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Tag Archives: Arnon Street Massacre


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Death of John William Nixon, Politician & N.I. Police Leader

John William Nixon, MBE, a unionist politician and police leader in Northern Ireland, dies on May 11, 1949, at his home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He is allegedly responsible for several sectarian atrocities, including the McMahon killings and the Arnon Street killings. Eyewitnesses to the Arnon street killings claim they can identify the police involved and allege that their leader is District Inspector Nixon. It is widely believed that Nixon’s “murder gang” within the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) hunted down and murdered Catholics as reprisals for the killing of police.

Nixon is born on June 1, 1877, in Graddum, a townland located between the village of Kilnaleck and the hamlet of Crosskeys in County Cavan. He becomes a district inspector in the RIC, and transfers to its successor in the newly created region of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). By 1922, he is responsible for controlling access to the Roman Catholic Ardoyne and Marrowbone areas of Belfast, and works closely with the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).

Irish nationalist writer and activist Michael Farrell alleges that during this period Nixon leads the Cromwell Club, an unofficial organisation of security officials responsible for killing several Catholic civilians. These allegations are not independently confirmed and during his lifetime Nixon successfully sues the Derry Journal and a book publisher for libel. He is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1923 “… for services rendered by him during the troubled period.”

In 1924, Nixon, long a member of the Orange Order, makes a political speech at an Orange lodge. This contravenes RUC regulations, and he is dismissed on the orders of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

Nixon is elected to Belfast Corporation as an Independent Unionist, but at the 1925 Northern Ireland general election, he stands unsuccessfully as an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate in Belfast North. At the 1929 Northern Ireland general election, running once again as an Independent Unionist, he is narrowly elected as the MP for Belfast Woodvale. From September 1932 until the 1933 Northern Ireland general election, he is the only opposition MP attending the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He is founder in 1931 of the Ulster Protestant League (UPL), whose object is to safeguard Protestant jobs, and is also connected with the Ulster Protestant Association (UPA), which includes a hard core of loyalist gunmen who carried out assassinations on Catholics during the mid-1930s. Until the end of his life, fearful that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would catch up with him, he carries a revolver in the glove compartment of his car.

Nixon holds his seat until his death on May 11, 1949, at home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He denies the murder allegations against him until the end of his life.

(Pictured: Captain John William Nixon (right) with Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig and Colonel Spencer, attending a conference with Michael Collins at City Hall, Dublin in February 1922)


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The Arnon Street Massacre

arnon-street-massacre

The Arnon Street Massacre takes place on April 1, 1922, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Six Catholic civilians, three in Arnon Street, are shot dead. It is believed that members of either the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) or the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) are responsible, acting in retaliation for the killing of an RIC officer by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Although the Irish War of Independence officially ends in July 1921, the Irish Republican Army’s conflict with British and unionist forces continues in Northern Ireland and escalates in the first half of 1922. The Ulster IRA, with the tacit but covert assistance of Michael Collins, head of the new Irish Free State, continues to wage a guerrilla war in Northern Ireland. According to historian Alan Parkinson, despite “the IRA having some short-term successes … the main effect of this intensive campaign was to unleash a terrible backlash on the Catholic population in Belfast.” Only a week before the Arnon Street incident, policemen – either Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) or Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) – kill six Catholic civilians in the McMahon murders.

On the evening of April 1, RIC constable George Turner is patrolling the Old Lodge Road when he is killed by a sniper.

About ten police officers in Brown Square Barracks, upon hearing of Turner’s murder, take a Lancia armoured car and begin touring nationalist areas. When they dismount their vehicle, witnesses hear them shouting “Cut the guts out of them for the murder of Turner.” Their first victim is John McRory who lives on Stanhope Street, just across the road from where Constable Turner had been shot. The police break into his house and shoot him dead in his kitchen. In Park Street, Bernard McKenna, father of seven, is killed while lying in bed. Finally, the police arrived at Arnon Street.

William Spallen, who lives at 16 Arnon Street, has just returned from the funeral of his wife who had also been killed in the conflict. His 12-year-old grandson, Gerald Tumelty, witnesses his death. “Two men came into the room, one was in the uniform of a policeman. They asked my grandfather his name and he said William Spallen. The man in plain clothes fired three shots at him. When I cried out, he said, ‘lie down or I will put a bullet into you.'” Tumelty says the killers then take £20 that his grandfather had to pay for his wife’s funeral.

The attackers then use a sledgehammer to break into the house next door, where they find Joseph Walsh in bed with his seven-year-old son Michael and his two-year-old daughter Bridget. Joseph Walsh is bludgeoned to death with the sledgehammer while Michael Walsh is shot and dies from his wounds the next day. Another son, Frank, is shot in the thigh but survives. Later that evening another Catholic, John Mallon, is shot dead in Skegoneill Avenue.

The unionist press, the Belfast News Letter and Belfast Telegraph, condemn the killings but do not identify the killers as police. The Dublin-based Irish Independent writes that “never even in the worst state of terror in the west and south has the state of affairs which now prevails in the Northern capital been experienced.” Michael Collins sends an angry telegram to Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig, demanding a joint inquiry into the killings. No such inquiry is set up.

As with the McMahon killings one week earlier, it is strongly suspected that an RIC Detective Inspector, Nixon, operating out of the Brown Street Police barracks, had organised the attack. Nixon and several other policemen fail to turn up at roll call at the barracks immediately after the killings.