seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Muammar Gaddafi


by Leave a comment

Birth of Charles Harding Smith, Loyalist & UDA Leader

Charles Harding Smith, a Northern Irish loyalist and the first effective leader of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on January 24, 1931. An important figure in the Belfast-based “defence associations” that form the basis of the UDA on its formation in 1971, he later becomes embroiled in feuds with other UDA leaders and is eventually driven out of Northern Ireland by his opponents.

A former soldier in the British Army, Smith, at the time residing in Rosebank Street on the Shankill Road, calls a meeting of other locals at the Leopold Street Pigeon Fanciers Club to develop a response to attacks by republicans from the neighboring Ardoyne area. The location is chosen because Smith is himself a pigeon fancier and a member of the club. At the meeting, it is agreed to establish a vigilante group, the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA), with Smith in command and assisted by Davy Fogel, who organises military drilling for the forty or so recruits, and Ernie Elliott.

The WDA gains widespread notoriety and is blamed for a series of bomb attacks and shootings, most of which have been carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Nevertheless, Smith’s reputation as a hardline loyalist is boosted as a result and when his group merges with other similar vigilante movements to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in late 1971, he is chosen as chairman of the new group’s thirteen-member Security Council ahead of the other leading candidates, Tommy Herron and Jim Anderson. According to journalist Martin Dillon, Smith is heavily influenced by William Craig and William McGrath, both of whom see a need for a group to replace the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) and feel that they can easily influence Smith to their way of thinking.

Smith soon takes charge of procuring arms for the UDA. In early 1972, working in tandem with Belfast businessman John Campbell who agrees to bankroll the purchases, he is put in contact with a Scottish arms dealer from whom he is to purchase £50,000 worth of weapons. He sends three WDA associates, John White, Bobby Dalzell, and Robert Lusty (who is also a serving officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)), to meet the arms dealer in a London hotel, following them without attending the actual meeting. The “arms dealer” is actually an RUC Special Branch agent and, after recording the conversation with the WDA men, arrests all three. Smith goes to Scotland Yard the same day to inquire about his friends only to be arrested himself.

Smith remains in custody in England until December 1972 when his case comes to trial. Campbell claims that the deal had been organised for the RUC to entrap the arms dealer, whom they believe to be a Provisional Irish Republican Army member and a series of mistakes by the prosecution helps to ensure that the case collapses with Smith acquitted. The trial is used as part of early arguments regarding collusion between the RUC and loyalists as a list of RUC Special Branch suspects is uncovered in Smith’s house while he attempts to call Chief Constable Graham Shillington as a character witness.

By the time Smith returns to Belfast in December 1972 there has been changes in the UDA with Tommy Herron in effective control of the organisation and Davy Fogel the dominant figure amongst the WDA. He immediately takes back control of his west Belfast stronghold, threatening Fogel with death if he does not fall into line. Fogel, a close ally of Ernie Elliott, who was killed in circumstances that Smith had been rumoured to be involved in, although it is later determined that Elliott was shot dead after a drunken brawl on Sandy Row had descended into a gunfight, decides it is best not to go up against Smith and stands down.

However, Smith is not satisfied and, after putting out intelligence that Fogel has been taking UDA funds for himself, arrests Fogel and holds him captive for three hours in a Shankill social club where he is told to leave the area. Fogel briefly leaves for east Belfast but when the UDA there makes it clear he is not welcome either he leaves to live in England, from where he controversially gives an interview about his time in the UDA to The Sunday Times. Among claims made by Fogel in this interview is one that Smith was attempting to take control of the UDA with the help of the UVF. Smith is a strong admirer of the UVF’s military structure and hopes to replicate it in the UDA but he has a deep dislike of UVF leader Gusty Spence. As part of his remit to instill military discipline, Smith moves against a culture of racketeering that has become endemic in the west Belfast UDA during his absence. It is this initiative that leads to the rumours concerning his involvement in the death of Elliott, who had been named by some of his rivals in the UDA as a gangster.

Despite Smith’s show of strength following his return to Belfast his public persona remains low-key, with Herron fast emerging as the public face of the UDA. Much of this is down to the fact that Smith is inarticulate and unable to project a good image, unlike Herron who is a good talker and fairly charismatic. The emergence of these two leaders at the same time however is to bring the fledgling movement into near civil war.

Following a period of marginalisation Jim Anderson, who is serving as caretaker leader of the UDA, resigns as chairman of the UDA and as a result a meeting is called of the group’s leaders in March 1973 to determine who will succeed him. By this time Smith and Herron are recognised as the undisputed leaders of the Belfast UDA. There is a fear that whichever of the two is chosen as chairman, the other one will automatically feel obliged to challenge his leadership. As a result, it is determined that someone else should be appointed chairman as a compromise candidate and as Highfield-based activist Andy Tyrie, a man noted for his skill as an organiser, is chairing the conference it is decided that he will be acceptable to both men as chairman of the UDA. Tyrie soon proves to be a powerful rival to the two leaders. In September 1973, Herron is kidnapped and shot dead. His murder remains unsolved.

Tyrie had not proven to be the puppet Smith had hoped and had consolidated his power through his close involvement with Glenn Barr and the Ulster Workers’ Council during the strike of May 1974, an event that had helped to give real credence to Tyrie’s leadership abilities. Fearing the growing power of Tyrie, Smith criticises the UDA leader for sending a delegation to Libya to meet Muammar Gaddafi, who is a hated figure for many loyalists due to his providing arms to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Smith, who had known about the trip in advance but had raised no objections, verbally attacks Tyrie over the Libya debacle in a meeting of the Inner Council in December 1974 before declaring the following January that he intends to split his West Belfast Brigade from the rest of the UDA.

Two weeks after announcing the schism, Smith is attending a meeting at the West Belfast UDA’s headquarters with Tommy Lyttle when he notices a sniper on a nearby roof. Smith, who is wearing a bulletproof vest, opens his coat as if to challenge the sniper to fire but is seriously wounded when the sniper shoots twice, hitting him both times with armour-piercing bullets. With Smith in hospital, Tyrie calls a meeting of the leading figures in the Shankill UDA and manages to convince Lyttle and other leading figures that Smith is too divisive a figure to remain in charge.

Smith is out of the hospital after only two weeks and declares himself back in charge, but before long he has fallen foul of a number of important people. Two Shankill UDA members are interned on the basis of evidence that rumours suggest had come from Smith, while he also clashed with the local UVF after suggesting that they merge but only on the basis that he will be in control. He begins to make threats against Barr and Chicken, two popular members who are leading figures on the UDA’s political side. Smith calls a meeting of his commanders, but, on February 6, 1975, in an attack arranged in advance by his opponents within the UDA, a gunman bursts in and shoots him twice in the chest. The gunman walks up to the injured Smith and prepares to shoot him in the head but the gun jams and he again survives an attempt on his life.

Smith spends another week in hospital after which he again returns to his Belfast home. Loyalist Davy Payne is sent to his house with another hitman and the two order Smith to leave Northern Ireland. He is taken to the airport the following day and leaves for England, leaving Tyrie as sole leader of the UDA. He settles in Southowram, West Yorkshire, where he works as a lorry driver before his death in 1997. During Dáil Éireann debates in 2005 he is named as a “self-confessed British intelligence agent.”


by Leave a comment

The Provisional IRA Resumes the August 1994 Ceasefire

On July 19, 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

The Provisional IRA, officially known as the Irish Republican Army (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann) and informally as the Provos, is an Irish republican paramilitary force that seeks to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It is the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argues that the all-island Irish Republic continues to exist, and it sees itself as that state’s army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). It is designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejects.

The Provisional IRA emerges in December 1969, due to a split within the previous incarnation of the IRA and the broader Irish republican movement. It is initially the minority faction in the split compared to the Official IRA but becomes the dominant faction by 1972. The Troubles begin shortly before when a largely Catholic, nonviolent civil rights campaign is met with violence from both Ulster loyalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), culminating in the August 1969 riots and deployment of British soldiers. The IRA initially focuses on defence of Catholic areas, but it begins an offensive campaign in 1970 that is aided by external sources, including Irish diaspora communities within the Anglosphere, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It uses guerrilla tactics against the British Army and RUC in both rural and urban areas and carries out a bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England against military, political and economic targets, and British military targets in mainland Europe. They also target civilian contractors to the British security forces. The IRA’s armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, kills over 1,700 people, including roughly 1,000 members of the British security forces and 500–644 civilians.

The Provisional IRA declares a final ceasefire on July 19, 1997, after which its political wing, Sinn Féin, is admitted into multi-party peace talks on the future of Northern Ireland. These talks result in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. In 2005, the IRA formally ends its armed campaign and decommissions its weapons under the supervision of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. Several splinter groups have been formed as a result of splits within the IRA, including the Continuity IRA, which is still active in the dissident Irish republican campaign, and the Real IRA.

The Provisional IRA issues the following statement to news media on the morning of July 19, 1997:

“On August 31, 1994, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann (Gaelic for Irish Republican Army) announced a complete cessation of military operations as our contribution to the search for a lasting peace.

After 17 months of cessation, in which the British government and the (pro-British Protestant) unionists blocked any possibility of real or inclusive negotiations, we reluctantly abandoned the cessation.

The Irish Republican Army is committed to ending British rule in Ireland.

It is the root cause of division and conflict in our country. We want a permanent peace and therefore we are prepared to enhance the search for a democratic peace settlement through real and inclusive negotiations.

So, having assessed the current political situation, the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann are announcing a complete cessation of military operations from 12 o’clock midday on Sunday the 20th, July 1997.

We have ordered the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. All IRA units have been instructed accordingly.”


by Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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