seamus dubhghaill

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Death of Nellie Gifford, Republican Activist & Nationalist

Nellie Gifford, Irish republican activist and nationalist, dies in Rathmines, Dublin, on June 23, 1971.

Born Helen Ruth Gifford on November 9, 1880, in Phibsborough, Dublin, to Frederick Gifford, a solicitor, and Isabella Julia Gifford (née Burton), Gifford is the fifth child and second eldest daughter of the family of six daughters and six sons. Her father is a Catholic while her mother, a niece of the painter Frederic Burton, is rigorously Protestant. All the children are brought up in the Church of Ireland. The men, emigrate and remain unionist while the women are active nationalists. Most famous are the two youngest, the artist Grace Gifford, and the journalist and broadcaster Sidney Czira.

Gifford grows up in Rathmines and goes to school at Alexandra College. She trains as a domestic economy teacher and works for seven years at a series of positions in County Meath.

Gifford experiences the living conditions of the landless rural poor while lodging in labourers’ cottages during this time. As a result, she becomes a supporter of the campaigns of the land agitator and nationalist MP Laurence Ginnell.

Gifford is also influenced by her sisters’ nationalism and feminism. With them, she becomes involved with the Irish Women’s Franchise League, and gets to know Constance Markievicz. She gets parts in stage plays, including Eleanor’s Enterprise by George Birmingham in the Gaiety Theatre, a play produced by the countess’s husband, Count Casimir Markievicz.

During the 1913 Dublin lock-out Gifford assists James Larkin enter the Imperial Hotel, on August 31 to address the crowd. He enters in disguise, that of an elderly and infirm clergyman. She poses as his niece. She speaks to the hotel staff to prevent Larkin’s strong Liverpool accent giving away his identify. This is the speech which precipitates the “Bloody Sunday” police baton charge. Gifford goes on to be a founding member of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). This group is attractive to many women due to the feminist beliefs of James Connolly.

Gifford gives lessons on camp cookery in Liberty Hall and finds jobs for recruits coming in from abroad. As a result of this work she, very fatefully, introduces Michael Collins to her future brother-in-law Joseph Plunkett who go on to serve together in the 1916 Easter Rising. Collins is Plunkett’s aide-de-camp.

Gifford is the only one of her sisters to actively participate in the rising itself. She is with the ICA’s St. Stephen’s Green contingent alongside Countess Markievicz. Throughout the week she supervises the garrison’s provisions in the Royal College of Surgeons building, commandeering food from shops and bread vans, and by courier from other garrisons. She also ensures the delivery of provisions to troops both in the college with her and in outlying posts. She is one of the women arrested at the surrender and jailed in Kilmainham Gaol. At the same time, in the same prison her sister Grace marries Joseph Plunkett hours before his execution. Only twelve women are detained after the main release of women prisoners on May 8, 1916. Gifford is one of those transferred to Mountjoy Prison until her release on June 4, 1916. Afterward she continues to be as involved in the campaigns.

After her time in prison, Gifford travels through England to the United States where she and other women veterans of Easter week lecture throughout America. While there she marries Joseph Donnelly, of Omagh, County Tyrone in 1918. In 1921 she and their year-old daughter Maeve leave him to return to Ireland.

Frederick Gifford dies in September 1917 and leaves Gifford £800. However, she is was not well off. She becomes a broadcaster and journalist for the national radio and the Irish press. Holding to her upbringing, she remains a staunch Protestant, unlike four of her sisters, who had married Catholics.

Gifford becomes devoted to preserving the historical record of the independence movement. Noticing the huge number of visitors for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, she organises a small exhibition there of 1916 memorabilia for the National Museum of Ireland. She is irritated by the display of Catholic religious artifacts there. She campaigns for a permanent exhibition of recent Irish nationalist history. She coordinates a substantial body of material pertinent to nationalist organisations, the Easter Rising, and the Irish War of Independence, which now forms the core of the present collection.

Over the years Gifford is secretary of the Old IRA Association, a member of the Old Dublin Society, and a founder of the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Society. She also looks after stray and neglected dogs and cats. She dies at the age of 90 on June 23, 1971, at the Gascoigne nursing home in Rathmines, Dublin.

(Pictured: Irish nationalist Nellie Gifford taken in Boston in 1917)


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Austin Currie Begins Housing Allocation Discrimination Protest

On June 20, 1968, Austin Currie, Nationalist Party Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and a number of other people, begin a protest about discrimination in the allocation of housing by “squatting” (illegally occupying) in a house in Caledon, County Tyrone. The protesters are evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The next day the annual conference of the Nationalist Party unanimously approves of the protest action by Currie in Caledon. This is one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

Born in Coalisland, County Tyrone on October 11, 1939, Austin is the eldest of eleven children born to Mary (née O’Donnell) and John Currie. He is educated at the renowned St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon, and graduates in politics and history from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

Currie becomes an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). He later speaks about the effect of partition on Catholics in Northern Ireland: “Partition was used to try to cut us off from the rest of the Irish nation. Unionists did their best to stamp out our nationalism and, the educational system, to the extent it could organise it, was oriented to Britain and we were not even allowed to use names such as Séamus or Seán. When my brothers’ godparents went to register their birth, they were told no such names as Séamus or Seán existed in Northern Ireland and were asked for the English equivalent.”

In 1964 Currie is elected in a by-election as a Nationalist MP for East Tyrone in the 10th House of Commons of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, following the death of the sitting Nationalist MP, Joe Stewart. He retains his seat in the 11th House of Commons in the 1965 Northern Ireland general election and the 12th House of Commons in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. This is the last election to the home rule Parliament at Stormort, before it is suspended by Government of the United Kingdom in March 1972, and formally abolished by the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973.

In 1970, Currie is a founder of the group that establishes the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). From 1973 to 1974, he is elected as an SDLP member of the short-lived devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. In 1974 he becomes Chief Whip of the SDLP, and in the same year becomes Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive. The Assembly and Executive collapse on May 28, 1974, after opposition from within the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Ulster Workers’ Council strike. This leads to the imposition of direct rule of Northern Ireland from London.

Currie contests the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat, but is unsuccessful on both attempts. He also is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat. That Assembly, which is an attempt by the Government of the United Kingdom to reintroduce devolved power-sharing, collapses in 1986 without executive ministerial functions ever being transferred to it from the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as no political agreement can be reached on power-sharing between the parties owing to nationalists abstentionism over the constituency boundaries used to elect members, and unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

Following his decision to quit Northern Ireland politics, and relocate his family to County Kildare, Currie becomes actively involved in politics in the Republic of Ireland. Partly due to his long-standing doubts about the commitment of politicians in the Republic to the plight of northern nationalists, he join the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West at the 1989 Irish general election.

In 1990, Fine Gael selects Currie as their candidate for the 1990 Irish presidential election, running against Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil TD, Brian Lenihan Sr, and Senator Mary Robinson for the Labour Party. The 1990 election is the first contested election for the Irish Presidency in 17 years. Currie receives 267,902 first-preference votes (approximately 17%) and is eliminated on the first count. The distribution of his votes sees Mary Robinson elected as Ireland’s first female president on the second count, beating Lenihan by more than 86,000 votes.

In his 2004 autobiography All Hell will Break Loose, Currie writes about his experience of running in the presidential election, and the prejudice he faced as a nationalist from Ulster in southern politics: “What annoyed, indeed angered me most was the suggestion that because I came from the North, I was not a real Irishman … what I called the partitionist mentality … [during the election campaign] the [then Fianna Fáil] Minister for Justice [Ray Burke] said Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes ‘had to go to Tyrone to find a candidate for the presidency’ … it was hard to take, particularly from so-called republicans.”

Following his defeat in the presidential election, Currie holds his Dáil seat in Dublin West at the 1992 and 1997 Irish general elections. Following the formation of the so-called Rainbow Coalition between Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, on December 20, 1994, newly appointed Taoiseach John Bruton appoints him as a Minister of State with responsibility for Children’s Rights at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, becoming the first ever minister in an Irish Government with dedicated responsibility for children. He holds this post until the appointment of a new Irish Government on June 26, 1997, following the 1997 Irish general election.

At the 2002 Irish general election Currie contests the new constituency of Dublin Mid-West, and fails to be elected. He immediately announces his retirement from electoral politics. He continues to speak and campaign for civil rights across the island of Ireland and for causes he believes in, such as justice for the families of the Disappeared during the Troubles. He and his wife and family are personal friends of the family of one of the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, from Donaghmore, County Tyrone. His daughter Emer Currie is elected in his former constituency of Dublin West at the 2024 Irish general election.

Following the deaths of Seamus Mallon and John Hume in January and August 2020 respectively, Currie becomes the last surviving founder of the SDLP.

Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at the age of 82 at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare. Following an initial funeral mass in Allentown, County Kildare, his remains are transferred to his original family home in Edendork, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, where a second funeral mass was celebrated at St. Malachy’s Church, Edendork. He is buried alongside his parents in the cemetery adjoining the church.


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Death of Robin Jackson, Northern Irish Loyalist Paramilitary

Robin Jackson, also known as The Jackal, a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary and part-time soldier, dies at his home in Donaghcloney, County Down, Northern Ireland, on May 30, 1998.

Jackson is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a Banbridge Catholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.

Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.

Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World  is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.

After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.

Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.

(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Bernadette Devlin, Civil Rights Leader & Politician

Bernadette Devlin, Irish civil rights leader and former politician, is born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on April 23, 1947. She serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland from the 1969 Mid Ulster by-election on April 17, 1969 until February 1974.

Devlin is born into a Roman Catholic family and attends St. Patrick’s Girls Academy in Dungannon. She is studying Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in 1968 when she takes a prominent role in a student-led civil rights organisation, People’s Democracy. She is subsequently excluded from the university.

Devlin stands unsuccessfully against James Chichester-Clark in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. When George Forrest, the MP for Mid Ulster, dies, she fights the subsequent by-election on the “Unity” ticket, defeating Forrest’s widow Anna, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate, and is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. At age 21, she is the youngest MP at the time, and remains the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster until the 2015 United Kingdom general election when 20-year-old Mhairi Black succeeds to the title.

After engaging on the side of the residents in the Battle of the Bogside, Devlin is convicted of incitement to riot in December 1969, for which she serves a short jail term.

Having witnessed the events of Bloody Sunday, Devlin is infuriated that she is consistently denied the floor in the House of Commons by the Speaker Selwyn Lloyd, despite the fact that parliamentary convention decrees that any MP witnessing an incident under discussion would be granted an opportunity to speak about it. She slaps Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary in the Conservative government, across the face when he states in the House of Commons that the paratroopers had fired in self-defence on Bloody Sunday.

Devlin helps to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), a revolutionary socialist breakaway from Official Sinn Féin, with Seamus Costello in 1974. She serves on the party’s national executive in 1975 but resigns when a proposal that the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) become subordinate to the party executive is defeated. In 1977, she joins the Independent Socialist Party, but it disbands the following year.

In 1971, Devlin gives birth to a daughter, Róisín, which costs her some political support because she is unmarried. She later marries Róisín’s father, Michael McAliskey, on her 26th birthday on April 23, 1973.

McAliskey stands as an independent candidate in support of the prisoners at Long Kesh prison in the 1979 European Parliament elections in Northern Ireland and wins 5.9% of the vote. She is a leading spokesperson for the Smash H-Block Campaign, which supports the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981.

On January 16, 1981, McAliskey and her husband are shot by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who break into their home near Coalisland, County Tyrone. She is shot fourteen times in front of her children. British soldiers are watching the McAliskey home at the time but fail to prevent the assassination attempt. The couple are taken by helicopter to a hospital in nearby Dungannon for emergency treatment and then transported to the Musgrave Park Hospital, Military Wing, in Belfast, under intensive care. The attackers, all three members of the South Belfast UDA, are captured by the army patrol and subsequently jailed.

In 1982, McAliskey twice fails in an attempt to be elected to the Dublin North–Central constituency of Dáil Éireann. In 2003, she is barred from entering the United States and is deported on the grounds that the United States Department of State has declared that she “poses a serious threat to the security of the United States,” apparently referring to her conviction for incitement to riot in 1969.

On May 12, 2007, McAliskey is the guest speaker at Éirígí‘s first Annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill, Dublin. She currently co-ordinates a not-for-profit community development organisation based in Dungannon, the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme, and works with migrant workers to improve their treatment in Northern Ireland.

During the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election, McAliskey is an election agent for People before Profit‘s candidate in Foyle, Eamonn McCann. McCann is successfully elected.

During the campaigning for the 2024 European Parliament election in Ireland, McAliskey endorses Clare Daly in the Dublin constituency.


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The Dungannon Land Mine Attack

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushes two British Army Land Rovers with an improvised land mine outside Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on December 16, 1979. Four British soldiers are killed in the attack.

Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA has carried out many improvised land mine and roadside bomb attacks on British forces in the region. In September 1972, three British soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is blown up by an IRA land mine at Sanaghanroe, near Dungannon. In March 1974, two IRA members are killed on the Aughnacloy Road near Dungannon when a land mine they are planting explodes prematurely.

The Dungannon attack occurs just months after the Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, where the IRA kills eighteen British soldiers with roadside bombs in south County Down — the deadliest single attack on British forces during The Troubles.

On December 16, 1979, two armoured British Army Land Rovers are driving along Ballygawley Road, about two miles outside Dungannon. A unit of the IRA had planted a 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) improvised land mine in a culvert under the road at Glenadush. When the second vehicle reaches the culvert, the land mine is detonated by remote control from a concealed location, showcasing their evolving tactics in guerrilla warfare and ambush strategy. The blast is powerful enough to launch the armoured Land Rover into the air and killing four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Artillery outright: William Beck (23), Keith Richards (22), Simon Evans (19), and Allan Ayrton (23).


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Birth of Padraig Marrinan, Figure- & Portrait-Painter

Padraig H. Marrinan, figure and portrait painter, is born Patrick Hamilton Marrinan in Belfast on December 10, 1906, the son of James Marrinan, a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), originally from County Louth, and Emily Marrinan (née O’Neill).

Marrinan becomes ill with infantile paralysis at the age of five, and as a result is tutored privately. He has no formal training in art but is largely influenced by his reading matter, particularly the American comic strips of Bud Fisher. The variety of facial expressions that Fisher can achieve, with only a pencil, intrigues and inspires him. Likewise, the images evoked by Celtic mythology and religious art also contributes to his visual language, and many hours are spent in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery studying the paintings in their collection.

Marrinan exhibits with the Ulster Academy of Arts from an address at 524 Donegall Road, Belfast, entering “The Wee Gate, Earl Street, Belfast” (1931) and “The Painter’s Father” and the “Apache” (1934), which is judged “picture of the year.” He last exhibits with a landscape, “Connemara,” along with four other works in 1949.

Marrinan paints and sketches portraits of many notable Irish figures, among which is the charcoal drawing of northern Fenian Robert Johnston (1934; National Gallery of Ireland) and a sketch of the Donegal storyteller Niall Duffy (University College Dublin). His literary portraits include one of Brian Friel. He holds a one-man show in 1951 at 55a Donegall Place, Belfast, where he exhibits a bust of John McLaverty. He takes an interest in sculpture although painting and drawing remain his preferred form of expression. Important commissions are for a memorial portrait (completed 1952) of Éamonn Ceannt for Ceannt Barracks officers’ mess, Curragh Camp, County Kildare, and for a portrait of Vice-brigadier Peadar Clancy for Clancy Barracks, Dublin. He paints two memorial portraits of President John F. Kennedy, one of which is in the Irish Club, London.

Examples of his religious art are in Dublin and Northern Ireland, with a Stations of the Cross in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Churchtown, Dublin, and another Stations in St. Colman’s Church, Lambeg, County Antrim. He paints “Our Lady of Belfast” for the Holy Cross church, Ardoyne, Belfast, a church regularly targeted in the northern troubles. His “Madonna and Child of Loreto” (1969) is in the Loreto Grammar School, Omagh, County Tyrone.

Marrinan is an honorary member of the Royal Ulster Academy and exhibits with them every year from 1950 onward, showing a portrait of Mrs. Padraig Marrinan in 1967 (no other details of his marriage are known). He is preparing for an exhibition to be held at the Irish Club, London, in 1974, but dies on October 25, 1973, at Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh. He is then living at James Street, Omagh.

(From: “Marrinan, Padraig H.” by Ruth Devine, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “The River Lee, Cork City, Ireland” by Padraig Marrinan, oil on canvas)


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Birth of Robin Jackson, Northern Irish Loyalist Paramilitary

Robin Jackson, also known as The Jackal, a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary and part-time soldier, is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Jackson is one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a Banbridge Catholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.

Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.

Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World  is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.

After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.

Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.

(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Ballygawley Bus Bombing

The Ballygawley bus bombing is a roadside bomb attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a bus carrying British soldiers in Northern Ireland. It occurs in the early hours of August 20, 1988, in the townland of Curr near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. The attack kills eight soldiers and wounds twenty-eight. In the wake of the bombing, the British Army begins ferrying its troops in and out of County Tyrone by helicopter.

The Irish Times reports that “This stretch of road has been a favourite ambush spot for successive generations of IRA men since the 1920s.” The Provisional IRA has been attacking British Army patrols and convoys with roadside bombs regularly since the beginning of the Troubles in the early 1970s. Most of these attacks take place in rural parts of Northern Ireland, especially eastern and southern County Tyrone (where the IRA’s Tyrone Brigade is active) and southern County Armagh (heartland of the South Armagh Brigade). In August 1979, the IRA ambushes a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs near Warrenpoint, killing eighteen soldiers. This is the deadliest attack on the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In December 1979, four more British soldiers are killed on Ballygawley Road in the Dungannon land mine attack. In May 1981, five British soldiers are killed when their Saracen APC is ripped apart by a roadside bomb at Altnaveigh, County Armagh. In July 1983, four Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers are killed when their vehicle strikes an IRA land mine near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. In December 1985, the Tyrone IRA launches an assault on the police barracks in Ballygawley, shooting dead two officers and destroying the barracks with a bomb.

In June 1988, six off-duty British soldiers are killed when an IRA bomb explodes underneath their van in Lisburn. It had been attached to the van as the soldiers are taking part in a charity marathon.

On the night of August 19/20, 1988, an unmarked 52-seater bus is transporting 36 soldiers of The Light Infantry from Aldergrove Flying Station to a military base near Omagh. The soldiers, who came from England, have just finished 18 months of a two-year tour of duty in Northern Ireland and are returning to the base after a short holiday.

As it is driving along the main road from Ballygawley to Omagh, at about 12:30 a.m., IRA members remotely detonate a roadside bomb containing 200 pounds (91 kg) of Semtex. According to police, the bomb had been planted in a vehicle by the roadside and had been detonated by command wire from 330 yards (300 m) away. A statement by one of the survivors claims instead that the roadside bomb was made of “two fertilizer bags filled with Semtex.” The blast hurls the bus 30 metres down the road and throws the soldiers into neighbouring hedges and fields. It leaves a crater 6 feet deep and scatters body parts and twisted metal over a wide area. Witnesses describe finding dead, dying and wounded soldiers strewn on the road and caught in the wreckage of the bus. Others are walking around “stunned.” Some of the first to arrive on the scene and offer help are loyalist bandsmen of the Omagh Protestant Boy’s Band returning from a parade in Portadown, who have also been traveling in buses.

Eight of the soldiers are killed and the remaining 28 are wounded. The soldiers killed are: Jayson Burfitt (aged 19), Richard Greener (aged 21), Mark Norsworthy (aged 18), Stephen Wilkinson (aged 18), Jason Winter (aged 19), Blair Bishop (aged 19), Alexander Lewis (aged 18) and Peter Bullock (aged 21). This is the single biggest loss of life for the British Army from an IRA attack in Northern Ireland since the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979, although eleven off-duty British soldiers had been killed in the Droppin Well bombing in 1982, carried out by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). An account from one of the survivors is published in Ken Wharton‘s book A Long Long War: Voices from the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1969–98 (2008).

An inquest into the attack is told that the road is usually off-limits to military vehicles, due to the threat from the IRA. The driver of the bus, who is also a soldier, claims he had been directed on to the road by diversion signs. The inquest hears that signs had not been placed by the police or the roads service. The IRA denies placing any signs and says that military buses often use the road. The mother of one of those killed accuses the British military of negligence and claims it is “trying to conceal the truth.”

Shortly thereafter, the Provisional IRA issues a statement claiming responsibility. It says that the attack had been carried out by its Tyrone Brigade and adds: “We will not lay down our arms until the peace of a British disengagement from Ireland.” The security forces suspect that an informer may have told the IRA of the bus’s route and the time it would pass a specific spot. After the attack, the British military decides to start ferrying their troops to and from East Tyrone by helicopter to avoid any future attacks like this.

Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, says there is “some evidence” that the explosives used are part of a consignment from Libya. He also states that the possibility of reintroducing internment is “under review”. Libyan weaponry enables the IRA to mount some of its biggest operations during its campaign. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to be one of these attacks. One former IRA member later suggests that Semtex explosive was not crucial to the outcome of the attack, saying, “we were having plenty of success without Semtex… at Ballygawley we ‘only’ got eight, but it was a bus of about fifty-six. If we’d used a fertiliser bomb, the whole bus would have been destroyed.”

On August 30, 1988, three IRA members are ambushed and killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) at Drumnakilly, County Tyrone. According to author Nick Van der Bijl, the men—Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin—are identified by British intelligence as the perpetrators of the bombing. Peter Taylor, instead, says that only Mullin is suspected, and that plans for the SAS operation were already underway at the time of the IRA attack.

Two months after the attack, the British Government introduces the broadcasting ban. It means that the voices of Sinn Féin and IRA members are not allowed to be broadcast on television or radio. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to have influenced the Government’s decision to introduce the ban.

According to state papers declassified in 2019, the attack sparks “panic” in the British Government, and tension between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the British Army over who is at fault for the security lapse. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warns RUC chief, John Hermon, that she will no longer send British troops over “in waves to be killed.”


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Heavy Fighting in Newcastle West, County Limerick

Nationalist forces enter Newcastle West, County Limerick, on Monday, August 7, 1922, after a twelve-hour battle, in which twelve anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, sometimes referred to as Irregulars, are killed. The casualties of the Nationalists are less than those of the Irregulars.

Taking little respite after Sunday’s labors, the Nationals advance from Rathkele on Monday morning, and by midday are in sight of their fresh objective. Armored cars enter the town and machine gun fire is directed against a party of Irregulars, causing many casualties.

When the artillery goes into action against the headquarters of the Irregulars, the Irregulars flee precipitately along Cord road.

Owing to the slow progress in the operations in Southern Ireland, the meeting of Dáil Éireann, scheduled to open Saturday, is postponed again.

The official army bulletin announces that the Nationals captured Castle Island on Saturday, August 5. It says that the counties of Cork and Kerry with a part of South Tipperary and a small area in County Waterford are the only districts held by the Irregulars with any degree of security.

The streets of Dublin are lined with great crowds of people on Tuesday, August 8, for the military funeral of nine National Army soldiers who were killed in fighting the Republican Irregulars in County Kerry. Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government, and all the leading officers of the army in Dublin march beside the hearses. Each coffin is covered with the Republican tricolour. There are many clergymen and other civilians in the funeral procession.

Prominent Catholics of Dublin and Belfast are trying to effect a better understanding between the Ulster and Free State Governments, according to the Daily Mail. This newspaper further states that all efforts to this end, which have all been taken with the advice and approval of leading English Catholics, are without official character.

A message from Strabane, County Tyrone, received by the Exchange Telegraph Company on August 8 states that a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities is imminent, the terms of agreement having been practically arranged in negotiations proceeding in London.

In Downing Street, however, all knowledge of any such Irish negotiations is disclaimed and a telegram from Belfast quotes Ulster Government officials as denying that a settlement with the Free State is imminent.

The Free State Government is also unaware of any negotiations for a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities. It is further states that such negotiations are unlikely to take place.

(From: “Irish Irregulars Routed With Loss,” The New York Times, August 9, 1922 | Pictured: General Michael Collins inspects a soldier at Newcastle West, County Limerick, August 8, 1922)


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Birth of James G. Douglas, Businessman & Politician

James Green Douglas, Irish businessman and politician, is born July 11, 1887, at 19 Brighton Square, Dublin. In 1922, he serves as the first-ever Leas-Chathaoirleach (deputy chairperson) of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the newly independent Irish parliament. He goes on to serve in the Seanad for 30 years.

Douglas is the eldest of nine children of John Douglas, proprietor of John Douglas & Sons Ltd, drapers and outfitters of Wexford Street and originally of Grange, County Tyrone, and his wife, Emily, daughter of John and Mary Mitton of Gortin, Coalisland, County Tyrone. The genealogy of the Douglas family to which he belongs can be traced to Samuel Douglas of Coolhill, Killyman, County Tyrone.

Douglas attends (1895–98) a small school for Quaker children and is a boarder (1898–1902) in the Friends’ School, Lisburn. In 1902, he begins a three-year apprenticeship in his father’s business.

On February 14, 1911, Douglas marries Georgina (Ena) Culley (1883–1959), originally of Tirsogue, Lurgan, County Armagh, whom he meets during his apprenticeship. Their children are John Harold Douglas, who succeeds to the family business and replaces his father as senator, and James Arthur Douglas, who becomes a well-known architect.

From an early age Douglas is fascinated by politics and influenced by the newspapers edited by Arthur Griffith. He becomes a member of the Dublin Liberal Association, whose members for the most part are Protestant home rulers. After the 1916 Easter Rising, with George Russell and others, who also regard themselves as neither unionists nor nationalists, he sets out to promote what they term “full dominion status” for Ireland. This paves the way for the Irish Convention (1917–18), which, however, fails to reconcile the polarised political attitudes of the time.

On February 1, 1921, Douglas, with the help of Sinn Féin, sets up the Irish White Cross. As honorary treasurer and trustee he almost singlehandedly runs the White Cross in 1921. He is appointed by Michael Collins as chairman of the committee to draft the Constitution of the Irish Free State following the Irish War of Independence.

Douglas goes on to become a very active member of Seanad Éireann between 1922 and 1936 under the constitution he had helped to prepare. In 1922, he is elected as the first vice-chairman of the Senate. The Senate is abolished in 1936 and re-established under the terms of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. He is again an active Senator between 1938 and 1943, and from 1944 to 1954. The topics most associated with him during his work as Senator are international refugees and the League of Nations.

For some thirty years he runs the family business, and is also a director of Aspro (Ireland) Ltd, Nugent & Cooper Ltd, Philips Lamps (Ireland) Ltd, and the Greenmount & Boyne Linen Co. Ltd. In addition, he serves as president of the Linen and Cotton Textile Manufacturers Association and as a member of the council of the Federated Union of Employers.

Douglas dies on September 16, 1954.