seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Northern Ireland


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Paul Muldoon Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Irish poet Paul Muldoon wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on April 8, 2003, for his work Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). Additionally, he has published more than thirty collections and won the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he has been both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He holds the post of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1999 to 2004 and has also served as president of The Poetry Society (UK) and poetry editor at The New Yorker.

Muldoon, the eldest of three children, is born on June 20, 1951, on a farm in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, outside The Moy, near the boundary with County Tyrone. His father works as a farmer (among other jobs) and his mother is a school mistress. In 2001, Muldoon says of the Moy:

“It’s a beautiful part of the world. It’s still the place that’s ‘burned into the retina,’ and although I haven’t been back there since I left for university 30 years ago, it’s the place I consider to be my home. We were a fairly non-political household; my parents were nationalists, of course, but it was not something, as I recall, that was a major area of discussion. But there were patrols; an army presence; movements of troops; and a sectarian divide. And that particular area was a nationalist enclave, while next door was the parish where the Orange Order was founded; we’d hear the drums on summer evenings. But I think my mother, in particular, may have tried to shelter us from it all. Besides, we didn’t really socialise a great deal. We were ‘blow-ins’ – arrivistes – new to the area, and didn’t have a lot of connections.”

Talking of his home life, Muldoon continues, “I’m astonished to think that, apart from some Catholic Truth Society pamphlets, some books on saints, there were, essentially, no books in the house, except one set, the Junior World Encyclopedia, which I certainly read again and again. People would say, I suppose that it might account for my interest in a wide range of arcane bits of information. At some level, I was self-educated.” He is a “Troubles poet” from the beginning.

In 1969, Muldoon reads English at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), where he meets Seamus Heaney and becomes close to the Belfast Group of poets which include Michael Longley, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian and Frank Ormsby. He says of the experience, “I think it was fairly significant, certainly to me. It was exciting. But then I was 19, 20 years old, and at university, so everything was exciting, really.” He is not a strong student at QUB. He recalls, “I had stopped. Really, I should have dropped out. I’d basically lost interest halfway through. Not because there weren’t great people teaching me, but I’d stopped going to lectures, and rather than doing the decent thing, I just hung around.” During his time at QUB, his first collection New Weather (1973) is published by Faber & Faber. He meets his first wife, fellow student Anne-Marie Conway, and they are married after their graduation in 1973. The marriage breaks up in 1977.

For thirteen years (1973–86), Muldoon works as an arts producer for the BBC in Belfast. In this time, which sees the most bitter period of the Troubles, he published the collections Why Brownlee Left (1980) and Quoof (1983). After leaving the BBC, he teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and at Gonville and Caius College and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where his students include Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland). In 1987, he emigrates to the United States, where he teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. He is Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for the five-year term 1999–2004, and is an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

Muldoon has been awarded fellowships in the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 The Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, and the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry. He is also shortlisted for the 2007 Poetry Now Award. His poems have been collected into four books: Selected Poems 1968–1986 (1986), New Selected Poems: 1968–1994 (1996), Poems 1968–1998 (2001) and Selected Poems 1968–2014 (2016). In September 2007, he is hired as poetry editor of The New Yorker.

Muldoon is married to novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, whom he meets at an Arvon Foundation writing course. He has two children, Dorothy and Asher, and lives primarily in New York City.

(Pictured: Paul Muldoon in Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico, 2018. Photograph by Alejandro Arras.)


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Birth of John Kelly, Northern Irish Politician & IRA Volunteer

John Kelly, Northern Irish republican politician, is born in the New Lodge area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 5, 1936. He joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1950s and is a founder member and a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the early 1970s.

Kelly is one of five sons and four daughters born to William Kelly, retail and wholesale fruitier, and his wife Margaret (née Maginness). Living off Carlisle Circus in a flashpoint area of north Belfast and close to Crumlin Road Gaol, the Kellys are a strongly republican family, regularly supplying republican inmates with fruit and assisting them on their release.

Later in life Kelly moves to Maghera, County Londonderry, where he lives until his death in 2007. He and his wife have a daughter. He is a dedicated member of local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club Watty Graham’s GAC, Glen and a keen supporter of Gaelic games and the Irish language.

Kelly joins the IRA in the early 1950s when he is eighteen and takes part in the Border Campaign of 1956–62 but is arrested in December 1956 and imprisoned until 1963. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in 1967–69 which leads on to sectarian riots in Belfast. A leader of the newly formed Provisional IRA in 1969, he is involved in the formation of “citizens’ defence groups” to protect nationalist areas of Belfast from loyalist rioters who are largely unhampered by the police.

Kelly is jailed on three occasions for IRA related activity spending a total of fifteen years in prison in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His first term is for his activity in the 1956 IRA border campaign. He also serves a six-month term in 1973 in the Republic of Ireland for being a member of the IRA.

Commenting later on the Troubles, Kelly says, “Yes, it was a terrible period. But you can’t turn the clock back. The Irish government did not create the Provisional IRA. What happened was as inevitable as the changing seasons.”

The citizens’ defence groups seek help from the government in Dublin in 1969, then led by Jack Lynch. Several ministers respond and arrange a fund of £100,000 but the planned arms shipment fails. Kelly later says, “These discussions were all about guns. The whole thing was government-sponsored, government-backed and government-related.” The planning includes travel to Britain, Europe, and on to the United States where he meets the founders of NORAID. He is one of the co-defendants in the subsequent Dublin “Arms Trial” with ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, accused of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic of Ireland. The trial eventually collapses from a lack of evidence, as the relevant government files are kept secret, but the Irish government sacks several ministers as a result.

Kelly goes into electoral politics, serving on Magherafelt District Council from 1997. At the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election he is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin member for Mid Ulster. He is deselected before the 2003 election, and criticises the decision by the Sinn Féin leadership to support policing reforms. In January 2006 he co-writes a letter with Brendan Hughes which casts doubt on the claims that dissident republicans have threatened Sinn Féin leaders and claims that the real threats are being made by the Sinn Féin leadership against those who seek a debate on policing. He leaves Sinn Féin which he considers too controlled from the centre, opposing the leadership “deceit and the philosophy of creative ambiguity,” and he retires from politics.

Kelly dies in Maghera following a long battle with cancer on September 5, 2007. Many tributes are paid to him including a minute’s silence before the Derry Senior Football Championship quarter final between St. Patrick’s GAC, Loup, and Dungiven GAC on September 8, 2007, at the home of his local club, Watty Graham GAC, Glen. A Na Piarsaigh Belfast GAC jersey is draped over his coffin before he is interred at Maghera Catholic Graveyard.


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Birth of Linda Martin, Singer & Television Presenter

Linda Martin, Northern Irish singer and television presenter, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on March 27, 1952. She is best known as the winner of the 1992 Eurovision Song Contest during which she represents Ireland with the song “Why Me?,” the first of a record three consecutive wins by Ireland. She is also known within Ireland as a member of the band Chips.

Martin is of Irish, Scottish and Italian ancestry. Her father’s family’s surname is originally Martini. Her paternal great-grandfather, Francis Martini, is born in Dublin to immigrants from Saronno, north of Milan, Italy. Two of her maternal great-grandparents, William Green and Elizabeth Nangle, have a coal-mining background and transferred to Belfast from Larkhall, Scotland.

Martin begins her musical career when she joins the band Chips in Omagh in 1969. They quickly become one of the top bands in Ireland on the live circuit, and release hit singles “Love Matters,” “Twice a Week” and “Goodbye Goodbye” during the mid-to-late 1970s. In 1972, she leaves Chips to be a vocalist with the new group Lyttle People but rejoins her former bandmates the following year.

The group appears on Opportunity Knocks in 1974 and appears a number of times on British television promoting their singles, but never scores a UK hit. With multiple entries to the Irish National finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, the band carries on into the 1980s. They score a final Irish hit in 1982 with “David’s Song (Who’ll Come With Me),” after which Martin leaves when she wins the Castlebar Song Contest with “Edge of the Universe” in 1983. From this point, she concentrates on a solo career as well as occasional live appearances with Chips until they recruit a new lead singer, Valerie Roe, in the late 1980s.

Martin participates in the National Song Contest four times as a member of Chips; however, they do not score successfully. She participates another four times in the contest as a soloist and once more as part of the group “Linda Martin and Friends.” With nine participations, she has been the most frequent entrant in the National Song Contest’s history. She wins the contest twice, going on to represent Ireland twice at the Eurovision Song Contest.

The first of these victories is in 1984 with the song “Terminal 3,” written by Johnny Logan. The song comes in second in the final, being beaten by eight points. “Terminal 3” reaches No. 7 in the Irish charts. The second victory is in 1992 when her song “Why Me?,” also written by Logan, goes on to win the final in Sweden. This becomes Ireland’s fourth victory in the Eurovision Song Contest, and the song reaches No. 1 in the Irish chart as well as becoming a hit in many European countries.

Martin is, at the time, one of only three artists to finish both first and second at Eurovision, behind Lys Assia and Gigliola Cinquetti. Since then, only Elisabeth Andreassen and Dima Bilan have achieved this, raising the number to five.

Martin is one of the hosts on the RTÉ quiz show The Lyrics Board and also serves as one of Louis Walsh‘s behind-the-scenes team on the first series of ITV‘s The X Factor. She also serves as a judge on the first, second and fourth seasons of RTÉ’s You’re a Star and on Charity You’re a Star in 2005 and 2006. While she is dismissed from later seasons, speaking on Saturday Night with Miriam on RTÉ television on July 28, 2007, she says that she is “open” to being invited back to the show. She does not rule out a return to Eurovision following Ireland’s dismal performance in the 2007 contest, finishing last with only five points.

Martin is a guest performer at Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest concert in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2005. She is also the Irish spokesperson for Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and is one of the five judges for Eurosong 2009. In 2012, she is the mentor for Jedward in the Irish Eurovision final Eurosong 2012.

During the interval of Eurovision 2013, the host Petra Mede presents a light-hearted history of the contest, during which she explains to viewers that Johnny Logan had won the competition three times, in 1980, 1987 and 1992. Appearing alongside Linda Martin in some vintage footage she jokes that he had won the third time disguised as a woman, saying, “I recognise a drag queen when I see one.” The joke proves controversial, particularly in the Irish media. However, on June 1, 2013, during an appearance on RTÉ’s The Saturday Night Show Martin says that she has actually benefited from all the publicity. On the same show she performs a cover of the song “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk.

Martin also appears in pantomime, in Dublin. She stars in Cinderella as the Wicked Stepmother, Snow White as the Evil Queen and Robin Hood as herself, at the Olympia Theatre. She tours Menopause The Musical with Irish entertainer Twink. While on tour, Twink describes Martin as a “cunt” during a tirade in May 2010. The two had been friends for 30 years but both say afterwards that they have no plans to speak to each other again.


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Death of Irish Writer Michael McLaverty

Michael McLaverty, Irish writer of novels and short stories, dies on March 22, 1992, in County Down, Northern Ireland.

McLaverty is born on July 5, 1904, at Magheross, near Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, the son of Michael McLaverty, a waiter, and Kathleen McLaverty (née Brady). His father works in a hotel in the town until they move to Rathlin Island, and later to Belfast, when he is five years old. He attends St. Malachy’s College in the city, where an inspiring teacher instills in him a love of William Shakespeare‘s writings. He entered Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in October 1924 and studies physics. He obtains a B.Sc. in 1928 and immediately takes his H.Dip.Ed., completing his teaching practice in St. Mary’s University College, Strawberry Hill, London. The following year he begins teaching at St. John’s Primary School in Colinward Street, west Belfast. He is admitted to the degree of M.Sc. at QUB in 1933.

In 1933, McLaverty marries Mary Conroy (formerly Giles), a young widow and fellow teacher at St. John’s. They have two sons and two daughters.

During his time at St. John’s, McLaverty writes his first five novels and fifteen short stories. In the 1930s he has developed a distinctive style in precise, unsentimental, but compassionate short stories. By the late 1930s, however, he switches his energies from short stories to the novel. Call My Brother Back (1939) contrasts the traditional world of Rathlin Island with the northern troubles in a family context. Another novel, Lost Fields (1941), and his collection of short stories, The White Mare (1943), explore the Belfast of his childhood and deal with the underlying tensions in Irish rural life. In the period 1949–55 he publishes five other novels: Three Brothers (1948), Truth in the Night (1951), School for Love (1954), The Choice (1958), and Brightening Day (1965). These novels deal with ordinary people and the dilemmas they encounter in their families and communities. His writings are influenced by Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Katherine Mansfield, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the Irish short story writers Liam O’Flaherty and Daniel Corkery.

As headmaster of St. Thomas’s intermediate school, a large school for boys in Ballymurphy, off the Falls Road, McLaverty gives his first job to the young Seamus Heaney, in whom he cultivates an interest in the writings of Chekhov and Tolstoy and the Irish writers Mary Lavin and Patrick Kavanagh. He deems Heaney to be the only genius he has ever met, and his work and success are a great source of pride and joy to him. His encouragement of the young John McGahern is of as much benefit to McLaverty himself, as their short but intense correspondence give him the energy to resume his writings.

Between his resignation from St. Thomas’s in 1963 and the early 1970s he teaches part-time at St. Joseph’s training college and St. Dominic’s High School, one of Belfast’s best-known grammar schools. In 1981 his old alma mater recognises his contribution to literature by awarding him an honorary master’s degree. In the same year he wins the American Irish literary fellowship, a prestigious literary award of $10,000, in recognition of his “impressive body of work as a short story writer and novelist.”

McLaverty dies on March 22, 1992, in County Down, Northern Ireland.

(From: “McLaverty, Michael” by Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Patrick Kelly, Provisional Irish Republican Army Commander

Patrick Joseph Kelly, commander of the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army during the mid-1980s, is born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on March 19, 1957. He holds the position until his death in a Special Air Service (SAS) ambush at Loughgall, County Armagh in May 1987.

Kelly is the oldest child in a Roman Catholic family of five. He lives in Carrickfergus until he is sixteen, at which time the family returns to live in Dungannon. His uncle is the Irish Republican activist and elected official Liam Kelly.

Kelly becomes a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army at the beginning of the 1970s and becomes one of the most experienced IRA men in County Tyrone. He is arrested in February 1982 based on testimony from an informant named Patrick McGurk but is released in October 1983 due to lack of evidence, after a trial that lasts fifteen minutes.

In 1985, Kelly becomes brigade commander in East Tyrone and begins developing tactics for attacking isolated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) bases in his area. Under his leadership the East Tyrone Brigade becomes the most active IRA unit.

In 1986, Kelly attends the IRA Army Convention where the main topic of discussion is the principle of abstentionism. Gerry Adams and others argue that the abstentionist rule should be dropped and the Provisional movement should become involved in constitutional politics. Kelly votes against dropping the rule, and a rift with the majority of the IRA Army Council ensues.

Kelly is killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) on May 8, 1987, while he is participating in an attack on Loughgall police station, in which seven other IRA men, Pádraig McKearney, Declan Arthurs, Seamus Donnelly, Tony Gormley, Eugene Kelly, Jim Lynagh, and Gerard O’Callaghan, also die. His funeral in Dungannon is one of the largest in Tyrone during the Troubles.

Kelly is buried in Edendork Cemetery, two miles from his home in Dungannon.


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Death of Peter Farrell, Irish Footballer

Peter Desmond Farrell, Irish footballer who plays as a right-half for, among others, Shamrock Rovers, Everton and Tranmere Rovers, dies in Dublin on March 16, 1999. As an international, he also plays for both Ireland teams – the FAI XI and the IFA XI. His playing career follows a similar path to that of Tommy Eglington. As well as teaming up at international level, they also play together at three clubs.

Farrell is born on August 16, 1922, and raised in the Convent Road area of Dalkey, County Dublin, and is educated at Harold Boy’s National School and the Christian Brothers in Dún Laoghaire, from which he wins a scholarship. He is playing football with Cabinteely Schoolboys when spotted by a Shamrock Rovers scout and subsequently joins Rovers on his 17th birthday in August 1939. Among his early teammates is the veteran Jimmy Dunne. With a team that also includes Jimmy Kelly, Tommy Eglington, Jimmy McAlinden and Paddy Coad, he later helps Rovers reach three successive FAI Cup finals. They win the competition in 1944 and 1945 and finish as runners up in 1946.

In July 1946, together with Tommy Eglington, Farrell signs for Everton. In eleven seasons with the club, he plays 421 league games and scores 14 goals. He also plays a further 31 games in the FA Cup and scores an additional four goals. In 1951 he is appointed Everton captain and during the 1953–54 season leads them to the runners up place in the Second Division, thus gaining promotion to the First Division. During his time with the club his teammates, apart from Eglington, also include Alex Stevenson, Peter Corr, Harry Catterick, Wally Fielding, Tommy E. Jones, Brian Labone and Dave Hickson. He is never sent off during his time at Goodison Park.

Farrell leaves Everton in October 1957 and follows Tommy Eglington to Tranmere Rovers where he becomes player-manager. He plays 114 league games for Tranmere, before leaving in December 1960. After a time as manager at Sligo Rovers, he becomes manager of Holyhead Town and, helped by a number of former Everton and Tranmere players, guides them to the Welsh Football League (North) title.

In September 1967, Farrell signs a one-year contract to manage St. Patrick’s Athletic F.C. He manages the Pats in their 1967–68 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup ties against FC Girondins de Bordeaux but resigns in March 1968.

When Farrell begins his international career in 1946 there are, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based IFA and the Ireland–based FAI claim jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and select players from the entire island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including Farrell, play for both teams.

Farrell makes 28 appearances and scores three goals for the FAI XI. While still at Shamrock Rovers, he captains the FAI XI on his international debut on June 16, 1946, against Portugal. On September 21, 1949, together with Johnny Carey and Con Martin, he is a member of the FAI XI that defeats England 2–0 at Goodison Park, becoming the first non-UK team to beat England at home. After Martin puts the FAI XI ahead with a penalty in the 33rd minute, Farrell makes victory certain in the 85th minute. Tommy O’Connor slips the ball to Farrell and as the English goalkeeper Bert Williams advances, he lofts the ball into the unguarded net. He scores his second goal for the FAI XI on October 9, 1949, a in 1–1 draw with Finland, a qualifier for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. His third goal comes on May 30, 1951, as Farrell scores the opening goal in a 3–2 win against Norway.

Farrell also makes seven appearances for the IFA XI between 1946 and 1949. On November 27, 1946, he makes his debut for the IFA XI in a 0–0 draw with Scotland. Together with Johnny Carey, Con Martin, Bill Gorman, Tommy Eglington, Alex Stevenson and Davy Walsh, he is one of seven players born in the Irish Free State to play for the IFA XI on that day. The draw helps the team finish as runners-up in the 1946-47 British Home Championship. He also helps the IFA XI gain some other respectable results, including a 2–0 win against Scotland on October 4, 1947, and a 2–2 draw with England at Goodison Park on November 5, 1947.

After returning to Ireland following his retirement, Farrell settles in Dublin and follows his father into the insurance business. He dies on March 16, 1999, following a long illness. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Deansgrange, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.


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Kenneth & Keith Littlejohn Escape from Mountjoy Prison

Keith and Kenneth Littlejohn, self-proclaimed British Government spies, escape from Mountjoy Prison, a top-security prison in Dublin, on March 11, 1974, where they are serving sentences for armed robbery. It is another embarrassment for the authorities at the prison coming just five months after a helicopter plucked three leading Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers from the prison’s exercise yard.

The Littlejohn brothers are jailed on August 3, 1973, for a £67,000 robbery at an Allied Irish Banks branch on Grafton Street, Dublin, in October 1972, the biggest to date in Irish history.

During their trial the brothers claim to have been working for the British Government against the IRA. They say they had been told to stage the robbery to discredit the republican organisation and force the Irish Government to introduce tougher measures against its members. The British Government, however, denies all knowledge of the brothers.

Kenneth is sentenced to twenty years while his brother receives a fifteen-year term. During their time in prison the brothers exhaust all the appeals processes, with their final appeal being turned down in January 1974.

The brothers escape from Mountjoy during an exercise period. They scale the 25-foot-high main prison wall with homemade ropes while other prisoners distract the guards. However, the pair is spotted as they climb an outer wall.

Keith, 29, who has injured his ankle, is recaptured near the prison. Kenneth, 32, however, disappears without trace and is believed to be heading for the border with Northern Ireland. He is recaptured in December 1974. The brothers are released early in 1981 on condition they leave the Republic of Ireland.

Keith’s successful bid for freedom comes as a surprise. He has been weakened by a hunger strike he has been conducting since February in support of a demand for political prisoner status.

From the time the brothers are jailed the British Government steadfastly continues to deny all knowledge of them.

But the brothers’ tale does receive partial validation the prior year. Ireland’s former Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, admits he had been given diplomatic reports from the British authorities in January 1973 about the UK’s contact with the Littlejohn brothers.

In 1982, Nottingham Crown Court jails Kenneth Littlejohn for six years for his part in a £1,300 armed robbery at the Old Manor House, North Wingfield, Chesterfield, England. Keith Littlejohn, however, is cleared of a similar offence.

(From: “1974: ‘Anti-IRA spies’ break out of jail,” BBC, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk)


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1973 Northern Ireland Border Poll

The 1973 Northern Ireland border poll is a referendum held in Northern Ireland on March 8, 1973, on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or join with the Republic of Ireland to form a united Ireland. It is the first time that a major referendum has been held in any region of the United Kingdom. The referendum is boycotted by nationalists and results in a conclusive victory for remaining in the UK. On a voter turnout of 58.7 percent, 98.9 percent vote to remain in the United Kingdom, meaning the outcome among registered voters is not affected by the boycott.

The Unionist parties support the “UK” option, as do the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI). However, the Alliance Party is also critical of the poll. While it supports the holding of periodic plebiscites on the constitutional link with Great Britain, the party feels that to avoid the border poll becoming a “sectarian head count,” it should ask other relevant questions such as whether the people support the UK’s white paper on Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, on February 5, 1973, the party’s chairman, Jim Hendron, states that “Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Féin all-Ireland republic or a Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people.”

The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), however, calls for a boycott of the referendum, urging its members on January 23, 1973 “to ignore completely the referendum and reject this extremely irresponsible decision by the British Government.” Gerry Fitt, leader of the SDLP, says he has organised a boycott to stop an escalation in violence.

The civil authorities are prepared for violence on polling day. They put in place mobile polling stations which can be rushed into use if there is bomb damage to scheduled poll buildings. Two days before the referendum a British soldier, Guardsman Anton Brown of the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, is shot dead in Belfast as the army searches for weapons and explosives which can be used to disrupt the upcoming referendum.

Violence by both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries still takes place on polling day. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) explode several bombs across Northern Ireland and shoot dead a British soldier guarding a polling station in the area of the Falls Road in Belfast. The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) abducts and kills a Catholic civilian from Ballymurphy. A polling station in East Belfast guarded by the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) is also raided by Loyalist paramilitaries who steal several self-loading rifles.

As a political response to the referendum, the Provisional Irish Republican Army also plants four car bombs in London that day, two of which detonate, causing one death and injuring over two hundred.

The vote results in an overwhelming majority of those who voted stating they wish to remain in the UK. The nationalist boycott contributes to a turnout of only 58.7% of the electorate. In addition to taking a majority of votes cast, the UK option receives the support of 57.5% of the total electorate. According to the BBC, less than 1% of the Catholic population turn out to vote.

The referendum electorate consists of 1,030,084 adults registered to vote out of a total population of approximately 1,529,993.

The Government of the United Kingdom takes no action on receipt of the referendum result, as the result is in favour of the status quo (Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK). It is followed by an Assembly election on June 28, 1973.

Brian Faulkner, who had been the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, claims the result leaves “no doubt in any one’s mind what the wishes of Ulster’s people are. Despite an attempted boycott by some, almost 600,000 electors voted for the maintenance of the union with Great Britain.” He also claims that the poll showed that a “quarter of the [N.I.] Catholic population who voted … voted for the maintenance of the union” and that the result is a “blow … against IRA mythology.”

(Pictured: Map of Northern Ireland (yellow) within the United Kingdom.)


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The 1991 Cappagh Killings

The 1991 Cappagh killings, a gun attack by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the village of Cappagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, takes place on March 3, 1991. A unit of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade drive to the staunchly republican village and shoot dead three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members and a Catholic civilian at Boyle’s Bar. There are allegations of collusion between the UVF and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) in the shootings.

Although nobody is ever charged in connection with the killings, it is widely believed by nationalists and much of the press that the attack had been planned and led by Billy Wright, the leader of the Mid-Ulster Brigade’s Portadown unit. Wright himself takes credit for this and boasts to The Guardian newspaper, “I would look back and say Cappagh was probably our best,” though some sources are sceptical about his claim.

On the evening of Sunday, March 3, 1991, a unit of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade drive into the heartland of the East Tyrone IRA, intent on wiping out an entire IRA unit that is based in the County Tyrone village of Cappagh. One team of the UVF men wait outside Boyle’s Bar, while a second team waits on the outskirts of the town. At 10:30 p.m. a car pulls into the car park outside the bar and the UVF gunmen open fire with vz. 58 assault rifles, killing Provisional IRA volunteers John Quinn (23), Dwayne O’Donnell (17) and Malcolm Nugent (20). The victims and car are riddled with bullets. According to author Thomas G. Mitchell, Quinn, O’Donnell and Nugent are part of an IRA active service unit (ASU). The gunmen then attempt to enter the pub but are unable to after the civilians inside realise what is happening and barricade the door. Unable to get into the bar, a UVF gunman shoots through a high open toilet window killing local civilian, Thomas Armstrong (50) and badly wounding a 21-year-old man. Their intended target, IRA commander Brian Arthurs, escapes with his life by crouching behind the bar during the shooting. According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), the three IRA volunteers chose to go to the pub “on the spur of the moment,” thus are unlikely to be the UVF’s original target.

After the attack, the UVF issues a statement: “This was not a sectarian attack on the Catholic community, but was an operation directed at the very roots of the Provisional IRA command structure in the Armagh–Tyrone area.” The statement concludes with the promise that “if the Provisional IRA were to cease its campaign of terror, the Ulster Volunteer Force would no longer deem it necessary to continue with their military operations.” Privately the UVF are hugely pleased with the attack in a republican heartland and Billy Wright, leader of the Portadown unit of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade, who is alleged to be centrally involved, tells Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald the killings were “one of things we did militarily in thirty years. We proved we could take the war to the Provos in one of their strongest areas.” Cusack and McDonald assert that a wealthy UVF supporter with a business in South Belfast helped the UVF purchase the cars used in the attack at auctions in the city.

The Provisional IRA initially does not acknowledge that three of the victims are within its ranks, apparently with the aim of garnering sympathy from the wider world, particularly in the Republic of Ireland, toward nationalists in Northern Ireland.

The first reprisal takes place on April 9, 1991, when alleged UVF member Derek Ferguson, a cousin of local MP Reverend William McCrea, is shot and killed in Coagh by members of the East Tyrone Brigade. His family denies any paramilitary links. In the months following the 1991 shootings, two former UDR soldiers are killed by the IRA near Cappagh. One of them is shot dead while driving along Altmore Road on August 5, 1991. The other former soldier is blown up by an IRA bomb planted inside his car at Kildress on April 25, 1993. It is claimed that he has loyalist paramilitary connections. The 1993 bombing leads to allegations that the IRA is killing Protestant landowners in Tyrone and Fermanagh in an orchestrated campaign to drive Protestants out of the region. There are at least five botched IRA attempts against the life of Billy Wright before the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) succeeds in killing him in 1997 inside the Maze Prison.

This is not the first time the UVF carries out an attack on Boyle’s Bar in Cappagh. On January 17, 1974, at around 7:40 p.m. two masked UVF gunmen enter the pub and open fire indiscriminately on the customers with a Sterling submachine gun and a Smith & Wesson revolver, firing at least 35 shots. A Catholic civilian and retired farmer Daniel Hughes (73) is shot eleven times and killed in the attack and three other people are injured. A group calling itself the “Donaghmore-Pomeroy Battalion of the UVF” claim responsibility for the shooting. The attack is linked to the notorious Glenanne gang.

(Pictured: The scene of the UVF attack outside Boyle’s Bar in Cappagh in March 1991. Photo: Pacemaker Archive Belfast 153-91-BW)


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The 2006 Dublin Riots

A series of riots in Dublin on February 25, 2006, is precipitated by a proposed march down O’Connell Street of a unionist demonstration. The disturbances begin when members of the Garda Síochána attempt to disperse a group of counterdemonstrators blocking the route of the proposed march. The situation escalates as local youths join forces with the counterdemonstrators.

Love Ulster is a Unionist organisation dedicated to commemorating the Unionist victims of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It is organised in part by Willie Frazer of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR). It is a partisan group established to voice outrage at killings by the Republican paramilitary organisations, but is criticised for not doing the same for victims of loyalist paramilitary organisations.

The Love Ulster march in Dublin is to consist of a uniformed band, several hundred activists (including some from the Orange Order) and relatives of victims, all of whom are to march from Parnell Street north of the River Liffey, down O’Connell Street, past Trinity College Dublin (TCD) onto Nassau Street, Dawson Street and Molesworth Street, and eventually reaching Leinster House, the seat of the Oireachtas, on Kildare Street.

The march of this group in Dublin is viewed as provocative by some Irish nationalists and many Irish republicans, particularly in the context of an Orange Order march. The Orange Order is accused of being a sectarian organisation known for its anti-Catholicism. The right to march is supported by the main Irish political parties and the march is authorised by the Garda Síochána. Love Ulster had organised a similar rally in Belfast in October 2005.

At previous FAIR rallies, a picture of an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) member who was allegedly involved in the murder of 26 people in Dublin in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and who was himself killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1976, had been displayed. An organiser of the Love Ulster demonstration tells a republican newspaper that he cannot guarantee that images of the murder suspect will not be displayed during the demonstration.

Sinn Féin, an Irish republican political party, does not organise a protest and says that the march should be allowed to go ahead, calling for republicans to ignore the march. Republican Sinn Féin, a splinter political party no longer affiliated with Sinn Féin, has an organised presence.

Their protest blocks the northeastern junction of O’Connell Street and Parnell Street. The small Republican Sinn Féin group (and some activists from the Irish Republican Socialist Party) are joined by several hundred local youths. Before the violence breaks out, they chant republican chants. Several thousand bystanders are also on the scene but take no part in the subsequent rioting. When the marchers form up at the top of Parnell Square and their bands begin to play in anticipation of the start of the march, gardaí attempt to disperse the protest at around 12:45 p.m. At this point, scuffles break out between protesters and Gardaí.

After the failure of the initial garda effort to disperse the protesters, the violence escalates. The Garda Public Order Unit is deployed, and stones and metal railings are thrown at gardaí by protesters, as are fireworks, bricks, crude petrol bombs, and other missiles. As the rioting continues, the ranks of the rioters are swelled by many local teenagers who had not taken part in the initial protest. Several barricades are constructed from building materials on the street to impede the march and the Gardaí. The march is due to start at 12:30 p.m., but as the violence goes on the gardaí decide against trying to escort the marchers through O’Connell Street. At about 1:30 p.m. the assembled marchers return to the coaches that had brought them to Dublin from Northern Ireland. The three coaches are then driven to Leinster House, where a small parade is carried out, and a letter is handed to Irish Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell. They are then escorted out of the city. One of the coaches is attacked by stone throwers on the way home.

Violence continues sporadically on O’Connell Street for another hour or so. The Gardaí, advancing from the northern end of the street gradually push the rioters back southward. The most sustained violence takes place around the General Post Office building, where the rioters initially sit down in protest and then, after several of them have been batoned, regroup behind burning barricades and throw rocks, paving slabs and one or possibly two petrol bombs at Gardaí. Several Gardaí, protesters and a number of journalists from RTÉ and TV3 are injured.

While the standoff on O’Connell Street is still going on, several hundred rioters follow the Unionist coaches to the Nassau Street area where they set a number of cars on fire and damage several businesses. Further skirmishes break out around the River Liffey at O’Connell Bridge, Aston Quay, Fleet Street and Temple Bar, as the Gardaí retake O’Connell street, before the rioters disperse.

Having dispersed the rioters, the gardaí then closes O’Connell Street to facilitate a cleanup of the scene by building workers. Media reports estimate the cost of the cleanup job at €50,000, and Dublin Chamber of Commerce places loss of earnings for businesses in the city due to the riots at €10,000,000.

Estimates for the number of unionist marchers before the event are predicted to be over 1,000. However, only eight coach loads turn up in Dublin, indicating a far smaller number, possibly 300 to 400. Estimates for the number of counterdemonstrators vary between 300 and 7,000. The number is made much more difficult to determine by the presence of the several thousand bystanders at the scene who do not take part. Most of the rioters appear to be local youths, though some who brandished leaflets and other political literature are clearly political activists.

A total of 14 people, including six gardaí and a small number of journalists and photographers, are hospitalised as a result of the rioting. A further 41 people are arrested, according to RTÉ news. As of February 27, 2006, thirteen have been charged. Twenty-six people are convicted in January 2009 for their part in the disturbances and given sentences of up to five years. Two are described as “alcoholics.” One of them and a teenage boy are “homeless.” Three are not Irish – a Georgian, a Romanian and a Moldovan are convicted of looting shops on O’Connell Street. Two have travelled from County Offaly, one from County Galway and one from County Donegal for the riot. All the rest come from Dublin.

(Pictured: The Public Order Unit on O’Connell Street during the 2006 Dublin Riots)