fortnight alleges that he got his nickname after he dressed up in a white coat to attack British soldiers guarding a patient at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Steenson is widely associated with internecine violence between Irish republican groups. He joins the Official Irish Republican Army‘s Belfast Brigade in 1972 at the age of 14, becoming part of the Brigade’s C Company. Two years later, he leaves to join the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) upon that paramilitary group’s formation, consequent to their split from the Official IRA. He becomes head of the INLA in Belfast.

Steenson first comes to notoriety as a teenager in 1975 for killing Billy McMillen, the Official IRA’s Belfast leader, during the feud between the INLA and the Official IRA. Jim Cusack, a journalist describes him as the “assassin-in-chief” of Hugh Torney.

During the 1981 Northern Ireland local elections, Steenson and Seán Mackin both lead efforts within the INLA to obstruct Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) candidates which disrupts their votes, viewing the decision to run in the election as wasteful, believing that the allocated resources would be better spent on weapons. Following the election, Steenson later changes his mind with regards to elections, declaring that the party should have run more candidates.

In December 1981, Steenson, fearing that the Dublin INLA leadership will make a move on him following his efforts to set up a parallel organisation, plans an assassination attempt on the Dublin leader, Harry Flynn. Following a meeting of the Ard Comhairle on December 5, Flynn and others go out for drinks in the Flowing Tide pub at the corner of Sackville Place and Marlborough Street in Dublin. Shortly before 11 p.m., Steenson’s gunman enters the pub and fires shots at Flynn before his gun jams and he flees. Though seriously wounded, Flynn survives. After the botched assassination attempt, Steenson then unsuccessfully threatens Seán Flynn for his seat on Belfast City Council. Later, on January 25, 1982, a botched attempt is also made on Seán Flynn and Bernard Dorrian at a bar in the Short Strand area, provoking a feud where a unit from the Derry INLA comes to Belfast searching for Steenson. Failing to secure power, the attacks only demoralise the IRSP and INLA and begin a trend of internal feuds.

In 1985, Steenson is convicted of 67 terrorist offences (including six murders) after his former friend, Harry Kirkpatrick, testifies against him. Kirkpatrick and Steenson are rarely seen apart in public and are given the nicknames “Pinkie and Perky.”

In 1986, Steenson, Jimmy Brown, and Martin “Rook” O’Prey form the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO), consisting of disaffected and expelled INLA members, with the express intention of wiping out the INLA and IRSP and replacing them with their own organisation. He argues in letters, written while he is in prison in the early 1980s, that the INLA has become militarily “inefficient” and that the IRSP leadership has become “ineffective” and requires “realignment.”

Steenson is involved in the Rosnaree Hotel shooting on January 20, 1987, where a meeting between the leadership of the INLA and IPLO is to take place to end hostilities. However, IPLO members ambush the four INLA members at the hotel, killing Thomas “Ta” Power and John “Jap” O’Reilly, while Hugh Torney and Peter Stewart manage to escape.

Steenson is viewed highly in the movement with Brown calling him a “committed and highly efficient military activist and a dedicated revolutionary.” However, he is described by Lord Justice Carswell as “a most dangerous and sinister terrorist. A ruthless and highly dedicated, resourceful and indefatigable planner of criminal exploits who did not hesitate to take a leading role in assassinations and other crimes.” Henry McDonald and Jack Holland write, “Both his friends and enemies spoke in a tone of awestruck at his paramilitary abilities.” Ken Wharton refers to him as a “notorious psychopath.” Sean O’Callaghan describes him as someone who “never took to orders.”

Terry George writes of Steenson that he “was extremely clever and even wittier than Billy McMillan. He had an angelic face and women adored him. He was also ruthless, cunning and fearless.”

On March 14, 1987, Steenson and Tony “Boot” McCarthy return to Ballymurphy after a night of drinking which is cut short by anger over the INLA GHQ faction’s show of force in the Divis Flats earlier in the day. After bringing their car to a stop on Springhill Avenue, they are killed in an ambush by an INLA active unit, with a member of the unit closing the security gate at the top of the street to trap the pair. An INLA spokesperson says Steenson was killed for being “actively involved in continuous and concerted efforts to undermine the authority of the … movement.” Jimmy Brown gives the graveside oration.

The IPLO later kills Emmanuel Gargan in the Hatfield Bar on the Lower Ormeau Road and Kevin Barry Duffy in Armagh, County Armagh, in retaliation for the killing of Steenson. The IPLO draws the ire of the Lower Ormeau community through the circumstances surrounding the killing of Gargan, with graffiti appearing in the area labeled “IPLOscum.”

On Halloween 1992, the Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a large-scale operation (dubbed the “Night of Long Knives”) with the goal of neutralising the IPLO. Following the operation and execution of Jimmy Brown, both the Belfast Brigade and Army Council factions disband.


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The Abercorn Restaurant Bombing

The Abercorn Restaurant bombing is a bomb attack that takes place in a crowded city centre restaurant and bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on March 4, 1972. The bomb explosion claims the lives of two young women and injures over 130 people. Many of the injuries are severe and include the loss of limbs and eyes. The Provisional Irish Republican Army is blamed, although no organisation ever claims responsibility and nobody is ever charged in connection with the bombing. According to Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist who has written extensively about the IRA, republican sources have unofficially confirmed the group’s involvement.

The Abercorn is on 7-11 Castle Lane in central Belfast and houses a ground-floor restaurant and upstairs bar. It is owned by 45-year-old Bill O’Hara, a Catholic businessman. On Saturday, March 4 1972, it is packed with late afternoon shoppers when an anonymous caller issues a bomb warning to 999 at 4:28 p.m. The caller does not give a precise location, but advises that a bomb will go off in Castle Lane in five minutes’ time. The street, located in the busy Cornmarket area, mills with crowds of people shopping and browsing as is typical on a Saturday in Belfast.

Two minutes later, at 4:30 p.m., a handbag containing a five-pound gelignite bomb explodes under a table inside the ground-floor restaurant. Two young Catholic friends are killed outright: Anne Owens (22), who is employed at the Electricity Board, and Janet Bereen (21), a hospital radiographer. The young women have been out shopping together and have stopped at the Abercorn to have coffee. They are seated at the table nearest the bomb and take the full force of the blast. Owens had survived a previous bombing at her workplace. More than 130 are injured in the explosion, which overturns tables and chairs, and brings the ceiling crashing down onto the ground floor restaurant. Many people are severely maimed. Some have their limbs blown off while others suffer terrible head and facial injuries, burns, deep cuts and perforated eardrums. Three have eyes destroyed by shards of flying glass. Two sisters, Jennifer and Rosaleen McNern (one of whom is due to be married), are both horrifically mutilated. Jennifer loses both legs and Rosaleen, the bride-to-be, loses her legs, right arm and one eye.

Witnesses describe a scene of panic and chaos as the bloodied survivors stumble through the smoke, broken glass, blood, and rubble, crawling over one another to get away, while firemen attempt to bring out the injured, many of whom lay with their bodies mangled, unable to move. A Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer is one of the first people to arrive on the scene. He describes the carnage that greets him as something he will never forget. “All you could hear was the moaning and squealing and the people with limbs torn from their bodies.”

A woman who had been inside the restaurant before the blast later tells an inquest that she had seen two teenaged girls walk out of the Abercorn leaving a handbag behind shortly before the explosion. This same woman was waiting at a bus stop when the bomb went off. A detective-sergeant establishes that the explosion’s epicentre is to the right of the table where the two girls had been sitting. The bomb is reportedly left behind inside a handbag.

Nobody is ever charged in connection with the bombing and no paramilitary organisation ever claims responsibility for it. Both wings of the IRA deny involvement and condemn the bombing. However, the RUC and British Military Intelligence blame the Provisional IRA First Battalion Belfast Brigade and it is now widely accepted that it was responsible. There is a public backlash against the organisation in Irish nationalist and Catholic areas such as West Belfast. The two dead women were both Catholic, along with many of the injured including the McNern sisters, and the Abercorn Bar was a popular venue with many young Catholics and nationalists.

Provisional IRA Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stíofáin claims the bombing is the work of loyalist paramilitaries. According to Mac Stíofáin, the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA) had made threats against the Abercorn in its weekly newsletter after the Abercorn management refused to play the British national anthem. The WDA denies the allegations, adding that one of its members had a friend who was badly injured in the blast. The day after the bombing, a leaflet allegedly circulated by the loyalist Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP) declares: “We make no apologies for Abercorn. No apologies were made for Aldershot […] These premises were being used extensively by Southern Irish shoppers for the transmission of information vital to the terrorist campaign…” Vanguard leader Rev. Martin Smyth dismisses the statement as fake.

According to Ed Moloney in his book Voices from the Grave, IRA sources have since confirmed, albeit unofficially, that the Provisional IRA was responsible. Moloney suggests that, based on eyewitness accounts, two teenaged IRA girls were probably the bombers. Unnamed republican sources suggest that the Abercorn was targeted because the upstairs bar was frequented by off-duty British Army soldiers.

The detonation of a bomb in a city centre restaurant on a Saturday afternoon packed with shoppers, and the severity of the injuries—inflicted on mostly women and children—ensures that the attack causes much revulsion and leaves a lasting impression on the people of Belfast. It is condemned by both unionist and Irish nationalist politicians and also by church leaders. Ian Paisley calls on the government “to mobilise and arm every able-bodied volunteer to meet the enemy.” The extent of the injuries the blast inflicts results in the Royal Victoria Hospital implementing a “disaster plan” for the first time.

The sculptor F. E. McWilliam produces a series of bronzes (1972–73) known as Women of Belfast in response to the Abercorn bombing.

Unrelated to the bombing, the Abercorn features in a sectarian attack in July 1972, when Michael McGuigan, a Catholic working in the bar, is abducted by loyalist paramilitaries, shot and left for dead, but survives. He had been dating a Protestant waitress who also worked in the Abercorn, which is why the loyalist group targets him.

The Abercorn is demolished in 2007.

(Pictured: A victim’s body being removed from the scene by members of the security forces following the bomb explosion)


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The Mullacreevie Ambush

The Mullacreevie ambush takes place on March 1, 1991, when a mobile patrol of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) composed of two Land Rover Defender vehicles is attacked with an improvised horizontal mortar by a Provisional Irish Republican Army active service unit from the North Armagh Brigade while passing near Mullacreevie housing estate, on the west side of Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. One member of the UDR is killed instantly when the leading Land Rover is hit, while another dies of wounds two days later. Two other soldiers are maimed for life.

According to author Tony Geraghty, British authorities learn of the first horizontal mortar produced by the Provisional IRA, the Mark 12, in 1985. The weapon is recovered after an incident in which three IRA volunteers are killed by security forces. The launcher suffers from the limitation of a heavy recoil, which makes the handling of the device difficult. One British intelligence report says that while the launcher is quite crude, the grenade is made of “a number of components which require a high standard of machine manufacturing.” The projectile has a warhead of 40 ounces (1.1 kg) of Semtex and TNT. It is used basically as a standoff weapon, in which the grenade is lofted over the security bases’ fences or against armoured vehicles. The mortar has an effective range of 70 yards, within which it can pierce an armour plate or destroy a sangar.

Later in the conflict the IRA develops the Mark 16, a new version with improved armour-piercing capabilities, usually referred to as a “projected recoilless improvised grenade.”

On the evening of March 1, 1991, a two-vehicle mobile patrol belonging to the 2nd Battalion, Ulster Defence Regiment is approaching the western outskirts of Armagh on Killylea road. When driving along Mullacreevie housing estate, the two Land Rovers are held by temporary traffic lights at roadworks. Unknown to them, an IRA unit from the North Armagh Brigade has set a Mark 12 launcher on a hump of earth in the front garden of a house beside the lights. After the incident, IRA sources describe the device as a “directional missile.”

When the first Land Rover pulls off after the lights turn green, the mortar ‘s improvised grenade is fired by command-wire from the backyard of the house by IRA members concealed behind a digger. The projectile hits the coachwork, blowing away both sides and the roof of the military vehicle. Witnesses report that the Land Rover was “ripped apart.” The soldiers inside are immediately assisted by fellow UDR members, who help to drag the wounded out of the shattered wreckage.

Private Paul Sutcliffe, a 32-year-old Englishman who has served for four years with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment before becoming a UDR soldier in 1989, dies on the spot. The driver, Private Roger Love, a 20-year-old from Portadown, succumbs to his injuries three days later. Two other servicemen are maimed by the explosion. One of them suffers severe chest wounds, and loses the use of one arm; the other has a leg amputated below the knee.

The ambush at Mullacreevie is the first time that a Mark 12 mortar is used successfully.

Roger Love’s family donates the deceased soldier’s kidneys after they authorize the medical staff to disconnect the life-supporting machine. A UDR party attends Paul Sutcliffe’s funeral at his hometown of Barrowford, Lancashire, the only UDR military funeral held outside Northern Ireland. His ashes are scattered in the Mourne Mountains.

Another horizontal mortar attack on a UDR mobile patrol takes place on November 6, when Private Michael Boxall is killed in Bellaghy, County Londonderry, after the Land Rover he is riding on is hit by a Mark 12 grenade. A fellow soldier loses one eye in the attack. Incidentally, constable Erik Clarke, another Englishmen who had also served in the British Army in Northern Ireland from 1973 to 1978, is killed that year by the same kind of weapon while riding on a combined Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – British Army mobile patrol in an early Mark 12 attack. The incident takes place on September 17 at Swatragh, County Londonderry. Clarke had married a local woman and later joined the RUC.

The Mark 12 mortar is used by the IRA until 1993, when it is superseded by the Mark 16. The Mark 16 is fired on eleven occasions by the IRA from late 1993 to early 1994.


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1978 British Army Gazelle Helicopter Downing

On February 17, 1978, a British Army Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter, serial number XX404, goes down near Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, after being fired at by a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit from the South Armagh Brigade. The IRA unit is involved at the time in a gun battle with a Royal Green Jackets observation post deployed in the area, and the helicopter is sent in to support the ground troops. The helicopter crashes after the pilot loses control of the aircraft while evading ground fire.

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Douglas Corden-Lloyd, 2nd Battalion Green Jackets commanding officer, dies in the crash. The incident is overshadowed in the press by the La Mon restaurant bombing, which takes place just hours later near Belfast.

By early 1978, the British Army forces involved in Operation Banner have recently replaced their aging Bell H-13 Sioux helicopters for the more versatile Aérospatiale Gazelles. The introduction of the new machines increases the area covered on a reconnaissance sortie as well as the improved time spent in airborne missions. In the same period, the Provisional IRA receives its first consignment of M60 machine guns from the Middle East, which are displayed by masked volunteers during a Bloody Sunday commemoration in Derry. Airborne operations are crucial for the British presence along the border, especially in south County Armagh, where the level of IRA activity means that every supply and soldier has to be ferried in and out of their bases by helicopter since 1975.

The Royal Green Jackets have been in South Armagh since December 1977, and have already seen some action. Just a few days after arrival, two mortar rounds hit the C Company base at Forkhill, injuring a number of soldiers. In the aftermath of the attack, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers are wounded by a booby trap while recovering the lorry where the mortar tubes are mounted. Two days later, a patrol near the border suffers a bomb and gun attack, leaving the commanding sergeant with severe head wounds. The sergeant is picked up from the scene by helicopter. He is later invalided from the British Army as a result of his injuries.

On January 17, 1978, a Royal Green Jackets observation post deployed around the village of Jonesborough begins to take heavy fire from the “March Wall,” which draws parallel with the Irish border to the east, along the Dromad woods. The soldiers return fire, but the short distance to the border and the open ground prevents them from advancing.

The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Corden-Lloyd, along with Captain Philip Schofield and Sergeant Ives fly from the battalion base at Bessbrook Mill to assess the situation and provide information to the troops. They are escorted by a Scout helicopter with an Airborne Reaction Force (ARF), comprising a medic and three soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry. While hovering over the scene of the engagement, the Aérospatiale Gazelle receives a barrage of 7.62 mm tracer rounds. The pilot loses control of the aircraft during a turn at high speed to avoid the stream of fire. The Aérospatiale Gazelle hits a wall and crashes in a field, some 2 km from Jonesborough. According to the crew and passengers of the Scout, the Aérospatiale Gazelle hits the ground twice after losing power, with its rotor blades trashing into the soil following the second impact, and then cartwheels across the field. The Scout lands the ARF while still under IRA fire. The soldiers rush to the wrecked helicopter, some 100 metres away from the site of the initial crash.

Corden-Lloyd is killed and the other two passengers are wounded. The machine comes to rest on its right side. The pilot remains trapped inside the wreckage, but he survives thanks to his helmet. The IRA later claim they had shot at the helicopter with an M60 machine gun. The IRA unit vanishes into the Dromad woods to the Republic of Ireland. Some Gardaí witness the attack from the other side of the border.

The gun battle and Aérospatiale Gazelle shootdown is displaced from the headlines by the deaths of twelve civilians in the La Mon restaurant bombing on the same day, some of whom are burned to death. Initially the British Army downplays the IRA’s claim as published by An Phoblacht, that the helicopter was shot down, on the basis that no hits were found on the wreckage, but finally they acknowledged that the IRA action had caused the crash.

The death of Corden-Lloyd, a former Special Air Service officer, is deeply regretted by the British Army, who regarded him as promising. He is awarded a posthumous mentioned in despatches “in recognition of gallant and distinguished service in Northern Ireland.” In 1973, Irish republicans had accused Corden-Lloyd and his subordinates of brutality against Belfast Catholics during an earlier tour of the Royal Green Jackets in 1971, at the time of Operation Demetrius.


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Death of John Luke, Northern Irish Artist

Northern Irish artist John Luke dies in Belfast on February 4, 1975.

Luke is born at 4 Lewis Street in Belfast on January 19, 1906, the fifth of seven sons and one daughter of James Luke and his wife Sarah, originally from Ahoghill, County Antrim. He attends the Hillman Street National School and in 1920 goes to work at the York Street Flax Spinning Company. He goes on soon after to become a riveter at the Workman, Clark shipyard. While working there he enrolls in evening classes at the Belfast School of Art.

Luke excells at the college under the tutelage of Seamus Stoupe and Newton Penpraze. His contemporaries include Romeo Toogood, Harry Cooke Knox, George MacCann and Colin Middleton. In 1927 he wins the coveted Dunville Scholarship which enables him to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he studies painting and sculpture under the celebrated Henry Tonks, who greatly influences his development as a draughtsman.

Luke remains at the Slade School of Fine Art until 1930, in which year he wins the Robert Ross Scholarship. On leaving the Slade School he stays in London, intent on establishing himself in the art world. For a time he shares a flat with fellow Ulsterman F. E. McWilliam, and enrolls as a part-time student of Walter Bayes at the Westminster School of Art to study wood engraving. He begins to exhibit his work and in October 1930 shows two paintings, Entombment and Carnival, in an exhibition of contemporary art held at Leger Galleries. The latter composition, depicting a group of masked merry-makers, is singled out by the influential critic, Paul George Konody of the Daily Mail (October 3, 1930), as “one of the most attractive features of the exhibition.” But the economic climate is deteriorating and a year later, at the end of 1933, he is driven back to Belfast by the recession. He remains in Belfast, apart from a time during World War II when he goes to Killylea, County Armagh.

Luke paints in the style known as Regionalism, whose main proponents are Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry and Harry Epworth Allen. His painting technique is painstakingly slow, his manner precise. “I’m afraid I’m very much a one job man,” he once writes to John Hewitt, continuing, “my strength lies in making the most of one job at a time, in sustained thought and effort, to bring it to the highest level of organisation and completeness I desire: the other way I lead to disintegrate in looseness and frustration with its inevitable weakness.” The precision characteristic of his work is manifested, too, in his appearance and personal manner. Dark haired, in stature he is erect and spare of build. Always tidy, his clothes brushed, his hair short, he is, in Hewitt’s words, “not at all close to the romantic stereotype of the artist.”

Apart from Luke’s work as a practising artist, he teaches from time to time in the Belfast School of Art, where he influences a generation of students “especially in the matter of drawing,” as he once puts it. Although principally a painter, throughout his career he occasionally makes sculptures, such as the Stone Head, Seraph of c. 1940 (Ulster Museum). Indeed it is for sculpture that he wins the Robert Ross Prize at the Slade School of Fine Art. He is also much interested in philosophical theories of art. In the 1930s, for example, as John Hewitt records, topical books such as Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, Clive Bell’s Art and R. H. Wilenski‘s Modern Movement in Art direct his thinking.

From the late 1930s until 1943, when Luke produces Pax, there is a gap in his output, occasioned, no doubt, by his move to County Armagh in order to escape Belfast after the Blitz. In 1946, he holds his first one-man exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, and this is followed two years later by a similar show, held under the aegis of CEMA, nearby at number 55A Donegal Place. In 1950, to celebrate the Festival of Britain the following year, he is commissioned to paint in Belfast City Hall, a mural representing the history of the city, a work which brings his name to the attention of a wider audience. In later years, other commissions follow for murals in the Masonic Hall, Rosemary Street, in 1956, and the College of Technology at Millfield in the 1960s. He also carves in relief coats of arms for the two Governors of Northern Ireland, John Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst (1959) and John Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine of Rerrick (1965). He is also a member of the Royal Ulster Academy.

Having been in declining health for some years, Luke dies, unmarried, at the Mater Infirmorum Hospital in Belfast on February 4, 1975, just a month into his sixty-ninth year. A retrospective exhibition of his work is held, in association with the Arts Councils of Ireland, in the Ulster Museum in 1978, and is accompanied by a short monograph on his life and career written by John Hewitt. Since that time his reputation has grown enormously, his loss rekindling memories in many of his former students of a fastidiously arranged life-room in the College of Art, his coat folded to perfection and his soft, gentle manner of instruction.