seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: 1997 United Kingdom General Election


by Leave a comment

1997 Coalisland Attack

On the evening of March 26, 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade launches an improvised grenade attack on the fortified Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The blast sparks an immediate reaction by an undercover Special Air Service (SAS) unit, who shoots and wounds Gareth Doris, an Irish republican and alleged IRA volunteer. The SAS unit is then surrounded by a crowd of protesters who prevent them approaching Doris or leaving. RUC officers arrive and fire plastic bullets at the crowd, allowing the special forces to leave the area.

Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that has a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents are killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. In February 1992, four IRA volunteers are killed in a gun battle with the SAS during their escape after a machine gun attack on the RUC/British Army barracks there. Three months later, an IRA bomb attack on a British Army patrol at Cappagh, in which a paratrooper loses his legs, triggers a series of clashes between local residents and British troops on May 12 and 17. A number of civilians and soldiers are injured, a soldier’s backpack radio destroyed, and two British weapons stolen. The melee is followed by a 500-strong protest in the town and bitter exchanges between Republic of Ireland and British officials. Further scuffles between civilians and soldiers are reported in the town on March 6, 1994.

At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 1997, a grenade is thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence. The RUC reports that a 1 kg device hit the fence ten feet off the ground. Another source claims that the device is a coffee-jar bomb filled with Semtex. The grenade is thrown or fired by two unidentified men. At the time of the attack, there is an art exhibition at Coalisland Heritage Hall, also known as The Mill, from where the explosion and the gunshots that follow are clearly heard. The incident lasts less than two minutes.

Just one minute after the IRA attack, bypassers hear high-velocity rounds buzzing around them. A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, get out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with “Army” stamped on the front. A source initially describes them as members of the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company. The men are firing Browning pistols and Heckler & Koch submachine guns. Witnesses say there are eight to ten gunshots, while a republican source claims that up to eighteen rounds are fired. Nineteen-year-old Gareth Doris is shot in the stomach and falls to the ground. He is allegedly returning from the local church and is in the company of a priest when he is shot. A local priest, Seamus Rice, is driving out of the church car park when his car is hit by bullets, smashing the windscreen.

Three minutes after the blast, hundreds of angry residents gather at the scene and confront the undercover soldiers. The soldiers fire live rounds at the ground and into the air to keep people back. The crowd keeps drawing back and moving forward again until 9:50 p.m., when the RUC arrives and begins firing plastic bullets at the protesters. Two women are wounded by plastic bullets and the undercover soldiers then flee in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time. Sinn Féin councillor Francie Molloy claims that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris’s life in the process. Witnesses allegedly fear an undercover soldier brandishing a pistol would have killed the wounded Doris with a shot to his head.

Afterward, hundreds of residents are forced to leave their homes as security forces search the area near the base. This keeps tensions high, according to local republican activist Bernadette McAliskey. Two men are later questioned by the RUC about the attack.

The attack, along with two large bombings the same day in Wilmslow, England, raise concerns that the IRA is trying to influence the upcoming UK general election. Martin McGuinness describes the shooting as “murderous,” while independent councillor Jim Canning says that more than a dozen soldiers “were threatening to shoot anybody who moved […] while a young man lay shot on the ground.” Republican sources claim that this is another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP Ken Maginnis, however, praises the SAS for their actions.

Gareth Doris is admitted to South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon, where he is arrested after undergoing surgery. He is later transferred to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He is later convicted for involvement in the bombing and sentenced to ten years in jail, before being released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Gareth is the cousin of Tony Doris, an IRA member killed in an SAS ambush in the nearby village of Coagh on June 3, 1991, and a cousin of Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill. According to Sinn Féin councillor Brendan Doris, another cousin of Gareth, “He absolutely denies being involved in terrorist activity of any description.” Amnesty International raises its concerns over the shooting and the fact that no warning is given beforehand.

DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting leads to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack. In February 2020, he is convicted by a Diplock court in Belfast. He denies the charges but receives a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. The prosecutor acknowledges that Campbell would have been released by this time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement but argues that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.

On July 5, 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base is the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engages an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks. One female officer is wounded. The former RUC station at Coalisland is eventually shut down in 2006 and sold for private development in 2010.

(Pictured: Coalisland RUC/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Joe Hendron, Northern Ireland Politician

Joseph Gerard Hendron, Northern Ireland politician and a member of the centre-left Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), is born on November 12, 1932, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Hendron, also a local GP physician for forty years, is first elected as a political representative of Belfast West in 1975 to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. He is later elected to Belfast City Council in 1981 and in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Hendron is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West between April 1992 and May 1997 in the UK Parliament in London. He takes the seat from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams at his third attempt with a majority of one percent. He becomes the only nationalist MP to defeat Adams. The seat had previously been held for the SDLP by Gerry Fitt, later Lord Fitt, until 1983. He attracts unprecedented cross-community support from Nationalists and Unionists in the constituency. This is the only example where an SDLP candidate receives a high enough number of Unionist votes in Belfast West to help unseat a Sinn Féin candidate. Adams regains the seat at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

In 1996, Hendron is elected to the Northern Ireland Forum and in 1998 to the newly reconvened Northern Ireland Assembly. However, he loses his seat in the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election to a member of Ian Paisley‘s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Hendron is appointed a member of the Northern Ireland Parades Commission in 2005. He retires from this role in December 2010.

On June 11, 2019, Hendron escapes with just bruising and a damaged collarbone after he is struck by a van and thrown up into the air while crossing Balmoral Avenue. He says he is probably partly to blame for the accident as he decided to cross the street in front of a van that was trying to pull out onto the main road. Apparently, the driver of the van did not see Hendron and began to pull out, striking him.

(Photo by Mark Pearce/Pacemaker)


by Leave a comment

Death of Patrick Mayhew, British Barrister, Politician & Northern Ireland Secretary

Patrick Barnabas Burke Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, PC, QC, DL, British barrister, politician and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who serves during a critical period in the Northern Ireland peace process, dies at his home in Kent, England, on June 25, 2016. He is a key figure in the December 1993 Downing Street Declaration which leads to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire on August 31, 1994

Mayhew is born on September 11, 1929. His father, George Mayhew, is a decorated army officer turned oil executive. His mother, Sheila Roche, descendant of members of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy, is a relative of James Roche, 3rd Baron Fermoy, an Irish National Federation MP for East Kerry. Through his father, Mayhew is descended from the Victorian social commentator Henry Mayhew. He is educated at Tonbridge School, an all boys public school in Tonbridge, Kent.

Mayhew then serves as an officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, studies law at Balliol College, Oxford, and is president of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and of the Oxford Union. He is called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1955.

In 1963, Mayhew marries The Rev. Jean Gurney, and they have four sons.

Mayhew contests Dulwich at the 1970 United Kingdom general election, but the incumbent Labour Party member, Samuel Silkin, beats him by 895 votes. He is Member of Parliament (MP) for Tunbridge Wells from its creation at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, standing down at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

Mayhew is Under Secretary of Employment from 1979 to 1981, then Minister of State at the Home Office from 1981 to 1983. After this, he serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1983 to 1987, and then Attorney General for England and Wales and simultaneously Attorney General for Northern Ireland from 1987 to 1992.

Mayhew is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1992 to 1997, the longest anyone has served in this office.

Mayhew is one of only five Ministers (Tony Newton, Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. This represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, in the early 19th century.

Mayhew is knighted in 1983. On June 1997, he is given a life peerage as Baron Mayhew of Twysden, of Kilndown in the County of Kent. He retires from the House of Lords on June 1, 2015.

Mayhew suffers from cancer and Parkinson’s disease in his later years. He dies at the age of 86 on June 25, 2016, in his home in Kent.

Mayhew’s son, The Honourable Henry Mayhew, appears in the fourth episode of the series The Secret History Of Our Streets, discussing life in the Portland Road, Notting Hill, London. Another son, Tristram, co-founds the outdoor adventure company Go Ape. His son Jerome is the Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Broadland in Norfolk since December 2019.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Sir Oliver Napier, First Leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance Party

Sir Oliver Napier, the first leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, is born in Belfast on July 11, 1935. In 1974 he serves as the first and only Legal Minister and head of the Office of Legal Reform in the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive set up by the Sunningdale Agreement.

Napier is educated at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast and Queen’s University Belfast before starting work as a solicitor.

Napier joins the Ulster Liberal Party, rising to become Vice President by 1969. That year, he leads a group of four party members who join the New Ulster Movement, accepting the post of joint Chairman of its political committee. The Liberal Party promptly expels him, but, working with Bob Cooper, he uses his position to establish a new political party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, which seeks to become a political force that can command support from across the divided communities of the province, but remain pro-union. This aims to offer an alternative to what he describes as the sectarianism of the Ulster Unionist Party. Despite his faith he is a supporter of the Union.

Napier serves as the party’s joint leader from 1970 until 1972, then as its sole leader from 1973 to 1984. Under his leadership Alliance participates in successive assemblies that seek to solve the debate on the province’s position, including the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973 in which he is a minister in the power-sharing Executive. In 1979 he comes closer to winning a seat in the Westminster Parliament than any other Alliance candidate up to that point when he is less than a thousand votes behind Peter Robinson‘s winning total in Belfast East in a tight three-way race. This record is beaten in 2010, when Naomi Long ousts Robinson from the same seat. When Napier steps down as leader in 1984 he receives many plaudits for his work. The following year he is knighted and in 1989 he stands down from Belfast City Council, seemingly to retire.

However, in 1995 Napier returns to the political fray when he contests the North Down by-election for the Alliance, standing again in the 1997 United Kingdom general election. In 1996 he is elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for North Down. Prior to his death he is the last prominent member of the Ulster Liberal Party.

Napier serves on the Board of Governors of Lagan College, the first integrated school in Northern Ireland.

Napier dies at the age of 75 on July 2, 2011. He is survived by his wife, Briege, whom he marries in 1961, three sons and five daughters, and 23 grandchildren. A son predeceases him.


by Leave a comment

Mo Mowlam Presented International Woman of the Year Award

mo-mowlan

Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, English Labour Party politician, is presented with the International Woman of the Year Award at a ceremony in Dublin on October 23, 2001. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson wins the Overall Award at the Irish Tatler Women of the Year Awards.

Mowlam is born on September 18, 1949 in Watford, Hertfordshire, England but grows up in Coventry. She starts her education at Chiswick Girls’ grammar school in West London, then moves to Coundon Court school in Coventry which, at the time, is one of the first comprehensive schools in the country. She then studies at Trevelyan College, Durham University, reading sociology and anthropology. She joins the Labour Party in her first year.

Mowlam becomes the Secretary of the Durham Union Society in 1969 and later goes on to become the Vice-President of the Durham Student’s Union. She works for then-MP Tony Benn in London and American writer Alvin Toffler in New York, moving to the United States with her then-boyfriend and studying for a PhD in political science at the University of Iowa.

Mowlam is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1977 and at Florida State University in Tallahassee from 1977 to 1979. During her time in Tallahassee, someone breaks into her apartment. She suspects that it is Ted Bundy, the serial killer and rapist who is thought to have murdered at least 35 young women and attacked several others. She returns to England in 1979 to take up an appointment at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Having failed to win selection for the 1983 general election, Mowlam is selected as Labour candidate for the safe seat of Redcar after James Tinn stands down. She takes the seat in the 1987 general election, becoming the Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland later that year. Together with Shadow Chancellor John Smith, she is one of the architects of Labour’s “Prawn Cocktail Offensive” dedicated to reassuring the UK’s financial sector about Labour’s financial rectitude.

Mowlam joins the Shadow Cabinet when John Smith becomes leader of the Labour Party in 1992, holding the title of Shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage. During this time, she antagonises both monarchists and republicans by calling for Buckingham Palace to be demolished and replaced by a “modern” palace built at public expense. Later, her willingness to speak her mind, often without regard to the consequences, is seen as her greatest strength by her supporters.

Following Smith’s death in 1994, Mowlam, alongside Peter Kilfoyle, becomes a principal organiser of Tony Blair‘s campaign for the Labour leadership. After his victory, Blair makes her Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She initially resists being appointed to the position, preferring an economic portfolio, but, after accepting it, she throws her weight into the job.

Mowlam oversees the negotiations which lead to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. She is successful in helping to restore an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire and including Sinn Féin in multi-party talks about the future of Northern Ireland. In an attempt to persuade the Ulster loyalists to participate in the peace process, she pays an unprecedented and potentially dangerous visit to loyalist prisoners in HM Prison Maze, meeting convicted murderers face-to-face and unaccompanied.

Mowlam witnesses the Good Friday Agreement signing in 1998, which leads to the temporary establishment of a devolved power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. However, an increasingly difficult relationship with Unionist parties means her role in the talks is ultimately taken over by Tony Blair and his staff.

Mowlam’s deteriorating relationship with Unionists is the key reason she is replaced by Peter Mandelson as Northern Ireland Secretary in October 1999. Her move to the relatively lowly position of Minister for the Cabinet Office possibly involves other factors, notably her health and her popularity. On September 4, 2000, she announces her intention to retire from Parliament and relinquishes her seat at the 2001 general election.

Five months before the 1997 general election, Mowlam is diagnosed with a brain tumor, a fact that she tries to keep private. She appears to suffer from balance problems as a result of her radiotherapy. According to her husband, she falls on July 30, 2005, receiving head injuries and never regaining consciousness. Her living will, in which she asks not to be resuscitated, is honoured. On August 12, 2005, Mowlan is moved to Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury, Kent, where she dies seven days later, on August 19, 2005, aged 55.

Mowlam is an atheist and is cremated in Sittingbourne on September 1, 2005 at a non-religious service conducted by Reverend Richard Coles, formerly of the 1980s band The Communards. Half of her ashes were scattered at Hillsborough Castle, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s official residence, and the other half in her former parliamentary constituency of Redcar.


by Leave a comment

Birth of James Molyneaux, Northern Irish Politician

james-molyneaux

James Henry Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, Northern Irish unionist politician and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1979 to 1995, is born in Killead, County Antrim on August 27, 1920. He is a leading member and sometime Vice-President of the Conservative Monday Club. An Orangeman, he is also Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution from 1971 to 1995. He is an unrelenting though peaceful supporter of the Protestant cause during the factional conflict that divides Northern Ireland from the 1960s until the early 21st century.

Molyneaux is educated at nearby Aldergrove School. Although he is raised an Anglican, as a child he briefly attends a local Catholic primary school. He leaves school at age 15 and works on his father’s poultry farm. When a Catholic church near his home is burned down by Ulster loyalist arsonists in the late 1990s, he helps to raise funds for its rebuilding.

In World War II Molyneaux serves in the Royal Air Force between 1941 and 1946. He participates in the D-Day landings in FranceFrance and in the liberation of the Belsen-Belsen concentration camp, and occasionally gives interviews about what he sees there. On April 1, 1947, he is promoted to flying officer.

After demobilization Molyneaux establishes a printing business with his uncle, and in 1946 he joins the UUP. He is first elected to local government in 1964 and enters Parliament six years later. He staunchly opposes all power-sharing deals, notably the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, which gives Dublin an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland and paves the way for devolution.

Molyneaux lacks the firebrand public image of his longtime rival Ian Paisley, who in 1971 breaks with the UUP to form the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). He never acquiesces to the Good Friday Agreement, which calls for the devolution of Northern Ireland’s government from London to Belfast, however, unlike Paisley and David Trimble, who in 1997 succeeds Molyneaux as the UUP leader and in April 1998 signs the devolution accord.

On retiring as UUP leader, Molyneaux is knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1996. The following year, after standing down as an MP at the 1997 general election, he is created a life peer on June 10, 1997, as Baron Molyneaux of Killead, of Killead in the County of Antrim.

James Molyneaux dies at the age of 94 in Antrim, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on March 9, 2015, Commonwealth Day.