seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Derry Journal


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Real IRA Pledges Continuation of Campaign of Violence

On October 21, 2002, the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) pledges to continue their campaign of violence, ignoring a call by the prisoners in Portlaoise Prison to disband and confirm the organisation has split.

Hardliners on the outside, mostly from Northern Ireland, issue a statement warning people to stay away from British army barracks and police stations.

The caller to a newspaper in Derry says, “We warn all civilians to stay away from military installations and Crown Force personnel. A number of recent attacks have had to be aborted due to the presence of civilians in the vicinity. Anyone entering military installations does so at their own risk.”

No reference is made to a lengthy statement, issued over the previous weekend by prisoners in Portlaoise Prison, that calls for the “Army Council” to stand down.

The prisoners with the exception of three claim the present leadership’s “financial motivations far outweigh their political commitment.” The Real IRA, heavily involved in smuggling cigarettes, is estimated to amass nearly 5m a year. Nearly 40 prisoners are being held in Portlaoise at the time and a further 30 are in jail in Northern Ireland. Three are serving sentences in England.

In the statement, the organisation claims responsibility for a coffee-jar bomb attack on Castlederg Police Station in County Tyrone. They have also been blamed for a series of hoax bomb alerts in the centre of Belfast and at Belfast International Airport.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan is one of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, killed in the group’s bomb attack in Omagh in August 1998, says the statement is a clear message that the Real IRA are going to continue killing innocent people. “The only people who have decided to pursue a peaceful path are those who are locked up in jail and are powerless to do anything about it,” Gallagher says.

“It looks as if it is business as usual for the Real IRA even though there is obviously an internal split,” Gallagher adds.

The Real IRA statement is phoned with a recognised code word to the Derry Journal newspaper, where civilian workman David Caldwell was killed in a Real IRA bomb attack on a Territorial Army base in August 2002.

(From: “Real IRA vows to continue violence” by John Breslin, Irish Examiner, October 22, 2002)


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Birth of Garbhan Downey, Novelist & Editor

Garbhan Downey, novelist and editor, is born in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on February 24, 1966. He is the former Director of Communications and Marketing for Culture Company 2013, which delivers Derry’s City of Culture year.

Downey is a product of St. Columb’s College, the Catholic grammar school whose past pupils include John Hume, Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel.

Downey cuts his teeth in journalism editing University College Galway’s student magazine in the late 1980s. After graduating with an MSc in computing from the University of Ulster, he works as an entertainment columnist with the Derry Journal and then as a staff reporter with the Londonderry Sentinel, before moving to The Irish News to become the paper’s Derry correspondent.

Downey’s offbeat reports of the 1994 FIFA World Cup for The Irish News are subsequently compiled for his first book, Just One Big Party. He spends six years as a BBC news producer in Derry and Belfast, before joining the Derry News as editor in 2001. During his period as editor (2001–2004), the Derry News wins two Newspaper Society awards for Fastest Circulation Growth in the United Kingdom.

Since 2004, Downey has published six comic novels set in the criminal underbelly of post-ceasefire Ireland. His books have been described as “a superb blend of comedy, political dirty tricks, grisly murder and bizarre twists.”

A former deputy-president of the Union of Students in Ireland, Downey is one of the organisers of a student occupation of government offices in Dublin on Budget Day 1988 in protest against education cutbacks.

In June 2002, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) get a court order to force Downey to hand over pictures the Derry News had captured of the Real Irish Republican Army attacking a communications post.

In 2006, Downey helps establish the new Northern Ireland literary review Verbal and edits the publication for its first six issues.

A lifelong political anorak, in 2007, Downey works as an election pundit for TV3 (Ireland), alongside the Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll. In 2010, he wins a contest to predict the winners of Northern Ireland’s 18 Westminster constituencies, missing out on just one, Naomi Long, who surprisingly beat First Minister Peter Robinson in Belfast East. He donates his prize, a framed Ian Knox cartoon, to Long by way of apology.

Downey’s 2010 comedy-thriller The American Envoy is the first novel issued by an Irish publishing house as a Kindle e-book, simultaneously with its paperback release.

In June 2011, Downey is appointed Director of Media for Culture Company 2013, the body tasked with delivering Derry’s UK City of Culture year.

Downey is married to Una McNally, and they have two children.


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Irish Republican Patsy O’Hara Dies on Hunger Strike

Patsy O’Hara, Irish republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), dies on hunger strike in the H Blocks of Long Kesh Prison at 11:29 PM on May 21, 1981. Earlier in the day, at 2:11 AM, he is preceded in death by his friend and fellow hunger-striker, Raymond McCreesh.

O’Hara is born on July 11, 1957 in Bishop Street, Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

O’Hara joins Na Fianna Éireann in 1970 and, in 1971, his brother Sean is interned in Long Kesh Prison. In late 1971, at the age of 14, he is shot and wounded by a soldier while manning a barricade. Due to his injuries, he is unable to attend the civil rights march on Bloody Sunday but watches it go by him in the Brandywell Stadium, and the events of the day have a lasting effect on him.

In October 1974, O’Hara is interned in Long Kesh Prison, and upon his release in April 1975 he joins the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and INLA. He is arrested in Derry in June 1975 and held on remand for six months. In September 1976, he is arrested again and once more held on remand for four months.

On May 10, 1978, O’Hara is arrested on O’Connell Street in Dublin under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, and is released eighteen hours later. He returns to Derry in January 1979 and is active in the INLA. On May 14, 1979, he is arrested and is convicted of possessing a hand grenade. He is sentenced to eight years in prison in January 1980.

O’Hara becomes Officer Commanding of the INLA prisoners at the beginning of the first hunger strike in 1980, and he joins the 1981 strike on March 22.

On Thursday, May 21, 1981 at 11:29 PM, Patsy O’Hara dies at the age of 23 after 61 days on hunger strike. In accordance with his wishes, his parents do not get him the medical intervention needed to save his life. His corpse is found to be mysteriously disfigured prior to its departure from prison and before the funeral, including signs of his face being beaten, a broken nose, and cigarette burns on his body.

O’Hara’s mother, Peggy O’Hara, is a candidate in the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election in the Foyle constituency. She is not elected, but she is one of the more successful dissident republican candidates opposed to the new policy of the Sinn Féin leadership of working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and wins 1,789 votes. On the eve of the election, over 330 former republican prisoners write a letter to the Derry Journal endorsing her campaign.


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Birth of Patsy O’Hara, Republican Hunger Striker

patsy-o-hara

Patsy O’Hara, Irish republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), is born on July 11, 1957, in Bishop Street, Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

O’Hara joins Na Fianna Éireann in 1970 and, in 1971, his brother Sean is interned in Long Kesh Prison. In late 1971, at the age of 14, he is shot and wounded by a soldier while manning a barricade. Due to his injuries, he is unable to attend the civil rights march on Bloody Sunday but watches it go by him in the Brandywell Stadium, and the events of the day have a lasting effect on him.

In October 1974, O’Hara is interned in Long Kesh Prison, and upon his release in April 1975 he joins the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and INLA. He is arrested in Derry in June 1975 and held on remand for six months. In September 1976, he is arrested again and once more held on remand for four months.

On May 10, 1978, O’Hara is arrested on O’Connell Street in Dublin under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act and is released eighteen hours later. He returns to Derry in January 1979 and is active in the INLA. On May 14, 1979, he is arrested and is convicted of possessing a hand grenade. He is sentenced to eight years in prison in January 1980.

O’Hara becomes Officer Commanding of the INLA prisoners at the beginning of the first hunger strike in 1980, and he joins the 1981 strike on March 22.

On Thursday, May 21, 1981, at 11:29 PM, Patsy O’Hara dies after 61 days on hunger strike, at the age of 23. In accordance with his wishes, his parents do not get him the medical intervention needed to save his life. His corpse is found to be mysteriously disfigured prior to its departure from prison and before the funeral, including signs of his face being beaten, a broken nose, and cigarette burns on his body.

O’Hara’s mother, Peggy O’Hara, is a candidate in the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election in the Foyle constituency. She is not elected, but she is one of the more successful dissident republican candidates opposed to the new policy of the Sinn Féin leadership of working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and wins 1,789 votes. On the eve of the election, over 330 former republican prisoners write a letter to the Derry Journal endorsing her campaign.