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Death of Robert Bates, Member of the Shankill Butchers

Robert William Bates, Northern Irish loyalist, dies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on June 11, 1997. He is a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the infamous Shankill Butchers gang, led by Lenny Murphy.

Bates is born into an Ulster Protestant family and grows up in the Shankill Road area of Belfast. He has a criminal record dating back to 1966, and later becomes a member of the Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Bates, employed as a barman at the Long Bar, is recruited into the Shankill Butchers gang in 1975 by its notorious ringleader, Lenny Murphy. 

The gang uses The Brown Bear pub, a Shankill Road drinking haunt frequented by the UVF, as its headquarters. Bates, a “sergeant” in the gang’s hierarchy, is an avid participant in the brutal torture and savage killings perpetrated against innocent Catholics after they are abducted from nationalist streets and driven away in a black taxi owned by fellow Shankill Butcher, William Moore.

The killings typically involve grisly-throat slashings preceded by lengthy beatings and torture. Bates is said to have been personally responsible for beating James Moorhead, a member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to death on January 30, 1977, and to have played a central role in the kidnapping and murder of Catholic Joseph Morrisey three days later.  He also kills Thomas Quinn, a derelict, on February 8, 1976, and the following day is involved in shooting dead Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle, two Protestant workmen that Bates and Murphy mistake for Catholics.

Martin Dillon reveals that Bates is also one of the four UVF gunmen who carries out a mass shooting in the Chlorane Bar attack in Belfast city centre on June 5, 1976. Five people (three Catholics and two Protestants) are shot dead. The UVF unit bursts into the pub in Gresham Street and orders the Catholics and Protestants to line up on opposite ends of the bar before they open fire. He later recounts his role in the attack to police; however, he claims that he never fired any shots due to his revolver having malfunctioned. Forensics evidence contradicts him as it proves that his revolver had been fired inside the Chlorane Bar that night. Lenny Murphy is in police custody at the time the shooting attack against the Chlorane Bar takes place.

Bates is arrested in 1977, along with Moore and other “Shankill Butcher” accomplices. His arrest follows a sustained attack by Moore and Sam McAllister on Catholic Gerard McLaverty, after which they dump his body, presuming him dead. However, McLaverty survives and identifies Moore and McAllister to the Royal Ulster Constabulary who drive him up and down the Shankill Road during a loyalist parade until he sees his attackers. During questioning both men implicate Bates, and other gang members, leading to their arrests. Following a long period spent on remand, he is convicted in February 1979 of murder related to the Shankill Butcher killings and given ten life sentences, with a recommendation by the trial judge, Justice Turlough O’Donnell, that he should never be released.

At the start of his sentence, Bates is involved in a series of violent incidents involving other inmates. He later claims that he had perpetrated these acts in order to live up to his “Basher” nickname. He serves as company commander of the UVF inmates and becomes noted as a stern disciplinarian.

However, while in the Maze Prison, Bates is said to have “found God,” and as a result becomes a born again Christian. He produces a prison testimony, which is later reprinted in The Burning Bush, and, after publicly advocating an end to violence, is transferred to HM Prison Maghaberry.

In prison, Bates forms a friendship with Provisional IRA member and fellow detainee Brendan Hughes. Bates foil a UVF assassination plot on Hughes.

It has been alleged that his image appears on the cover of Searching for the Young Soul Rebels by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

In October 1996, eighteen months prior to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Bates is cleared for early release by the Life Sentence Review Board. He is given the opportunity of participating in a rehabilitation scheme, spending the day on a work placement and returning to prison at night. As he arrives for work in his native Shankill area of Belfast early on the morning of June 11, 1997, he is shot dead by the son of a UDA man named James Curtis Moorehead, who Bates had killed in 1977. The killer identifies himself to Bates as the son of his victim before opening fire. The Sutton Index of Deaths attributes his assassination to a feud between the UVF and the UDA. Bates had been working at the Ex-Prisoners Interpretative Centre (EPIC), a drop-in centre for former loyalist prisoners.

Bates’s killing had not been sanctioned by the UDA leadership but nevertheless they refuse to agree to UVF demands that the killer should be handed over to them, instead exiling him from the Shankill. He is rehoused in the Taughmonagh area where he quickly becomes an important figure in the local UDA as a part of Jackie McDonald‘s South Belfast Brigade.

Bates’s name is subsequently included on the banner of a prominent Orange Lodge on the Shankill Road, called  Old Boyne Island Heroes. Relatives of Shankill Butchers victim Cornelius Neeson condemn the banner, stating that “it hurts the memory of those the butchers killed.” A fellow Lodge member and former friend of Bates defends the inclusion of his name to journalist Peter Taylor: “I knew him very well and he’d been a personal friend for twenty or thirty years and to me he was a gentleman.” He goes on to describe him as having been “an easy-going, decent fellow, and as far as the Lodge is concerned, a man of good-standing.”

Bates is buried in a Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster ceremony by Reverend Alan Smylie. His funeral is attended by a large representation from local Orange Lodges. Peace activist Mairead Maguire is also among the mourners, arguing that Bates had “repented, asked for forgiveness and showed great remorse for what he had done,” while a memorial service held at the spot of his killing two days after the funeral is attended by Father Gerry Reynolds of Clonard Monastery.[8]


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Birth of John Kelly, Northern Irish Politician & IRA Volunteer

John Kelly, Northern Irish republican politician, is born in the New Lodge area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 5, 1936. He joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1950s and is a founder member and a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the early 1970s.

Kelly is one of five sons and four daughters born to William Kelly, retail and wholesale fruitier, and his wife Margaret (née Maginness). Living off Carlisle Circus in a flashpoint area of north Belfast and close to Crumlin Road Gaol, the Kellys are a strongly republican family, regularly supplying republican inmates with fruit and assisting them on their release.

Later in life Kelly moves to Maghera, County Londonderry, where he lives until his death in 2007. He and his wife have a daughter. He is a dedicated member of local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club Watty Graham’s GAC, Glen and a keen supporter of Gaelic games and the Irish language.

Kelly joins the IRA in the early 1950s when he is eighteen and takes part in the Border Campaign of 1956–62 but is arrested in December 1956 and imprisoned until 1963. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in 1967–69 which leads on to sectarian riots in Belfast. A leader of the newly formed Provisional IRA in 1969, he is involved in the formation of “citizens’ defence groups” to protect nationalist areas of Belfast from loyalist rioters who are largely unhampered by the police.

Kelly is jailed on three occasions for IRA related activity spending a total of fifteen years in prison in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His first term is for his activity in the 1956 IRA border campaign. He also serves a six-month term in 1973 in the Republic of Ireland for being a member of the IRA.

Commenting later on the Troubles, Kelly says, “Yes, it was a terrible period. But you can’t turn the clock back. The Irish government did not create the Provisional IRA. What happened was as inevitable as the changing seasons.”

The citizens’ defence groups seek help from the government in Dublin in 1969, then led by Jack Lynch. Several ministers respond and arrange a fund of £100,000 but the planned arms shipment fails. Kelly later says, “These discussions were all about guns. The whole thing was government-sponsored, government-backed and government-related.” The planning includes travel to Britain, Europe, and on to the United States where he meets the founders of NORAID. He is one of the co-defendants in the subsequent Dublin “Arms Trial” with ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, accused of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic of Ireland. The trial eventually collapses from a lack of evidence, as the relevant government files are kept secret, but the Irish government sacks several ministers as a result.

Kelly goes into electoral politics, serving on Magherafelt District Council from 1997. At the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election he is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin member for Mid Ulster. He is deselected before the 2003 election, and criticises the decision by the Sinn Féin leadership to support policing reforms. In January 2006 he co-writes a letter with Brendan Hughes which casts doubt on the claims that dissident republicans have threatened Sinn Féin leaders and claims that the real threats are being made by the Sinn Féin leadership against those who seek a debate on policing. He leaves Sinn Féin which he considers too controlled from the centre, opposing the leadership “deceit and the philosophy of creative ambiguity,” and he retires from politics.

Kelly dies in Maghera following a long battle with cancer on September 5, 2007. Many tributes are paid to him including a minute’s silence before the Derry Senior Football Championship quarter final between St. Patrick’s GAC, Loup, and Dungiven GAC on September 8, 2007, at the home of his local club, Watty Graham GAC, Glen. A Na Piarsaigh Belfast GAC jersey is draped over his coffin before he is interred at Maghera Catholic Graveyard.


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Birth of Raymond McCartney, Sinn Féin Politician & Provisional IRA Volunteer

Raymond McCartney, former Sinn Féin politician and former hunger striker and volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born on November 29, 1954, in Derry, County Derry, Northern Ireland.

McCartney takes part in the civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972, an event widely known as Bloody Sunday. One of his cousins, James Wray, is one of fourteen men shot and killed by the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army on that march. As a result of this incident, he joins the Provisional IRA several months later. In 1974, Martin McGuinness, who commands the IRA in Derry, instructs him to beat up an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) man, Patsy O’Hara, who McGuinness calls a “scumbag” and a “hood.” On January 12, 1979, at Belfast‘s Crown Court, he and another man, Eamonn MacDermott, are convicted of the murder of Detective Constable Patrick McNulty of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who was shot several times outside a garage in Derry on January 27, 1977. He is also convicted of IRA membership and the murder of businessman Jeffery Agate in February 1977 and is sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder convictions are overturned in 2007.

While incarcerated at Long Kesh Detention Centre, McCartney is involved in the blanket and dirty protests, then takes part in the 1980 hunger strike, along with fellow IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Tom McFeely, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon.

McCartney spends 53 days on hunger strike, from October 27 to December 18. From 1989–91 he is Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks and is released in 1994.

Following his release, McCartney is active with ex-prisoners’ groups Tar Abhaile and Coiste na n-Íarchimí, and is the first member of Sinn Féin to hear his own voice heard on television after the lifting of the British broadcasting ban in 1994. He is arrested on April 4, 2002, following a breach of security at Belfast’s police headquarters, but is released without charge the following day. Later that year, on September 5, he is the first former IRA member to appear before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and encourages anyone with information, including paramilitaries, to come forward. He is a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from July 15, 2004, until February 3, 2020.

On February 15, 2007, McCartney and MacDermott have their murder convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, following an investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in 2002. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland declines to compensate McCartney and MacDermott on the grounds that they have not proven themselves innocent. The decision is appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, in May 2011, finds in favour of the applicants, opening the way for a substantial compensation claim from both for their prison terms of 15 and 17 years.


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Birth of Billy McKee, Founding Member of the Provisional IRA

Billy McKee (Irish: Liam Mac Aoidh), Irish republican and a founding member and leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, is born on November 12, 1921, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

McKee joins Fianna Éireann in 1936. He is arrested following a raid on a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club in 1938, being imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol for several months. Following his release from prison, he joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1939. During World War II, the IRA carries out a number of armed actions in Northern Ireland known as the Northern Campaign. He is arrested and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol until 1946 for his role in this campaign. In 1956, the IRA embarks on another armed campaign against partition, known as the Border Campaign. He is again arrested and interned for the duration of the campaign. He is released in 1962.

Upon release, McKee becomes Officer Commanding (OC) of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade. However, he resigns this position in 1963, after a dispute with other republicans due to him acceding to a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) demand that he not fly an Irish tricolour during a republican march. He is succeeded by Billy McMillen.

As the 1960s proceed, McKee drifts away from the IRA. He grows very disillusioned with the organisation’s increasing emphasis on socialism and reformist politics over “armed struggle.” He is a devout Roman Catholic, who attends Mass daily. As a result, he is very uncomfortable with what he feels are “communist” ideas coming into the republican movement.

During the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, severe rioting breaks out in Belfast between Irish Catholic nationalists, Protestant loyalists, and the RUC. McKee is highly critical of the IRA’s failure to defend Catholic areas during these disturbances. On August 14, 1969, McKee, Joe Cahill and a number of other Irish Republican activists occupy houses at Kashmir Street, however, being poorly armed they fail to prevent Irish Catholics in Bombay Street and parts of Cupar Street and Kashmir Street being driven from their homes in the sectarian rioting that engulfs parts of the city. In the aftermath of the riots, he accuses Billy McMillen, the IRA’s Belfast commander, and the Dublin-based IRA leadership, of having failed to direct a clear course of action for the organization in civil disturbances. On September 22, 1969, he and a number of other IRA men arrive with weapons at a meeting called by McMillen and try to oust him as head of the Belfast IRA. They are unsuccessful but announce that they will no longer be taking orders from the IRA leadership in Dublin. In December 1969, the IRA splits into the Provisional IRA which is composed of traditional militarists like McKee, and the Official IRA which is composed of the remnants of the pre-split Marxist leadership and their followers. He sides with the Provisionals and joins the IRA Army Council in September 1970.

McKee becomes the first OC of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. From the start, there is intermittent feuding between McKee’s men and his former comrades in the Official IRA, as they vie for control of nationalist areas. However, the Provisionals rapidly gain the upper hand, due to their projection of themselves as the most reliable defenders of the Catholic community.

McKee himself contributes greatly to this image by an action he undertakes on June 27, 1970, the Battle of St Matthew’s. Rioting breaks out in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast after an Orange Order parade, and three Protestants are killed in gun battles between the Provisional IRA and loyalists. In response, loyalists prepare to attack the vulnerable Catholic enclave of Short Strand in east Belfast. When McKee hears about this, he drives to Short Strand with some men and weapons and takes up position at St Matthew’s Church. In the ensuing five-hour gun battle, he is wounded and one of his men is killed, along with at least four Protestants.

On April 15, 1971, McKee, along with Proinsias Mac Airt, is arrested by the British Army when found in possession of a handgun. He is charged and convicted for possession of the weapon and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol, and Joe Cahill takes over as OC of the Belfast Brigade.

In 1972, McKee leads a hunger strike protest in an effort to win recognition of IRA prisoners as political prisoners. Republicans who are interned already have special status, but those convicted of crimes do not. On June 19, the 35th day of hunger strike, he is close to death, William Whitelaw concedes Special Category Status (SCS) which, although not officially awarding political status, is tacit recognition of the political nature of the incarceration. Prisoners wear their own clothes, have no prison work, can receive one visit and food parcel per week and unlimited letters.

McKee is released on September 4, 1974, and resumes his position as OC of the Belfast Brigade. At this time the Provisional IRA calls a ceasefire, and he is involved, with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, in secret peace talks in Derry with the Northern Ireland Office. He is also involved in talks with Protestant clergy in Feakle, County Clare, in December 1974, where he voices his desire to end the violence.

However, in the same period, McKee authorises a number of sectarian attacks on Protestants as well as renewed attacks on rival republicans in the Official IRA. For this he is heavily criticised by a group of Provisional IRA activists grouped around Gerry Adams.

A faction led by Adams manages to get McKee voted off the IRA Army Council in 1977, effectively forcing him out of the leadership of the organisation. His health suffers in this period, and he does not resume his IRA activities. He joins Republican Sinn Féin after a split in Sinn Féin in 1986. At age 89, reflecting on his involvement in the Republican cause he says, “From the time I was 15 until 65 I was in some way involved. I have had plenty of time since to think if I was right or I was wrong. I regret nothing.”

In later years McKee, Brendan Hughes and Tommy McKearney are critical of the Belfast Agreement and of the reformist politics of Sinn Féin. In 2016 he sends a message of support to the launch of the hardline new Republican party Saoradh, reportedly the political wing of the New IRA.

McKee dies in Belfast at the age of 97 on June 11, 2019. His funeral takes place on June 15, 2019, in west Belfast. His coffin is carried on a gun carriage. He is buried in Milltown Cemetery.


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Death of Brian Keenan, Member of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA

Brian Keenan, a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on May 21, 2008, at Cullyhanna, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, following a battle with colorectal cancer. He receives an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions and plays a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The son of a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Keenan is born on July 17, 1941, in Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, before his family moves to Belfast. As a teenager, he moves to England to find work, for a time working as a television repairman in partnership with his brother in Corby, Northamptonshire. During this time, he comes to the attention of the police when he damages a cigarette machine, which leads to police having his fingerprints on file. He returns to Northern Ireland when the Troubles begin and starts working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquires a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.

Despite his family having no history of republicanism, Keenan joins the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1970 or 1971, and by August 1971 is the quartermaster of the Belfast Brigade. He is an active IRA member, planning bombings in Belfast and travelling abroad to make political contacts and arrange arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. In 1972, he travels to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government. In early 1973 he takes over responsibility for control of the IRA’s bombing campaign in England and also becomes IRA Quartermaster General. In late 1973, he is the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.

In early 1974, Keenan plans to break Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell out of Long Kesh using a helicopter, in a method similar to Seamus Twomey‘s escape from Mountjoy Prison in October 1973, but the plan is vetoed by Billy McKee. He is arrested in the Republic of Ireland in mid-1974 and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for IRA membership. On March 17, 1975, he is shot and wounded while attempting to lead a mass escape from Portlaoise Prison. While being held in Long Kesh, Gerry Adams helps to devise a blueprint for the reorganisation of the IRA, which includes the use of covert cells and the establishment of a Southern Command and Northern Command. As the architects of the blueprint, Adams, Bell and Brendan Hughes, are still imprisoned, Martin McGuinness and Keenan tour the country trying to convince the IRA Army Council and middle leadership of the benefits of the restructuring plan, with one IRA member remarking “Keenan was a roving ambassador for Adams.” The proposal is accepted after Keenan wins support from the South Derry Brigade, East Tyrone Brigade and South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying, “Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams’ Christ.”

In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London are arrested following the six-day Balcombe Street siege. The IRA unit had been active in England since late 1974 carrying out a series of bombings, and a few months after his release from prison Keenan visits the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions. In follow-up raids after the siege, police discover crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

Garda Síochána informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that Keenan recommended IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey to authorise an attack on Ulster Protestants in retaliation to an increase in sectarian attacks on Catholic civilians by Protestant loyalist paramilitaries, such as the killing of three Catholics in a gun and bomb attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh on December 19, 1975. According to O’Callaghan “Keenan believed that the only way, in his words, to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants] was to just hit back much harder and more savagely than them.” Soon after the sectarian Kingsmill massacre occurs, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work are ordered out of a minibus they are travelling in and executed en masse with a machine gun on January 5, 1976.

Keenan is arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near Banbridge on March 20, 1979, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stopped two cars travelling north on the main road from Dublin to Belfast and is extradited to England to face charges relating to the Balcombe Street Gang‘s campaign in England. His capture is a blow to the IRA, in particular as he was carrying an address book listing his contacts including Palestinian activists in the United Kingdom. The IRA responds by dispatching Bobby Storey and three other members to break Keenan out of prison using a helicopter, but all four are arrested and remanded to Brixton Prison. Keenan stands trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 defended by Michael Mansfield and is accused of organising the IRA’s bombings in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter and Gordon Hamilton Fairley. He is sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on June 25, 1980.

Keenan continues to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams is granted permission by the IRA’s Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, having been refused permission at a meeting the previous month. In a letter sent from Leicester Prison, Keenan writes that he “emphatically” supports the move and endorses the Army Council’s decision.

Keenan is released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 is one of seven members of the IRA’s Army Council. Following the events after the IRA’s ceasefire of August 1994, he is openly critical of Gerry Adams and the “tactical use of armed struggle,” or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement. After the Northern Ireland peace process becomes deadlocked over the issue of the IRA decommissiong its arms, he and the other members of the Army Council authorise the Docklands bombing which kills two people and marks the end of the IRA’s eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.

Keenan outlines the IRA’s public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he states, “The IRA will not be defeated…Republicans will have our victory…Do not be confused about decommissioning. The only thing the Republican movement will accept is the decommissioning of the British state in this country.” In the same speech he accuses the British of “double-dealing” and denounces the Irish government as “spineless.”

On February 25, 2001, Keenan addresses a republican rally in Creggan, County Armagh, saying that republicans should not fear “this phase” of “the revolution” collapsing should the Good Friday Agreement fail. He confirms his continued commitment to the Armalite and ballot box strategy, saying that both political negotiations and violence are “legitimate forms of revolution” and that both “have to be prosecuted to the utmost.” He goes on to say, “The revolution can never be over until we have British imperialism where it belongs—in the dustbin of history,” a message aimed at preventing rank-and-file IRA activists defecting to the dissident Real IRA.

Keenan plays a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA’s go-between with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Gerry Adams remarks, “There wouldn’t be a peace process if it wasn’t for Brian Keenan.” Keenan resigns from his position on the Army Council in 2005 due to ill-health, and is replaced by Bernard Fox, who had taken part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. On May 6, 2007, he is guest speaker at a rally in Cappagh, County Tyrone, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the so-called “Loughgall Martyrs,” eight members of the IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987.

In July 2002, Keenan is diagnosed as suffering from terminal colorectal cancer. It is alleged by the Irish Independent and The Daily Telegraph that Keenan succeeded Thomas “Slab” Murphy as Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA at some point between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s before he relinquished the role to deal with his poor health caused by cancer.

Keenan’s last years are spent living with his wife in Cullyhanna, County Armagh, where he dies of cancer on May 21, 2008. He is an atheist and receives a secular funeral, representing a major republican show of strength.


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Birth of Dolours Price, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Dolours Price, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in Belfast on December 16, 1950.

Price and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident while handling IRA explosives. 

Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.

In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure.  The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition, she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.

Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.

On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.

After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.

The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.

In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.

Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.

In 2010, Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.

Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.

Price dies in her Malahide, County Dublin, home on January 23, 2013, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. Her body is found the following day. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. She is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.


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Birth of Anthony McIntyre, Former IRA Volunteer, Writer & Historian

Anthony McIntyre, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, writer and historian, is born on June 27, 1957.

McIntyre is imprisoned for murder for 18 years in Long Kesh Detention Centre, spending four of those years on the dirty protest. Following his release from prison in 1992, he completes a PhD in political science at Queen’s University Belfast and leaves the republican movement in 1998 to work as a journalist and researcher. A collection of his journalism is published as a book in 2008, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

McIntyre is involved with the Boston College oral history project on the Troubles entitled the Belfast Project, conducting interviews with former Provisional IRA members who, like himself, had become disillusioned with the direction the republican movement had taken, such as Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, and former Ulster loyalist paramilitaries such as David Ervine. The interviews are the basis for the book Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland by Ed Moloney.

In 2011, McIntyre becomes embroiled in controversy when transcripts of the interviews, held by Boston College, are subpoenaed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in relation to an investigation of the 1972 abduction and killing of Jean McConville. In March 2014, the PSNI announces that it is seeking to question McIntyre over newly released Belfast Project recordings, specifically in reference to the alleged role of Gerry Adams in the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville.

McIntyre is a prominent critic of modern-day Sinn Féin and its leadership. He has spoken at Republican Sinn Féin party events. He is a co-founder of The Blanket, a journal which casts a critical eye on the Northern Ireland peace process.


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The Mountjoy Prison Helicopter Escape

The Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape occurs on October 31, 1973, when three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escape from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin aboard a hijacked Alouette II helicopter, which briefly lands in the prison’s exercise yard. The escape makes headlines around the world and is an embarrassment to the Irish coalition government of the time, led by Fine Gael‘s Liam Cosgrave, which is criticised by opposition party Fianna Fáil. A manhunt involving twenty thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána is launched for the escapees, one of whom, Seamus Twomey, is not recaptured until December 1977. The Wolfe Tones write a song celebrating the escape called “The Helicopter Song,” which tops the Irish Singles Chart.

Following the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, the Provisional IRA conducts an armed campaign that seeks to create a united Ireland by ending Northern Ireland‘s status as part of the United Kingdom. As a result of increasing levels of violence in Northern Ireland, internment without trial is introduced there in August 1971, and in the Republic of Ireland the coalition government led by Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave is attempting to curb IRA activity. Fine Gael had come to power on a law-and-order ticket, with a policy of “getting tough on crime.” Suspected IRA members are arrested and accused of IRA membership by a superintendent in the Garda Síochána, a crime under the Offences against the State Acts. They are tried at the juryless Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where the traditional IRA policy of not recognising the court results in a fait accompli as no defence is offered and IRA membership carries a minimum mandatory one-year sentence, resulting in internment in all but name. In September 1973 IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey appears at the Special Criminal Court charged with IRA membership, and states, “I refuse to recognise this British-orientated quisling court.” He is found guilty and receives a five-year sentence. By October 1973 the IRA’s command structure is seriously curbed, with Twomey and other senior republicans J. B. O’Hagan and Kevin Mallon all being held in Mountjoy Prison.

The IRA immediately begins making plans to break Twomey, O’Hagan and Mallon out of the prison. The first attempt involves explosives that had been smuggled into the prison, which are to be used to blow a hole in a door which will give the prisoners access to the exercise yard. From there, they are to scale a rope ladder thrown over the exterior wall by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade who are to have a getaway car waiting to complete the escape. The plans when the prisoners cannot gain access to the exercise yard and the rope ladder is spotted, so the IRA begins making new escape plans. The idea of using a helicopter in an escape had been discussed before in a plot to break Gerry Adams out of Long Kesh internment camp but had been ruled out because of faster and more sophisticated British Army helicopters being stationed at a nearby base. The IRA’s GHQ staff approves the plan to break out Twomey, O’Hagan and Mallon, and arrangements are made to obtain a helicopter. A man with an American accent calling himself Mr. Leonard approaches the manager of Irish Helicopters at Dublin Airport, with a view to hiring a helicopter for an aerial photographic shoot in County Laois. After being shown the company’s fleet of helicopters, Leonard arranges to hire a five-seater Alouette II for October 31.

Leonard arrives at Irish Helicopters on October 31 and is introduced to the pilot of the helicopter, Captain Thompson Boyes. Boyes is instructed to fly to a field in Stradbally, in order to pick up Leonard’s photographic equipment. After landing Boyes sees two armed, masked men approaching the helicopter from nearby trees. He is held at gunpoint and told he will not be harmed if he follows instructions. Leonard leaves with one gunman, while the other gunman climbs aboard the helicopter armed with a pistol and an ArmaLite rifle. Boyes is instructed to fly towards Dublin following the path of railway lines and the Royal Canal and is ordered not to register his flight path with Air Traffic Control. As the helicopter approaches Dublin, Boyes is informed of the escape plan and is instructed to land in the exercise yard at Mountjoy Prison.

In the prison’s exercise yard, the prisoners are watching a football match. Shortly after 3:35 p.m. the helicopter swings in to land in the prison yard, with Kevin Mallon directing the pilot using semaphore. A prison officer on duty initially takes no action as he believes the helicopter contains the Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan. After prisoners surround the eight prison officers in the yard, fights break out as the officers realise an escape attempt is in progress. As other prisoners restrain the officers, Twomey, Mallon and O’Hagan board the helicopter. As the helicopter takes off, in the confusion one officer shouts, “Close the gates, close the fucking gates.” The helicopter flies north and lands at a disused racecourse in the Baldoyle area of Dublin, where the escapees are met by members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade. Boyes is released unharmed, and the escapees are transferred to a taxi that had been hijacked earlier and are transported to safe houses.

The escape makes headlines around the world and is an embarrassment for Cosgrave’s government, which is criticised for “incompetence in security matters” by opposition party Fianna Fáil. An emergency debate on security is held in Dáil Éireann on November 1.

The IRA releases a statement on the escape, which reads, “Three republican prisoners were rescued by a special unit from Mountjoy Prison on Wednesday. The operation was a complete success, and the men are now safe, despite a massive hunt by Free State forces.” Shortly after the escape Twomey gives an exclusive interview to German magazine Der Spiegel, where the reporter says people throughout Europe are joking about the incident as “the escape of the century.” Irish rebel band the Wolfe Tones writes a song celebrating the escape called “The Helicopter Song,” which is immediately banned by the government yet still tops the Irish Singles Chart after selling twelve thousand copies in a single week.

The escape results in all IRA prisoners being held at Mountjoy Prison and Curragh Camp being transferred to the maximum security Portlaoise Prison. In order to prevent any further escapes, the perimeter of the prison is guarded by members of the Irish Army, and wires are erected over the prison yard to prevent any future helicopter escape. Cosgrave states there will be “no hiding place” for the escapees, and a manhunt involving twenty thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána ensues.

Mallon is recaptured at a Gaelic Athletic Association dance in a hotel near Portlaoise on December 10, 1973, and imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. He escapes from there in a mass break-out on August 18, 1974, when nineteen prisoners escape after overpowering guards and using gelignite to blast through the gates. He is recaptured in Foxrock in January 1975 and returned to Portlaoise Prison. O’Hagan is recaptured in Dublin in early 1975, and also imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. After the end of his original twelve-month sentence, he is immediately arrested and sentenced to a further two years imprisonment for escaping. Twomey evades recapture until December 2, 1977, when he is spotted sitting in a car in Sandycove by members of the Garda’s Special Branch who are investigating an arms shipment after a tip-off from police in Belgium. He drives away after spotting the officers, before being recaptured in the centre of Dublin after a high-speed car chase. He is also imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison until his release in 1982.

In 2021, Brendan Hughes publishes an autobiography Up Like a Bird, an account of the planning and organisation of the escape, co-authored with Doug Dalby.


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Death of Dolours Price, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Dolours Price, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, dies in her Malahide, County Dublin home on January 23, 2013.

Price is born in Belfast on December 16, 1950. She and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident handling IRA explosives. 

Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.

In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure.  The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.

Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.

On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.

After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.

The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.

In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.

Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.

In 2010 Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.

Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.

On January 24, 2013 Price is found dead at her Malahide, County Dublin home, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. Her body is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.


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The Beginning of the 1980 Hunger Strike

Irish political prisoners confined in the infamous H-Blocks of Long Kesh Detention Centre commence a hunger strike on October 27, 1980. The hunger strike is to continue until their demands for political status and for an end to British torture are met, or until death.

It begins with seven republican volunteers: Brendan Hughes, the IRA commanding officer in the prison, Sean McKenna, Tommy McKearney, Tommy McFeely, Leo Green, and Raymond McCartney, all of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and John Nixon of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

On December 1, three female prisoners, Mary Doyle, Mairéad Farrell and Mairéad Nugent, join the strike in Armagh Prison. Thirty more republican prisoners join later.

Despite being deceived into ending prematurely after 53 days, it sets the scene for a second hunger strike the following March, led by Bobby Sands. The first hunger strike announcement is made in a statement which is reprinted in full below.

“We the Republican POWs in the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, demand the right of political recognition and that we be accorded the status of political prisoners. We claim this right as captured combatants in the continuing struggle for national liberation and self-determination. We refute most strongly the tag of criminal with which the British have attempted to label us and our struggle, and we point to the devisive, partitionist institution of the six-county state as the sole criminal aspect of the present conflict.

“All of us were arrested under repressive laws, interrogated and often tortured in RUC barracks, and processed through special non-jury courts, where we were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. After this we were put in the H-Blocks and were expected to bow the knee before the British administration and wear their criminal uniform. Attempts to criminalise us were designed to depoliticise the Irish national struggle.

“We don’t have to recite again the widespread, almost total forms of punishment, degradations and deprivations we have been subjected to. All have failed to break our resistance.

“For the past four years we have endured this brutality in deplorable conditions. We have been stripped naked and robbed of our individuality, yet we refuse to be broken. Further repression only serves to strengthen our resolve and that of our gallant female comrades’ enduring the same hardships in Armagh jail.

“During this period many individuals, religious figures and political organisations and sections of the media have condemned the way we have been treated. Yet despite appeals for a resolution of the H-Block protest, the British government has remained intransigent and has displayed vindictive arrogance in dealing with the problem. They refuse to treat this issue in a realistic manner which is just another reflection of their attitude to the entire Irish question.

“Bearing in mind the serious implications of our final step, not only for us but for our people, we wish to make it clear that every channel has now been exhausted, and not wishing to break faith with those from whom we have inherited our principles, we now commit ourselves to a hunger strike.

“We call on the Irish people to lend us their support for our just demands and we are confident that this support will be very much in evidence in the coming days.

“We call on all solidarity and support groups to intensify their efforts and we also look forward with full confidence to the support of our exiled countrymen in America and Australia.

“We declare that political status is ours of right and we declare that from Monday, October 27th, 1980, a hunger strike by a number of men representing H- Blocks 3, 4, and 5 will commence.

“Our widely recognised resistance has carried us through four years of immense suffering, and it shall carry us through to the bitter climax of death, if necessary.”

Signed: PRO, H-Block blanket men, Long Kesh camp

(From: “The 1980 H-Block hunger strike,” Irish Republican News, http://www.republican-news.org, October 31, 2020)