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Tag Archives: Irish Republicanism


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Death of Gerard Steenson, Leader of the IPLO

Gerard Steenson, an Irish republican paramilitary and a leader of the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation during the Troubles, is killed in an ambush in Ballymurphy, Belfast, on March 14, 1987.

Steenson, a Catholic and the son of Frank Steenson, is born in 1957 and raised in heavily republican West Belfast. He is nicknamed “Doctor Death” by the media and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) for the multiple assassinations he purportedly accomplishes according to The New York Times. However, Fortnight alleges that he got his nickname after he dressed up in a white coat to attack British soldiers guarding a patient at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Steenson is widely associated with internecine violence between Irish republican groups. He joins the Official Irish Republican Army‘s Belfast Brigade in 1972 at the age of 14, becoming part of the Brigade’s C Company. Two years later, he leaves to join the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) upon that paramilitary group’s formation, consequent to their split from the Official IRA. He becomes head of the INLA in Belfast.

Steenson first comes to notoriety as a teenager in 1975 for killing Billy McMillen, the Official IRA’s Belfast leader, during the feud between the INLA and the Official IRA. Jim Cusack, a journalist describes him as the “assassin-in-chief” of Hugh Torney.

During the 1981 Northern Ireland local elections, Steenson and Seán Mackin both lead efforts within the INLA to obstruct Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) candidates which disrupts their votes, viewing the decision to run in the election as wasteful, believing that the allocated resources would be better spent on weapons. Following the election, Steenson later changes his mind with regards to elections, declaring that the party should have run more candidates.

In December 1981, Steenson, fearing that the Dublin INLA leadership will make a move on him following his efforts to set up a parallel organisation, plans an assassination attempt on the Dublin leader, Harry Flynn. Following a meeting of the Ard Comhairle on December 5, Flynn and others go out for drinks in the Flowing Tide pub at the corner of Sackville Place and Marlborough Street in Dublin. Shortly before 11 p.m., Steenson’s gunman enters the pub and fires shots at Flynn before his gun jams and he flees. Though seriously wounded, Flynn survives. After the botched assassination attempt, Steenson then unsuccessfully threatens Seán Flynn for his seat on Belfast City Council. Later, on January 25, 1982, a botched attempt is also made on Seán Flynn and Bernard Dorrian at a bar in the Short Strand area, provoking a feud where a unit from the Derry INLA comes to Belfast searching for Steenson. Failing to secure power, the attacks only demoralise the IRSP and INLA and begin a trend of internal feuds.

In 1985, Steenson is convicted of 67 terrorist offences (including six murders) after his former friend, Harry Kirkpatrick, testifies against him. Kirkpatrick and Steenson are rarely seen apart in public and are given the nicknames “Pinkie and Perky.”

In 1986, Steenson, Jimmy Brown, and Martin “Rook” O’Prey form the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO), consisting of disaffected and expelled INLA members, with the express intention of wiping out the INLA and IRSP and replacing them with their own organisation. He argues in letters, written while he is in prison in the early 1980s, that the INLA has become militarily “inefficient” and that the IRSP leadership has become “ineffective” and requires “realignment.”

Steenson is involved in the Rosnaree Hotel shooting on January 20, 1987, where a meeting between the leadership of the INLA and IPLO is to take place to end hostilities. However, IPLO members ambush the four INLA members at the hotel, killing Thomas “Ta” Power and John “Jap” O’Reilly, while Hugh Torney and Peter Stewart manage to escape.

Steenson is viewed highly in the movement with Brown calling him a “committed and highly efficient military activist and a dedicated revolutionary.” However, he is described by Lord Justice Carswell as “a most dangerous and sinister terrorist. A ruthless and highly dedicated, resourceful and indefatigable planner of criminal exploits who did not hesitate to take a leading role in assassinations and other crimes.” Henry McDonald and Jack Holland write, “Both his friends and enemies spoke in a tone of awestruck at his paramilitary abilities.” Ken Wharton refers to him as a “notorious psychopath.” Sean O’Callaghan describes him as someone who “never took to orders.”

Terry George writes of Steenson that he “was extremely clever and even wittier than Billy McMillan. He had an angelic face and women adored him. He was also ruthless, cunning and fearless.”

On March 14, 1987, Steenson and Tony “Boot” McCarthy return to Ballymurphy after a night of drinking which is cut short by anger over the INLA GHQ faction’s show of force in the Divis Flats earlier in the day. After bringing their car to a stop on Springhill Avenue, they are killed in an ambush by an INLA active unit, with a member of the unit closing the security gate at the top of the street to trap the pair. An INLA spokesperson says Steenson was killed for being “actively involved in continuous and concerted efforts to undermine the authority of the … movement.” Jimmy Brown gives the graveside oration.

The IPLO later kills Emmanuel Gargan in the Hatfield Bar on the Lower Ormeau Road and Kevin Barry Duffy in Armagh, County Armagh, in retaliation for the killing of Steenson. The IPLO draws the ire of the Lower Ormeau community through the circumstances surrounding the killing of Gargan, with graffiti appearing in the area labeled “IPLOscum.”

On Halloween 1992, the Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a large-scale operation (dubbed the “Night of Long Knives”) with the goal of neutralising the IPLO. Following the operation and execution of Jimmy Brown, both the Belfast Brigade and Army Council factions disband.


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Death of James Boland, Member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

James Boland, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) who is linked to the Irish National Invincibles, dies in Dublin on March 11, 1895. He is the father of republican revolutionaries and politicians Harry, Gerald, Ned and Kathleen Boland.

Boland is born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, on October 6, 1856. His parents, Patrick Boland and Eliza Boland (née Kelly), are both Great Famine emigrants from Connacht in Ireland. His father is reputed to be a member of the IRB and his mother is a first cousin of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly.

Patrick and his brothers may have been involved in the IRB campaign to rescue Kelly and Timothy Deasy from a Manchester police van. Ten-year-old Boland is believed to have been a scout for the party that attacks the van and kills a police officer. As he grows older, he becomes more involved in the movement himself.

Boland moves to Dublin in around 1881 and becomes a foreman with a company paving the streets of Smithfield, Dublin. He is transferred from the Manchester Fenians to the Dublin section. He marries Kate Woods in 1882.

Boland is awarded the Royal Humane Society‘s medal in the same year for “jumping off the Metal Bridge” to save a life.

Boland’s involvement in the Invincibles and the Phoenix Park Murders remains unclear. He works with Joe Brady and is named by informers as a member of the IRB’s Dublin Directory in 1882, while another informer names him as a member of the Invincibles and claims that he gave orders to Brady. He is questioned at Dublin Castle, but when a warrant is issued for his arrest on January 25, 1883, he and Kate had fled to New York.

Boland finds work as an engineer with De Castro & Donner, a sugar-refining company in Brooklyn. He also becomes involved in Clan na Gael and gets to know John Devoy very well. He possibly secretly returns to Ireland in 1883 as he reputedly takes part in IRB meetings that are believed to lead to the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). According to his grandson, Kevin Boland, he is in attendance as a member of the already established General Council at the historic meeting in Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary.

Boland’s first child, Nellie, is born in the United States, while his second child, Gerald is conceived there, but is born in Manchester in May 1885.

The Boland family returns to Dublin in 1885 where Boland resumes work with the Dublin Corporation, this time directly employed and, by 1891, has been promoted from foreman to overseer. He is a leading figure in the Paviors’ Society. He is also under continuous surveillance by the police as his IRB role continues. He is named number 59 of 63 “dangerous Fenians” in the Dublin Metropolitan Police District in September 1886.

The Bolands’ third child, Harry, is born in 1887. Boland’s involvement in the nationalist movement increases and, after the split over Charles Stewart Parnell‘s leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), he becomes one of the main Parnellite organisers in Dublin. At Parnell’s funeral procession in 1891, he and seven colleagues head a contingent of 2,000, each wielding a camán (hurley) draped in black. He also organises the funeral of his friend Pat Nally, a former member of the IRB’s Supreme Council with whom Boland had originally conspired in Manchester.

In 1892, Boland is brought before the courts charged with keeping drink for the purposes of sale without a license. In court, he is able to show that, in fact, the premises is the new premises of the Nally Branch of the GAA and that the bar is attached to the club. The case is dismissed.

Boland is elected President of the Dublin County Committee of the GAA in 1892 and to the Dublin seat of GAA Central Council for the next two years. The Bolands have two more children, Kathleen in 1889 and Ned in 1893.

In 1894, Boland is elected to the Supreme Council of the IRB.

Boland falls ill in October 1894 with a serious brain disorder. He has received head injuries at two previous incidents. According to accounts, he is hit in the head protecting Parnell from assailants before his last trip to Wicklow and suffers a concussion. The injury also causes an undetected skull fracture. He is also involved in a bombing of the offices of the Parnell’s newspaper United Ireland in 1891 following an attempted takeover by Healyites, during which he is struck in the head.

Boland fails to recover and dies in Dublin on March 11, 1895. Around 1,500 mourners on foot follow his open hearse at his funeral. The group includes three members of parliament, eight city councillors and prominent Nationalists, including Arthur Griffith, James Bermingham and Fred Allan. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. Following his death, two funds are raised to save his wife and young family from destitution. Enough money is raised to acquire a tobacconists business for Kate Boland.


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The Massereene Barracks Shooting

The Massereene Barracks shooting takes place at Massereene Barracks in Antrim, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on March 7, 2009. Two off-duty British soldiers of the 38 Engineer Regiment are shot dead outside the barracks. Two other soldiers and two civilian delivery men are also shot and wounded during the attack. A dissident Irish republican paramilitary group, the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), claim responsibility.

The shootings are the first British military fatalities in Northern Ireland since 1997. Two days later, the Continuity Irish Republican Army shoot dead Stephen Carroll, a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer, the first Northern Ireland police officer to be killed by paramilitaries since 1998.

From the late 1960s until the late 1990s, Northern Ireland undergoes a conflict known as the Troubles, in which more than 3,500 people are killed. More than 700 of those killed are British military personnel, deployed as part of Operation Banner. The vast majority of these British military personnel are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which wages an armed campaign to force the British to negotiate a withdrawal from Northern Ireland. In 1997, the IRA calls a final ceasefire and in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement is signed. This is widely seen as marking the end of the conflict.

However, breakaway groups of dissident Irish republicans oppose the ceasefire and continue a low-level armed campaign against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. The main group involved is an IRA splinter group known as the Real IRA. In 2007, the British Army formally ends Operation Banner and greatly reduces its presence in Northern Ireland.

The low-level dissident republican campaign continues. In January 2009, security forces have to defuse a bomb in Castlewellan, County Down, and in 2008 three separate incidents see dissident republicans attempt to kill PSNI officers in Derry, Castlederg and Dungannon. In all three cases, PSNI officers are seriously wounded. Two of the attacks involve firearms while the other involves an under-car booby-trap bomb.

At about 9:40 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, March 7, four off-duty British soldiers of the Royal Engineers walk outside the barracks to receive a pizza delivery from two delivery men. As the exchange is taking place, two masked gunmen in a nearby car open fire with PM md. 63 assault rifles. The firing lasts for more than 30 seconds with more than 60 shots being fired. After the initial burst of gunfire, the gunmen walk over to the wounded soldiers lying on the ground and fire again at close range, killing two of them. Those killed are Sappers Mark Quinsey from Birmingham and Patrick Azimkar from London. The other two soldiers and two deliverymen are wounded. The soldiers are wearing desert fatigues and were to be deployed to Afghanistan the following day. A few hours later, the stolen car involved is found abandoned near Randalstown, eight miles (13 km) from the barracks.

A Dublin-based newspaper, the Sunday Tribune, receives a phone call from a caller using a recognised Real IRA codeword. The caller claims responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Real IRA, adding that the civilian pizza deliverymen were legitimate targets as they were “collaborating with the British by servicing them.”

The shootings are the first British military fatalities in Northern Ireland since Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick was shot dead by the Provisional IRA in February 1997, during the Troubles. The attack comes days after a suggestion by Northern Ireland’s police chief, Sir Hugh Orde, that the likelihood of a “terrorist” attack in Northern Ireland is at its highest level in several years.

Civilian security officers belonging to the Northern Ireland Security Guard Service are criticised for not opening fire during the incident, as a result of which plans are made to retrain and rearm them.

The morning after the attack, worshippers come out of St. Comgall’s Church after mass and keep vigil near the barracks. They are joined by their priest and clerics from the town’s other churches. On March 11, 2009, thousands of people attend silent protests against the killings at several venues in Northern Ireland.

The killings are condemned by all mainstream political parties in Northern Ireland, as well as the Irish government, the United States government and Pope Benedict XVI. Sinn Féin condemns the killings, but is criticised for being less vehement than others in its condemnation.

On March 14, 2009, the PSNI arrests three men in connection with the killings, one of whom is former IRA prisoner Colin Duffy. He had broken away from mainstream republicanism and criticised Sinn Féin’s decision to back the new PSNI. On March 25, 2009, after a judicial review of their detention, all the men are ordered to be released by the Belfast High Court. Duffy is immediately re-arrested on suspicion of murder. On March 26, 2009, Duffy is charged with the murder of the two soldiers and the attempted murder of five other people. The following day he appears in court for indictment and is remanded in custody to await trial after it is alleged that his full DNA profile had been found on a latex glove inside the vehicle used by the gunmen. There is also soil found in the car they drove that matches the soil on the ground in front of the barracks.

Brian Shivers, a cystic fibrosis sufferer, is charged with the soldiers’ murders and the attempted murder of six other people. He is also charged with possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life. He is arrested in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, in July 2009.

In January 2012, Shivers is convicted of the soldiers’ murders, but Duffy is acquitted. In January 2013, Shivers’s conviction is overturned by Northern Ireland’s highest appeals court. A May 2013 retrial finds Shivers not guilty. He is cleared of all charges and immediately released from jail. The judge questions why the Real IRA would choose Shivers as the gunman, with his cystic fibrosis and his engagement to a Protestant woman.

The barracks are shut down in 2010 as part of the reduction of the British Army presence in Northern Ireland.


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Birth of Charles McGuinness, Sailor & Adventurer

Charles John McGuinness, sailor and adventurer, is born on March 6, 1893, in Derry, County Londonderry.

McGuinness is the elder of two sons of John McGuinness, sea captain and harbourmaster who is born in the United States, and Margaret McGuinness (née Hernand) from Donegal, County Donegal.

In 1908, at the age of 15, McGuinness leaves home, stowing away in a ship and traveling extensively throughout the world for several years. At the age of 17 he is involved in the first of several shipwrecks, drifting for two weeks on a lifeboat before being rescued near Tahiti. He works as a pearl fisher in the South Seas for a year before resuming his nautical career.

In 1913, McGuinness travels through Canada, working as a panhandler and briefly joining the Canadian Militia. In August 1914, following the outbreak of World War I, he joins the British navy, serving in Admiral Reginald Bacon‘s Dover Patrol and in Cameroon. After learning of the 1916 Easter Rising, he deserts the British navy but later joins the South African Army, in which he fights in east Africa. He is captured by the German Schutztruppe of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck but manages to escape by trekking through the jungle.

Disillusioned with the war, McGuinness resumes his travels. In 1920, he returns to Derry and joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA), leading a flying column in northwest Ireland. McGuinness, who reputedly introduces the first monkey to Derry, is viewed locally as an eccentric adventurer but is much celebrated for his instrumental role in the daring escape of Frank Carty, the IRA Sligo Brigade commander, from Derry jail.

Wanted for the murder of Inspector Robert Johnson in Glasgow, a charge he denies, McGuinness is captured by the British army in June 1921 after a failed bank raid in Glenties, County Donegal, but escapes from Derry’s Ebrington Barracks before his identity is established. Shortly after the truce in July 1921 he is sent by Liam Mellows to Germany, from where he smuggles arms to Ireland. After the treaty split, he continues to smuggle arms for the republican side but leaves the IRA, having become disillusioned with its incompetence. He claims to have been arrested in Berlin in 1922 for conspiring with Bulgarian revolutionaries, and released on condition that he leaves the state.

McGuinness emigrates to New York in 1923 where, following an alleged spell of employment by Chiang Kai-shek‘s forces in China, he establishes himself as a building contractor. In 1928, he joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd‘s expedition to the Antarctic, serving as a navigation officer. At a reception on his return in 1929, he presents the mayor of New York City, Jimmy Walker, with an Irish tricolour which, he claims, Byrd had flown over the South Pole. He is not, as he claims, awarded a congressional medal by the secretary of the navy.

In 1930, McGuinness embarks on a new career, smuggling rum between Canada and the United States (his memoirs of which are subsequently published in the American press under the pseudonym “Night-Hawk”). After losing his fortune when his boat and cargo are impounded in the summer of 1931, he travels to the Soviet Union to observe communism at first hand. He remains in the Soviet Union around two years, where he claims to work as a harbourmaster in Murmansk, and forms an unfavourable opinion of the Soviet Union.

McGuinness’s autobiography, Nomad, is published in 1934. His publisher, Methuen Publishing, is sued for considerable damages by the notorious Alderman John William Nixon, MP, as a result of McGuinness’s veiled reference to him as the former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detective inspector who led a murder gang in Belfast in 1922, believed responsible for the murder of the McMahon family.

In late 1936, McGuinness joins the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War but soon deserts after disagreements with the authorities. He returns to Ireland, where he pens a sensational exposé of the International Brigades, I fought with the Reds, which is published by the Irish Independent. He also writes colourful accounts of life under communism, such as Behind the Iron Curtain, under the pseudonym “Peter Dawson.”

In 1942, while serving as chief petty officer in the marine service at Haulbowline, McGuinness offers to assist the German legation by smuggling spies out of Ireland. Despite his British naval service, he is virulently anti-British. According to local legend he has the sole of both feet tattooed with the Union Jack so wherever he goes he is safe in the knowledge that he is “trampling on the butcher’s apron.” He is arrested and sentenced to seven years imprisonment but is released shortly after the end of the Emergency.

McGuinness is believed to have died on December 4, 1947, when he supposedly drowns alongside four other crew members of the schooner Isaalt that he is piloting on Ballymoney Strand near Gorey, County Wexford. Two members of the crew survive, managing to swim ashore, the ship is a mere 100 metres from land. However, members of McGuinness’ family express doubt over the years. A nephew claims to have encountered McGuinness on the London Underground in 1955. Upon their gazes meeting, McGuinness is reported to smile and say four simple words: “You never saw me.”

(From: “McGuinness, Charles John” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Abercorn Restaurant Bombing

The Abercorn Restaurant bombing is a bomb attack that takes place in a crowded city centre restaurant and bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on March 4, 1972. The bomb explosion claims the lives of two young women and injures over 130 people. Many of the injuries are severe and include the loss of limbs and eyes. The Provisional Irish Republican Army is blamed, although no organisation ever claims responsibility and nobody is ever charged in connection with the bombing. According to Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist who has written extensively about the IRA, republican sources have unofficially confirmed the group’s involvement.

The Abercorn is on 7-11 Castle Lane in central Belfast and houses a ground-floor restaurant and upstairs bar. It is owned by 45-year-old Bill O’Hara, a Catholic businessman. On Saturday, March 4 1972, it is packed with late afternoon shoppers when an anonymous caller issues a bomb warning to 999 at 4:28 p.m. The caller does not give a precise location, but advises that a bomb will go off in Castle Lane in five minutes’ time. The street, located in the busy Cornmarket area, mills with crowds of people shopping and browsing as is typical on a Saturday in Belfast.

Two minutes later, at 4:30 p.m., a handbag containing a five-pound gelignite bomb explodes under a table inside the ground-floor restaurant. Two young Catholic friends are killed outright: Anne Owens (22), who is employed at the Electricity Board, and Janet Bereen (21), a hospital radiographer. The young women have been out shopping together and have stopped at the Abercorn to have coffee. They are seated at the table nearest the bomb and take the full force of the blast. Owens had survived a previous bombing at her workplace. More than 130 are injured in the explosion, which overturns tables and chairs, and brings the ceiling crashing down onto the ground floor restaurant. Many people are severely maimed. Some have their limbs blown off while others suffer terrible head and facial injuries, burns, deep cuts and perforated eardrums. Three have eyes destroyed by shards of flying glass. Two sisters, Jennifer and Rosaleen McNern (one of whom is due to be married), are both horrifically mutilated. Jennifer loses both legs and Rosaleen, the bride-to-be, loses her legs, right arm and one eye.

Witnesses describe a scene of panic and chaos as the bloodied survivors stumble through the smoke, broken glass, blood, and rubble, crawling over one another to get away, while firemen attempt to bring out the injured, many of whom lay with their bodies mangled, unable to move. A Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer is one of the first people to arrive on the scene. He describes the carnage that greets him as something he will never forget. “All you could hear was the moaning and squealing and the people with limbs torn from their bodies.”

A woman who had been inside the restaurant before the blast later tells an inquest that she had seen two teenaged girls walk out of the Abercorn leaving a handbag behind shortly before the explosion. This same woman was waiting at a bus stop when the bomb went off. A detective-sergeant establishes that the explosion’s epicentre is to the right of the table where the two girls had been sitting. The bomb is reportedly left behind inside a handbag.

Nobody is ever charged in connection with the bombing and no paramilitary organisation ever claims responsibility for it. Both wings of the IRA deny involvement and condemn the bombing. However, the RUC and British Military Intelligence blame the Provisional IRA First Battalion Belfast Brigade and it is now widely accepted that it was responsible. There is a public backlash against the organisation in Irish nationalist and Catholic areas such as West Belfast. The two dead women were both Catholic, along with many of the injured including the McNern sisters, and the Abercorn Bar was a popular venue with many young Catholics and nationalists.

Provisional IRA Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stíofáin claims the bombing is the work of loyalist paramilitaries. According to Mac Stíofáin, the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA) had made threats against the Abercorn in its weekly newsletter after the Abercorn management refused to play the British national anthem. The WDA denies the allegations, adding that one of its members had a friend who was badly injured in the blast. The day after the bombing, a leaflet allegedly circulated by the loyalist Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP) declares: “We make no apologies for Abercorn. No apologies were made for Aldershot […] These premises were being used extensively by Southern Irish shoppers for the transmission of information vital to the terrorist campaign…” Vanguard leader Rev. Martin Smyth dismisses the statement as fake.

According to Ed Moloney in his book Voices from the Grave, IRA sources have since confirmed, albeit unofficially, that the Provisional IRA was responsible. Moloney suggests that, based on eyewitness accounts, two teenaged IRA girls were probably the bombers. Unnamed republican sources suggest that the Abercorn was targeted because the upstairs bar was frequented by off-duty British Army soldiers.

The detonation of a bomb in a city centre restaurant on a Saturday afternoon packed with shoppers, and the severity of the injuries—inflicted on mostly women and children—ensures that the attack causes much revulsion and leaves a lasting impression on the people of Belfast. It is condemned by both unionist and Irish nationalist politicians and also by church leaders. Ian Paisley calls on the government “to mobilise and arm every able-bodied volunteer to meet the enemy.” The extent of the injuries the blast inflicts results in the Royal Victoria Hospital implementing a “disaster plan” for the first time.

The sculptor F. E. McWilliam produces a series of bronzes (1972–73) known as Women of Belfast in response to the Abercorn bombing.

Unrelated to the bombing, the Abercorn features in a sectarian attack in July 1972, when Michael McGuigan, a Catholic working in the bar, is abducted by loyalist paramilitaries, shot and left for dead, but survives. He had been dating a Protestant waitress who also worked in the Abercorn, which is why the loyalist group targets him.

The Abercorn is demolished in 2007.

(Pictured: A victim’s body being removed from the scene by members of the security forces following the bomb explosion)


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Death of Michael J. Browne, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh

Michael J. Browne, an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, dies in Galway, County Galway, on February 24, 1980. He serves as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh for almost forty years from 1937 to 1976.

Browne is born in Westport, County Mayo, on December 20, 1895. He is an important and outspoken member of the Irish hierarchy. His time as Bishop has been described by the historian James S. Donnelly Jr. as “far-reaching and … controversial,” while the historian of Irish Catholicism John Henry Whyte claims that Browne’s “readiness to put forward his views bluntly is welcome at least to the historian.”

Browne is ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1920, for the Archdiocese of Tuam. He later serves as professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

On August 6, 1937, at the relatively young age of 41, Browne is appointed Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh by Pope Pius XI, receiving his episcopal consecration from Archbishop Thomas Gilmartin on the following August 10. He supports Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s defence of arrests and police searches for cached Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms, declaring, “Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God’s law, and there can be no excuse for that crime – not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity.”

In 1939, Browne is selected by Éamon de Valera to chair the Commission on Vocational Organisation.

Browne is attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians. He is also concerned about public intoxication and other misconduct at the Galway Races, controversies over dancing and the commercial dance halls, as well as immodesty in dress and the closely related issue of so-called “mixed bathing” in Galway and Salthill.

Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemns communism in his pastoral letters. When Cardinal József Mindszenty is detained by Hungary‘s post-war communist government, Browne in 1949 forwards protest resolutions from Galway Corporation, Galway County Council and the University College Galway student body to Pope Pius XII. He also frequently condemns the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist group in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, including the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, Browne says, “non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”

The most enduring monument or physical legacy of Browne’s time as Bishop is the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, commonly known as Galway Cathedral, which is dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Richard James Cushing of Boston, Massachusetts. The site of the old jail had come into the possession of the diocese in 1941 and Browne leads the campaign to construct a new Cathedral. This includes a 1957 audience with Pope Pius XII where the plans are approved.

Browne attends the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and retires in 1976. He dies four years later in Galway, at the age of 84, on February 24, 1980.

Browne is parodied in Breandán Ó hÉithir`s novel Lig Sinn i gCathu, which fictionalises late 1940s Galway as “Baile an Chaisil” and Browne as “An tEaspag Ó Maoláin.”

The Irish cabinet minister Noël Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:

“The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny scullcap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash neatly divided the lordly prince into two.”


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1978 British Army Gazelle Helicopter Downing

On February 17, 1978, a British Army Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter, serial number XX404, goes down near Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, after being fired at by a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit from the South Armagh Brigade. The IRA unit is involved at the time in a gun battle with a Royal Green Jackets observation post deployed in the area, and the helicopter is sent in to support the ground troops. The helicopter crashes after the pilot loses control of the aircraft while evading ground fire.

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Douglas Corden-Lloyd, 2nd Battalion Green Jackets commanding officer, dies in the crash. The incident is overshadowed in the press by the La Mon restaurant bombing, which takes place just hours later near Belfast.

By early 1978, the British Army forces involved in Operation Banner have recently replaced their aging Bell H-13 Sioux helicopters for the more versatile Aérospatiale Gazelles. The introduction of the new machines increases the area covered on a reconnaissance sortie as well as the improved time spent in airborne missions. In the same period, the Provisional IRA receives its first consignment of M60 machine guns from the Middle East, which are displayed by masked volunteers during a Bloody Sunday commemoration in Derry. Airborne operations are crucial for the British presence along the border, especially in south County Armagh, where the level of IRA activity means that every supply and soldier has to be ferried in and out of their bases by helicopter since 1975.

The Royal Green Jackets have been in South Armagh since December 1977, and have already seen some action. Just a few days after arrival, two mortar rounds hit the C Company base at Forkhill, injuring a number of soldiers. In the aftermath of the attack, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers are wounded by a booby trap while recovering the lorry where the mortar tubes are mounted. Two days later, a patrol near the border suffers a bomb and gun attack, leaving the commanding sergeant with severe head wounds. The sergeant is picked up from the scene by helicopter. He is later invalided from the British Army as a result of his injuries.

On January 17, 1978, a Royal Green Jackets observation post deployed around the village of Jonesborough begins to take heavy fire from the “March Wall,” which draws parallel with the Irish border to the east, along the Dromad woods. The soldiers return fire, but the short distance to the border and the open ground prevents them from advancing.

The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Corden-Lloyd, along with Captain Philip Schofield and Sergeant Ives fly from the battalion base at Bessbrook Mill to assess the situation and provide information to the troops. They are escorted by a Scout helicopter with an Airborne Reaction Force (ARF), comprising a medic and three soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry. While hovering over the scene of the engagement, the Aérospatiale Gazelle receives a barrage of 7.62 mm tracer rounds. The pilot loses control of the aircraft during a turn at high speed to avoid the stream of fire. The Aérospatiale Gazelle hits a wall and crashes in a field, some 2 km from Jonesborough. According to the crew and passengers of the Scout, the Aérospatiale Gazelle hits the ground twice after losing power, with its rotor blades trashing into the soil following the second impact, and then cartwheels across the field. The Scout lands the ARF while still under IRA fire. The soldiers rush to the wrecked helicopter, some 100 metres away from the site of the initial crash.

Corden-Lloyd is killed and the other two passengers are wounded. The machine comes to rest on its right side. The pilot remains trapped inside the wreckage, but he survives thanks to his helmet. The IRA later claim they had shot at the helicopter with an M60 machine gun. The IRA unit vanishes into the Dromad woods to the Republic of Ireland. Some Gardaí witness the attack from the other side of the border.

The gun battle and Aérospatiale Gazelle shootdown is displaced from the headlines by the deaths of twelve civilians in the La Mon restaurant bombing on the same day, some of whom are burned to death. Initially the British Army downplays the IRA’s claim as published by An Phoblacht, that the helicopter was shot down, on the basis that no hits were found on the wreckage, but finally they acknowledged that the IRA action had caused the crash.

The death of Corden-Lloyd, a former Special Air Service officer, is deeply regretted by the British Army, who regarded him as promising. He is awarded a posthumous mentioned in despatches “in recognition of gallant and distinguished service in Northern Ireland.” In 1973, Irish republicans had accused Corden-Lloyd and his subordinates of brutality against Belfast Catholics during an earlier tour of the Royal Green Jackets in 1971, at the time of Operation Demetrius.


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Birth of John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden

John Jeffreys Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden, a British politician, is born at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, on February 11, 1759. He is styled Viscount Bayham from 1786 to 1794 and known as the 2nd Earl Camden from 1794 to 1812. He serves as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the revolutionary years 1795 to 1798 and as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1804 and 1805.

Pratt is born the only son of the barrister Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, and Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Jeffreys, of The Priory, Brecknockshire, Wales. He is baptised on the day Halley’s Comet appears. In 1765, his father is created Baron Camden, at which point he becomes The Hon. John Pratt. He is educated at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College).

In 1780, Pratt is elected Member of Parliament for Bath and obtains the position of Teller of the Exchequer the same year, a lucrative office which he keeps until his death, although after 1812 he refuses to receive the large income arising from it. He serves under William Perry, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, as Lord of the Admiralty between 1782 and 1783 and in the same post under William Pitt the Younger between 1783 and 1789, as well as a Lord of the Treasury between 1789 and 1792.

In 1786, Pratt’s father is created Earl Camden, at which point he becomes known by one of his father’s subsidiary titles as Viscount Bayham.

In 1793, Pratt is sworn of the Privy Council. In 1794 he succeeds his father as 2nd Earl Camden, and the following year he is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Pitt.

As an opponent of parliamentary reform and of Catholic emancipation, Pratt’s term of office is one of turbulence, culminating in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. His refusal in 1797 to reprieve the United Irishman William Orr, convicted of treason on the word of one witness of dubious credit (and for which his own sister, Frances Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, petitions him), arouses great public indignation. To break the United Irish conspiracy, he suspends habeas corpus and unleashes a ruthless martial law campaign to disarm and break up the republican organization.

Pratt resigns from office in June 1798, to be replaced with Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, who oversees the military defeat of the rebellion. In 1804, Pratt becomes Secretary of State for War and the Colonies under Pitt, and in 1805 Lord President of the Council, an office he retains until 1806. He is again Lord President from 1807 to 1812, after which date he remains for some time in the cabinet without office. In 1812 he is created Earl of Brecknock and Marquess Camden.

The enforced resignation from the Cabinet of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, the stepson of his sister Frances (Lady Londonderry), to whom he has always been personally close, in September 1809, leads to a series of bitter family quarrels, when it becomes clear that Pratt has known for months of the plan to dismiss Stewart, but has given him no warning. Stewart himself regards Pratt as “a weak friend,” not an enemy, and they are eventually reconciled. Other members of the Stewart family, however, never forgive Pratt for what they regard as his disloyalty.

Pratt is also Lord Lieutenant of Kent between 1808 and 1840 and appoints himself Colonel of the Cranbrook and Woodsgate Regiment of Local Militia in 1809. He is Chancellor of the University of Cambridge between 1834 and 1840. He is made a Knight of the Garter in 1799 and elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1802.

Pratt marries Frances, daughter of William Molesworth, in 1785. She dies at Bayham Abbey, Sussex, in July 1829. He survives her by eleven years and dies at Seal, Kent, on October 8, 1840, aged 81. He is succeeded by his only son, George.

The family owns and lives in a house located at 22 Arlington Street in St. James’s, a district of the City of Westminster in central London, which adjoins The Ritz Hotel. In the year of his death, he sells the house to Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort.


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Gerry Adams Threatens to Walk Away from Peace Process

On February 8, 2000, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams issues a stark warning that he is ready to walk away from the Northern Ireland peace process if the Government re-imposes direct rule from Westminster.

Adams tells reporters, “I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life trying to shore up a process that is going to be in perpetual crisis.” His words are taken as those of an exhausted and deeply frustrated politician, angry that the bulk of the blame for the impasse has been directed at him and his colleagues.

They also raise, in a very stark way, the question of what effect the suspension of the new political institutions will have on Sinn Féin. In the days leading up to Adams’s announcement, the efforts of London and Dublin are primarily directed at saving David Trimble‘s leadership of his party. Peter Mandelson, MP for Hartlepool, emphasises the importance of this in the House of Commons on February 8. To abandon Trimble at this time would be seen as a betrayal that would even further harden political attitudes in the broad unionist community.

This leads to both governments putting a degree of pressure on the republican movement, Sinn Féin as well as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which is having entirely predictable and dangerous results. The old, familiar sense of beleaguered isolation, summed up in the party’s name, is reasserting itself. Adams has told the British government that he believes his position as Sinn Féin’s president will very quickly become untenable if the political institutions are suspended. The most common reaction to this news is, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” The inference is that Adams is firing a warning shot across the bows of both governments, that there are two parties to this dispute and both need to be protected.

There is deep pessimism among republicans about what will happen if the Executive is suspended for any length of time. The fear is that it will be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to put it together again. Over a period of weeks and months, confidence in the political process, already pretty fragile at grass roots level, will likely ebb even further. Adams, Martin McGuinness, Mitchel McLauglin and others closely identified with the move to a political strategy will be seen to have failed.

One Sinn Féin source, a staunch supporter of the peace process, says, “Already there’s a widespread suspicion that we’ve been suckered into this by the British government, helped by Dublin. The long-term aim has always been to destroy Sinn Féin politically. There’s no pressure on the loyalists to disarm because they don’t represent a political threat. If Adams is seen to have misjudged this, what else can he do but resign?”

Many dismiss this as the old republican paranoia coming once again into play. But it is important to understand how this crisis appears to very many people within Sinn Féin. It is not just a matter of a hundred or so IRA activists seeing the hand-over of weapons as a surrender. There has always been a profound suspicion of politics, not only within the IRA, but at many other levels. Politics has always failed to deliver the holy grail of a united Ireland.

Some of these people believe that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are cynical opportunists who have sold out for the rewards of office. Many more see them as sincere, but mistaken, in their strategy. They genuinely believe that they have been seduced by the British government, probably with the active co-operation of Dublin, by the promise of political progress. Now they are in a position where Sinn Féin is carrying all the opprobrium for the breakdown.

If, as seems likely, it is necessary to hold an election for a new assembly, Sinn Féin will be greatly weakened. The party’s hopes of taking Dáil seats will also be diminished. As Sinn Féin is seen to lose ground, there will almost certainly be a drift back to violence, sporadic at first, but gathering momentum.

This conspiracy theory, and the bleak scenario it predicts probably sounds utterly fanciful to many, those who lay the blame for this threat to the peace process squarely on the IRA. Possibly the republican movement is simply preparing itself for a retreat to the political trenches, and putting forward reasons to justify this. But there is also a danger that such an interpretation of what has happened could gain much wider credibility in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.

There is a profound sense of disappointment that the Executive is about to be suspended. It is quite striking how many professional interest groups – doctors, teachers, farmers – express their satisfaction with local politicians and a reluctance to go back to dealing with “remote, ignorant, arrogant” British ministers.

For nationalists there has been the added satisfaction of seeing their own elected representatives taking up posts in government and performing well. For the first time, many of them feel that they are equal citizens in Northern Ireland. Now, it seems, that could be put at risk, to save David Trimble’s “pretty valuable” skin.

If this does prove to be the case, sympathy will swing back to Sinn Féin. Within his own community, Adams is not seen as having betrayed the peace process. On the contrary, along with John Hume, he is seen as one of its main architects. If Adams had decided to resign the leadership of his party, or had been forced to do so, it would have been seen by many nationalists as proving that politics, within the context of Northern Ireland, cannot work.

(From: “What future if Adams walks away from peace efforts now?” by Mary Holland, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, February 10, 2000)


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Anti-Treaty IRA Raid Ballyconnell, County Cavan

On the morning of February 5, 1923, at about 7:00 a.m., fifty well-armed anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) fighters descend on Ballyconnell, County Cavan, from the hills in a military lorry and several cars. The guerrillas, armed with rifles and three machine guns, stop the train to nearby Ballinamore so that word will not get out to adjacent Irish Free State garrisons and then go in search of those they hold responsible for the death of anti-Treaty IRA volunteer Michael Cull during a raid on Ballyconnell on January 6.

At Oven’s grocery, the proprietor, William Ovens, is shot through the thigh and badly wounded. One of his employees, William Ryan, is dragged out and shot dead. According to the local press, the guerrillas shout “was it you who shot Cull?” at Ryan before they shoot him. His 80 year old father follows the fighters through the streets, shouting “murder, murder.”

Sean McGrath, an Irish language teacher, originally from Galway, is also dragged out of bed and shot dead, apparently for no other reason than that he is lodging at the home of Free State supporter, John Dunn.

The guerrillas proceed to bomb and burn out three shops, including the car dealership and the Post Office, and to smash the windows of the other premises with shots and rifle butts. The Ulster Bank branch is robbed of £200 and two Ford cars are seized. After a rampage of 35 minutes, the IRA column re-mounts their vehicles and heads back toward the Arigna hills, leaving the little town partially in flames, pockmarked with bullet holes and mourning the death of two of its citizens.

According to the pro-Treaty National Army, “Our troops in Belturbet got word of the raid, and immediately set out in all their transport. They were joined en route by two Fords of troops from Cavan, and all proceeded to Ballyconnell, where they arrived shortly after 9 o’clock. They followed the Irregulars past Ballinamore, but failed to get in touch with them.”

The ruthlessness of the reprisal at Ballyconnell – the premeditated assault on civilians – shocks pro-Treaty opinion. For the Free State government it exemplifies the irrationality and criminality of what they called the “Irregulars.” Such madness justifies the government’s repressive measures, particularly the executions of republican prisoners which had been going on since November of the previous year.

Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Home Affairs and hard-line supporter of the executions policy, says, “I want to combat the view that it was a natural thing to expect that a body of Irishmen would descend upon this little town and proceed to murder their fellow-citizens. It was not a natural thing. It is perhaps the most unnatural thing that has happened since this unnatural strife began.”

Within a week, a National Army expedition is dispatched to the West Cavan/ Leitrim area in considerable strength to root out Ned Bofin’s anti-Treaty column, which had carried out the Ballyconnell raid. They report that “the people are delighted at our presence and their only fear is that we might leave” but are afraid to give information. “Our only concern,” they report, “is the remarkable agility of the Irregulars in retreating from an engagement with us.”

If one is to believe the National Army version, the Irregulars are simply cowardly bandits without any public support and the conflict in the border region would evaporate with the presence in strength of government troops. And if one is to take the Ballyconnell reprisal alone, this would appear to make sense. However, looked at a little more closely, it is clear that the Irish Civil War in this region is a complex web of national and local conflicts, that the Ballyconnell incident is only the culmination of the collapse of Free State authority in the area over several months.

(From: “The Tragedies of Ballyconnell” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, June 2014 | Pictured: The main street in Ballyconnell in the early 20th century)