Paisley is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Armagh. He becomes a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remains one for the rest of his life. In 1951, he co-founds the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and is its leader until 2008. He becomes known for his fiery speeches and regularly preaches and protests against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gains a large group of followers who are referred to as “Paisleyites.”
Paisley becomes involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he leads and instigates loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This leads to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that engulfs Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970, he becomes Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founds the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he leads for almost forty years. In 1979, he becomes a Member of the European Parliament.
In 2005, Paisley’s DUP becomes the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which has dominated unionist politics since 1905. In 2007, following the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agrees to share power with republican party Sinn Féin and consent to all-Ireland governance in certain matters. He and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. He steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. He is made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.
In November 2011, Paisley announces to his congregation that he is retiring as a minister. He delivers his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs’ Memorial Hall on December 18, 2011, and finally retires from his religious ministry on January 27, 2012.
Paisley dies in Belfast on September 12, 2014. He is buried in Ballygowan, County Down on September 15 following a private funeral and a public memorial for 800 invited guests is held in the Ulster Hall on October 19. An obituary in The New York Times reports that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that “the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained.”
The move paves the way for Sinn Féin’s first face-to-face talks with British Cabinet ministers since 1921, when the country was partitioned. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness and party secretary Lucilita Bhreatnach agree behind closed doors at Stormont Castle in east Belfast to abide by the guiding principles underlying the Northern Ireland all-party talks.
Democratic and peaceful means of resolving political issues. Total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations. The disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission.
Renounce for themselves and oppose any effort by others to use force or threaten to use force to influence the course or outcome of all-party negotiations.
Abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree.
Urge that “punishment” killings and beatings stop, and take effective steps to prevent such actions.
Sinn Féin pledges to honor the Mitchell Principles exactly 51 days after the IRA stopped its decades-old violent campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland. “This is a watershed. There is an expectation and understanding out there of the importance of this moment,” Adams says.
Paul Murphy, minister for political development in the province, says the Sinn Féin pledge marks a new phase in the peace process. “The significance I am sure is that we are now entering a new era … in the sense that the gun is going out of politics in Northern Ireland and that here Sinn Féin is ascribing to those principles of nonviolence, of democratic government.”
“I believe people outside these buildings, outside Stormont, are of the view that enough is enough, and that change must come,” Murphy adds. “But that change must be change which encompasses everybody’s aspirations and which will last for generations.”
The pledge to honor the Mitchell Principles means that the ten parties involved can proceed with round-table talks on the future of Northern Ireland on Monday, September 15, as planned.
However, two mainstream Protestant parties that favor continued British rule of Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the UK Unionist Party (UKUP), plan to boycott the talks. In addition, the powerful Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), is expected to decide on Saturday, September 13, whether to attend the crucial new round of negotiations.
In a statement, the Ulster Unionists call Sinn Féin’s commitment “a charade.” “The subscription of Sinn Féin to the Mitchell Principles will completely lack credibility. Actions matter much more than words,” the statement says.
The London and Dublin governments agree that sovereignty in Northern Ireland can only be changed through the ballot box. While Protestants generally are determined to remain British, most Catholics favor making Northern Ireland part of Ireland.
(From: “Sinn Fein gains access to Northern Ireland talks” on CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com, September 9, 1997)
McGuinness is born James Martin Pacelli McGuinness on May 23, 1950 in Derry. He attends St. Eugene’s Primary School and later the Christian Brothers technical college, leaving school at the age of 15.
McGuinness joins the IRA about 1970, and by 1971 he is one of its leading organizers in Derry. In 1973 a Special Criminal Court in the Republic of Ireland sentences him to six months in prison after he is caught in a car containing large quantities of explosives and ammunition. Although the IRA keeps secret the membership of its seven-person Army Council, few doubt that McGuinness is one of its most important members from the 1970s through the 1990s. Even while reportedly planning attacks on civilians in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland, McGuinness is involved in spasmodic secret talks with British government ministers and officials to end the conflict. In 1972 McGuinness, with fellow IRA leader Gerry Adams, privately negotiates with British Secretary of State for Northern IrelandWilliam Whitelaw, but these and other talks over the next two decades are unsuccessful.
McGuinness contests seats in the British House of Commons on several occasions, losing in 1983, 1987, and 1992. However, in 1997 he is elected to the House of Commons to represent the constituency of Mid Ulster and, in line with party policy, he does not take his seat. He subsequently wins reelection to the seat in 2001, 2005, and 2010.
McGuinness is the IRA’s chief negotiator in the deliberations, also secret at first, that culminate in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This pact finally ends the conflict and eventually brings Sinn Féin into a coalition government to rule Northern Ireland. He is elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly and in 1999 is appointed Minister of Education. In this post he eliminates the controversial eleven-plus examination, which determines which type of secondary school a child should attend. The test had been abolished in most of the rest of the United Kingdom more than 25 years earlier.
Disagreements over such issues as policing and the decommissioning of arms causes Northern Ireland’s Executive and Assembly to be suspended for some years, but a fresh agreement in 2006 paves the way for them to be revived. In elections in March 2007, both Sinn Féin and the antirepublican Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) gain seats, becoming the two largest parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly. McGuinness becomes Deputy First Minister, working with First Minister Ian Paisley, leader of the DUP. The two men, previously bitter enemies, perform so well together that they are dubbed the “Chuckle brothers.”
When Paisley retires in 2008, he is succeeded by the DUP’s Peter Robinson, who is considered to be even more militantly antirepublican. Once again, however, a shared need to rebuild the economy and attract international investment leads to cooperation between former opponents. In 2009 their government is in jeopardy as Sinn Féin and the DUP argue over the devolution of the police and justice system in Northern Ireland. McGuinness and Robinson are involved in the ensuing negotiations, and in February 2010 an agreement is reached for the transfer of powers from Britain to Northern Ireland in April.
In the Assembly elections in May 2011, McGuinness and Robinson are a formidable pair, and voters respond to their call for stability in a time of economic uncertainty. Sinn Féin gains an additional seat and increases its overall share of the vote, and McGuinness is assured an additional term as Deputy First Minister. In the autumn he steps down to run as Sinn Féin’s candidate for the presidency of Ireland. After finishing third in the election held on October 28, he returns to the position of Deputy First Minister a few days later. On June 27, 2012, in an event widely seen as having great symbolic importance for the ongoing reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland, McGuinness and Elizabeth II shake hands twice, once in private and again in public, during a visit by the British monarch to Belfast.
In January 2017 McGuinness resigns as Deputy First Minister in response to First Minister Arlene Foster’s refusal to temporarily step down from her position during the investigation of a scandal relating to the government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), a mishandled program under which large amounts of state funds allegedly had been squandered. Foster had served as head of the department that oversaw the RHI before becoming First Minister. Under the power-sharing agreement the posts of First Minister and Deputy First Minister constitute a single joint office so that the resignation of one minister results in termination of the other’s tenure. When Sinn Féin chooses not to nominate a replacement for McGuinness within the required seven-day period, authority reverts to the British government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in advance of a snap election on March 2.
Even before McGuinness’s resignation there had been speculation late in 2016 that he might step down for health reasons, and soon after resigning he confirms that he is suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease brought about by deposits of abnormal protein in organs and tissue. With McGuinness removing himself from “frontline politics,” Michelle O’Neill leads Sinn Féin into the election. The disease claims McGuinness’s life only months later on March 21, 2017.
Some of the fifty people at the luncheon, most of them Irish American members of Congress, think Clinton might forgo a handshake because he is under tremendous pressure from Britain’s Prime MinisterJohn Major not to give Adams a warm embrace. But Clinton does not hesitate although the handshake comes after photographers have left the room.
“Gerry was concerned about the protocol of how he should go up to the President, but when he walked up, the President gave him a very big handshake,” says RepresentativePeter T. King, a Republican from Seaford, Long Island, who sits to the right of Adams at the lunch. After an awkward moment of silence, the room explodes with applause.
The President and the Sinn Féin leader speak for five minutes. Later Adams says, “The engagement was positive, was cordial.”
According to Rep. King, Clinton says he is committed to making the Irish peace effort succeed and, while talking to Adams, puts his fist in front of him and says, “This is going to work.” Adams says Clinton does not urge him to make sure the IRA disarms, something Major asked the President to do. Clinton invites Adams to a White House reception scheduled for the following day and, according to his aides, plans to speak to Major over the weekend in an effort to patch up their differences.
The tone at the luncheon is often light. Clinton jokes that finally he is at a place where people will not criticize him for taking a drink of Guinness. Also, Bruton hails Gingrich as an honorary Irishman, noting that his mother apparently descended from the Doherty clan of County Donegal.
Wearing a white carnation tinged with green, Gingrich gives the Taoiseach a bowl of Georgia peanuts and a book on the history of the United States Capitol. Telling Gingrich that he is not the first person to consider overhauling welfare, Bruton gives him an 1840’s book about welfare reform in Ireland.
McAleese’s initial seven-year term of office ends in November 2004, but she stands for a second term in the 2004 Irish presidential election. Following the failure of any other candidate to secure the necessary support for nomination, the incumbent president stands unopposed, with no political party affiliation, and is declared elected on October 1, 2004.
McAleese is re-inaugurated at the commencement of her second seven-year term on November 11, 2004. Her very high approval ratings are widely seen as the reason for her re-election, with no opposition party willing to bear the cost, financial or political, of competing in an election that would prove difficult to win.
Following the inauguration ceremony earlier in the day in Dublin Castle, McAleese attends a reception there hosted by the Government to mark the beginning of her second term of office. The 700 invited guests include members of the Government, the Oireachtas, the judiciary and dignitaries from Christian churches and other faiths.
McAleese identifies the need for strong and resilient communities as the theme of her second term in office. Speaking after her inauguration in the afternoon, she says, “The cushion of consumerism is no substitute for the comfort of community.” Speaking on the Northern Ireland peace process, she urges the hesitant to “muster the courage to complete the journey to a bright new landscape of hope.”
Prevented by the Constitution of Ireland from running for a third term, McAleese leaves office in 2011 as one of Ireland’s most popular and respected presidents.
(Pictured: the second inauguration of Mary McAleese, November 11, 2004, President of Ireland website, http://www.president.ie)
The province’s institutions are suspended on October 14 following a row over allegations of Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity, including alleged spying within the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).
Speaking after a 40-minute meeting with Trimble, Adams says they had had a “useful exchange of views.” But he adds, as expected, “there were very few conclusions in terms of the big picture….I asked Mr. Trimble how he thought things could be sorted out and Mr. Trimble had no particular suggestion to offer. But it was a good meeting.”
The Sinn Féin president says he had suggested to Trimble that each leader could address the executive of the opposite’s party. “He declined. But I hope he will think about the suggestion.”
Trimble says no significant developments came out of the meeting. He adds that the onus is on the republican movement to move the process forward. He dismisses Adams’s suggestion that they should address each other’s parties as a “stunt.”
Kelly is the eldest of ten children born into a staunchly Irish republican family. His father, also named James Kelly, had stood for Sinn Féin in local elections in 1918, topping the poll. An ancestor from the late 18th century, Robert Kelly, was a member of the Society of United Irishmen, and was supposedly a Officer Commanding of the United Irishmen in the East Cavan/South Monaghan area. Kelly joins the Irish Army in 1949. By 1960 he has been promoted to captain and appointed to the intelligence section at army headquarters.
Kelly is a central figure in the Arms Trial, having travelled to Hamburg to arrange the purchase of arms. It emerges later that Neil Blaney had ordered him to do so outside normal legal channels, but before the weapons arrive the GardaSpecial Detective Unit has heard of the plan and informs TaoiseachJack Lynch, aborting the importation and resulting in criminal charges for the plotters. Although in his summation the judge says it is no defence for Kelly to say that he believed that the government had authorised the importation of arms, Kelly is acquitted.
Although he is acquitted, Kelly suffers financially because he had felt compelled to resign from the Army even before the prosecution is brought. He prints and publishes a personal memoir in paperback format called Orders for the Captain? in 1971.
Kelly never denies that he had been involved in extra-legal arms purchase talks but contends that he had been ordered to do so by some ministers. A typical version of the events is found in a 1993 hostile biography of Charles Haughey, claiming: “As early as October 1969, to the certain knowledge of Charles Haughey, James Gibbons, the Department of Justice, the Special Branch and Army Intelligence, there were meetings with leading members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), when they were promised money and arms. The critical encounter took place in Bailieborough [sic], County Cavan, on Saturday, 4 October 1969. It had been arranged by Captain James Kelly, an army intelligence officer, and Cathal Goulding. Kelly, at that stage, was already the subject of several security reports to the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, from the Special Branch, implicating Kelly with subversives and with promises of money and of arms.” Kelly never objects to such versions of the events of 1969.
Following the Arms Trial, Kelly joint-founds Aontacht Éireann, a political party directly born out of the scandal. He is elected vice-chairman of the party and stands in Dáil elections for them unsuccessfully on two occasions in 1973 and 1977 in the Cavan-Monaghan constituency. Aontacht Éireann meets with little success at the polls and by 1980 he has joined Fianna Fáil, becoming a member of its national executive. Following the first applications of the 1987 Extradition (European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism) Act, he resigns from the party in 1989 in opposition to the extradition of Provisional IRA prisoners to the United Kingdom. He also serves twice as President of the “1916-1921” Club.
Kelly is heavily involved in the Northern Ireland peace process. In 1989 he publishes his own draft on how a peace process could proceed. His document called The Courage of the Brave is launched in Conway Mill, Belfast on August 24, 1989. Present on the platform party at the launch of the document are Fianna Fáil Councillor Macarten McCormack, Ernest Cowan, Chairman of Kentstown Fianna Fáil who had served with Captain Kelly on the Fianna Fáil National Executive, Robert C. Linnon, National President, Irish American Unity Conference, Kate Lavery, representing John J. Finucane, National President, American Irish Political Education Committee and Father Des Wilson of Belfast.
Kelly dies on July 16, 2003, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. The epitaph on his grave is “Put not your trust in princes,” which is a quote from Niccolò Machiavelli.
In 1916 Flannery joins the Irish Volunteers alongside his brother Peter, although he does not take part in the Easter Rising. However, he does participate in the Irish War of Independence. Following the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, he fights as part of the Anti-Treaty IRA until his capture by the National Army on November 11, 1922, in Roscrea, County Tipperary. He is imprisoned for nearly a year and a half in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison (C Wing). While there he witnesses the execution of Anti-Treaty IRA leaders Richard Barrett, Joe McKelvey, Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor from his cell window. Following a 28-day hunger strike, he is placed in the Curragh Camp until May 1, 1924, when he is finally released, a full year after the end of the civil war.
Following the creation of Fianna Fáil and their entry into the Irish Parliament Dáil Éireann, Flannery becomes affiliated with Sinn Féin, who had voted to retain their abstentionist policy towards the Dáil and their refusal to acknowledge it as the legitimate government of Ireland. Sinn Féin tasks him with drumming up support for the party in New York. However, following the start of the Great Depression he finds it difficult to focus on politics in the face of mounting poverty. By 1933 finding support for Sinn Féin and the IRA becomes particularly tough when Fianna Fáil expands greatly the range of people eligible for military pensions, which under the previous government had been biased against members of the Anti-Treaty IRA. For the next 40 years Flannery works for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Upon the onset of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Flannery is once again drawn into the world of Irish Republicanism. In a response to the mounting violence, he sets up the Irish Northern Aid Committee, or as it became better known as, NORAID. The official purpose of NORAID is to provide funds to the families of imprisoned Irish Republicans and victims of violence. However, opponents level the accusation against the organisation that it is also providing funding directly to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and perhaps even also supplying firearms.
In 1970 Flannery travels around America and sets up 62 chapters of NORAID. In 1971 he says, “The more coffins sent back to Britain, the sooner this will be all over,” referring to British soldiers.
In 1982 Flannery is indicted, with four other members of NORAID, for arms smuggling, but all defendants are acquitted after their legal defence is able to successfully argue their actions had been sanctioned the CIA.
In 1986 Flannery quietly resigns from NORAID following the decision by Sinn Féin to drop its abstentionist policy in the Republic of Ireland and to recognise Dáil Éireann as the legitimate governing body of Ireland.
Flannery opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, believing that Sinn Féin and the Provisionals have “sold out,” and believes the removal of British troops from Northern Ireland is the only starting point upon which negotiations can begin.
Flannery dies at the age of 92 in New York City on September 30, 1994. He is buried in Mount Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York.
The soft-spoken but firm Mitchell leads a review of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which he played a crucial part in brokering. The aim is to halt a renewed drift to violence by pro-British Protestant and pro-Irish Catholicparamilitaries, and to persuade the two communities to begin cooperating in the province’s elected assembly.
“The peace process is mired in mistrust on both sides of the sectarian divide,” says a British government official, who declines to be identified. “It will need somebody of Mr. Mitchell’s political caliber and neutrality to find a way forward.” The future role of the Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), will be “part of the tangle [Mitchell] has to unravel,” the official adds. The 92% Protestant force, in a society where Catholics make up 42% of the population, is widely seen as requiring urgent attention.
The Protestant political leaders are unwilling to accept the good faith of Sinn Féin, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). They are also attacking Northern Ireland Secretary of StateMo Mowlam for having refused to acknowledge that republican paramilitaries have breached the cease-fire despite several violent incidents and the discovery of an alleged plot to send arms to the IRA from the United States.
Mowlam’s decision enraged David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s main Protestant political party and first minister-designate in a devolved Belfast government. Trimble and his senior lieutenants called for her to be fired. Trimble also launches a bitter attack on the Patten Commission after a leaked report indicates it would recommend allowing active IRA members to join the RUC police force.
Mitchell’s main contribution to the peace process has been to insist that the issue of decommissioning terrorist arms must be addressed in parallel with talks on future political structures in Northern Ireland. But he still has to find a formula that will satisfy Unionists for the IRA to begin handing in its weapons and explosives. Trimble and other Protestant leaders insist the IRA must agree to decommission before Sinn Féin is allowed to join a devolved Belfast government. Sinn Féin says that was not part of the 1998 peace accord.
Most worrying for Mitchell is the recent outcry over IRA tactics that makes a solution to the problem of law and order all the more important. The IRA is known to use threats and so called “punishment beatings” to maintain law and order in areas under its control, where RUC forces dare not tread. Six Catholic youths are in hiding in Britain after being threatened with violence, even death, if they remained in Northern Ireland.
According to the RUC, the youths have been targeted because of their refusal to accept the authority of sectarian paramilitaries in the areas where they live. Vincent McKenna, spokesman for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, says, “The IRA thinks it has the right to police its own areas, and it is determined to punish anyone critical of the political direction of the Sinn Féin leadership.” He adds that since the Belfast agreement was signed 16 months earlier, 757 young people have been “exiled” by the IRA and Protestant paramilitary groups.
Mowlam reportedly says that if the Patten Commission can come up with a blueprint for the police that gives Catholics a larger role in legitimate law enforcement, the scope for policing by paramilitary groups will be reduced.
(From: “Mitchell returns to N. Ireland tinderbox,” The Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 1999)
The bomb is in a grey Saab 9000 near the Ealing Broadway station, restaurants and pubs on Uxbridge Road, which explodes shortly after midnight, injuring seven people. Debris from the blast spreads more than 220 yards. The bomb is timed to target leaving karaoke pub-goers, but while most escape injury, the explosion still causes significant damage to property, estimated to be around £200,000. The adjacent Ealing Broadway shopping centre is also damaged by flooding arising from the water main under the car bomb being ruptured.
Experts regard the bomb to be designed to look spectacular on CCTV for the purposes of “armed propaganda” rather than to cause large numbers of injuries. However, anti-terrorist detectives claim that the attack is planned to be a massacre and to cause as much carnage as the Omagh bombing three years earlier.
In November 2001, three men, Noel Maguire, Robert Hulme and his brother Aiden Hulme, are arrested in connection with the Ealing, BBC and Birmingham bomb attacks. They are all later convicted at the Old Bailey on April 8, 2003. Robert and Aiden Hulme are each jailed for twenty years. Noel Maguire, whom the judge says played “a major part in the bombing conspiracy,” is sentenced to twenty-two years.
Two other men, James McCormack of County Louth and John Hannan of Newtownbutler, County Fermanagh, had already admitted the charge at an earlier hearing. McCormack, who plays the most serious part of the five, is jailed for twenty-two years. John Hannan, who is seventeen at the time of the incidents, is given sixteen years of detention.
Former 
