seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Northern Ireland


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The Execution of Roddy McCorley, Irish Nationalist

Roddy McCorley, Irish nationalist, is executed on February 28, 1800. He is alleged to be a member of the United Irishmen and claimed as a participant in their rebellion of 1798.

McCorley, the son of a miller, and is born near Toome in the civil parish of Duneane, County Antrim, in what is now Northern Ireland. A few years before the Irish Rebellion of 1798, his father is believed to have been executed for stealing sheep. These charges appear to be politically motivated in an attempt to remove a troublesome agitator at a time of great social unrest. Following his father’s execution, his family is evicted from their home.

There is uncertainty as to whether McCorley is actually actively involved with the predominantly Presbyterian United Irishmen or the predominantly Catholic Defenders. His role in the 1798 rebellion itself is unrecorded. In a ballad called “Roddy McCorley” written in the 1890s by Ethna Carbery, he is claimed to have been one of the leaders of the United Irishmen at the Battle of Antrim, however there is no contemporary documentary evidence to support this claim or prove that he was even active in the rebellion.

After the rebellion, McCorley joins a notorious outlaw gang known as Archer’s Gang, made up of former rebels and led by Thomas Archer. Some of these men had been British soldiers who changed sides in the conflict, and as such are guilty of treason and thus exempt from the terms of amnesty offered to the rank and file of the United Irishmen. This means that they are always on the run in an attempt to evade capture. This “quasi-rebel” group are claimed to have attacked loyalists and participated in common crime. It is believed that McCorley is caught while in hiding, having been betrayed by an informer.

After McCorley is arrested he is tried by court martial in Ballymena on February 20, 1800, and sentenced to be hanged “near the Bridge of Toome,” in the parish of Duneane. His execution occurs on February 28, 1800. The bridge had been partially destroyed by rebels in 1798 to prevent the arrival of loyalist reinforcements from west of the River Bann.

McCorley’s body is then dismembered and buried under the gallows, on the main Antrim to Derry road. A letter published in the Belfast News Letter a few days after his execution gives an account of the execution and how he was viewed by some. In it he is called Roger McCorley, which may be his proper Christian name.

His great-grandson, Roger McCorley, is an officer in the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921).

In addition to Ethna Carbery’s ballad, historian Guy Beiner uncovers earlier references to McCorley in Presbyterian folklore, which he shows to have been repeatedly forgotten and obscured on the background of mainstream Presbyterian identification with Unionism.

Carbery’s ballad is re-popularised by The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, The Dubliners, The Kingston Trio, and others during the folk music revival of the 1960s. It is recorded in 1995 by Shane MacGowan and The Popes for their album The Snake and has also been recorded by other contemporary artists, such as Heather Dale on her 2006 album The Hidden Path. The melody for “Roddy McCorley” is reused in 1957 for “Sean South,” about a failed operation that year during the IRA’s border campaign.

An account of McCorley’s career compiled in the early twentieth century from local traditions and correspondence with his descendants, Who Fears to Speak of ’98?, is written by the Belfast antiquary and nationalist Francis Joseph Bigger. It contains an edited version of an early 19th-century ballad about Roddy McCorley’s fate.


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Death of Dermot Ryan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Dermot Joseph Ryan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin from 1972 until 1984, dies in Rome, Italy, on February 21, 1985.

Ryan is born on June 26, 1924, to Andrew Ryan, a medical doctor, and Therese (née McKenna), in Clondalkin, Dublin. In 1932 he goes to Belvedere College, Dublin. In 1942 he enters Holy Cross College, Drumcondra, and graduates with a first in Hebrew and Aramaic at University College Dublin in 1945. He spends a year at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth before attending the Pontifical Irish College in Rome gaining his BD in 1948 at the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. He returns to Clonliffe to complete his formation, and where he is ordained a priest on May 28, 1950. He returns to Rome to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University, gaining a Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1952. In 1954 he is awarded an MA in Semitic Languages from the National University of Ireland (NUI), followed by a licentiate in sacred scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Ryan is Professor of Oriental Languages at University College Dublin before his appointment by Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland on December 29, 1971. Maintaining his connection and interest in oriental studies, he serves as chairman of the trustees of the Chester Beatty Library from 1978 to 1984.

Ryan is ordained a bishop by Pope Paul VI in Rome, assisted by Cardinals Bernardus Johannes Alfrink and William Conway (Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland), on February 13, 1972. At the time of his appointment, he is seen as a liberal and a reformer in the Church.

During his term, Ryan consolidates much of the expansion of the archdiocese which had taken place during the term of his predecessor. He also oversees the fuller implementation of the reforms of Vatican II. He is particularly interested in liturgical reform.

Seen as a Liberal, following the episcopacy of John Charles McQuaid, in November 1972, Ryan becomes the first Roman Catholic archbishop to attend a Church of Ireland service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and holds an interdenominational service in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. He also supports “Ballymascanlon talks,” an inter-church initiative to try to bring communities together and bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Ryan also takes a traditional stand on social issues, including poverty, family life and opposition to abortion. He strongly promotes the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1983, granting the equal right to life to mother and unborn.

As Archbishop, Ryan gives the people of Dublin a public park on a site earmarked by his predecessors for a proposed cathedral. It is named “Archbishop Ryan Park” in his honour. The land, at Merrion Square, is a gift from the archbishop to the city of Dublin.

Ryan also serves as Pro-Prefect of Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples from April 8, 1984, until his death in Rome on February 21, 1985, following a heart attack at the age of sixty.

Ryan is named in the Murphy Report, released in 2009, on sexual abuse of children in Dublin. His actions in respect of complaints against priest Fr. McNamee are described in the report as “an example of how, throughout the 1970s, the church authorities were more concerned with the scandal that would be created by revealing Fr. McNamee’s abuse rather than any concern for the abused.” He also does not act on complaints against other priests who are also subsequently confirmed to be abusers.

In January 2010, after Ryan has been criticised in the Murphy Report the previous year, Dublin City Council seeks public views on renaming “Archbishop Ryan Park.” Later that same year it is renamed “Merrion Square Park” by the City Council.


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The Shankill Butchers Sentenced to Life Imprisonment

The Shankill Butchers, a gang of eleven Ulster loyalists, are sentenced to life imprisonment on February 20, 1979, for 112 offences including nineteen murders. Many of the gang are members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) that is active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The gang is based in the Shankill area and is responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom are killed in sectarian attacks. The gang is notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering random or suspected Catholic civilians. Each is beaten ferociously and has their throat hacked with a butcher’s knife. Some are also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also kills six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes, and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics.

Most of the Butchers are eventually captured and eleven of them come to trial during 1978 and early 1979. On February 20, 1979, the eleven men are convicted of a total of nineteen murders, and the 42 life sentences handed out are the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.

William Moore pleads guilty to eleven counts of murder and Bobby “Basher” Bates pleads guilty to ten counts. The trial judge, Lord Justice Turlough O’Donnell, says that he does not wish to be cast as “public avenger” but feels obliged to sentence the two to life imprisonment with no chance of release. Gang leader Lenny Murphy and his two chief “lieutenants,” however, escape prosecution.

In summing-up, Lord Justice O’Donnell states that their crimes, “a catalogue of horror”, are “a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry.” After the trial, Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Murder Squad in Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base and the man charged with tracking down the Butchers, comments, “The big fish got away,” a reference to Murphy (referred to in court as “Mr. X” or the “Master Butcher”) and to Messrs “A” and “B.”

Lenny Murphy is assassinated by a Provisional Irish Republican Army hit squad early in the evening of November 16, 1982, outside the back of his girlfriend’s house in the Glencairn estate. The IRA is likely acting with loyalist paramilitaries who perceive him as a threat.

The first of the Butchers to be released from prison is John Townsley, who had been only fourteen when he became involved with the gang and sixteen when arrested. Bobby Bates is released in October 1996, two years after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994. He reportedly “found religion” behind bars. He is shot and killed in the upper Shankill area on June 11, 1997, by the son of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) man he had killed in the Windsor Bar. “Mr. B”, John Murphy, dies in a car accident in Belfast in August 1998. William Moore is the final member of the gang to be released from prison in August 1998, in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement, after over twenty-one years behind bars. He dies on May 17, 2009, from a suspected heart attack at his home.

The investigations by Martin Dillon, author of The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder (1989 and 1998), suggests that a number of other individuals (whom he is unable to name for legal reasons) escape prosecution for participation in the crimes of the Butchers and that the gang are responsible for a total of at least thirty murders.

The Butchers brought a new level of paramilitary violence to a country already hardened by death and destruction.


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The Clonoe Ambush

The Clonoe Ambush, a military action between the British Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), occurs on February 16, 1992, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. An IRA unit attacks the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) security base in the village of Coalisland in County Tyrone and is ambushed shortly afterwards by the Special Air Service (SAS) in the grounds of a church in the village of Clonoe while attempting to make its escape, resulting in several IRA fatalities.

From 1985 onwards, the IRA in East Tyrone had been at the forefront of a campaign against British state police and army facilities and their personnel. In 1987, an East Tyrone IRA unit was ambushed with eight of its members being killed by the SAS while they were making an attack on a police station in Loughgall, County Armagh. This was the IRA’s greatest loss of life in a single incident during The Troubles. Despite these losses, the IRA’s campaign continued, with it attacking nearly 100 police and military facilities over the next five years, wrecking thirty-three and damaging the remainder to varying degrees. The SAS ambush has no noticeable long-term effect on the level of IRA activity in East Tyrone. In the two years before the Loughgall ambush, the IRA killed seven people in East Tyrone and North Armagh, and eleven in the two years following the ambush.

Three other IRA members – Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin – had been ambushed and killed by the SAS as they tried to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier near Carrickmore, County Tyrone. British intelligence identified them as the perpetrators of the Ballygawley bus bombing, which killed eight British soldiers. After that bombing, all troops going on leave or returning from leave were ferried in and out of East Tyrone by helicopter. Another high-profile attack of the East Tyrone Brigade was carried out on January 11, 1990, near Augher, where a Gazelle helicopter was shot down.

On June 3, 1991, three IRA men, Lawrence McNally, Michael “Pete” Ryan and Tony Doris, were killed at the town of Coagh, when a stolen car they were driving in on their way to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier was ambushed by the Special Air Service. Ryan was the same man who, according to Irish journalist and author Ed Moloney, had led an attack on Derryard checkpoint on the orders of IRA Army Council member Thomas “Slab” Murphy two years earlier.

The IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade lost 53 members killed by the British Forces during the Troubles – the highest of any “Brigade areas.” Of these, 28 were killed between 1987 and 1992.

At 10.30 p.m. on the night of February 16, 1992, a stolen car and lorry carrying multiple IRA attackers drives into the centre of the village of Coalisland and, pulling up at its fortified Royal Ulster Constabulary security base, fires 30 rounds of armour-piercing tracer ammunition into it at close range from a Soviet Union made DShK heavy machine-gun that they had mounted on the back of the lorry. The heavy machine gun is fired by IRA member Kevin O’Donnell, the rest of the unit being armed with Soviet-made AKM assault rifles. The IRA attackers then drive off at speed up Annagher hill, without any apparent pursuit from the security forces. While making their escape they drive past the home of Tony Doris, an IRA man who had been killed by the British Army the previous year, where they stop to fire into the air, shouting, “Up the ‘RA, that’s for Tony Doris!” Witnesses also report the IRA men waving Irish Tricolours from the back of the lorry. After this they drive on at speed to the car park of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in the village of Clonoe, two miles away from Coalisland police station, arriving at 10.45 p.m., where getaway cars are waiting.

Immediately on arrival, the IRA attackers are in the process of preparing to abandon the attack vehicles and dismounting the DShK to take with them when they are assailed by a British Army detachment that had been lying in wait for them in the car park’s perimeter, primarily composed of soldiers from the Special Air Service, who engage them with sustained automatic fire. Patrick Vincent, age 20, the driver of the stolen lorry, is shot dead with five bullets while still in its cab. Peter Clancy, age 19, and Kevin O’Donnell, age 21) are killed while dismounting the DShK on the back of the lorry. Sean O’Farrell, age 23, is pursued on foot across the church grounds over a distance of 100 yards before being shot dead with five bullets while trying to climb over a fence. Two other IRA men, one of them being Aidan McKeever, who are found sitting in a car in the car park with the intention of acting as getaway drivers, surrender after being wounded and are taken prisoner. The roof of the church is accidentally set on fire after a stray round hit a fuel storage tank. One British soldier is wounded during the confrontation. An IRA statement reports that another active service unit made up of at least four volunteers taking part in the operation at Coalisland “escaped unharmed” under heavy fire in other vehicles after splitting up into two teams.

Several witnesses to the ambush later claim that some of the IRA men tried to surrender to the British Army engaging unit during the ambush but were summarily executed. Justice Seamus Treacy of Northern Ireland’s High Court awards McKeever, the IRA getaway driver, £75,000 in damages in 2011. It is unclear whether or not this decision is appealed, or whether the damages are ever paid.

A local IRA source points out areas of incompetence in the attack by the IRA unit involved that leads to its destruction:

  • The use of a long-range weapon for a short-range shooting. The DShK can be used up to 2,000 metres from the target, and its armour-piercing capabilities at 1,500 metres are still considerable.
  • The use of tracer rounds is ill-judged as they easily reveal the firing location of the gun if it is not being fired from a well-hidden position.
  • The escape route is chosen at random, with the machine-gun in full sight and the support vehicle flashing its hazard lights.
  • The gathering of so many men at the same place after such an attack is another factor in the failure to escape for most of the attacking force.

During the funeral services for O’Donnell and O’Farrell in Coalisland, the parish priest criticises the security forces for what happened at Clonoe church, which had resulted in the deaths of the four IRA men. The priest, Fr. MacLarnon, then appeals to the IRA and Sinn Féin to replace “the politics of confrontation with the politics of cooperation.” While Francie Molloy, a local Sinn Féin councillor, walks out of the church in protest, leading Sinn Féin politicians Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness remain in their seats. There are hundreds of Royal Ulster Constabulary police officers outside the church during the funeral, the RUC having changed its policy after the Milltown Cemetery attack. This show of force is criticised by Sinn Féin.

This is the last occasion that IRA members are killed in a series of ambushes by the British Army, spearheaded by the Special Air Service, in Northern Ireland. Growing tension between locals and the British military foot-patrols lead to street confrontations with soldiers from the Parachute Regiment three months later.

(Pictured: The ambush scene at Clonoe, County Tyrone, where four IRA men were shot dead by the British army in February 1992)


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Mary Lou McDonald Ratified as Leader of Sinn Féin

Mary Lou McDonald is ratified as the new president of Sinn Féin at a special party Ardfheis on February 10, 2018. Approximately 2,000 party delegates gather for the meeting in Dublin. After almost 35 years, Gerry Adams officially steps down as party leader, a role he has held since November 1983.

McDonald takes the helm with a sweeping speech that touches on everything from abortion to Brexit and promises a united Ireland “in our time.”

McDonald, 48, is the first woman to lead the party, and the first Sinn Féin leader with no direct connection to Ireland’s period of violence known as the Troubles. “We must only agree that the past is never again repeated,” she says. “On other things, we can agree to disagree. The poet Maya Angelou put it well: ‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’”

McDonald takes over for Adams, a divisive politician who was the face of the Irish republican movement as it shifted from violence to peace. The end of Adams’ tenure marks a new era for the party, which wants to unite the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south.

Adams, who announced in November 2017 he was stepping down after almost 35 years, was the key figure in the peace process that saw the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the formation of a power sharing government between Northern Ireland’s pro-British and republican factions. But many believe Sinn Féin’s popularity among voters has been hindered by the presence of leaders linked to the Troubles, which killed over 3,600 people.

McDonald immediately puts her own stamp on the future, trying to infuse new energy into the movement that has lawmakers on both sides of the Irish border. But she also focuses on Sinn Féin’s founding principle: a united Ireland. “We are the generation of republicans who will see the rising of the moon,” she says. “Sinn Féin in government, both North and South. Irish unity in our time.”

McDonald also lays out her positions on the key issues of the day.

On the United Kingdom’s upcoming departure from the European Union, or Brexit, she says Sinn Féin will not accept any deal that reinstates border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Brexit represents a threat to the prosperity of Ireland as a whole.

“Ireland will not be the collateral damage in the political games and antics of Tories in London,” she says, referring to the Conservative Party of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

McDonald also says the party will campaign for women’s right to an abortion in Ireland’s upcoming referendum on the issue and says she is committed to reaching an agreement that will restore Northern Ireland’s power sharing government on the basis of “respect and integrity for all.”

Northern Ireland’s last government collapsed more than a year earlier amid a corruption scandal.

(From: “Mary Lou McDonald takes over as Sinn Féin party leader” by Danica Kirka, AP News, apnews.com, February 10, 2018)


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Birth of Garret FitzGerald, Eighth Taoiseach of Ireland

Garret Desmond FitzGerald, Fine Gael politician, economist and barrister who serves twice as Taoiseach (1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1987), is born into a very politically active family in Ballsbridge, Dublin on February 9, 1926, during the infancy of the Irish Free State. He serves as Senator for the Industrial and Commercial Panel from 1965 to 1969, a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1969 to 1992, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1973 to 1977, Leader of Fine Gael from 1977 to 1987 and twice Leader of the Opposition between 1977 and 1982.

FitzGerald’s father, Desmond FitzGerald, is the Free State’s first Minister for External Affairs. He is educated at the Jesuit Belvedere College, University College Dublin and King’s Inns, Dublin, and qualifies as a barrister. Instead of practicing law, however, in 1959 he becomes an economics lecturer in the department of political economy at University College, Dublin, and a journalist.

FitzGerald joins Fine Gael, attaching himself to the liberal wing of the party. and in 1969 is elected to Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. He later gives up his university lectureship to become Minister for Foreign Affairs in the coalition government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–1977). When the coalition government is resoundingly defeated in the 1977 Irish general election, Cosgrave yields leadership of Fine Gael to FitzGerald. In his new role as Leader of the Opposition and party leader, he proceeds to modernize and strengthen the party at the grass roots. He briefly loses power in 1982 when political instability triggers two snap elections.

By the time of the 1981 Irish general election, Fine Gael has a party machine that can easily match Fianna Fáil. The party wins 65 seats and forms a minority coalition government with the Labour Party and the support of a number of Independent TDs. FitzGerald is elected Taoiseach on June 30, 1981. To the surprise of many FitzGerald excludes Richie Ryan, Richard Burke and Tom O’Donnell, former Fine Gael stalwarts, from the cabinet.

In his prime ministry, FitzGerald pushes for liberalization of Irish laws on divorce, abortion, and contraception and also strives to build bridges to the Protestants in Northern Ireland. In 1985, during his second term, he and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sign the Anglo-Irish (Hillsborough) Agreement, giving Ireland a consultative role in the governing of Northern Ireland. After his party loses in the 1987 Irish general election, he resigns as its leader and subsequently retires in 1992.

On May 5, 2011, it is reported that FitzGerald is seriously ill in a Dublin hospital. Newly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny sends his regards and calls him an “institution.” On May 6 he is put on a ventilator. On May 19, after suffering from pneumonia, he dies at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin at the age of 85.

In a statement, Irish President Mary McAleese hails FitzGerald as “a man steeped in the history of the State who constantly strove to make Ireland a better place for all its people.” Taoiseach Enda Kenny pays homage to “a truly remarkable man who made a truly remarkable contribution to Ireland.” Henry Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, who serves as an opposite number to FitzGerald in the 1970s, recalls “an intelligent and amusing man who was dedicated to his country.”

FitzGerald’s death occurs on the third day of Queen Elizabeth II‘s state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an event designed to mark the completion of the Northern Ireland peace process that had been “built on the foundations” of FitzGerald’s Anglo-Irish Agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1985. In a personal message, the Queen offers her sympathies and says she is “saddened” to learn of FitzGerald’s death.

On his visit to Dublin, United States President Barack Obama offers condolences on FitzGerald’s death. He speaks of him as “someone who believed in the power of education; someone who believed in the potential of youth; most of all, someone who believed in the potential of peace and who lived to see that peace realised.”

FitzGerald is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery in Shankill, Dublin.

FitzGerald is the author of a number of books, including Planning in Ireland (1968), Towards a New Ireland (1972), Unequal Partners (1979), All in a Life: An Autobiography (1991), and Reflections on the Irish State (2003).


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IRA Kidnaps & Holds Hostage 42 Prominent Loyalist Activists

On February 7, 1922, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland kidnaps and holds hostage forty-two prominent loyalist activists in Fermanagh and Tyrone in response to the January 14 arrest of the Monaghan county football team, who were traveling to play Derry in the final of the Ulster Championship game.

A party of eighteen armed B-Specials, a part-time auxiliary police force which is almost 100% Protestant, when traveling by train to Enniskillen, are stopped at Clones railway station in County Monaghan by an IRA group. The B-Specials react immediately by shooting Commander Fitzpatrick. His colleagues retaliate by fatally shooting four Specials and arresting the survivors. Trouble in the North is at a boiling point and in the three days after the Clones incident thirty people are murdered in Belfast.

Intense negotiations between Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill and Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State Michael Collins helps to secure the release of the Monaghan footballers and the Fermanagh and Tyrone loyalists, but for some time the British suspend the evacuation of troops from Ireland. Following the incident, Churchill, who is leading the UK effort on the transfer of power following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, writes to his wife Clementine in what might be termed an understatement, “Ireland is sure to bring us every form of difficulty and embarrassment.”

Collins and James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, have further discussions in Dublin in early February 1922 but the meeting breaks down over the question of the boundary revision. Craig informs reporters that he has the assurance of the British Government that the Boundary Commission will make only slight changes. He complains that the maps which Collins had produced led him to the assumption that Collins had already been promised almost half of Northern Ireland. Craig agrees to minor changes but if North and South fail to agree, there will be no change at all. Collins issues a statement which refuses to admit any ambiguity and says that majorities must rule.

The British and the Provisional Government finally agreed that an Irish Free State Agreement Bill will legalise the Treaty and the transfer of power to the Provisional Government and will authorise the election of a Provisional Parliament to enact the Free State Constitution. Final ratification of the Treaty is deferred until the British confirm the Free State Constitution. Only then will Northern Ireland be allowed to exclude itself formally from the Free State.

(From: “OTD in 1922 – The IRA Kidnaps More Than Forty Loyalists Activists and ‘B’ Specials,” Stair na hÉireann | History of Ireland, https://stairnaheireann.net | Picture: Colour image of the IRA patrolling Grafton Street, Dublin, during the Irish Civil War in 1922, 1916 Easter Revolution in Colour)


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The Mahon’s Hotel Bombing

A Continuity Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes at Mahon’s Hotel in Irvinestown, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, on February 6, 2000, less than 24 hours before the Ulster Unionist Party’s Ken McGuinness is due to visit. The Continuity IRA is the only republican organisation which has not called a ceasefire.

The bombing follows repeated warnings from senior police officers on both sides of the Northern Ireland border that republican dissidents continue to pose a threat. Both the Continuity IRA and Real IRA have been recruiting and rearming in preparation for a campaign to wreck the Northern Ireland peace process.

The splinter republican organisation is behind a bomb attack on the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen in July 1996. The attack follows a week-long marching stand-off at Drumcree.

In September 1997, it places at bomb in Markethill, in County Armagh, just 24 hours after Sinn Féin joins the political negotiations which lead to the Good Friday Agreement.

In January 1998, a Continuity IRA bomb wrecks a club in County Fermanagh. The explosion coincides with a series of loyalist attacks, which follow the murder of the Portadown Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader Billy Wright.

The latest explosion in Irvinestown comes in a week when the new political institutions are facing suspension because of the stalemate over paramilitary arms decommissioning. This attack by the Continuity IRA looks deliberately timed to add to the peace process’s troubles.

BBC Northern Ireland political editor Stephen Grimason says the bomb will not help the current situation. “We are hearing an argument reinforced from unionists that if these things are left lying around then people will use them,” he says. “So the anti-agreement unionists will be using this as a weapon. But I would have thought it will harden the attitudes of the Ulster Unionist Council and the Ulster Unionist executive, meeting tonight on the issue of weapons,” he adds.

Grimason adds that unionists in general will want to hear about the forensics of the bomb and if there was a Semtex booster charge used. “They will use that as another means of saying that this is all the IRA,” he says. But he adds that there will be those who will see this as a move against Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams because it removes the room for manoeuvre that he has.

BBC Northern Ireland chief security correspondent Brian Rowan says the bomb contained one to two kilos of high explosive, but that the security forces had not yet revealed what type it is. He says the bomb had the appearance of the Continuity IRA which in “times of trouble made more trouble.” He adds, “They would see this as a reminder that they are still out there and as a reminder to other republicans that there is an alternative to the mainstream IRA, and to the peace process strategy. It is about damaging a process that this organisation very much opposes, a process in which they believe republicans principles have been sold out.”

Rowan says security sources believe in some areas the Real IRA, Continuity IRA and the more mainstream Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) co-operate in attacks. INLA prisoners have been released under the Good Friday Agreement early prisoner release scheme, following the INLA’s ceasefire declaration.

“In the Fermanagh area security forces believe the Continuity IRA is operating alone and there is a pattern of activity over a period of years. There is nothing to suggest it was any other group.” He says there is nothing coming from republicans or security sources at this time to suggest that the IRA has any intention of actual decommissioning in the “immediate period ahead.”

(From: “Bombing follows dissident pattern,” BBC News, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk, February 7, 2000 | Photo: RUC forensic experts examine the scene of the bomb attack at Mahons Hotel in Irvinestown, Northern Ireland, Associated Press)


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Death of Irish Writer Amanda McKittrick Ros

Anna Margaret Ross (née McKittrick), Irish writer known by her pen name Amanda McKittrick Ros, dies on February 2, 1939, at Larne, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She publishes her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh, at her own expense in 1897. She writes poetry and a number of novels. Her works are not read widely, and her eccentric, over-written, “purple” circumlocutory writing is alleged by some critics to be some of the worst prose and poetry ever written.

Ros is born in Drumaness, County Down, on December 8, 1860, the fourth child of Eliza Black and Edward Amlave McKittrick, Principal of Drumaness High School. She is christened Anna Margaret at Third Ballynahinch Presbyterian Church on January 27, 1861. In the 1880s she attends Marlborough Teacher Training College in Dublin, is appointed Monitor at Millbrook National School, Larne, County Antrim, finishes her training at Marlborough and then becomes a qualified teacher at the same school.

During Ros’s first visit to Larne, she meets Andrew Ross, a widower of 35, who is station master there. She marries him at Joymount Presbyterian Church, Carrickfergus, County Antrim, on August 30, 1887.

Ros writes under the pen name Amanda McKittrick Ros, possibly in an attempt to suggest a connection to the noble de Ros family of County Down. She is strongly influenced by the novelist Marie Corelli. She writes, “My chief object of writing is and always has been, to write, if possible, in a strain all my own. This I find is why my writings are so much sought after.” She imagines “the million and one who thirst for aught that drops from my pen,” and predicts that she will “be talked about at the end of a thousand years.”

Ros’s “admirers” include Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, C. S. Lewis and Mark Twain. The publication of her novel Irene Iddesleigh is financed by her husband in 1897 as a gift to her on their tenth wedding anniversary. Twain considers the novel “one of the greatest unintentionally humorous novels of all time.” A reader sends a copy of the novel to humorist Barry Pain, who in an 1898 review calls it “a thing that happens once in a million years,” and sarcastically terms it “the book of the century.” He reports that he is initially entertained, but soon “shrank before it in tears and terror.” Ros retorts in her preface to Delina Delaney by branding Pain a “clay crab of corruption,” suggesting that he is so hostile only because he is secretly in love with her. But Ros claims to make enough money from her second novel, Delina Delaney, to build a house, which she names Iddesleigh.

In Ros’s last novel, Helen Huddleson, all the characters are named after various fruits: Lord Raspberry, Cherry Raspberry, Sir Peter Plum, Christopher Currant, the Earl of Grape, Madame Pear. Of Pear, Ros writes, “she had a swell staff of sweet-faced helpers swathed in stratagem, whose members and garments glowed with the lust of the loose, sparkled with the tears of the tortured, shone with the sunlight of bribery, dangled with the diamonds of distrust, slashed with sapphires of scandals…”

Ros believes that her critics lack sufficient intellect to appreciate her talent and is convinced that they conspire against her for revealing the corruption of society’s ruling classes, thereby disturbing “the bowels of millions.”

Andrew Ross dies in 1917, and Ros marries Thomas Rodgers, a County Down farmer, in 1922.

Ros dies at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast on February 2, 1939, under the name Hannah Margaret Rodgers.

Belfast Public Libraries have a large collection of manuscripts, typescripts and first editions of Ros’s work. Manuscript copies include Irene Iddesleigh, Sir Benjamin Bunn and Six Months in Hell. Typescript versions of all the above are held together with Rector Rose, St. Scandal Bags and The Murdered Heiress among others. The collection of first editions covers all her major works including volumes of her poetry, Fumes of Formation and Poems of Puncture, together with lesser-known pieces such as Kaiser Bill and Donald Dudley: The Bastard Critic. The collection includes hundreds of letters addressed to Ros, many with her own comments in the margins. Also included are typed copies of her letters to newspapers, correspondence with her admiring publisher T. S. Mercer, an album of newspaper cuttings and photographs, and a script for a BBC broadcast from July 1943.

A few enthusiasts have kept Ros’s legend alive. A biography, O Rare Amanda!, is published in 1954. A collection of her most memorable passages is published in 1988 under the title Thine in Storm and Calm. In 2007 her life and works are fêted at a Belfast literary festival.

Denis Johnston, the Irish playwright, writes a radio play entitled Amanda McKittrick Ros which is broadcast on BBC Home Service radio on July 27, 1943, and subsequently. The play is published in The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston vol. 3. He acquires a collection of papers from Ros including the unfinished typescript of Helen Huddleson. These can now be seen as part of the Denis Johnston collection in the library of the Ulster University at Coleraine, Northern Ireland.


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March Commemorating the 26th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

On February 1, 1998, up to 40,000 people march from the nationalist Creggan estate to the Bogside area of Derry to commemorate the 26th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and to remember the 14 people who died after paratroopers opened fire during disturbances 26 years earlier. Organisers say it is one of the biggest Bloody Sunday marches to date.

Jean Heggarty, whose brother Kevin was among those killed on January 31, 1972, pays tribute to the families’ quest for truth. “The families have never doubted the truth would survive. Due to their determination 26 years later, Tony Blair stated in the House of Commons that he would establish the truth,” she says.

John Kelly, whose brother Michael was killed, says, “The families have had a long struggle but what Tony Blair has said has really surprised us. I think we are in a more jovial mood after that announcement.”

The Sinn Féin chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, calls for prosecutions to result from the new Bloody Sunday inquiry. He says those commanding the paratroopers on the day should be called to account for their actions.

McGuinness includes in his remarks General Sir Robert Ford, who was Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland at the time of the killings. “I think the role of General Ford in particular is going to come under the microscope,” he says. “If people such as General Ford are found to be complicit in the killings then I think they should be subjected to proceedings in the courts. The implications of all that are enormous for the British establishment.”

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, General Ford told the BBC that his men had returned only three shots after having between 10 and 20 rounds fired at them.

(From: “Special Report: Remembering Bloody Sunday,” BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk, February 1, 1998 | Pictured: In driving rain, relatives lay wreaths at the Bloody Sunday memorial)