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Category Archives: Irish Republican Army


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The 1978 Crossmaglen Ambush

On December 21, 1978, three British soldiers are shot dead when the Provisional Irish Republican Army‘s South Armagh Brigade ambushes an eight-man British Army foot patrol in Crossmaglen, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Since the Troubles began, the South Armagh area—especially around Crossmaglen and other similar republican strongholds—is one of the most dangerous places for the British security forces, and the IRA’s South Armagh brigade carries out numerous ambushes on the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). This includes the 1975 Drummuckavall ambush and the 1978 downing of a British Army Gazelle helicopter which leads to the death of one British soldier and four others being seriously injured.

A number of British security force members are killed in Crossmaglen during 1978. On March 4, British soldier Nicholas Smith (20), 7 Platoon, B Company, 2nd Royal Green Jackets, is killed by an IRA booby trap bomb while attempting to remove an Irish flag from a telegraph pole in Crossmaglen. On June 17, William Turbitt (42) and Hugh McConnell (32), both Protestant RUC officers, are shot by the IRA while on mobile patrol near Crossmaglen. McConnell is killed at the scene, but Turbitt is kidnapped. The next day, a Catholic priest, Fr. Hugh Murphy, is kidnapped in retaliation but later released after appeals from Protestant clergy. The body of Turbitt is found on July 10, 1978.

On December 21, 1978, when the patrol is near Rio’s Bar coming around a bend, a red Royal Mail-type van is spotted by the patrols commander Sergeant Richard Garmory. The van is fitted with armor plating and is facing away from the patrol. Garmory believes the van is in a suspicious place on the other side of the street. He notes what appear to be boxes in the back of the van, which actually provide cover for the IRA Volunteers. IRA members open fire from the back of the van with an M60 machine gun which is fitted down onto the floor in the back of the van. Three other IRA volunteers armed with AR-15-style rifles and another Volunteer with an AK-47 open up on the patrol. The British soldiers on patrol return fire but do not claim any hits. A handful of Christmas shoppers scramble for cover. Three soldiers at the front of the patrol are fatally wounded. They are treated by staff at a nearby health center and then taken to Musgrave Park Hospital but are declared dead on arrival. The soldiers killed are Graham Duggan (22), Kevin Johnson (20) and Glen Ling (18). All are members of the British Armies Grenadier Guards regiment. The patrol commander, Richard Garmory, says of the ambush:

On coming round the bend near the Rio Bar, I saw 40 yards away what looked like a British Rail parcel delivery van parked partly on the pavement on the left facing away from us. It had an 18-inch tailboard with a roll shutter that could be pulled down. The van immediately struck me as highly suspicious because I saw what looked like cardboard boxes piled to the top in the back, all flush with the tailboard so they would fall out if the van moved off fast. I instantaneously put my magnifying sight to my to my eye and saw four firing slits, two above the other two, among the boxes. I immediately opened fire.

Four months later the South Armagh brigade strikes again at British security forces, this time near Bessbrook which is several miles from Crossmaglen. Four RUC officers are killed in the 1979 Bessbrook bombing, when a 1,000 lb. land mine is detonated when the RUC patrol is passing by the bomb, killing all the officers outright.

(Pictured: South Armagh Brigade, Provisional Irish Republican Army, manning a temporary checkpoint close to Crossmaglen, 1978)


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Donnelly’s Bar and Kay’s Tavern Attacks

During the evening of December 19, 1975, two coordinated attacks are carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in pubs on either side of the Irish border. The first attack, a car bombing, takes place outside Kay’s Tavern, a pub along Crowe Street in Dundalk, County Louth, Republic of Ireland – close to the border. The second, a gun and bomb attack, takes place at Donnelly’s Bar & Filling Station in Silverbridge, County Armagh, just across the border inside Northern Ireland.

The attacks are linked to the Glenanne gang, a group of loyalist militants who are either members of the UVF, the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the closely linked UVF paramilitary the Red Hand Commando (RHC). Some of the Glenanne gang are members of two of these organisations at the same time, such as gang leaders Billy Hanna, who is in both the UVF and the UDR and who fights for the British Army during the Korean War, and John Weir from County Monaghan, who is in the UVF and is a sergeant in the RUC. At least 25 UDR men and police officers are named as members of the gang. The Red Hand Commando claim to have carried out both attacks.

According to journalist Joe Tiernan, the attacks are planned and led by Robert McConnell and Robin “The Jackal” Jackson who are both alleged to have carried out dozens of sectarian murders during The Troubles, mainly from 1974 to 1977, mostly in south County Armagh – which in 1975 is virtually lawless. Loyalist paramilitaries and the Provisional Irish Republican Army roam the streets and countryside and can set up bogus military checkpoints freely.

The attacks are planned at the Glenanne farm of RUC reserve officer James Mitchell which is where most terrorist acts are planned by the gang and the farm also acts as a UVF arms dump and bomb-making site. After the attacks are finished everyone involved in both attacks is to meet at Mitchell’s farm. Then if there is any heat, Mitchell can claim the bombers and shooters were with him when the attacks happened.

The first phase of the plan starts at around 6:15 p.m. along Crowe Street in Dundalk when a 100-pound no-warning bomb explodes in a Ford sports car just outside Kay’s Tavern. The blast kills Hugh Watters, who is a tailor and has just dropped into the pub to deliver some clothes he has altered for the pub’s owner, almost instantly. Jack Rooney, who is walking past the town hall on the opposite side of the street, is struck in the head by flying shrapnel and dies three days later. A further 20 people are injured in the explosion, several of them very seriously. The car bomb is fitted with fake southern registration plates and placed in one of the busiest streets in Dundalk in the hope of causing maximum death and injury. According to Joe Tiernan, UVF commander Robin Jackson plants the bomb and along with other members of his unit escapes across the border in a blue Hillman Hunter around the time the bomb goes off.

At around 9:00 p.m., about three hours after the Dundalk bombing, the second phase of the coordinated plan begins. It is led by McConnell and takes place at Donnelly’s Bar & Filling Station in the small Armagh village Silverbridge, close to Crossmaglen.

The unit arrives in two cars and come unusually fast toward the pub. The publican’s son, Michael Donnelly (14), is serving petrol to a customer. He notices the strange speed of the cars. He tries to run toward the pub, but McConnell jumps out of one of the cars and shoots the teenage boy dead with a Sten gun. McConnell then shoots the man Michael Donnelly had been serving petrol to in the head. Although the man survives the shooting, he is maimed for life.

Then a second gunman, believed to be Billy McCaughey, a UVF volunteer and member of the RUC Special Patrol Group, shoots dead a second person, local man Patrick Donnelly (no relation to the pub owner’s family) who has been waiting for petrol. McConnell then goes inside the pub and sprays the bar with his Sten SMG, killing a third man, Trevor Bracknell, and seriously injuring three more people.

As McConnell withdraws to his car, two other members of the unit carry a 25-pound cylinder bomb inside the pub. As McConnell’s unit flees back to Mitchell’s farm, the bomb detonates inside the pub. However, by this time most of the people have already fled.

(Pictured: Photograph of the destruction at Kay’s Tavern after the loyalist car bomb explosion on December 19, 1975. Members of the Garda and Dundalk fire service are seen in the foreground. Also present are a number of visiting government ministers from Dublin.)


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The Dungannon Land Mine Attack

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushes two British Army Land Rovers with an improvised land mine outside Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on December 16, 1979. Four British soldiers are killed in the attack.

Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA has carried out many improvised land mine and roadside bomb attacks on British forces in the region. In September 1972, three British soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is blown up by an IRA land mine at Sanaghanroe, near Dungannon. In March 1974, two IRA members are killed on the Aughnacloy Road near Dungannon when a land mine they are planting explodes prematurely.

The Dungannon attack occurs just months after the Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, where the IRA kills eighteen British soldiers with roadside bombs in south County Down — the deadliest single attack on British forces during The Troubles.

On December 16, 1979, two armoured British Army Land Rovers are driving along Ballygawley Road, about two miles outside Dungannon. A unit of the IRA had planted a 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) improvised land mine in a culvert under the road at Glenadush. When the second vehicle reaches the culvert, the land mine is detonated by remote control from a concealed location, showcasing their evolving tactics in guerrilla warfare and ambush strategy. The blast is powerful enough to launch the armoured Land Rover into the air and killing four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Artillery outright: William Beck (23), Keith Richards (22), Simon Evans (19), and Allan Ayrton (23).


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Death of Oscar Traynor, Fianna Fáil Politician & Republican

Oscar Traynor, Fianna Fáil politician and republican, dies in Dublin on December 14, 1963. He serves as Minister for Justice from 1957 to 1961, Minister for Defence from 1939 to 1948 and 1951 to 1954, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1936 to 1939 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence from June 1936 to November 1936. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1925 to 1927 and 1932 to 1961. He is also involved with association football, being the President of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) from 1948 until 1963.

Traynor is born in Dublin on March 21, 1886, into a strongly nationalist family. He is educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1899, he is apprenticed to John Long, a famous woodcarver. As a young man he is a noted footballer and tours Europe as a goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic F.C. whom he plays with from 1910 to 1912. He rejects claims soccer is a foreign sport calling it “a Celtic game, pure and simple, having its roots in the Highlands of Scotland.”

Traynor joins the Irish Volunteers and takes part in the Easter Rising in 1916, being the leader of the Hotel Metropole garrison. Following this he is interned in Wales. During the Irish War of Independence, he is brigadier of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and leads the disastrous attack on the Custom House in 1921 and an ambush on the West Kent Regiment at Claude Road, Drumcondra on June 16, 1921, when the Thompson submachine gun is fired for the first time in action.

When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, Traynor takes the Anti-Treaty IRA side. The Dublin Brigade is split, however, with many of its members following Michael Collins in taking the pro-Treaty side. During the Battle of Dublin, he is in charge of the Barry’s Hotel garrison, before making their escape. He organises guerilla activity in south Dublin and County Wicklow, before being captured by Free State troops in September. He is then imprisoned for the remainder of the war.

On March 11, 1925, Traynor is elected to Dáil Éireann in a by-election as a Sinn Féin TD for the Dublin North constituency, though he does not take his seat due to the abstentionist policy of Sinn Féin. He is re-elected as one of eight members for Dublin North in the June 1927 Irish general election but just one of six Sinn Féin TDs. Once again, he does not take his seat. He does not contest the September 1927 Irish general election but declares his support for Fianna Fáil. He stands again in the 1932 Irish general election and is elected as a Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin North.

In 1936, Traynor is first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In September 1939, he is appointed Minister for Defence and holds the portfolio to February 1948. In 1948, he becomes President of the Football Association of Ireland, a position he holds until his death. He serves as Minister for Defence in several Fianna Fáil governments and as Minister for Justice, where he is undermined by his junior minister, and later Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, before he retires in 1961.

Traynor dies in Dublin at the age of 77 on December 14, 1963. He has a road named in his memory, running from the Malahide Road through Coolock to Santry in Dublin’s northern suburbs.


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Death of Vincent “Vinnie” Byrne, Member of “The Squad”

Vincent (‘Vinnie’) Byrne, a member of the Irish Republican Army and a senior figure in the assassination group known as The Squad, dies at the age of 92 on December 13, 1992, in Artane, Dublin.

Byrne is born on November 23, 1900, in the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, the elder among one son and one daughter of Vincent Byrne, carpenter, of 33 Denzille Street (now Fenian Street), and his wife Margaret (née White). By 1911 the family is living with maternal relatives at 1 Anne’s Lane. Educated at St. Andrew’s national school, Westland Row, he is apprenticed as a cabinet maker under Thomas Weafer, a company captain in the Irish Volunteers, who is subsequently killed in the 1916 Easter Rising. At the age of fourteen, he joins the Irish Volunteers in January 1915, and is posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. His training includes lectures on street fighting by James Connolly. During the 1916 rising he serves with the 2nd Battalion in Jacob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh. At the surrender he is slipped out a factory window to safety by a priest who is acting as an intermediary. Arrested in his home a week later, he is held in Richmond Barracks with other youngsters, all of whom are released after an additional week. Active in the post-rising reorganisation of the Dublin Brigade, he claims to have voted twenty times for Sinn Féin candidates in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.

In November 1919, Byrne is recruited to an elite counter-intelligence squad of the Dublin Brigade, whose primary mission is the assassination of plainclothes detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) political (‘G’) division. He participates in the attempted ambush of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John French, at Ashtown, Dublin, on December 19, 1919, a combined operation of the Dublin and the 3rd Tipperary brigades. In March 1920, he leaves his civilian employment with the Irish Woodworkers, Crow Street, when the squad is constituted as a full-time, paid, GHQ guard, under direct orders from Michael Collins. Dubbed “The Twelve Apostles,” the squad also includes James Slattery, a workmate of Byrne since their apprenticeships. For the duration of the Irish War of Independence, Byrne takes part in the stakeouts and killings of police detectives and military intelligence agents. His witness statement to the Bureau of Military History recounts his participation in some fifteen such operations. On Bloody Sunday he commands an IRA detail that kills two of the “Cairo Gang“ agents in their boarding house at 38 Upper Mount Street on November 21, 1920. He takes part in The Custom House raid on May 25, 1921.

Owing largely to his devoted allegiance to Collins, Byrne supports the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921, regarding it as a stepping stone to complete independence. Enlisting in the National Army, he serves in the Dublin Guard. Promoted five times from January 1922 to February 1923, he rises in rank from company sergeant to commandant. He is OC of the guard at the handover of Dublin Castle from British to Irish authority on January 16, 1922. During ensuing months he commands guard details at government buildings and the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. In March 1922, he foils an attempt by Anti-Treaty forces to seize the bank with the aid of mutinous soldiers within the building’s guard. Having displayed courage and presence of mind throughout the incident, he is promoted captain in the field. Resenting the role given to ex-British-army officers in the National Army, and feeling that the political elite of the Free State are betraying the national interest, he is among the group of officers involved in the failed army mutiny of 1924, and accordingly is forced to resign his commission on March 21. He then works as a carpenter on the industrial staff of the Office of Public Works (OPW), and in the post office stores, St. John’s Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, until his retirement.

Byrne is a founding member of both the Association of Dublin Brigades and the 1916–1921 Club. Long lived, and a willing raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase, he becomes probably the best known of Collins’s squad (of which he is the last surviving member), granting many interviews to journalists and historians. He expresses no misgivings about his role as a revolutionary hit man, arguing the necessity of the ruthless methods employed, which deterred potential informers, and eventually won the struggle by crippling British intelligence.

Byrne lives in Dublin at 59 Blessington Street, and later at 227 Errigal Road, Drimnagh. His last address is 25 Lein Road, Artane. His wife Eileen predeceases him. He dies on December 13, 1992, survived by two daughters and one son. He is buried at Balgriffin Cemetery, Balgriffin, County Dublin.

(From: “Byrne, Vincent (‘Vinnie’)” by Lawrence William White and Pauric J. Dempsey, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Timothy Lyons, Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Timothy Lyons, also known as Aero or Aeroplane, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) soldier who fights with the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War, is born in Garrynagore, County Kerry, on December 4, 1895.

Lyons is born in to Margaret (née Sullivan) and Timothy Lyons senior, who is listed on his birth certificate as a cottier. He is the oldest of six siblings. Prior to the Irish Civil War, he works as a labourer. He fights with the IRA’s Kilflynn Company during the Irish War of Independence. He is described as being slight, “adventurous” as a column leader and a marksman who shoots at small birds. He shoots a British officer in an ambush led by captain George O’Shea at Shannow Bridge where the Kilflynn road joins the R557, forcing a retreat. He gains the nickname “Aeroplane” or “Aero” because of the way he suddenly appears and his last-minute escapes. Because of regular searches by Black and Tans, his father fears the family home will be burnt out and asks him to leave.

After the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Lyons fights against Free State forces . At the time of his death he is commandant. He is involved in fighting in Listowel and Limerick, is captured near Athea, jailed in Limerick and released in late 1922 with an undertaking not to rejoin the fight. Notwithstanding this, the column continues to operate, generally around Causeway and Ballyduff.

On April 15, 1923, Lyons’ column attacks a Free State raiding party in Meenoghane, County Kerry. The raiding party receives reinforcements. He and his men are eventually surrounded at nearby Clashmealcon on April 16 by Michael Hogan’s 1st Western Division. They descend the rugged, Atlantic cliffs to the caves and hide in Dumfort’s Cave. He shoots out searchlights with his Lee-Enfield rifle and two Free State soldiers are shot dead from the cave. The situation is under Army Emergency Powers. With no escape for the men hiding, troops try to blast them out by dropping mines and smoke them out with petrol-soaked turf.

On April 16, James McGrath, the brother of Thomas McGrath, one of Lyons’s men, is arrested and taken to the cliffs in order to enter the cave and persuade the men to surrender. On the night of April 17-18, Thomas McGrath and Patrick O’Shea, his first cousin, fall trying to scale the cliffs to escape and drown. After offering to surrender himself on the morning of the April 18, Lyons falls several metres onto rocks from a rope that is provided by National Army troops. He is then shot multiple times by troops from the cliff top and is not recovered.

Three of Lyons’ men who surrender, Edmond Greaney, James McEnery and British deserter-turned-republican Reginald Stephen Hathaway, are executed in Ballymullen Barracks by gunshot on April 25, for breaking their undertaking not to take up arms against the Free State, attacking troops at Clashmealcon, burning the Civic Guard station at Ballyheigue, stripping the same Civic Guards and robbing the post office at Ballyduff.

Lyons’ decomposing body, minus a leg, is washed up on May 5, identifiable by a boot. He is buried alongside George O’Shea and Timothy Tuomey (both killed at Ballyseedy) in the Republican plot at Kilflynn Church (now St. Columba’s Heritage Centre).

(Pictured: Kilflynn IRA Flying Column, 1922. Back (L to R): Denis O’Connell (Lixnaw), Stephen Fuller (Kilflynn), William Hartnett (Mountcoal), Tim Twomey (Kilflynn). Front (L to R): Terry Brosnan (Lixnaw), John McElligott (Leam, Kilflynn), Danny O’Shea (Kilflynn), Timothy (Aero) Lyons (Garrynagore), Tim Sheehy (Lyre), Pete Sullivan (Ballyduff), Paddy Mahony (Ballyegan, Battalion O.C.).)


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Birth of Daniel McCann, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Daniel McCann, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born into an Irish republican family from the Clonard area of West Belfast on November 30, 1957. He is killed by the British Army on March 6, 1988, while being accused of attempting to plant a car bomb in Gibraltar.

McCann is educated at primary level at St. Gall’s Primary School, Belfast, and at St. Mary’s Grammar School, Belfast. He does not finish his education as he is arrested after becoming involved in rioting. He is charged and convicted of “riotous behaviour” and sentenced to six months in prison. Later that year he joins the Provisional IRA. He is later convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment for the possession of explosives.

In 1987, McCann along with another IRA member, Seán Savage, murders two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers at Belfast docks.

In 1988, McCann and Savage, along with Mairead Farrell, another IRA member, are sent to the British overseas territory of Gibraltar to plant a bomb in the town area, targeting a British Army band which parades weekly in connection with the changing of the guard in front of The Convent, the official residence of the governor of Gibraltar.

The British Government knows in advance about the operation, and specially dispatches to Gibraltar a British Army detachment to intercept the IRA team. While McCann, Savage and Farrell are engaged on March 6, 1988, on a reconnaissance trip in Gibraltar before driving in a car bomb, soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment wearing civilian clothes confronts them in the streets of the town. McCann is shot five times at close range, the SAS soldiers later claiming that he had made an “aggressive move” when approached. Farrell, who is with McCann, is also shot dead. Savage is walking separately behind McCann and Farrell within eyesight distance, and seeing them ahead being confronted and fired upon, flees, running several hundred yards back into Gibraltar town closely pursued on foot by another SAS soldier, who catches up with him and shoots him dead also. All three IRA members are subsequently found to be unarmed.

A car bomb created by McCann, Savage and Farrell and ready to be driven into Gibraltar is found 36 miles away in Spain by the Spanish Police two days after their deaths, containing 140 lbs. (64 kg) of Semtex with a device timed to go off during the changing of the guard in Gibraltar.

A documentary entitled Death on the Rock, is produced and broadcast on British television about the failed IRA operation in Gibraltar shortly after it takes place, detailing the British and Spanish Government’s actions and that of the IRA team, in an operation that the British Government code-names Operation Flavius. The documentary also interviews civilian eyewitnesses to the shooting of the Provisional IRA members, raising questions about the veracity of the British Government and its involved soldiers’ accounts of it, focusing on whether the three IRA members had been offered the chance to surrender by the soldiers confronting them before they had been fired upon. It also questions whether the violence used had been proportionate, in line with ongoing rumours in the British media of a purported “Shoot to Kill” policy that the British Government is pursuing against the Provisional IRA during The Troubles.

At an IRA-sponsored collective funeral on March 16, 1988, for McCann along with Savage and Farrell at the IRA plot in Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast, as the bodies are being lowered into the ground, the funeral party comes under a hand grenade attack from a lone Loyalist paramilitary. The funeral immediately descends into chaotic scenes, as a running fight occurs between the lone gunman firing a handgun and throwing more grenades at a group of mourners, as they pursue him through the cemetery’s grounds. Three mourners are killed and scores wounded in the incident.


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IRA Assassination of MP Robert Bradford

The Rev. Robert J. Bradford, an Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for the Belfast South constituency in Northern Ireland, is killed by Provisional Irish Republican Army gunmen on the morning of November 14, 1981, as he sits talking with constituents in a Belfast community center.

The gunmen, who are wearing workmen’s overalls, escape in a car afterward, killing Ken Campbell, a caretaker, as they leave. The people with whom Bradford had been meeting, most of them elderly, dive under tables for cover, and dozens of teenagers dancing nearby break into hysterical tears, but there are no injuries.

The killing is part of an escalation of IRA violence, both in London and in Northern Ireland, after the collapse of the prison hunger strike the previous month. The previous night an IRA bomb damages the London home of Britain’s Attorney General for Northern Ireland, Michael Havers. The home is empty and no one is seriously injured.

Bradford, a 40-year-old Methodist minister who is married and has a 6-year-old daughter, is shot several times, according to witnesses, and he dies almost immediately. His brother, Roy, who lives near the scene of the killing, in South Belfast, is at his side within moments. “But he was unconscious when I reached him, and he only lived for about a minute,” Roy Bradford says. News of the killing arouses fears of a Protestant reaction that could lead to serious civil unrest in Northern Ireland.

John “Jack” Hermon, the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, issues an appeal to both the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholics to show “good sense and restraint.” He says security is being tightened in the province as a precautionary measure. He orders a wide-ranging search for the gunmen, who number at least three and possibly four, a point upon which the witnesses differ.

Bradford, who has been in Parliament since 1974, is an outspoken critic of the Irish nationalist guerrillas. He repeatedly calls for the reimposition of capital punishment in the province and for other strong deterrent measures.

With the Rev. Ian Paisley, another hard-line Member of Parliament, Bradford had planned to visit the United States In early 1982 to counteract the publicity of the IRA, which depends heavily on the money it receives from its American sympathizers. “There is a need for Americans to recognize that Ulster is not an occupied country,” Bradford says the previous month, “and that our political history is one of which we can be proud.”

The IRA, in a statement claiming responsibility for the killing, calls Bradford “one of the key people responsible for winding up the loyalist paramilitary sectarian machine in the North.” All twelve of Northern Ireland’s Members of Parliament – ten Protestants and two Catholics – are considered likely targets in the sectarian struggle that has claimed 2,100 lives in the province since 1969.

In a statement expressing shock and sympathy, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher says, “We shall pursue with utmost vigor those who committed this wicked act.”

(From: “I.R.A. Gunmen Slay a Protestant M.P.” by William Borders, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com, November 15, 1981)


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Execution of Maurice O’Neill, Irish Republican

Maurice O’Neill, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) Captain captured in 1942 after a shootout with Irish police (Garda Síochána), is executed on November 12, 1942, one of only two people executed in independent Ireland for a non-murder offence.

O’Neill is a farmer from an Irish republican family in the farming community of Cahersiveen, County Kerry. He and his older brother Sean are dedicated Irish republicans. He fights in the Irish Republican Army’s 1942-44 Northern Campaign and is assigned to the IRA’s General Headquarters (GHQ) at the time of his capture. In the early 1930s, his brother Sean serves in the IRAs Dublin Brigade and serves on GHQ Staff IRA in various capacities from 1945 to 1955.

On October 24, 1942, O’Neill is arrested after a raid by Garda Síochána in which Garda Detective Officer Mordant is shot and killed in Donnycarney, Dublin. The mission of the police raid is the capture of Harry White, the IRA Quartermaster General. White escapes capture and O’Neill is arrested but not charged with the murder of the Detective Officer but with “shooting with intent.” It is thought that Detective Officer Mordant’s death may have been a result of crossfire between Special Branch policemen.

In 1939, the Irish legislature, the Oireachtas, passes the Offences Against the State Act 1939, which establishes the Special Criminal Court (SCC). O’Neill is promptly tried in a military court and found guilty of a capital offence. Sentenced to death, and with no appeal provided for in the relevant law, he is executed on November 12, 1942, just 19 days after his arrest, by the Irish Army in Mountjoy Prison. His body is buried in the grounds of the prison. He is one of seven IRA men executed in Ireland between September 1940 and December 1944: Patrick MacGrath, Thomas Harte, Richard Goss, George Plant, and O’Neill are executed by firing squad, while two others are hanged – Tom Williams in Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast, and Charlie Kerins in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. O’Neill and Richard Goss are the only people executed by the Irish state for a non-murder crime.

The 25-year-old O’Neill’s execution provokes particularly widespread protests, as he is a popular figure in his native County Kerry. He apparently is stoic and calm when his fate becomes clear. In a letter to his elder brother, Sean, from Arbour Hill Prison, he writes: “I suppose you saw in the papers where I met my Waterloo last Saturday night. Well, such are the fortunes of war…there is only one sentence, death or release. So I believe it is the full penalty for me. There is no good in having false hopes, hard facts must be faced.” In his last letter to his father he writes: “I am glad that I am not being reprieved as the thought of the torture I would have to endure in Portlaoise makes me shudder.”

Many Irish republican prisoners are released in 1948 as is the body of O’Neill (on September 17, 1948). O’Neill is buried in the republican plot at Kilavarnogue Cemetery, Cahersiveen, County Kerry. His name is listed on a monument in Fairview Park, Dublin, with the names other IRA members of that period who lose their lives. The Maurice O’Neill Bridge to Valentia Island is built in 1970 and named in memory of the young farmer who had been executed in 1942. In Kilflynn, County Kerry, the Crotta O’Neill’s hurling club is named after him. In 2011, an Irish television documentary focuses on how O’Neill’s execution affected his family.


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The Woolwich Pub Bombing

The Woolwich pub bombing is an attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the Kings Arms, a public house in Woolwich in southeast London, on November 7, 1974. Two people are killed in the explosion.

Standing at 1 Frances Street to the south of Woolwich Dockyard and the Royal Marine Barracks, and northwest of the Royal Artillery Barracks, the Kings Arms was built in the 19th century. In the 1881 census it is listed as the Kings Arms Hotel.

The pub is attacked by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on November 7, 1974, and two people are killed: Gunner Richard Dunne (aged 42), of the Royal Artillery (whose barracks are just 100 yards away), and Alan Horsley (aged 20), a sales clerk. A further 35 people, including the landlady, Margaret Nash, are injured. Echoing similar attacks in Guildford the previous month, a bomb, made of 6 lbs. of gelignite plus shrapnel, is thrown through a window into the pub.

Initially a left-wing extremist group called Red Flag 74 says it had placed the bomb, but responsibility is subsequently claimed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army and specifically by part of the Active Service Unit apprehended in December 1975 at the Balcombe Street siege. Two of the Guildford Four are wrongfully charged in December 1974 with involvement in the Woolwich pub bombing, and their convictions in October 1975 are eventually quashed in 1989 after a long campaign for justice.

The bombing is most likely the work of the Balcombe Street ASU, which claims sole responsibility during the 1977 trial of four members apprehended at the siege and include Joe O’Connell, who states from the dock: 

“We have instructed our lawyers to draw the attention of the court to the fact that four totally innocent people – Carole Richardson, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong – are serving massive sentences for three bombings, two in Guildford and one in Woolwich, which three of us and another man now imprisoned, have admitted that we did.”

The other three members apprehended at the siege are Hugh Doherty, Eddie Butler and Harry Duggan. Liam Quinn (a US-born member) and Brendan Dowd are also active within the unit. Sentenced to life imprisonment, the “Balcombe Street four” serve 23 years in English prisons until transferred to Portlaoise Prison, County Laois, in early 1998. They are then released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Neither the Woolwich bombing nor the wrongful imprisonments result in further charges or convictions. Three British police officers—Thomas Style, John Donaldson and Vernon Attwell—are charged in 1993 with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but each is found not guilty.

In continuation of a “troubles” overseas offensive, the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich are bombed by the IRA in December 1983.

On April 17, 2018, P2P Residential Limited obtains full planning permission to demolish the pub and redevelop it as 19 residential units, nine parking spaces and a replacement pub across the ground floor and basement.

Similar plans had been proposed in 2013. Permission was granted in 2015 for 12 residential units and a pub, but the then owner did not implement the consent. The pub is demolished for redevelopment in 2020. Following a 2022 planning application, a Tesco Express supermarket is opened on the ground floor of the building.