O’Conor is the second of six sons of Denis O’Conor and Catharine O’Conor (neé Browne), who also have six daughters. The O’Conors are Catholic, descendants of a princely family in the west of Ireland. His grandfather is the historian Charles O’Conor, his brother the historian Matthew O’Conor.
O’Conor is educated at the Pontifical Irish College, Rome, from 1779 to 1791 and is appointed parish priest of Kilkeevan, County Roscommon, in 1789. In 1796 he prepares for publication a memoir of his grandfather, the historian Charles O’Connor, which highlights the efforts made by him and other Irish Catholics of substance to obtain the constitutional repeal of the penal laws. The first volume is suppressed as dangerous to the family and the manuscript of the second is burned by O’Conor before reaching the printer. He destroys what he believes to be the whole run of the first volume and ten folios of the second, by casting them into a sewer, which communicates with the River Poddle. However, copies of the first volume survive in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Barrister at Law (BL).
In 1798 O’Conor is invited to become chaplain to Mary Nugent, the Marchioness of Buckingham, and to organize and translate a collection of Gaelic manuscripts at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. With him he brings papers of his grandfather to Stowe, including fifty-nine Gaelic manuscripts. There he writes Columbanus ad Hibernos (1810–13), a series of letters supporting the royal veto on Catholic episcopal appointments in Ireland. These are answered by Francis Plowden and see him suspended from duties of parish priest by John Troy, Archbishop of Dublin. In his duties as librarian, he edits the Annals of the Four Masters, and other chronicles from the Stowe Library as Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres (1814–26), an edition regarded as unreliable.
O’Conor experiences mental illness and by 1827 is suffering from the delusion that he is deliberately being starved by order of the Marquess of Buckingham. He leaves Stowe on July 4, 1827. The Nation (March 26, 1853) claims that he is thereafter a patient at Dr. Harty’s asylum in Finglas, Dublin, apparently along with John Lanigan, whom he knew in the Irish College. His family twice unavailingly demands that the paper’s editor issue a correction.
O’Conor dies on July 29, 1828, in his family’s house at Bellanagare. He is buried in Ballintober Cemetery, Castlerea, County Roscommon.
The Protestant forces are taken by surprise and there is little fighting, reflected in the term “Break,” a Scottish word for rout. Victory secures eastern Ulster for the Jacobites but they fail to fully exploit their success.
While much of the Protestant population of east Ulster supports the claim of William III to thrones of Ireland, England and Scotland, the rest of Ireland, including the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and the army, support James II. As a result, war breaks out in Ireland after James is deposed in the Glorious Revolution. At the start of the conflict, the Jacobites are left in control of two fortified positions at Carrickfergus and Charlemont in territory which is predominantly Williamite in sympathy. The local Williamites raise a militia and meet in a council at Hillsborough. They make an ineffective assault on Carrickfergus. However, this is easily beaten off and a local Catholic cleric named O’Hegarty reports that the Williamite are badly armed and trained.
The Jacobite commander in the north is Richard Hamilton, an experienced soldier who serves with the French military from 1671 to 1685, when he is appointed a colonel in the Irish Army. In September 1688, he and his regiment are transferred to England. When James flees into exile, he is held in the Tower of London. Released on parole by William in February, he is sent to negotiate with Talbot but drops this mission once back in Ireland. Alexander Osbourne, a Presbyterian clergyman, is sent to offer the Hillsborough council a pardon in return for surrender but they refuse, reportedly encouraged by Osbourne. On March 8, Hamilton marches north from Drogheda with 2,500 men to subdue the Williamites by force.
On March 14 Hamilton crosses the River Lagan and attacks a 3,000 strong Williamite force under Lord Mount Alexander at Dromore. Alexander’s cavalry falls back in disorder following a charge by the Jacobite dragoons. Seeing this, Hamilton orders a general advance of his infantry and the Williamite foot flee toward Dromore itself. They are overtaken in the village by the Jacobite cavalry and slaughtered, roughly 400 being killed and the rest fleeing for their lives.
Lord Mount Alexander rides to Donaghadee and takes a ship to England, while many other Protestants leave for Northern England or Scotland. Hamilton’s men capture Hillsborough, along with £1,000 and large stocks of food but fail to pursue their opponents. This allows the bulk of the militia under Rawdon and Henry Baker to reach Coleraine, then make their way to Derry, where they take part in the successful defence of the city.
Drew is born on September 18, 1838, in Victoria Place, Belfast, into the large family of Rev. Thomas Drew, son of a Limerick grocer, and Isabella Drew (née Dalton). He is one of four sons and eight daughters of the couple, although most of the children die young. His sister, Catherine Drew, is a prominent Londonjournalist and an early champion of women’s rights.
Drew is educated in Belfast and in 1854 articled to the Antrimcounty surveyor and architect Sir Charles Lanyon, before moving to work in Dublin in 1862, where he becomes principal assistant to William George Murray. In 1865, he becomes the diocesan architect of the united dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore. From this point forward, church architecture is his principal activity. He is consulting architect for both St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.
Drew marries Adelaide Anne, sister of William George Murray, in 1871.
Among other projects, Drew is responsible for the design of the Ulster Bank on Dame Street, Rathmines Town Hall and the Graduates’ Building at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He takes an interest in historic buildings and is the first to draw serious attention to the architectural and historic importance of the St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin’s oldest parish church, in 1866. He produces detailed plans of the church for which he wins the Fitzgerald medal from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), carries out excavations and draws up a paper on the church and its history.
From 1885 to 1892, Richard Orpen works with Drew as a managing assistant. Drew’s most significant work in Belfast is St. Anne’s Cathedral, completed in 1899.
From 1879 onward Drew lives in Gortnadrew, one half of a pair of semi-detached houses of his own design, on Alma Road in Monkstown, County Dublin. For many years he serves as a commissioner of the local township of Blackrock, Dublin. He dies on March 13, 1910, a month after an unsuccessful operation for appendicitis. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.
Drew is commemorated in a memorial brass in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. His wife survives him by three years and in her will bequeaths back to the RIAI the loving cup presented to her husband in commemoration of his knighthood, and to the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery (Ulster Museum since 1962) an 1852 portrait of his father Thomas. A portrait of Drew by Walter Osborne is held in the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) in Dublin.
As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Harrington represents Westmeath from February 1883 to November 1885. In 1885 he is elected for the new constituency of Dublin Harbour, which he represents until his death. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin three times from 1901 to 1904.
Harrington owns two newspapers, United Ireland and the Kerry Sentinel, and is a member of the so-called Bantry band of prominent nationalist politicians from the Bantry vicinity. They are also more pejoratively known as the Pope’s brass band. Tim Healy is another prominent member of this unofficial group.
In 1884, Harrington publishes a pamphlet, “Maamtrasna Massacres – Impeachment of the Trials,” in which he dismantles the Crown Prosecution’s case against the eight men accused of the murders of the Joyce family on August 17, 1882. He provides evidence that Crown Prosecutor George Bolton had deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), who was hanged, and four men who were sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude.
Thereafter Harrington becomes excluded from Redmond’s closed circle of confidants, retains sympathy with O’Brien, and represents the interests of the tenant farmers at the 1902 Land Conference negotiations which lead to the enactment of the unprecedented WyndhamLand Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.
On September 7, 1901, as the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Harrington kicks off at the official ceremony to open Bohemian F.C.‘s new home, Dalymount Park.
Harrington retains the party nomination for the Dublin Harbour constituency in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election, largely because of local divisions about who should succeed him and because an O’Brienite offer to pay his election expenses deters rivals from going to the polls. He decides that the finely balanced result of the general election means that every nationalist vote would be required at Westminster. He therefore travels to London, but shortly after attending the parliamentary party meeting on February 23 he suffers a stroke. After some days’ recuperation he is brought home to Dublin, but his condition deteriorates and he dies on March 12, 1910, at his home, 70 Harcourt Street. He is buried near the Parnell circle at Glasnevin Cemetery.
Harrington is celebrated by a statue erected in 2001 at the east end of Castletownbere near the Millbrook bar.
The Littlejohn brothers are jailed on August 3, 1973, for a £67,000 robbery at an Allied Irish Banks branch on Grafton Street, Dublin, in October 1972, the biggest to date in Irish history.
During their trial the brothers claim to have been working for the British Government against the IRA. They say they had been told to stage the robbery to discredit the republican organisation and force the Irish Government to introduce tougher measures against its members. The British Government, however, denies all knowledge of the brothers.
Kenneth is sentenced to twenty years while his brother receives a fifteen-year term. During their time in prison the brothers exhaust all the appeals processes, with their final appeal being turned down in January 1974.
The brothers escape from Mountjoy during an exercise period. They scale the 25-foot-high main prison wall with homemade ropes while other prisoners distract the guards. However, the pair is spotted as they climb an outer wall.
Keith, 29, who has injured his ankle, is recaptured near the prison. Kenneth, 32, however, disappears without trace and is believed to be heading for the border with Northern Ireland. He is recaptured in December 1974. The brothers are released early in 1981 on condition they leave the Republic of Ireland.
Keith’s successful bid for freedom comes as a surprise. He has been weakened by a hunger strike he has been conducting since February in support of a demand for political prisoner status.
From the time the brothers are jailed the British Government steadfastly continues to deny all knowledge of them.
But the brothers’ tale does receive partial validation the prior year. Ireland’s former Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, admits he had been given diplomatic reports from the British authorities in January 1973 about the UK’s contact with the Littlejohn brothers.
In 1982, Nottingham Crown Court jails Kenneth Littlejohn for six years for his part in a £1,300 armed robbery at the Old Manor House, North Wingfield, Chesterfield, England. Keith Littlejohn, however, is cleared of a similar offence.
Ireland wins the rugby Triple Crown for first time on March 10, 1894. In rugby union, the Triple Crown (Irish: An Choróin Triarach) is an honour contested annually by the national teams of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales as part of the Six Nations Championship. If any one team manages to win all their games against the other three then they win the Triple Crown.
The history of the Ireland national rugby union team begins in 1875, when Ireland plays its first international match, a 0–7 loss against England. Ireland has competed in the Six Nations (formerly known as the Five Nations and originally known as the Home Nations) rugby tournament since 1883. Ireland has also competed at the Rugby World Cup every four years since its inception.
Dublin University is the first organised rugby football club in Ireland, having been founded in 1854. The club is organised by students who have learned the game while at English public schools. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and following the adoption of a set of official rules in 1868, rugby football begins to spread quickly throughout Ireland, resulting in the formation of several other clubs which are still in existence, including North of Ireland F.C. (1868), Wanderers F.C. (1869), Queen’s University RFC (1869), Youghal RFC (1869), Lansdowne F.C. (1873), Dungannon RFC (1873), County Carlow F.C. (1873), University College Cork RFC (1874) and Ballinasloe RFC (1875) which amalgamates with Athlone RFC to form Buccaneers RFC.
In 1874, the Irish Football Union. reconstituted as the Irish Rugby Football Union after unification with the North of Ireland Union, is formed by Dublin University Football Club, Wanderers F.C., Engineers F.C., Lansdowne F.C., Bray, Portora, Dungannon RFC and Monaghan. Ireland loses their first test match against England 0-7 at The Oval on February 15, 1875. Both teams field twenty players in this match, as is customary in the early years of rugby union. It was not until 1877 that the number of players is reduced from twenty to fifteen. Ireland’s first home game is also against England in the same year. It is held at the Leinster Cricket Club in Rathmines as Lansdowne Road is deemed unsuitable. The first match at Lansdowne Road is held on March 11, 1878, with England beating Ireland by 2 goals and 1 try to nil.
It is not until 1881 that Ireland first wins a test, beating Scotland at Ormeau Cricket Ground in Belfast. Ireland turns up two men short for their game in Cardiff in 1884 and has to borrow two Welsh players. The first victory Ireland has at Lansdowne Road takes place on February 5, 1887. It is also their first win over England, by two goals to nil. On March 3, 1888, Ireland records their first win over Wales with a goal, a try and a drop goal to nil.
In 1894, Ireland follows the Welsh model of using seven backs instead of six for the first time. After victory over England at Blackheath, Ireland wins back-to-back matches for the first time when recording their first win over Scotland on February 24, 1894. Ireland goes on to beat Wales in Belfast on March 10, 1894, and wins the Triple Crown for the first time.
In the 1890s, rugby is primarily a game for the Protestant middle class, the only Catholic in Edmund Forrest’s 1894 team is Thomas Crean. Of the eighteen players used in the three games, thirteen are from three Dublin clubs – Wanderers, Dublin University and Bective Rangers – and the remaining five are from Ulster. They go on to win the Home international championship twice more before the century is out (1896 and 1899), so that by 1901 all four of the Home Unions have tasted success at a game that is growing in popularity with players and spectators.
(Pictured: The 1894 Ireland Rugby Union team, Kildare Observer, Irish News Archives)
Moylett is born into a farming family and emigrates to London as a young man working in various departments in Harrods for five years before returning to Ireland in 1902. He opens a grocery and provisions business in Ballina and, as it proves successful, he later establishes branches in Galway and London between 1910 and 1914. The London-branch is sold at the outbreak of World War I.
Having founded and organised the recruitment and funding of the Mayo activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) he also acts as a justice of the Sinn Féin courts. He is advised to leave the area due to death threats from the Black and Tans and their burning down of his commercial premises in Ballina. On one occasion during the period, according to his military statements, he prevents some over-enthusiastic volunteers from attempting to kidnap and assassinate Prince George, Future King of England, who is sailing and holidaying in the Mayo/Donegal region at the time.
Relocating to Dublin, the Irish overseas Trading Company is formed with a former director of Imperial Chemical Industries. Moylett becomes involved in the Irish nationalist movement and is active in the Mayo and Galway areas during the Irish War of Independence. The Irish Overseas Trading Company, of which he is one of two directors, acts as a front for the importation of armaments covered by consignments of trade goods. According to his subsequent detailed military statements archived in the bureau of military history by the Irish Army, the consignments are imported to a number of warehouses in the Dublin Docks with the three keyholders to the warehouses being Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.
With Harry Boland in the United States with Éamon de Valera, Moylett succeeds him as president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and, in October 1920, is selected to go to London as the personal envoy of Arthur Griffith. During the next several months, he is involved in secret discussions with British government officials on the recognition of Dáil Éireann, a general amnesty for members of the Irish Republican Army and the organisation of a peace conference to end hostilities between both parties.
Moylett is assisted by John Steele, the London editor of the Chicago Tribune, who helps him contact high-level members of the British Foreign Office. One of these officials, in particular C.J. Phillps, has frequent meetings with him. Discussions center on the possibility of an armistice and amnesty in Ireland with the hope for a settlement in which a national Parliament will be established with safeguards for Unionists of Ulster. These meetings are later attended by H. A. L. Fisher, the President of the Board of Education and one of the most outspoken opponents of unauthorised reprisals against the Irish civilian population by the British government. One of the main points Fisher expresses to Moylett is the necessity of Sinn Féin to compromise on its demands for a free and united republic. His efforts are hindered however, both to the slow and confused pace of the peace negotiations as well as the regularly occurring violence in Ireland, most especially the Bloody Sunday incident on November 21, 1920, which happens while he is in London speaking with members of the cabinet. During the Irish Civil War, although a supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he chooses not to participate in the Free State government party which he views as an amalgam of Unionists and the old Irish Party. In 1926, he is a founding member of the Clann Éireann party and becomes an early advocate of the withholding of land annuities.
In 1930, Moylett and his family move to Dublin, and by 1940 his political activities in the city have become a concern for the Gardai. He begins moving in antisemitic, pro-German far-right politic circles while in Dublin, engaging with the likes of Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin and George Griffith. Indeed alongside Griffith, he is deeply involved with the founding of the People’s National Party, an explicitly anti-Jewish Pro-Nazi party whose membership overlaps greatly with that of the Irish Friends of Germany. He leaves the People’s National Party in October 1939 only when he is expelled from the party and his position as treasurer on charges of embezzling party funds. In 1941 he continues to support these far-right groups when he aids Ó Cuinneagáin in setting up the Youth Ireland Association, a group gathered to fight “a campaign against the Jews and Freemasons, also against all cosmopolitan agenda.” When the group is found to be stealing guns from army reservists, the Gardai shuts the group down in September 1942.
The 1973 Northern Ireland border poll is a referendum held in Northern Ireland on March 8, 1973, on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or join with the Republic of Ireland to form a united Ireland. It is the first time that a major referendum has been held in any region of the United Kingdom. The referendum is boycotted by nationalists and results in a conclusive victory for remaining in the UK. On a voter turnout of 58.7 percent, 98.9 percent vote to remain in the United Kingdom, meaning the outcome among registered voters is not affected by the boycott.
The Unionist parties support the “UK” option, as do the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI). However, the Alliance Party is also critical of the poll. While it supports the holding of periodic plebiscites on the constitutional link with Great Britain, the party feels that to avoid the border poll becoming a “sectarian head count,” it should ask other relevant questions such as whether the people support the UK’s white paper on Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, on February 5, 1973, the party’s chairman, Jim Hendron, states that “Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Féin all-Ireland republic or a Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people.”
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), however, calls for a boycott of the referendum, urging its members on January 23, 1973 “to ignore completely the referendum and reject this extremely irresponsible decision by the British Government.” Gerry Fitt, leader of the SDLP, says he has organised a boycott to stop an escalation in violence.
The civil authorities are prepared for violence on polling day. They put in place mobile polling stations which can be rushed into use if there is bomb damage to scheduled poll buildings. Two days before the referendum a British soldier, Guardsman Anton Brown of the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, is shot dead in Belfast as the army searches for weapons and explosives which can be used to disrupt the upcoming referendum.
As a political response to the referendum, the Provisional Irish Republican Army also plants four car bombs in London that day, two of which detonate, causing one death and injuring over two hundred.
The vote results in an overwhelming majority of those who voted stating they wish to remain in the UK. The nationalist boycott contributes to a turnout of only 58.7% of the electorate. In addition to taking a majority of votes cast, the UK option receives the support of 57.5% of the total electorate. According to the BBC, less than 1% of the Catholic population turn out to vote.
The referendum electorate consists of 1,030,084 adults registered to vote out of a total population of approximately 1,529,993.
The Government of the United Kingdom takes no action on receipt of the referendum result, as the result is in favour of the status quo (Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK). It is followed by an Assembly election on June 28, 1973.
Brian Faulkner, who had been the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, claims the result leaves “no doubt in any one’s mind what the wishes of Ulster’s people are. Despite an attempted boycott by some, almost 600,000 electors voted for the maintenance of the union with Great Britain.” He also claims that the poll showed that a “quarter of the [N.I.] Catholic population who voted … voted for the maintenance of the union” and that the result is a “blow … against IRA mythology.”
(Pictured: Map of Northern Ireland (yellow) within the United Kingdom.)
Murray is born in Macroom, County Cork on January 17, 1873, the seventh of the eleven children of Cornelius Murray and Honora Murray (née Kelleher). He is educated at St. Patrick’s Teacher Training College in Drumcondra, Dublin. He works as a schoolteacher and in 1900 is appointed headmaster of the national school in Rathduff, County Cork. His first play, The Wheel of Fortune, is produced in 1909 by the Little Theatre in Cork, a theatre he co-founded with Daniel Corkery, Con O’Leary and Terence MacSwiney. The play is revised and renamed Sovereign Love in 1913. In 1915, he moves to Dublin as headmaster of the Model Schools at Inchicore, where he remains until his retirement from teaching in 1932.
Murray’s play Birthright is performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1910 and establishes him as a writer of force. In all, he writes fifteen plays, all of which are produced by the Abbey. His two most highly regarded works are Maurice Harte (1912) and Autumn Fire (1924). Both of these and Birthright are performed in New York City on Broadway, with Autumn Fire having a run of 71 performances. He also writes an autobiographical novel Spring Horizon (1937).
It has been stated both by A. DeGiacomo and by R. Allen Cave that, in the Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Murray is awarded a bronze medal for his play Birthright. However, according to the official record for the games, although Murray is a participant in the literature category with this play and also with Maurice Harte, he does not win a medal.
In his later years, Murray holds a number of significant positions: director of the Authors’ Guild of Ireland, vice-president of the Irish Academy of Letters and president of the Irish Playwrights’ Association. He is awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the National University of Ireland in 1949. He dies on March 7, 1959, at his home on Sandymount Strand, Ballsbridge, Dublin, of viral pneumonia, his wife having predeceased him by fifteen years. His extensive papers, containing scripts of almost all of his fifteen plays, correspondence, clippings, reviews, and other material, are held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
The trio is believed to be planning a car bomb attack on British military personnel in Gibraltar. They are shot dead while leaving the territory, having parked a car. All three are found to be unarmed, and no bomb is discovered in the car, leading to accusations that the British government conspired to murder them. An inquest in Gibraltar rules that the authorities had acted lawfully but the European Court of Human Rights holds that, although there had been no conspiracy, the planning and control of the operation is so flawed as to make the use of lethal force almost inevitable. The deaths are the first in a chain of violent events in a fourteen-day period. On March 16, the funeral of the three IRA members is attacked, leaving three mourners dead. At the funeral of one, two British soldiers are murdered after driving into the procession in error.
In late 1987, British authorities become aware of an IRA plan to detonate a bomb outside the governor’s residence in Gibraltar. On the day of the shootings, Savage, a known IRA member, is seen parking a car near the assembly area for the parade. Fellow members McCann and Farrell are seen crossing the border shortly afterward. As SAS personnel move to intercept the three, Savage splits from McCann and Farrell and runs south. Two soldiers pursue him while two others approach McCann and Farrell. The soldiers report seeing the IRA members make threatening movements when challenged, so the soldiers shoot them multiple times. All three are found to be unarmed, and Savage’s car does not contain a bomb.
When the bodies are searched, a set of car keys is found on Farrell. Spanish and British authorities conduct enquiries to trace the vehicle. Two days after the shootings, their enquiries lead them to a red Ford Fiesta in a car park in Marbella, fifty miles from Gibraltar. The car contains a large quantity of Semtex surrounded by 200 rounds of ammunition, along with four detonators and two timers.
The IRA notifies the McCann, Savage, and Farrell families of the deaths on the evening of March 6, and the following day publicly announces that the three were members of the IRA. A senior member of Sinn Féin, Joe Austin, is tasked with recovering the bodies. On March 9, he and Terence Farrell (Mairéad Farrell’s brother) travel to Gibraltar to identify the bodies. A charter aircraft flies the corpses to Dublin on March 14. Two thousand people wait to meet the coffins in Dublin, which are then driven north to Belfast. At the border, the Northern Irish authorities meet the procession with a large number of police and military vehicles, and insist on intervals between the hearses, causing tensions between police and members of the procession.
The joint funeral of McCann, Farrell and Savage takes place on March 16 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) agree to maintain a minimal presence at the funeral in exchange for guarantees from the families that there will be no salute by masked gunmen. This agreement is leaked to Michael Stone, who describes himself as a “freelance Loyalistparamilitary.” During the burial, Stone throws grenades into the crowd and begins shooting with an automatic pistol, injuring 60 people. Several mourners chase Stone, throwing rocks and shouting abuse. Stone continues shooting and throwing grenades at his pursuers, killing three of them. He is chased onto a road and his pursuers beat him until the RUC arrive to extract and arrest him.
Two months after the shootings, the documentary “Death on the Rock” is broadcast on British television. Using reconstructions and eyewitness accounts, it presents the possibility that the three IRA members had been unlawfully killed.
The inquest into the deaths begins in September 1988. The authorities state that the IRA team had been tracked to Málaga, where they were lost by the Spanish police, and that the three did not re-emerge until Savage was seen parking his car in Gibraltar. The soldiers testify that they believed the suspected bombers had been reaching for weapons or a remote detonator. Several eyewitnesses recall seeing the three shot without warning, with their hands up, or while they were on the ground. One witness, who told “Death on the Rock” he saw a soldier fire at Savage repeatedly while he was on the ground, retracts his statement at the inquest, prompting an inquiry into the programme which largely vindicated it. The inquest returns a verdict of lawful killing. Dissatisfied, the families take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. Delivering its judgement in 1995, the court finds that the operation had been in violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights as the authorities’ failure to arrest the suspects at the border, combined with the information given to the soldiers, rendered the use of lethal force almost inevitable. The decision is cited as a landmark case in the use of force by the state.
(Pictured: The three IRA members shot in Gibraltar: (l to r) Sean Savage, Mairéad Farrell, Daniel McCann, PA Archive / PA Images)
seamus dubhghaill 