McCartney takes part in the civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972, an event widely known as Bloody Sunday. One of his cousins, James Wray, is one of fourteen men shot and killed by the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army on that march. As a result of this incident, he joins the Provisional IRA several months later. In 1974, Martin McGuinness, who commands the IRA in Derry, instructs him to beat up an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) man, Patsy O’Hara, who McGuinness calls a “scumbag” and a “hood.” On January 12, 1979, at Belfast‘s Crown Court, he and another man, Eamonn MacDermott, are convicted of the murder of Detective Constable Patrick McNulty of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who was shot several times outside a garage in Derry on January 27, 1977. He is also convicted of IRA membership and the murder of businessman Jeffery Agate in February 1977 and is sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder convictions are overturned in 2007.
McCartney spends 53 days on hunger strike, from October 27 to December 18. From 1989–91 he is Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks and is released in 1994.
Following his release, McCartney is active with ex-prisoners’ groups Tar Abhaile and Coiste na n-Íarchimí, and is the first member of Sinn Féin to hear his own voice heard on television after the lifting of the British broadcasting ban in 1994. He is arrested on April 4, 2002, following a breach of security at Belfast’s police headquarters, but is released without charge the following day. Later that year, on September 5, he is the first former IRA member to appear before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and encourages anyone with information, including paramilitaries, to come forward. He is a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from July 15, 2004, until February 3, 2020.
On February 15, 2007, McCartney and MacDermott have their murder convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, following an investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in 2002. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland declines to compensate McCartney and MacDermott on the grounds that they have not proven themselves innocent. The decision is appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, in May 2011, finds in favour of the applicants, opening the way for a substantial compensation claim from both for their prison terms of 15 and 17 years.
As a teenager, Foster is on a school bus that is bombed by the IRA, the vehicle targeted because its driver is a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). A girl sitting near her is seriously injured. She is a pupil at Enniskillen Collegiate Grammar School in Enniskillen from 1982 to 1989, and attends Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), where she graduates with an LLB degree. Her political career begins at QUB when she joins the Queen’s Unionist Association, part of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). She serves as the association’s chair from 1992 to 1993.
After leaving QUB Foster remains active in the UUP, chairing its youth wing, the UYUC, in 1995. In 1996, she becomes an Honorary Secretary of the UUP’s ruling body, the Ulster Unionist Council, a position which she holds until her resignation from the UUP on December 18, 2003. She is a councillor on Fermanagh District Council representing Enniskillen from 2005 to 2010.
McGuinness resigns as deputy First Minister in January 2017 amid the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, which involves a green energy scheme that Foster set up during her time as Minister for Enterprise and Investment. The scheme is set to cost the taxpayer £490 million and there are allegations of corruption surrounding her role in implementing the scheme. McGuinness asks her to step aside as First Minister while her involvement in the scheme is investigated, but she refuses to step aside or resign and says that the voices calling for her resignation are those of “misogynists and male chauvinists.” Under the terms of the Northern Ireland power-sharing agreement, the First and deputy First Ministers are equal and, therefore, she cannot remain in her post as First Minister and is subsequently removed from office. McGuinness’s resignation causes a 2017 snap assembly election to be held, in which the DUP loses ten seats. After no party receives an outright majority in the 2017 United Kingdom general election, the DUP enters into an agreement with the Conservative Party to support Prime MinisterTheresa May‘s government. In January 2020, she becomes First Minister of Northern Ireland again after the Executive is reinstated under the terms of the New Decade, New Approach agreement.
On April 28, 2021, after more than twenty DUP MLAs and four DUP MPs sign a letter “…voicing no confidence in her leadership,” Foster announces that she will resign as party leader and as First Minister. She is succeeded by Edwin Poots as DUP leader on May 28, 2021. She leaves office as First Minister on June 14, 2021, and is succeeded by Paul Givan as First Minister on June 17, 2021. She resigns from the Northern Ireland Assembly in October 2021 and becomes a presenter on GB News.
In May 2024, it is confirmed that Foster will be appointed chairperson of Intertrade UK, a new body to promote trade within the UK which is announced as part of the UK government package to restore devolution.
Foster and her husband, Brian, have three children. They live on the outskirts of Brookeborough, a village in the east of County Fermanagh. In 2008, she is recognised as Assembly member of the year at the Women in Public Life Awards.
(Pictured: Official portrait of Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee, January 30, 2024)
Frazer grows up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret. He is an ex-member of the Territorial Army and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He attends a local Catholic school and plays Gaelic football up to U14 level. He describes his early years as a “truly cross-community lifestyle.” Growing up, he is a fan of the American actor John Wayne and wrestling. His father, who is a part-time member of the British Army‘s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and a council worker, is killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on August 30, 1975. The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claims were IRA men, due to his father’s UDR membership. He states that his family is well respected in the area including by “old-school IRA men” and receives Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father’s killing. Over the next ten years, four members of Frazer’s family who are members or ex-members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) or British Army are killed by the IRA. An uncle who is also a member of the UDR is wounded in a gun attack.
Soon after his father’s death, the IRA begins targeting Frazer’s older brother who is also a UDR member. Like many South Armagh unionists, the family moves north to the village of Markethill. After leaving school, he works as a plasterer for a period before serving in the British Army for nine years. Following this he works for a local haulage company, then sets up his own haulage company, which he later sells.
During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer is a supporter of the PortadownOrange Order who demand the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents. He is president of his local Apprentice Boys club at the time.
For a brief period after selling his haulage firm, Frazer runs “The Spot,” a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closes down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, are stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson. Frazer is confronted in an interview on BBC Radio Ulster about the murders by the father of one of the victims, Paul McIlwaine. During the Smithwick Tribunal, set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the 1989 Jonesborough ambush, it is alleged by a member of Garda Síochána that Frazer is a part of a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Commando. Frazer denies this allegation, saying they put his life in danger.
Frazer applies for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and is turned down, a chief inspector says, in part because he is known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.
FAIR, founded by Frazer in 1998, claims to represent the victims of IRA violence in South Armagh. It has been criticised by some for not doing the same for victims of loyalist paramilitary organisations or for those killed by security forces.
In February 2006, Frazer is an organiser of the Love Ulster parade in Dublin that has to be cancelled due to rioting. In January 2007, he protests outside the Sinn FéinArd Fheis in Dublin that votes to join policing structures in Northern Ireland. He expresses “outrage at the idea that the ‘law-abiding population’ would negotiate with terrorists to get them to support democracy, law and order.”
In January 2007, Frazer dismisses Police OmbudsmanNuala O’Loan‘s report into security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
In March 2010, Frazer claims to have served a civil writ on deputy First MinisterMartin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, seeking damages arising from the killing of his father by the Provisional IRA. Both Sinn Féin and the courts deny that any such writ had been served, but in June 2010 Frazer announces that he will seek to progress his claim in the High Court. There has since been no report of any such litigation. He previously pickets McGuinness’s home in Derry in 2007 to demand support for calls for Libya to compensate victims of IRA attacks. Accompanied by two other men, he attempts to post a letter to the house but is confronted by local residents and verbally abused. When McGuinness stands for election in the 2011 Irish presidential election, Frazer announces that he and FAIR will picket the main Sinn Féin election events, however, no such pickets take place.
In September 2010, the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) revokes all funding to FAIR due to “major failures in the organisation’s ability to adhere to the conditions associated with its funding allocation” uncovered following a “thorough audit” of the tendering and administration procedures used by FAIR.
In November 2011, the SEUPB announces that it is seeking the return of funding to FAIR and another Markethill victims’ group, Saver/Naver. FAIR is asked to return £350,000 while Saver/Naver is asked to return £200,000. Former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Reg Empey demands that the conclusions about FAIR’s finances be released into the public domain.
In January 2012, Frazer announces a protest march to be held on February 25 through the mainly Catholic south Armagh village of Whitecross, to recall the killing of ten Protestant workmen by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF) in January 1976 in the Kingsmill massacre. He also names individuals whom he accuses of responsibility for the massacre. He later announces that the march is postponed “at the request of the Kingsmills families.” A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team finds that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack despite the organisation being on ceasefire.
A delegation including Frazer, UUP politician Danny Kennedy and relatives of the Kingsmill families travel to Dublin in September 2012 to seek an apology from the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. The apology is sought for what they describe as the Irish government‘s “blatant inaction” over the Kingmills killings. The Taoiseach says he cannot apologise for the actions of the IRA but assures the families there is no hierarchy for victims and their concerns are just as important as any other victims’ families. The families express disappointment although Frazer states he is pleased to have met the Taoiseach.
On November 16, 2012, Frazer announces that he is stepping down as director of FAIR, after he had reviewed a copy of the SEUPB audit report which, he claims, shows no grounds for demanding the reimbursement of funding. He adds, “I will still be working in the victims sector.”
In 2019, the BBC investigative journalism programme Spotlight reports that Frazer distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from Ulster Resistance to loyalist terror groups who used them in more than 70 murders. A police report on the activities of the former Ulster Defence Association (UDA) boss Johnny Adair states he was receiving weapons from Ulster Resistance in the early 1990s and his contact in Ulster Resistance was Frazer.
In addition to his advocacy for Protestant victims, Frazer contests several elections in County Armagh. He is not elected and, on most occasions, loses his deposit. He runs as an Ulster Independence Movement candidate in the 1996 Forum Elections and the 1998 Assembly elections, and as an independent in the 2003 Assembly elections and a council by-election.
In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election Frazer is listed as a subscriber for the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) candidate for the Newry and Armagh constituency, Barrie Halliday, who secures 1.8% of the vote. At Newry Crown Court on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, Pastor Barrie Gordon Halliday is sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for eighteen months, when he pleads guilty to seventeen counts of VAT repayment fraud.
In November 2012, Frazer announces his intention to contest the 2013 Mid Ulster by-election necessitated by Martin McGuinness’s decision to resign the parliamentary seat to concentrate on his Assembly role. He is quoted in The Irish News in January 2013 as stating that he will not condemn any paramilitary gunman who shoots McGuinness.
Despite his earlier advocacy of Ulster nationalism, in 2013 Frazer declares himself in favour of re-establishing direct rule in Northern Ireland.
Frazer dies of cancer in Craigavon, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on June 28, 2019. Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister and DUP Assembly member Jim Wells pay tribute to his memory.
Born John Gerard Smyth, upon joining the Norbertine Roman Catholic religious order in 1945, he changes his name to Brendan. The Norbertines, also known as the “Premonstratensians,” are aware of Smyth’s crimes as early as the late 1970s, yet they do not report him to either the Garda Síochána or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). He is moved from parish to parish and between dioceses and countries whenever allegations are made. In some cases, the order does not inform the diocesan bishop that Smyth has a history of sexual abuse and should be kept away from children. He abuses children in parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota and at one time works in Boston and is suspected of similar actions while on pastoral work in Wales and Italy. Norbertine Father Bruno Mulvihill makes several attempts to alert church authorities about the abuse committed by Smyth.
Smyth’s first conviction follows the reporting to police of his abuse of four siblings in Belfast’s Falls Road. After his arrest in 1991, he flees to the Republic of Ireland, where he spends the next three years on the run, staying mostly at Kilnacrott Abbey. This leads to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party coalition government in December 1994 when the poor handling of an extradition request from the RUC by the Irish Attorney General‘s office leads to a further delay of Smyth’s trial. An award-winning UTVCounterpoint programme on the scandal by journalist Chris Moore, followed by a book, accuses the head of the Norbertines and the Archbishop of Armagh of mishandling the case, and the Norbertines of negligence and a failure to tell others of Smyth’s crimes, enabling him to sexually abuse large numbers of children for 40 years.
Smyth dies in prison of a heart attack at the age of 70 on August 22, 1997, after collapsing in the exercise yard, one month into a 12-year prison sentence. The Norbertines hold his funeral before dawn and cover his grave with concrete to deter vandalism. He is buried in Kilnacrott Abbey, which is later put up for sale with 44 acres of land, including the grave.
On October 27, 2005, the title “Reverend” is removed from his gravestone following a campaign by one of Smyth’s victims.
Reviewers of the case differ as to whether there is a deliberate plot to conceal Smyth’s behaviour, incompetence by his superiors at Kilnacrott Abbey, or some combination of factors. Cahal Daly, both as Bishop of Down and Connor, a diocese where some of the abuse takes place, and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, is recorded as having been privately furious at the Norbertine “incompetence.” Smyth’s activities are investigated by the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, finding that: “…despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children…”
In 2010, Daly’s successor as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Seán Brady, faces “huge pressure to resign” after he admits that in 1975, he witnessed two teenage boys sign oaths of silence after testifying in a Church inquiry against Smyth. Survivor groups see this as evidence of collusion, but Brady says he “did not have the authority” to turn Smyth in. On March 17, 2010, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, calls for Brady to resign.
In 2013, some of Smyth’s alleged Rhode Island victims between 1965 and 1968, both male and female, call for the Diocese of Providence to investigate Smyth. As of 2019, he is among those listed by the Diocese of Providence as being “credibly accused” of committing sex abuse.
Module 6 of the 2014-2016 Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is dedicated to Smyth’s crimes in Northern Ireland.
A two-part dramatisation of the Smyth case, Brendan Smyth: Betrayal of Trust, is broadcast by the BBC on March 13, 2011, with Ian Beattie in the title role and Richard Dormer as Chris Moore.
(Pictured: Father Brendan Smyth, Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, USA, c. 1965)
The son of a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Keenan is born on July 17, 1941, in Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, before his family moves to Belfast. As a teenager, he moves to England to find work, for a time working as a television repairman in partnership with his brother in Corby, Northamptonshire. During this time, he comes to the attention of the police when he damages a cigarette machine, which leads to police having his fingerprints on file. He returns to Northern Ireland when the Troubles begin and starts working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquires a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.
Despite his family having no history of republicanism, Keenan joins the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1970 or 1971, and by August 1971 is the quartermaster of the Belfast Brigade. He is an active IRA member, planning bombings in Belfast and travelling abroad to make political contacts and arrange arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. In 1972, he travels to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government. In early 1973 he takes over responsibility for control of the IRA’s bombing campaign in England and also becomes IRA Quartermaster General. In late 1973, he is the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.
In early 1974, Keenan plans to break Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell out of Long Kesh using a helicopter, in a method similar to Seamus Twomey‘s escape from Mountjoy Prison in October 1973, but the plan is vetoed by Billy McKee. He is arrested in the Republic of Ireland in mid-1974 and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for IRA membership. On March 17, 1975, he is shot and wounded while attempting to lead a mass escape from Portlaoise Prison. While being held in Long Kesh, Gerry Adams helps to devise a blueprint for the reorganisation of the IRA, which includes the use of covert cells and the establishment of a Southern Command and Northern Command. As the architects of the blueprint, Adams, Bell and Brendan Hughes, are still imprisoned, Martin McGuinness and Keenan tour the country trying to convince the IRA Army Council and middle leadership of the benefits of the restructuring plan, with one IRA member remarking “Keenan was a roving ambassador for Adams.” The proposal is accepted after Keenan wins support from the South Derry Brigade, East Tyrone Brigade and South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying, “Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams’ Christ.”
In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London are arrested following the six-day Balcombe Street siege. The IRA unit had been active in England since late 1974 carrying out a series of bombings, and a few months after his release from prison Keenan visits the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions. In follow-up raids after the siege, police discover crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant is issued for his arrest.
Garda Síochána informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that Keenan recommended IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey to authorise an attack on Ulster Protestants in retaliation to an increase in sectarian attacks on Catholic civilians by Protestant loyalist paramilitaries, such as the killing of three Catholics in a gun and bomb attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh on December 19, 1975. According to O’Callaghan “Keenan believed that the only way, in his words, to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants] was to just hit back much harder and more savagely than them.” Soon after the sectarianKingsmill massacre occurs, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work are ordered out of a minibus they are travelling in and executed en masse with a machine gun on January 5, 1976.
Keenan is arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near Banbridge on March 20, 1979, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stopped two cars travelling north on the main road from Dublin to Belfast and is extradited to England to face charges relating to the Balcombe Street Gang‘s campaign in England. His capture is a blow to the IRA, in particular as he was carrying an address book listing his contacts including Palestinian activists in the United Kingdom. The IRA responds by dispatching Bobby Storey and three other members to break Keenan out of prison using a helicopter, but all four are arrested and remanded to Brixton Prison. Keenan stands trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 defended by Michael Mansfield and is accused of organising the IRA’s bombings in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter and Gordon Hamilton Fairley. He is sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on June 25, 1980.
Keenan continues to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams is granted permission by the IRA’s Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, having been refused permission at a meeting the previous month. In a letter sent from Leicester Prison, Keenan writes that he “emphatically” supports the move and endorses the Army Council’s decision.
Keenan is released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 is one of seven members of the IRA’s Army Council. Following the events after the IRA’s ceasefire of August 1994, he is openly critical of Gerry Adams and the “tactical use of armed struggle,” or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement. After the Northern Ireland peace process becomes deadlocked over the issue of the IRA decommissiong its arms, he and the other members of the Army Council authorise the Docklands bombing which kills two people and marks the end of the IRA’s eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.
Keenan outlines the IRA’s public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he states, “The IRA will not be defeated…Republicans will have our victory…Do not be confused about decommissioning. The only thing the Republican movement will accept is the decommissioning of the British state in this country.” In the same speech he accuses the British of “double-dealing” and denounces the Irish government as “spineless.”
On February 25, 2001, Keenan addresses a republican rally in Creggan, County Armagh, saying that republicans should not fear “this phase” of “the revolution” collapsing should the Good Friday Agreement fail. He confirms his continued commitment to the Armalite and ballot box strategy, saying that both political negotiations and violence are “legitimate forms of revolution” and that both “have to be prosecuted to the utmost.” He goes on to say, “The revolution can never be over until we have British imperialism where it belongs—in the dustbin of history,” a message aimed at preventing rank-and-file IRA activists defecting to the dissident Real IRA.
Keenan plays a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA’s go-between with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Gerry Adams remarks, “There wouldn’t be a peace process if it wasn’t for Brian Keenan.” Keenan resigns from his position on the Army Council in 2005 due to ill-health, and is replaced by Bernard Fox, who had taken part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. On May 6, 2007, he is guest speaker at a rally in Cappagh, County Tyrone, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the so-called “Loughgall Martyrs,” eight members of the IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987.
In July 2002, Keenan is diagnosed as suffering from terminal colorectal cancer. It is alleged by the Irish Independent and The Daily Telegraph that Keenan succeeded Thomas “Slab” Murphy as Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA at some point between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s before he relinquished the role to deal with his poor health caused by cancer.
Keenan’s last years are spent living with his wife in Cullyhanna, County Armagh, where he dies of cancer on May 21, 2008. He is an atheist and receives a secular funeral, representing a major republican show of strength.
Ahern is urged by Paisley to ensure that criminals who flee across the Irish border are arrested. The Democratic Unionist leader makes the proposal during a cordial one-and-a-half-hour meeting at Farmleigh in Phoenix Park, where the two leaders exchange their first public handshake.
Afterwards Paisley, who receives an invitation from the taoiseach to visit the Battle of the Boyne site later in the year, says that they had also discussed the need for the new administrations in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland to work for each other’s best interests. “We can confidently state that we are making progress to ensure our two countries can develop and grow side by side in the spirit of generous cooperation,” he declares. “I trust that old barriers and threats will be removed in my day. Business opportunities are flourishing. Genuine respect for the understanding of each other’s differences and, for that matter, similarities is now developing.”
Earlier the DUP leader, who becomes the First Minister of the new power-sharing government on May 8 alongside Sinn Féin‘s Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister, firmly shakes the hand of Ahern in public for the first time. As he arrives at Farmleigh, he quips, “I better shake the hands of this man. I’ll give him a firm handshake.”
Paisley, who is accompanied by his son, Ian Paisley, Jr., affectionately grabs the taoiseach by the shoulder. There is another handshake after the meeting at Farmleigh is finished.
Paisley says, “Mr. Ahern has come to understand me as an Ulsterman of plain speech. He didn’t ever need a dictionary to find out what I was saying. We engaged in clear and plain speech about our hopes and our aspirations for the people we both serve. The prime minister kindly congratulated me on my election victory.”
Paisley says that he had raised a number of issues crucial to unionists. “I have taken the opportunity to raise with the prime minister a number of key matters including ensuring that fugitives from justice who seek to use the border to their advantage are quickly apprehended and returned without protracted legal wrangle.” He adds, “I raised other legal issues of interests to unionists, and we discussed cooperation of an economic nature that will be to our mutual benefit.” He also says he had raised the issue of bringing Northern Ireland’s corporation tax into line with that of Ireland.
Regarding the invitation to visit the site of the Battle of the Boyne, Paisley says, “We both look forward to the visit to the battle site at the Boyne… Not to refight it, because that would be unfair, for he would have the home advantage. No Ulsterman ever gives his opponents an advantage. He adds, “Such a visit would help to demonstrate how far we have come when we can celebrate and learn from the past, so the next generation more clearly understands.”
Ahern pays tribute to the leadership shown by Paisley in helping to deliver a better future for the people of Northern Ireland. As Northern Ireland’s politicians continue at great pace to prepare for the return of power sharing, the taoiseach says that the progress has been very encouraging. “At this important time in our history, we must do our best to put behind us the terrible wounds of our past and work together to build a new relationship between our two traditions,” he says. “That new relationship can only be built on a basis of open dialogue and mutual respect. I fervently believe that we move on from here in a new spirit of friendship. The future for this island has never been brighter. I believe that this is a future of peace, reconciliation and rising prosperity for all. We stand ready to work with the new executive. We promise sincere friendship and assured cooperation. I believe that we can and will work together in the interests of everyone on this island.”
Ahern says he believes that the Battle of the Boyne site can be a symbol of the new beginning in the relationship between governments in Belfast and Dublin. “I believe that this site can become a valuable and welcome expression of our shared history and a new point of departure for an island, north and south, which is at ease with itself and respectful of its past and all its traditions,” he declared.
The Battle of the Boyne was fought in 1690 between the followers of England‘s King William of Orange, a Protestant, and the deposed King James, a Catholic, in Drogheda, eastern Ireland. Ireland was at that point under English rule. The battle is commemorated by many Northern Irish loyalists on July 12 each year.
Ministerial posts within the new devolved Stormont government have yet to be finalised. Already Sinn Féin has announced that MPs Michelle Gildernew and Conor Murphy and assembly members Gerry Kelly and Caitríona Ruane will be members of the government. However, the party has not yet indicated which of the four will take the three senior cabinet posts in education, agriculture and regional development and which one will be the junior minister in the Office of First and Deputy First Minister.
The DUP has also yet to name its ministers, but it has chosen finance, economy, environment and culture arts and leisure as the government departments it will head. The DUP’s deputy leader, Peter Robinson, and Nigel Dodds, the Belfast North MP, who both served in the last devolved government, are tipped to be the finance and economy ministers.
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has yet to declare who their two ministers will be at the Departments of Health and Employment and Learning.
(From: “Upbeat Paisley shares first handshake with Irish PM” by Hélène Mulholland and agencies, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com, April 4, 2007)
Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that has a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents are killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. In February 1992, four IRA volunteers are killed in a gun battle with the SAS during their escape after a machine gun attack on the RUC/British Army barracks there. Three months later, an IRA bomb attack on a British Army patrol at Cappagh, in which a paratrooper loses his legs, triggers a series of clashes between local residents and British troops on May 12 and 17. A number of civilians and soldiers are injured, a soldier’s backpack radio destroyed, and two British weapons stolen. The melee is followed by a 500-strong protest in the town and bitter exchanges between Republic of Ireland and British officials. Further scuffles between civilians and soldiers are reported in the town on March 6, 1994.
At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 1997, a grenade is thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence. The RUC reports that a 1 kg device hit the fence ten feet off the ground. Another source claims that the device is a coffee-jar bomb filled with Semtex. The grenade is thrown or fired by two unidentified men. At the time of the attack, there is an art exhibition at Coalisland Heritage Hall, also known as The Mill, from where the explosion and the gunshots that follow are clearly heard. The incident lasts less than two minutes.
Just one minute after the IRA attack, bypassers hear high-velocity rounds buzzing around them. A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, get out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with “Army” stamped on the front. A source initially describes them as members of the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company. The men are firing Browning pistols and Heckler & Kochsubmachine guns. Witnesses say there are eight to ten gunshots, while a republican source claims that up to eighteen rounds are fired. Nineteen-year-old Gareth Doris is shot in the stomach and falls to the ground. He is allegedly returning from the local church and is in the company of a priest when he is shot. A local priest, Seamus Rice, is driving out of the church car park when his car is hit by bullets, smashing the windscreen.
Three minutes after the blast, hundreds of angry residents gather at the scene and confront the undercover soldiers. The soldiers fire live rounds at the ground and into the air to keep people back. The crowd keeps drawing back and moving forward again until 9:50 p.m., when the RUC arrives and begins firing plastic bullets at the protesters. Two women are wounded by plastic bullets and the undercover soldiers then flee in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time. Sinn FéincouncillorFrancie Molloy claims that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris’s life in the process. Witnesses allegedly fear an undercover soldier brandishing a pistol would have killed the wounded Doris with a shot to his head.
Afterward, hundreds of residents are forced to leave their homes as security forces search the area near the base. This keeps tensions high, according to local republican activist Bernadette McAliskey. Two men are later questioned by the RUC about the attack.
The attack, along with two large bombings the same day in Wilmslow, England, raise concerns that the IRA is trying to influence the upcoming UK general election. Martin McGuinness describes the shooting as “murderous,” while independent councillor Jim Canning says that more than a dozen soldiers “were threatening to shoot anybody who moved […] while a young man lay shot on the ground.” Republican sources claim that this is another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MPKen Maginnis, however, praises the SAS for their actions.
Gareth Doris is admitted to South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon, where he is arrested after undergoing surgery. He is later transferred to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He is later convicted for involvement in the bombing and sentenced to ten years in jail, before being released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Gareth is the cousin of Tony Doris, an IRA member killed in an SAS ambush in the nearby village of Coagh on June 3, 1991, and a cousin of Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill. According to Sinn Féin councillor Brendan Doris, another cousin of Gareth, “He absolutely denies being involved in terrorist activity of any description.” Amnesty International raises its concerns over the shooting and the fact that no warning is given beforehand.
DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting leads to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack. In February 2020, he is convicted by a Diplock court in Belfast. He denies the charges but receives a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. The prosecutor acknowledges that Campbell would have been released by this time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement but argues that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.
On July 5, 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base is the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engages an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks. One female officer is wounded. The former RUC station at Coalisland is eventually shut down in 2006 and sold for private development in 2010.
(Pictured: Coalisland RUC/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland)
McGlinchey is one of eleven siblings born into a staunchly republican home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father owns a garage and some of his father’s police customers later die at McGlinchey’s hands. His mother Monica is a devout Catholic. He is educated at the local school. When he was sixteen, he begins an apprenticeship in his father’s garage. About this time, he is joining the numerous civil rights marches that are taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but speculation is that he is reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offers glamour and a close identification with his own community.
In 1971, McGlinchey is interned without charge for ten months in Long Kesh Detention Centre. Not long after his release the following year, he is imprisoned again on arms charges. On July 5, 1975, during his imprisonment, he marries Mary O’Neil, daughter of Patrick O’Neil from Toomebridge. Together they have three children.
Following his release, McGlinchey joins Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikersFrancis Hughes and Thomas McElwee and wages a campaign of shooting and bombing throughout the county and beyond. Together, they later join the Provisional IRA. The gang spends the late 1970s on the run, carrying out operations and evading both the British Army and the Garda Síochána. Following a mailvan robbery, the latter force arrests McGlinchey in County Monaghan in 1977 for carjacking a Garda patrol vehicle and threatening the officer with a pistol, although he claims that the gun is actually a wheel brace. He fails to make bail at Dublin‘s Special Criminal Court after a Garda Superintendent argues that McGlinchey would fail to attend court if bailed. He is convicted and sent to the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison. In 1982, while serving his prison sentence, he clashes with the prison’s IRA leadership and is either expelled by them for indiscipline or leaves the organisation due to strategic differences.
Following his departure from the IRA and his release from prison, McGlinchey joins the INLA. Due to his experience, he rises through the ranks, becoming chief of staff by 1982. Under his leadership, the INLA, which had previously had a reputation for disorganisation, becomes extremely active in cross-borderassassinations and bombings. These include many individual assassinations and woundings, but also massacres such as the Droppin Well bombing of 1982 in which both civilians and soldiers die. There are some failed operations, and McGlinchey, who believes this is the result of an informer within the ranks, devotes much time and energy to finding the cause. Those suspected of betraying the organisation are treated brutally, often by McGlinchey personally. As a result of this resurgence of activity and his high profile, the press nicknames him “Mad Dog.” Under his tenure the Darkley massacre is carried out, ostensibly by another group but using a weapon supplied by McGlinchey. In late 1983, while still on the run, he gives an interview with the Sunday Tribune newspaper in which he condemns the Darkley killings but also lays out his political philosophy and plans for the future.
By 1984, McGlinchey has fallen out with members of a powerful Republican family from South Armagh over what he considers missing funds. Men loyal to this family are subsequently killed by McGlinchey’s unit, which includes his wife. In March of the same year, he is captured in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, following a gunfight with the Gardaí. At this time, he is wanted in Northern Ireland for the shooting of an elderly woman, but republicans have traditionally been able to avoid extradition by claiming their offences were political. The bloody war in the north is leading the Republic of Ireland to re-evaluate its position, however, and he becomes the first republican to be extradited to Northern Ireland. Although convicted and sentenced there to life imprisonment, this is overturned in 1985. As a result, he is returned to the Republic, where he is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment on firearms charges. While he is incarcerated, his wife is shot dead at her Dundalk home.
McGlinchey is released in March 1993 and claiming to have no further involvement with the INLA, moves to Drogheda. He survives an assassination attempt soon after his release from prison, but in February 1994, his enemies catch up with him. At around 9:30 on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 1994, he visits and dines with friends of his in Duleek Road, near his home. He leaves about forty minutes later, intending to take a video back to a shop in Brookville, on the north side of town. At around 11:00 p.m. he and his 16-year-old son Dominic are returning home, when he pulls up to make a phone call from a public kiosk on Hardman’s Gardens, near Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Almost immediately and despite the presence of four witnesses, a red Mazda pulls up alongside him. While his son watches from the car, three men get out and beat McGlinchey. Once he is on the ground the men, who are armed with three pump action shotguns and a pistol, fire into him fourteen times. The attack finishes with a coup de grâce to the head, although he is already dead. His last words are reputed to be “Jesus, Mary help me.” His son yells for an ambulance.
The following day, an autopsy is carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, which indicates McGlinchey had been hit in the neck, skull, the left upper chest, the left arm, and both legs. His inquest is held in Drogheda two weeks later, suspended and then reopened in November 1996. Gardaí forensic officers tell the coroner that they had compared the shell casings they had found with the database, but no matches have been made to other known weapons. The officer notes that no such information has been received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The shotguns used are impossible to trace ballistically, but it is ascertained that the Mazda was registered in the north. His and his wife’s killers have never been found.
McGlinchey’s funeral is held on February 13, 1994, in Bellaghy, with no republican accoutrements. There is no INLA colour guard, and only an Irish tricolor draped over the coffin. Over 1,500 people attend and are watched closely by 200 RUC. Police armoured vans are held on the perimeter. He is buried alongside his wife and their young daughter Máire. His coffin is carried from the McGlinchey family home to St. Mary’s Church by pallbearers who are swapped out from the crowd every 40-yards or so. Martin McGuinness is among them, as is Bernadette McAliskey and her daughter Róisín. His sons carry the coffin for the final yards.
McGlinchey’s posthumous reputation ranges from being a “psycho” to his enemies to being an inspiration to those who followed him. Commentators have speculated on what he would have contributed to Irish politics had he lived. Some have suggested that he would have contributed to the Northern Ireland peace process, while others have argued that dissident republicans, opposed to that process, would have found him a willing rallying point. He remains an influence on Irish fiction and music, with both Edna O’Brien and Martin McDonagh producing acclaimed pieces based on his life and career. He is also featured in popular songs.
On January 21, 2002, Sinn Féin‘s four MPs take the historic step of signing up to use the facilities of the House of Commons, whose authority over Northern Irelandrepublicans have been fighting for almost a century. Party policy is also changed to allow MPs to sit in the Irish Parliament, the Dáil.
Amid concern among some republicans that the move comes close to recognising British rule, Sinn Féin president and Belfast West MP, Gerry Adams, insists that his party will never take its seats at Westminster. “There will never ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British houses of parliament,” he tells a Westminster press conference.
However, flanked by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs, Martin McGuinness (Mid Ulster), Pat Doherty (West Tyrone) and Michelle Gildernew (Fermanagh and South Tyrone), Adams says taking up seats in the Dáil is a very different proposition from doing so the Commons. No Sinn Féin member would take the loyalty oath to the Queen, needed to take up a seat in Parliament, but that was a mere side issue to the key question of sovereignty, he says. Even if the oath were amended, the party would still refuse to take its seats because republicans do not recognise parliament’s jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.
“There are lots of things which there can be no certainty of and there are some things of which we can be certain,” Adams says. “There will never, ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British Houses of Parliament. The transfer of power by London and Dublin to the Assembly in the north … is all proof of where we see the political centre of gravity on the island of Ireland and that is in the island of Ireland.”
Adams insists his party’s presence in the Commons is a “temporary” measure until they can join the parliament of a united Ireland.
A ban on MPs using Commons facilities without taking the loyalty oath was lifted in December 2001 to Conservative fury. Tories end three decades of cross-party cooperation over the move, which also entitles Sinn Féin’s four MPs to allowances of £107,000 a year each.
Shadow Secretary of State for Northern IrelandQuentin Davies claims Adams plans to use the cash for party political campaigning – something forbidden by Westminster rules. He accuses British Prime MinisterTony Blair of “deliberately contributing to a great propaganda coup in which … the British Government are licking their boots.” The Prime Minister’s spokesman says Blair acknowledges “many victims do feel very strongly about what has happened, but the Prime Minister’s view is that this peace process has saved many lives.”
Sitting alongside a giant Irish tricolour inside his new office, Adams likens his presence there to that of MPs who had served in the British Army and intelligence services – suggesting some of them still do. He also dismisses concerns about the misuse of the money, accusing those “complaining loudest” of being from parties “indicted for corruption and sleaze.”
Sinn Féin’s move into their new offices coincides with a “routine” meeting with the Prime Minister in Downing Street to discuss the peace process. The Sinn Féin president uses publicity surrounding the controversial move to issue a new challenge to Blair to tackle the loyalist “killing campaign.” Adams is joined in Downing Street by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs.
“There have been 300 bombs over the last nine or ten months,” Adams says. “The British Prime Minister has to face up to the reality that the threat to the peace process within Northern Ireland comes from within loyalism.”
Adams blames Betty Boothroyd‘s decision to bar Sinn Féin MPs from using Commons facilities for the current controversy. “We are here, elected, with our mandate renewed and increased,” he adds.
Adams is asked how he would react if he met former Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit and his wife, who was badly injured by the 1984 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack at the Tories conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, at the Commons. “I don’t ignore anyone. As someone who has been wounded and shot and someone whose house has been bombed, I understand precisely how others who have suffered more than me feel about all of this,” Adams replies. “I would like to think that as part of building a peace process that all of us agree there must be dialogue.”
(Pictured: from left, Sinn Fein MPs Michelle Gildernew, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty)
After the death of Brendan Doris in 2006, Martin McGuinness pays tribute to the Doris family as “a well-known and respected republican family [who] have played a significant role in the republican struggle for many years.”
O’Neill becomes involved in republican politics in her teens, assisting her father with constituency work in his role as a Dungannon councillor. She joins Sinn Féin after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, at the age of 21, and starts working as an advisor to Francie Molloy in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding this role until 2005.
O’Neill automatically relinquishes her office following Paul Givan‘s resignation as first minister on February 3, 2022. Sinn Féin becomes the largest party after the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, putting O’Neill in line to become the First Minister of Northern Ireland, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader to become the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. However, she remains to be officially sworn in as First Minister because, as part of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the DUP has refused to nominate a deputy First minister and there is therefore no functioning executive of Northern Ireland.
In August 2022, O’Neill is asked in a BBC interview whether it was right during the Troubles for the Provisional IRA “to engage in violent resistance to British rule.” She is criticised for her response, “I think at the time there was no alternative, but now thankfully we have an alternative to conflict, and that is the Good Friday Agreement – that is why it’s so precious to us all.”
In May 2023, O’Neill attends the coronation of King Charles, saying, “Well obviously I wanted to be here. We live in changing times, and it was the respectful thing to do, to show respect and to be here for all those people at home, who I had said I would be a first minister for all. Attendance here is about honouring that and fulfilling my promise.”
seamus dubhghaill 