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Tag Archives: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey


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The 1992 Coalisland Riots

The 1992 Coalisland riots are a series of clashes in the town of Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on May 12 and 17, 1992, between local Irish nationalist civilians and British Army soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB). The Third Battalion 1992 tour’s codename is “Operation Gypsy.”

On May 12, 1992, a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade launches a bomb attack on a British Army foot patrol near the republican stronghold of Cappagh, County Tyrone. One soldier of the Parachute Regiment, Alistair Hodgson, loses both legs as a result. The improvised land mine is described in an IRA statement as an “anti-personnel device.” Other paratroopers receive lesser wounds, according to the same statement. The incident triggers a rampage by members of the Parachute Regiment in the nearby, overwhelmingly Irish nationalist town of Coalisland, some ten miles to the east. The IRA attack is described as a “provocation” tactic, devised to produce an over-reaction by troops to make them even more unpopular among local nationalists.

The deployment of the paratroopers, which begins in April has already been criticised by republican activist and former Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, who denounces beatings, shootings and damages to property reportedly carried out by the troops. These previous incidents include the destruction of fishing gear and boats in the townland of Kinturk, near Ardboe, and a brawl on April 22 between soldiers and motorists at a checkpoint in Stewartstown, in which plastic bullets are fired that end with a civilian and two paratroopers wounded. Unionist politician and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) officer Ken Maginnis, then-Member of Parliament for the area, calls for the withdrawal of the regiment after receiving a large number of complaints about their behaviour.

On May 12, two hours after the IRA ambush at Cappagh, members of the regiment seal off the town of Coalisland, ten miles east of Cappagh. According to a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, the soldiers fabricate a bogus bomb warning, while the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) states that the operation began when a joint police/military patrol was stoned by a crowd. Two pubs are ransacked by the troops and a number of civilian cars are damaged. Several people are allegedly hit with sticks. Following this, a lieutenant is suspended from duty and the regiment is removed from patrol duties in Coalisland.

On the evening of May 17, a fistfight begins at Lineside Road, where a group of young men are having a drink. A passing four-man patrol of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers regiment is challenged to a “boxing match” by the residents. The soldiers set aside their weapons and engage the youths. Noncritical injuries are reported on both sides. The official claim is that the patrol was attacked by a mob of at least 30 people. In the melée, a rifle and a light machine gun are stolen. The rifle is later recovered nearby. The youths smash a backpack radio which is left behind by the troops. Two KOSB soldiers are hospitalised, while in the end seven other soldiers, including paratroopers, receive lesser injuries, one of them hit by a car that crashes through two roadblocks set up by the British Army.

The Parachute Regiment is called to the scene again, and at 8:30 p.m., a major riot starts outside The Rossmore pub between local people and about 20 to 25 paratroopers. The soldiers claim one of their colleagues is isolated and dragged by the crowd. Some witnesses claim paratroopers were in a frenzy, showing their guns and inviting civilians to try to take them. Suddenly, shots are fired by the troops — first into the air and then toward the people outside the pub. Three civilians are rushed to hospital in Dungannon with gunshot wounds, while the soldiers return to their barracks. Another four civilians suffer minor injuries. The paratroopers claim that a “member of the growing crowd” attempted to fire the stolen machine gun at them, but the weapon jammed. One of the wounded is the brother of IRA volunteer Kevin O’Donnell, who had been killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in February during an ambush at the nearby hamlet of Clonoe, shortly after carrying out a machine-gun attack on the local RUC base.

About 500 people attend a protest rally in Coalisland on May 19, and the wisdom of deploying the troops to patrol the town is questioned by members of the Dáil in Dublin. The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ireland, David Andrews, asks the British Government to withdraw the regiment. As a result, the paratroopers are redeployed outside the urban areas. The RUC claims that the stolen machine gun is found 11 days later at a farmhouse near Cappagh, along with another light machine gun and an AK-47 rifle. The IRA denies they had the machine gun in their possession. Republicans question whether the weapon had really been stolen, suggesting this was merely an excuse for the soldiers’ rampage in Coalisland. Bernardette McAliskey goes even further, suggesting that the recovery of the machine gun near Cappagh, where the initial IRA attack had taken place, was actually staged by the security forces as a publicity stunt. British officials accuse Sinn Féin of being the instigators of the riots, while Michael Mates, then Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, states that the incidents were due to “a gang of thugs motivated by the IRA.” Eventually the battalion’s 1992 tour in Northern Ireland is scaled down, with the patrols suspended before the official end of the deployment. The Third Brigade’s commander, Brigadier Tom Longland, is replaced by Brigadier Jim Dutton. This is the first occasion that a high-ranking officer is disciplined in such a way during the Troubles.

The last patrol takes place on June 27, when two paratroopers drown while crossing the River Blackwater. The same day there are further clashes with local residents, this time in the town of Cookstown, when a group of people that the Belfast News Letter calls “drunken hooligans” assault a number of paratroopers trying to help an elderly man who is suffering a heart attack.

The 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment is replaced by the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards.

Six soldiers face criminal charges for their roles in the May riots but are acquitted one year later. Five are bound over. Maurice McHugh, the presiding magistrate, avers that the soldiers were “not entirely innocent,” while Sinn Féin sources dub the ruling “a farce.” Dungannon priest Father Denis Faul is of the opinion that the soldiers should have been charged with conspiracy. The Ulster Television documentary Counterpoint of June 1993 claims that Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland, Sir Alasdair Fraser, returned the case file to the RUC recommending no prosecution. The programme also interviews Alistair Hodgson, the soldier maimed at Cappagh, who says that “had another member of my unit been injured in the way that I was, I would have been with the rest of the lads attacking the locals.” Authors Andrew Sanders and Ian S. Wood suggest that the deployment of the battalion in Coalisland and elsewhere hindered the British policy of police primacy in Northern Ireland.

Fresh clashes between local residents and troops are reported at Coalisland on March 6, 1994, a few months before the first IRA ceasefire, when a crowd assaults two soldiers after the RUC searched a car. Plastic bullets are fired, and three civilians and two soldiers are slightly injured.

(Pictured: Confrontation between a British paratrooper and a civilian in Coalisland, May 1992)


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Death of Gerry Fitt, Northern Ireland Politician

Gerard Fitt, Northern Ireland politician, dies in London on August 26, 2005. He is a founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a social democratic and Irish nationalist party.

Fitt is born in Belfast on April 9, 1926. He is educated at a local Christian Brothers school in Belfast. He joins the Merchant Navy in 1941 and serves on convoy duty during World War II. His elder brother Geordie, an Irish Guardsman, is killed at the Battle of Normandy.

Living in the nationalist Beechmount neighbourhood of the Falls, he stands for the Falls as a candidate for the Dock Labour Party in a city council by-election in 1956, but loses to Paddy Devlin of the Irish Labour Party, who later becomes his close ally. In 1958, he is elected to Belfast City Council as a member of the Irish Labour Party.

In 1962, he wins a seat in the Parliament of Northern Ireland from the Ulster Unionist Party, becoming the only Irish Labour member. Two years later, he left Irish Labour and joined with Harry Diamond, the sole Socialist Republican Party Stormont MP, to form the Republican Labour Party. At the 1966 general election, Fitt won the Belfast West seat in the Westminster parliament.

Many sympathetic British Members of Parliament (MPs) are present at a civil rights march in Derry on October 5, 1968, when Fitt and others are beaten by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Fitt also supports the 1969 candidacy of Bernadette Devlin in the Mid Ulster by-election who runs as an anti-abstentionist ‘Unity‘ candidate. Devlin’s success greatly increases the authority of Fitt in the eyes of many British commentators, particularly as it produces a second voice on the floor of the British House of Commons who challenge the Unionist viewpoint at a time when Harold Wilson and other British ministers are beginning to take notice.

In August 1970, Fitt becomes the first leader of a coalition of civil rights and nationalist leaders who create the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). By this time Northern Ireland is charging headlong towards near-civil war and the majority of unionists remain hostile.

After the collapse of Stormont in 1972 and the establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 Fitt becomes deputy chief executive of the short-lived Power-Sharing Executive created by the Sunningdale Agreement.

Fitt becomes increasingly detached from both his own party and also becomes more outspoken in his condemnation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He becomes a target for republican sympathisers in 1976 when they attack his home. He becomes disillusioned with the handling of Northern Ireland by the British government. In 1979, he abstains from a crucial vote in the House of Commons which brings down the Labour government, citing the way that the government had failed to help the nationalist population and tried to form a deal with the Ulster Unionist Party.

In 1979, Fitt is replaced by John Hume as leader of the SDLP and he leaves the party altogether after he agrees to constitutional talks with British Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins without any provision for an ‘Irish dimension’ and then sees his decision overturned by the SDLP party conference. Like Paddy Devlin before him, he claims the SDLP has ceased to be a socialist force.

In 1981, he opposes the hunger strikes in the Maze prison in Belfast. His seat in Westminster is targeted by Sinn Féin as well as by the SDLP. In June 1983, he loses his seat in Belfast West to Gerry Adams, in part due to competition from an SDLP candidate. The following month, on October 14, 1983, he is created a UK life peer as Baron Fitt, of Bell’s Hill in County Down. His Belfast home is firebombed a month later and he moves to London.

Gerry Fitt dies in London on August 26, 2005, at the age of 79, after a long history of heart disease.


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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)


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The Murder of Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey

Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey, Irish republican paramilitary leader who moves from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to become head of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group in the early 1980s and self-confesses participation in more than thirty killings, dies in a hail of bullets while making a phone call in Drogheda, County Louth, on February 10, 1994. No one is ever convicted of his murder.

McGlinchey is one of eleven siblings born into a staunchly republican home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father owns a garage and some of his father’s police customers later die at McGlinchey’s hands. His mother Monica is a devout Catholic. He is educated at the local school. When he was sixteen, he begins an apprenticeship in his father’s garage. About this time, he is joining the numerous civil rights marches that are taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but speculation is that he is reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offers glamour and a close identification with his own community.

In 1971, McGlinchey is interned without charge for ten months in Long Kesh Detention Centre. Not long after his release the following year, he is imprisoned again on arms charges. On July 5, 1975, during his imprisonment, he marries Mary O’Neil, daughter of Patrick O’Neil from Toomebridge. Together they have three children.

Following his release, McGlinchey joins Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikers Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee and wages a campaign of shooting and bombing throughout the county and beyond. Together, they later join the Provisional IRA. The gang spends the late 1970s on the run, carrying out operations and evading both the British Army and the Garda Síochána. Following a mailvan robbery, the latter force arrests McGlinchey in County Monaghan in 1977 for carjacking a Garda patrol vehicle and threatening the officer with a pistol, although he claims that the gun is actually a wheel brace. He fails to make bail at Dublin‘s Special Criminal Court after a Garda Superintendent argues that McGlinchey would fail to attend court if bailed. He is convicted and sent to the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison. In 1982, while serving his prison sentence, he clashes with the prison’s IRA leadership and is either expelled by them for indiscipline or leaves the organisation due to strategic differences.

Following his departure from the IRA and his release from prison, McGlinchey joins the INLA. Due to his experience, he rises through the ranks, becoming chief of staff by 1982. Under his leadership, the INLA, which had previously had a reputation for disorganisation, becomes extremely active in cross-border assassinations and bombings. These include many individual assassinations and woundings, but also massacres such as the Droppin Well bombing of 1982 in which both civilians and soldiers die. There are some failed operations, and McGlinchey, who believes this is the result of an informer within the ranks, devotes much time and energy to finding the cause. Those suspected of betraying the organisation are treated brutally, often by McGlinchey personally. As a result of this resurgence of activity and his high profile, the press nicknames him “Mad Dog.” Under his tenure the Darkley massacre is carried out, ostensibly by another group but using a weapon supplied by McGlinchey. In late 1983, while still on the run, he gives an interview with the Sunday Tribune newspaper in which he condemns the Darkley killings but also lays out his political philosophy and plans for the future.

By 1984, McGlinchey has fallen out with members of a powerful Republican family from South Armagh over what he considers missing funds. Men loyal to this family are subsequently killed by McGlinchey’s unit, which includes his wife. In March of the same year, he is captured in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, following a gunfight with the Gardaí. At this time, he is wanted in Northern Ireland for the shooting of an elderly woman, but republicans have traditionally been able to avoid extradition by claiming their offences were political. The bloody war in the north is leading the Republic of Ireland to re-evaluate its position, however, and he becomes the first republican to be extradited to Northern Ireland. Although convicted and sentenced there to life imprisonment, this is overturned in 1985. As a result, he is returned to the Republic, where he is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment on firearms charges. While he is incarcerated, his wife is shot dead at her Dundalk home.

McGlinchey is released in March 1993 and claiming to have no further involvement with the INLA, moves to Drogheda. He survives an assassination attempt soon after his release from prison, but in February 1994, his enemies catch up with him. At around 9:30 on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 1994, he visits and dines with friends of his in Duleek Road, near his home. He leaves about forty minutes later, intending to take a video back to a shop in Brookville, on the north side of town. At around 11:00 p.m. he and his 16-year-old son Dominic are returning home, when he pulls up to make a phone call from a public kiosk on Hardman’s Gardens, near Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Almost immediately and despite the presence of four witnesses, a red Mazda pulls up alongside him. While his son watches from the car, three men get out and beat McGlinchey. Once he is on the ground the men, who are armed with three pump action shotguns and a pistol, fire into him fourteen times. The attack finishes with a coup de grâce to the head, although he is already dead. His last words are reputed to be “Jesus, Mary help me.” His son yells for an ambulance.

The following day, an autopsy is carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, which indicates McGlinchey had been hit in the neck, skull, the left upper chest, the left arm, and both legs. His inquest is held in Drogheda two weeks later, suspended and then reopened in November 1996. Gardaí forensic officers tell the coroner that they had compared the shell casings they had found with the database, but no matches have been made to other known weapons. The officer notes that no such information has been received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The shotguns used are impossible to trace ballistically, but it is ascertained that the Mazda was registered in the north. His and his wife’s killers have never been found.

McGlinchey’s funeral is held on February 13, 1994, in Bellaghy, with no republican accoutrements. There is no INLA colour guard, and only an Irish tricolor draped over the coffin. Over 1,500 people attend and are watched closely by 200 RUC. Police armoured vans are held on the perimeter. He is buried alongside his wife and their young daughter Máire. His coffin is carried from the McGlinchey family home to St. Mary’s Church by pallbearers who are swapped out from the crowd every 40-yards or so. Martin McGuinness is among them, as is Bernadette McAliskey and her daughter Róisín. His sons carry the coffin for the final yards.

McGlinchey’s posthumous reputation ranges from being a “psycho” to his enemies to being an inspiration to those who followed him. Commentators have speculated on what he would have contributed to Irish politics had he lived. Some have suggested that he would have contributed to the Northern Ireland peace process, while others have argued that dissident republicans, opposed to that process, would have found him a willing rallying point. He remains an influence on Irish fiction and music, with both Edna O’Brien and Martin McDonagh producing acclaimed pieces based on his life and career. He is also featured in popular songs.


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Birth of Norman Stronge, 8th Baronet & UUP Politician

Sir Charles Norman Lockhart Stronge, 8th Baronet, senior Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician in Northern Ireland, is born on July 23, 1894, in Bryansford, County Down.

Stronge is the only son among two children of Sir Charles Edmond Sinclair Stronge (1862–1939) of Tynan Abbey, County Armagh, and Marian Iliff Stronge (née Bostock) of Walton Heath, Epsom, England. The family holds one of Ulster‘s oldest baronetcies and has a distinguished tradition in public life. Educated at Eton College, he serves in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers during World War I and is mentioned in dispatches by Sir Douglas Haig after the opening Battle on the Somme in July 1916. He is awarded the Military Cross (MC) and the Belgian Croix de guerre. After the war he begins farming in County Londonderry. While in Londonderry he serves as High Sheriff of the county from 1934. Seven years later he moves to his ancestral home, Tynan Abbey, on the death of his cousin Sir James Stronge. He becomes the 8th Baronet in 1939, a year after his election to the House of Commons for Northern Ireland for Mid Armagh. He is appointed High Sheriff for Armagh in 1940.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Stronge joins the North Irish Horse as a lieutenant but has to relinquish his commission the following year due to ill health. He is then granted the rank of captain. Resuming his political career, he becomes Assistant Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Finance (Assistant Whip) (1941–42) and then Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Finance (Chief Whip) (1942–44). His period as Chief Whip is marked by more robust and “fluid” debate within the party and significant backbench discontent in early 1943. In June 1944 he is elected chairman of Armagh County Council, and in the following year is returned unopposed in the general election. He becomes Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland in 1945 and in this position he earns the respect of, and makes friends with, politicians of every hue, and is regarded as a moderating influence. It has been said of him that he disproved the myth that politicians at Stormont never spoke to each other. He is unopposed in every postwar election up to 1965, when he sees off the challenge of the Liberal candidate. He does not contest the 1969 general election. He is made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold in 1946 and in the same year is appointed to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland. A member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, he is a delegate to its 1950 conference in New Zealand. Another interest is the Royal Over-Seas League, of which he is president for a time.

Stronge is closely associated with Sir Basil Brooke, Dame Dehra Parker and Sir Henry Mulholland. He is president of the Northern Ireland area council of the Royal British Legion, sovereign grand master of the Royal Black Institution, president of the Federation of Boys’ Clubs, and chairman of the Commercial Insurance Co. and of the Central Advisory Council for the Employment of the Disabled. It is this last position that causes a brief interruption of his speakership, with an act of parliament deemed necessary to remove any doubt about it having been an office of profit. A prominent member of the Orange Order, he is also chairman of the BBC appeals advisory committee and the Northern Ireland scout council. His retirement from public life in 1977 is marked by his investiture as a Knight of Grace by Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

A leading member of the Church of Ireland, Stronge becomes Commander of the Order of Saint John in 1952 and is for many years on the Armagh diocesan synod and council. Until his death, he is a nominator for the position of rector and reads the lessons each Sunday morning in Tynan parish church. In September 1921 he marries Gladys Olive, daughter of Major Henry Thomas Hall of Knockbrack, Athenry, County Galway. They have three daughters and a son, James. In his later life he lives with James, a bachelor, on their 800-acre estate near the border. James is educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. He succeeds his father in the Mid Armagh constituency in 1969, serving as Ulster Unionist MP in the Stormont parliament until 1972. He is firmly opposed to the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973, which he describes as a “great act of political appeasement.” Although both are known in the locality, neither seeks public attention and both live relatively quiet lives. Stronge likes to work in the garden but has little interest in the farm, most of which is let out to tenants.

Stronge and his son become prominent victims of the Troubles when a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army shoots them dead on January 21, 1981, at Tynan Abbey and sets the mansion alight, destroying it. The Provisional IRA statement describes them as “symbols of hated unionism” and their killings as “direct reprisal for a whole series of loyalist assassinations and murder attacks on nationalist people.” The killings come five days after an attempted assassination of the former MP Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. Tynan Abbey is long held to have been an easy target, given its relative isolation and its proximity to the border. In 1985 a man is tried for their murders but is acquitted. In 1999 the shell of Tynan Abbey is demolished.

(From: “Stronge, Sir Charles Norman Lockhart” by Tom Feeney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Tribunal of Inquiry Into Bloody Sunday 1972 Announced

On January 31, 1972, the day after Bloody Sunday, British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announces a tribunal of inquiry “into the circumstances of the march and the incidents leading up to the casualties which resulted.”

The official British Army position, backed by Maudling in the House of Commons, is that the paratroopers reacted to gun and nail bomb attacks from suspected Irish Republican Army (IRA) members. Apart from the soldiers, all eyewitnesses — including marchers, local residents, and British and Irish journalists present — maintain that soldiers fired into an unarmed crowd or were aiming at fleeing people and those tending the wounded, whereas the soldiers themselves were not fired upon. No British soldier is wounded by gunfire or reports any injuries, nor are any bullets or nail bombs recovered to back up their claims.

On February 2, 1972, the day that twelve of those killed are buried, there is a general strike in the Republic of Ireland, the biggest such strike in Europe since World War II relative to population. Memorial services are held in Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as synagogues, throughout the Republic. The same day, irate crowds burn down the British embassy in Merrion Square in Dublin. Anglo-Irish relations hit one of their lowest ebbs with the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillery, going to the United Nations Security Council to demand the involvement of a UN peacekeeping force in the Northern Ireland conflict.

In the days following Bloody Sunday, Bernadette Devlin, the independent Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster, expresses anger at what she perceives as British government attempts to stifle accounts being reported about the shootings. Having witnessed the events firsthand, she is infuriated that the Speaker of the House of Commons, Selwyn Lloyd, consistently denies her the chance to speak in Parliament about the shootings, although parliamentary convention decrees that any MP witnessing an incident under discussion will be granted an opportunity to speak about it in Parliament. Devlin slaps Reginald Maudling and calls him a “murdering hypocrite” when he makes a statement to Parliament that the British Army had fired only in self-defence. She is temporarily suspended from Parliament as a result.

An inquest into the deaths is held in August 1973. The city’s coroner, Hubert O’Neill, a retired British Army major, issues a statement at the completion of the inquest. He declares:

“This Sunday became known as Bloody Sunday and bloody it was. It was quite unnecessary. It strikes me that the Army ran amok that day and shot without thinking what they were doing. They were shooting innocent people. These people may have been taking part in a march that was banned but that does not justify the troops coming in and firing live rounds indiscriminately. I would say without hesitation that it was sheer, unadulterated murder. It was murder.”

(Pictured: Home Secretary Reginald Maudling (left) and Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster Bernadette Devlin)


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Assassination of Norman and James Stronge

Sir Charles Norman Lockhart Stronge and his son James, both former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Members of Parliament, are assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at their home, Tynan Abbey, on January 21, 1981. The home is then burned to the ground.

Before his involvement in politics Stronge fights in World War I as a junior officer in the British Army. He fights in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and is awarded the Military Cross. His positions after the war include Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland for twenty-three years.

Stronge (86) and his son, James (48), are watching television in the library of Tynan Abbey when members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, armed with machine guns, use grenades to break down the locked heavy doors to the home.

The Stronge family home is then burned to the ground as a result of two bomb explosions. On seeing the explosions at the house, as well as a flare Stronge lit in an attempt to alert the authorities, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army troops arrive at the scene and establish a roadblock at the gate lodge. They encounter at least eight fleeing gunmen. A twenty-minute gunfight ensues in which at least two hundred shots are fired. There are no casualties among the security forces but the gunmen escape. The bodies of the father and son are later discovered in the library of their burning home, each with gunshot wounds in the head. It is not known who died first, Norman or James. Under the legal fiction known as the doctrine of survival, James is still listed as succeeding to the baronetcy.

The village of Tynan is crowded for the joint funeral of Stronge and his son. Mourners come from throughout the province and from England, including lords, politicians, policemen, judges and church leaders. The coffin is carried by the 5th Battalion the Royal Irish Rangers, the successors to his old regiment. The sword and cap of the Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone, Major John Hamilton-Stubber, are placed on his coffin in lieu of his own, which had been destroyed with his other possessions in the fire. During the service, a telegram sent from Queen Elizabeth II to one of Sir Norman’s daughters, is read. After the service, the chief mourners move out into the churchyard where the “Last Post” is sounded, and a Royal British Legion farewell is given. The two coffins are laid in the family plot, where Lady Stronge, Sir Norman’s wife and mother of James, was buried a year previously.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, is informed by friends of the Stronge family that he would not be welcome at the funeral because of government policy on Irish border security. Atkins leaves the Northern Ireland Office later that year, to be replaced by Jim Prior. Stronge is commemorated with a tablet in the Northern Ireland Assembly Chamber in Parliament Buildings on the Stormont Estate.

The IRA releases a statement in Belfast, quoted in The Times, claiming that “This deliberate attack on the symbols of hated unionism was a direct reprisal for a whole series of loyalist assassinations and murder attacks on nationalist peoples and nationalist activities.” This follows the loyalist attempted murder of Bernadette McAliskey and her husband Michael McAliskey on January 16, and the loyalist assassinations of four republican activists (Miriam Daly, John Turnley, Noel Lyttle and Ronnie Bunting) which had taken place since May 1980.

The killings are referred to as murder by multiple media sources including The Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, The New York Times and Time magazine, by the Reverend Ian Paisley in the House of Commons and by Alec Cooke, Baron Cooke of Islandreagh in the House of Lords.

Stronge is described at the time of his death by Social Democratic and Labour Party politician Austin Currie as having been “even at 86 years of age … still incomparably more of a man than the cowardly dregs of humanity who ended his life in this barbaric way.”

The ruins of Tynan Abbey are demolished in 1998, having stood for 249 years.


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Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Assassination Attempt

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner and former Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), is shot by members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who burst into her home at Coalisland, County Tyrone on January 16, 1981. She survives the assassination attempt.

The three men shoot McAliskey nine times in the chest, arm and thigh as she goes to wake up one of her three children. Her husband, Michael, is also shot twice at point blank range. British soldiers are watching the McAliskey home at the time but fail to prevent the assassination attempt. It is claimed that Devlin’s assassination was ordered by British authorities, and that collusion was a factor. An army patrol of the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment enter the house and wait for half an hour. McAliskey claims they are waiting for the couple to die.

Another group of soldiers then arrive and transport them by helicopter to a nearby Dungannon hospital for emergency treatment and then to the Musgrave Park Hospital, Military Wing, in Belfast, under intensive care. Their condition is initially said to be serious, but not life-threatening.

The attackers, Ray Smallwoods, Tom Graham, both from Lisburn, and Andrew Watson from Seymour Hill, Dunmurry, are captured by members of the Parachute Regiment, who are on patrol nearby when they hear the shots and are taken in for questioning by the police and subsequently jailed. All three are members of the South Belfast UDA. Smallwoods is the driver of the getaway car. Police say it is a professional attack. The gunmen cut the telephone wires to the house before breaking down the front door with a sledgehammer.

McAliskey had played a leading role in the campaign for Republican prisoners in the HM Prison Maze, who are demanding “prisoner of war” or political status. They want to be held separately from loyalist supporters in the Maze. Four other members of the campaign for the H-block inmates have been murdered.

Seven Maze prisoners went on hunger strike before Christmas in support of their demands for political status. The strike is called off on December 12 after Taoiseach Charles Haughey convinces the inmates their families want them to start eating again.


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Rioting Erupts In Belfast & Derry

belfast-rioting-1970

Intense riots between Protestants and Roman Catholics erupt in Derry and Belfast on June 27, 1970. During the evening, loyalist paramilitaries make incursions into republican areas of Belfast. This leads to a prolonged gun battle between republicans and loyalists. The rioting in both Belfast and Derry takes place despite the presence of more than 8,000 British soldiers, backed up by armored vehicles and helicopters.

The rioting follows the June 26 jailing of Bernadette Devlin, the 23‐year‐old Roman Catholic leader, who had recently been reelected to Parliament in London. She had been convicted of riotous behavior during violence in Derry in August 1969 and sentenced to six months in prison.

The rioting in Belfast begins after Catholic youths hurl stones and disrupt a parade by the militantly Protestant Orange Order. About 100 persons are injured badly enough to be treated in hospitals. A bakery and a butcher shop in a shopping center are set afire and a police station is wrecked with iron bars and clubs. The scene of the rioting is at the intersection of Mayo Street and Springfield Road in a mixed Protestant‐Catholic area.

Armed British soldiers, in visors and helmets and carrying riot shields, separate ugly, shouting mobs of Catholics and Protestants. The troops use tear gas in an effort to break up the crowd and at one point send 1,000 people, including women and children, fleeing with tears streaming down their faces.

There is civilian sniping and firing by British troops in two riot areas — the Springfield Road area and the Crumlin Road area – where rival crowds from segregated slum streets clash later in the afternoon.

At night British soldiers seal off the riot areas to all but military vehicles. Armored cars with machine guns ready stand in the streets, which are littered with glass and stones. Hundreds of soldiers in full battle dress stand against the seedy red‐brick shops and houses.

However, the crowds continue to gather. Buses are set afire, and late at night the army uses tear gas again to drive the mobs away. As rioting erupts in other parts of Belfast, 4,000 British soldiers are said to have been sent into the riot areas. The police are harassed by a half dozen fires around the city. Some of the fires are started with battery devices according to the police.

In Derry, Catholic youths attack soldiers and policemen with stones, bottles and gasoline bombs. The youths begin re‐erecting the barricades that had shielded the Catholic Bogside slum area during rioting the previous year. Ninety-two soldiers are injured and a paint shop near Bogside is set ablaze after looting by children who appear to be no more that 11 or 12 years old.

The wave of agitation begins in October 1968, when a largely Catholic civil rights movement takes to the streets to demand an end to anti‐Catholic discrimination in voting rights, jobs and housing. The Unionist Government in Belfast, which considers itself aligned with the Conservative Party in London, responds reluctantly to the street violence. However, under intense prodding by the Labor Government, it enacts many of the demanded reforms.

However, a Protestant backlash ensues, encouraged by the fiery evangelical preacher, the Rev. Ian Paisley. Paisley fans the latent fear that Northern Ireland‘s Catholics seek to unite Ireland into a Catholic state under Dublin. In the view of many observers, the Protestants have never shared power nor prestige with the Catholic minority, while the Catholics have taken an ambiguous view on whether they wanted to be British or Irish.

(From: “New Rioting Flares in Northern Ireland; 4 Dead and 100 Hurt” by John M. Lee, The New York Times, June 28, 1970)


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Muhammad Ali Fights Al Lewis in Dublin

muhammad-ali-and-al-lewis

Muhammad Ali fights Al “Blue” Lewis in Dublin on July 19, 1972, and defeats him via a technical knockout (TKO) in the eleventh round.

After losing to Joe Frazier in March 1971, Ali goes on something of a world tour, fighting 13 times in six countries before defeating Frazier in a rematch in January 1974.

The promotion is the brainchild of a character from County Kerry named Butty Sugrue, known throughout Ireland as a circus strongman, whose alleged claim to fame is pulling double-decker buses by a rope in his teeth. Dublin journalists laugh at him when he first announces his intentions.

But despite the scepticism, the fight is arranged for July 19, 1972. As soon as he steps off the plane at Dublin Airport, Ali, ever the showman, immediately captures the heart of a nation by announcing that he has Irish roots. In the 1860s, Abe Grady left his native Ennis in County Clare and emigrated to the United States. In Kentucky, he met and married an emancipated slave. A century later Abe Grady’s great grandson Muhammad Ali touches down in Dublin.

In the week leading up to the fight Ali meets people from all walks of life in Dublin. He spends time with celebrities, including actor Peter O’Toole, and playfully spars with director John Huston, whose boxing movie, Fat City, is screened with both Ali and Lewis in attendance.

Ali also meets politicians, including Taoiseach Jack Lynch in Leinster House and political activist Bernadette Devlin. The Cork Examiner comments on how popular Ali has proven with politicians in Ireland. “Not since the late President John F. Kennedy was in Dublin in 1963 has a visitor from abroad been given as big a welcome at Leinster House as that accorded to Muhammad Ali.”

Ali is always about so much more than boxing, and that week in Dublin is another case in point, as the fight itself is not a classic. He has a cold and is wary of Lewis, who is a dangerous fighter and a man who had previously served time in prison for manslaughter. Ali who, prior to the bout predicts that his opponent’s chances of victory lay somewhere between “slim and none,” eventually wins with a TKO in the eleventh round.

In 2009, Ali returns to Ireland to visit Ennis in County Clare, the hometown of his ancestor Abe Grady, where he is granted the freedom of the town. The huge crowds who come out to meet him are testament to his enduring appeal. But the magic of Muhammad Ali leaves an indelible impact on Ireland after his 1972 visit as the late Budd Schulberg, a legendary boxing writer, said, “Ali was like the Pied Piper. It was really kind of magical. He had enormous influence over there. He was a fellow Irishman.”

(From: “When Ali thrilled Ireland: How ‘the Greatest’ shook up Dublin” by Peter Crutchley, BBC NI Digital & Learning, June 6, 2016)