The Dublin Harp Society is founded on July 13, 1809, by John Bernard Trotter, a former secretary to Charles James Fox and a passionate supporter of Irish music, to revive and preserve the ancient Irish harp tradition, and it flourishes briefly with contributions from prominent patrons and musicians before closing in 1812 due to financial difficulties.
Inspired by the Belfast Irish Harp Society, Trotter aims to create a society that will extend the revival of the Irish harp to the capital and broaden its audience across Ireland. The society’s purpose is to rescue the old Irish harp from oblivion, teach blind and talented harpers, and promote Irish music through public events, publications, and performances.
Trotter gathers an influential list of subscribers, including Thomas Moore, the poet and songwriter, and Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist. He brings to Dublin Patrick Quin (pictured), a blind harper from Portadown, County Armagh, as the society’s instructor. Quin is one of the last of the traditional blind harpers and performs extensively at society events, including Turlough O’Carolan commemorations, delighting patrons and audiences. The Bishop of Kildare, Charles Dalrymple Lindsay, also supports the society by providing a house in Glasnevin for the instruction of harpers.
The society engages in multiple avenues to revive Irish harp music. In addition to the previously mentioned Turlough O’Carolan commemorations, circulars and subscription notices are published to drum up public support and secure funding. The Society hosts concerts and gatherings at prominent Dublin locations, offering elaborate performances for subscribers. Tuition and mentorship to young Irish harpers is provided, particularly to blind musicians, as part of a broader cultural and philanthropic effort. Trotter also personally subsidizes the society, contributing £200 annually, which helps maintain performances and attract participants.
Despite early enthusiasm, the society struggles financially due to Trotter’s generous hospitality and personal funding of its activities. By the close of 1812, the Dublin Harp Society becomes defunct when Trotter goes bankrupt. The society attempts to publish rules and regulations in 1810 and conduct active recruitment of subscribers and pupils, but it cannot be sustained beyond three years.
Although short-lived, the Dublin Harp Society contributes significantly to the preservation and promotion of the Irish harp, inspiring subsequent societies and harp revival initiatives in Ireland. It highlights the importance of cultural patrimony, music education, and public patronage, acting as a bridge between the older harp traditions and the modern revival movements seen in later 19th-century Ireland.
In summary, the Dublin Harp Society represents an early 19th-century endeavor to revive Ireland’s venerable harp tradition through education, sponsorship, and celebration of master harpers, leaving a lasting mark on the cultural memory of Irish music.
Osborne (née Meikle) is born on February 21, 1926 in Larne, County Antrim, the daughter of William Meikle who is a fitter at Harland & Wolff. She displays artistic talent from a young age, recognized at 20 by painter Paul Nietsche, and earns a scholarship from the Ministry of Education to pursue further studies. She trains at the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts in London and later completes her National Diploma in Art and Design at the Belfast School of Art.
Osborne’s early career includes exhibitions in Belfast, London, and prominent Canadian galleries after she emigrates to Canada with her husband, fellow artist Dennis H. Osborne, in 1953. She exhibits works such as The Harmonica Player, a portrait of poet Barbara Hunter, and other pieces across Canada, gaining recognition for her skill in landscapes, portraits, and abstract forms.
Declining health due to a brain tumour forces Osborne to return to Northern Ireland in 1959. She settles first in Portadown and later in Lisburn, where she continues to paint despite her illness. She participates in exhibitions, including those of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts and local art societies, maintaining her influence on the Northern Irish art scene.
Osborne dies at the age of 39 on July 9, 1965, in Lisburn Hospital due to complications from a brain tumour, which had been a long-standing health struggle. She leaves behind her husband, Dennis, and their daughter, Moya. Posthumously, her work is celebrated in memorial exhibitions, including those organized by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Ulster Society of Women Artists, and several of her paintings, like Roots and Grief, are preserved in the Ulster Museum and Armagh County Museum.
Osborne is remembered as a gifted painter whose contributions to mid-20th-century art in both the United Kingdom and Canada reflect emotional depth, modernist abstraction, and a commitment to capturing natural forms, despite her life and career being cut tragically short.
The unrest was triggered by the Orange Order’s permission to march its traditional route through the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, County Armagh, a Catholic/nationalist area, as part of the annual Drumcree parading dispute. The Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization, has marched this route since 1807 to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne. For decades, Catholic residents object to the route, seeing it as a sectarian provocation.
The decision to allow the march comes after death threats from loyalistparamilitaries to target Catholics if the parade is stopped. This concession outrages nationalists, who also resent the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)’s aggressive policing of protesters.
On July 6, around 1,000 Orangemen march under a sealed-off Garvaghy Road, with about 1,500 RUC and British Army personnel present. The next day, mass protests erupt in areas like North Belfast, Lurgan, and west Belfast’s Lenadoon district. Rioters hurl stones, petrol bombs, and other projectiles at security forces, while Republican paramilitaries engage in gun battles with police.
Security forces responded with plastic bullets and other riot control measures, firing over 2,500 plastic bullets at rioters. A 13-year-old boy is critically injured after being struck by one. Hundreds of vehicles are hijacked, set on fire, and used to block roads in Belfast, Newry, Armagh, and Dungannon. The RUC and British Army have to withdraw entirely from some nationalist areas of Belfast.
One civilian is killed in the rioting and over 100 people are injured, including 62 RUC officers and at least three soldiers. One hundred seventeen arrests are made and some armoured vehicles are either damaged or destroyed. An indirectly related incident sees a loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member killed by a pipe bomb he is handling.
The riots highlight the fragility of peace efforts and deepen divisions over parading rights. The episode leads Secretary of State for Northern IrelandMo Mowlam to urge Orange leaders to reroute future marches. For the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the riots are its last major action in a 27-year campaign. It declares its final ceasefire on July 19, 1997.
The 1997 riots are the last widespread sectarian violence in Northern Ireland before the Good Friday Agreement, underscoring the unresolved nature of the Drumcree dispute and the challenges of achieving lasting peace.
(Pictured: “Drumcree, The Garvaghy Road July 1997” by military artist David Rowlands, oil on canvas, owned by the 1st Battalion (The Cheshires) The Mercian Regiment which depicts British soldiers during the rioting on Garvaghy Road)
Twaddell’s death precipitates a clamp-down on the IRA in Northern Ireland and 350 IRA members are interned. Seamus Woods, who is interned on HMS Argenta during the clampdown, is charged with his murder. Woods, who had joined the Irish National Army, is trying to control irregular elements within the IRA. By agreement with the government of Northern Ireland, two officers of the Irish National Army are given permission to travel to the trial. General J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell and Commandant Charles McAlister give evidence and Woods is found not guilty. A total of 724 people are interned in Northern Ireland up to the end of 1924.
Twaddell was buried at Drumcree Church cemetery, Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where his headstone says that he was “foully murdered in Belfast.”
Shillington originally plans to join the Northern Ireland Civil Service, however he wants a more varied career. He joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary on February 8, 1933, as a cadet officer. He completes his training at the Newtownards depot in County Down. He is promoted to district inspector in 1935, and serves as officer in charge of D District in Belfast. In 1944, he is promoted to 1st Class District Inspector and is posted to Derry, County Londonderry.
In 1953, after nine years in Derry, Shillington is promoted to County Inspector and returns to Belfast. There, he joins the Inspector General’s Headquarters and serves in an administrative post. On January 16, 1961, he is appointed Commissioner of Belfast City.
In 1969, Shillington is appointed Deputy Inspector-General of the RUC, as second-in-command to the Inspector-General, Anthony Peacocke, who, like Shillington, had been educated at Sedbergh and Cambridge. When the Battle of the Bogside breaks out in Derry in August 1969, he requests permission to use CS gas for the first time in the United Kingdom. When that does not halt the rioting, he requests that the British Army be brought in. He telephones Peacocke on August 13 in order to persuade him of this. Peacocke, who has long denied the need for army involvement, eventually agrees, but his reputation never recovers and following the publication of the Hunt Report in October he resigns as Inspector-General.
Shortly thereafter, Sir Arthur Young is seconded from the City of London Police to be the last Inspector-General and the first Chief Constable of the RUC. James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, sends him to implement the Hunt Report. Young’s measures introduce the standard British rank system for police officers in Northern Ireland and disbands the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). Shillington remains as Young’s deputy, and when the latter returns to the mainland in 1970 he succeeds him to become the RUC’s second Chief Constable.
Shillington marries Mary (Peggy) Bulloch in 1935. They have two sons and a daughter. He dies on August 14, 2001, at the age of 90, in a County Armagh nursing home.
According to author Tony Geraghty, British authorities learn of the first horizontal mortar produced by the Provisional IRA, the Mark 12, in 1985. The weapon is recovered after an incident in which three IRA volunteers are killed by security forces. The launcher suffers from the limitation of a heavy recoil, which makes the handling of the device difficult. One British intelligence report says that while the launcher is quite crude, the grenade is made of “a number of components which require a high standard of machine manufacturing.” The projectile has a warhead of 40 ounces (1.1 kg) of Semtex and TNT. It is used basically as a standoff weapon, in which the grenade is lofted over the security bases’ fences or against armoured vehicles. The mortar has an effective range of 70 yards, within which it can pierce an armour plate or destroy a sangar.
Later in the conflict the IRA develops the Mark 16, a new version with improved armour-piercing capabilities, usually referred to as a “projected recoilless improvised grenade.”
On the evening of March 1, 1991, a two-vehicle mobile patrol belonging to the 2nd Battalion, Ulster Defence Regiment is approaching the western outskirts of Armagh on Killylea road. When driving along Mullacreevie housing estate, the two Land Rovers are held by temporary traffic lights at roadworks. Unknown to them, an IRA unit from the North Armagh Brigade has set a Mark 12 launcher on a hump of earth in the front garden of a house beside the lights. After the incident, IRA sources describe the device as a “directional missile.”
When the first Land Rover pulls off after the lights turn green, the mortar ‘s improvised grenade is fired by command-wire from the backyard of the house by IRA members concealed behind a digger. The projectile hits the coachwork, blowing away both sides and the roof of the military vehicle. Witnesses report that the Land Rover was “ripped apart.” The soldiers inside are immediately assisted by fellow UDR members, who help to drag the wounded out of the shattered wreckage.
Private Paul Sutcliffe, a 32-year-old Englishman who has served for four years with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment before becoming a UDR soldier in 1989, dies on the spot. The driver, Private Roger Love, a 20-year-old from Portadown, succumbs to his injuries three days later. Two other servicemen are maimed by the explosion. One of them suffers severe chest wounds, and loses the use of one arm; the other has a leg amputated below the knee.
The ambush at Mullacreevie is the first time that a Mark 12 mortar is used successfully.
Roger Love’s family donates the deceased soldier’s kidneys after they authorize the medical staff to disconnect the life-supporting machine. A UDR party attends Paul Sutcliffe’s funeral at his hometown of Barrowford, Lancashire, the only UDR military funeral held outside Northern Ireland. His ashes are scattered in the Mourne Mountains.
Another horizontal mortar attack on a UDR mobile patrol takes place on November 6, when Private Michael Boxall is killed in Bellaghy, County Londonderry, after the Land Rover he is riding on is hit by a Mark 12 grenade. A fellow soldier loses one eye in the attack. Incidentally, constable Erik Clarke, another Englishmen who had also served in the British Army in Northern Ireland from 1973 to 1978, is killed that year by the same kind of weapon while riding on a combined Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – British Army mobile patrol in an early Mark 12 attack. The incident takes place on September 17 at Swatragh, County Londonderry. Clarke had married a local woman and later joined the RUC.
The Mark 12 mortar is used by the IRA until 1993, when it is superseded by the Mark 16. The Mark 16 is fired on eleven occasions by the IRA from late 1993 to early 1994.
The Irish Times reports that “This stretch of road has been a favourite ambush spot for successive generations of IRA men since the 1920s.” The Provisional IRA has been attacking British Army patrols and convoys with roadside bombs regularly since the beginning of the Troubles in the early 1970s. Most of these attacks take place in rural parts of Northern Ireland, especially eastern and southern County Tyrone (where the IRA’s Tyrone Brigade is active) and southern County Armagh (heartland of the South Armagh Brigade). In August 1979, the IRA ambushes a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs near Warrenpoint, killing eighteen soldiers. This is the deadliest attack on the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In December 1979, four more British soldiers are killed on Ballygawley Road in the Dungannon land mine attack. In May 1981, five British soldiers are killed when their Saracen APC is ripped apart by a roadside bomb at Altnaveigh, County Armagh. In July 1983, four Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers are killed when their vehicle strikes an IRA land mine near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. In December 1985, the Tyrone IRA launches an assault on the police barracks in Ballygawley, shooting dead two officers and destroying the barracks with a bomb.
On the night of August 19/20, 1988, an unmarked 52-seater bus is transporting 36 soldiers of The Light Infantry from Aldergrove Flying Station to a military base near Omagh. The soldiers, who came from England, have just finished 18 months of a two-year tour of duty in Northern Ireland and are returning to the base after a short holiday.
As it is driving along the main road from Ballygawley to Omagh, at about 12:30 a.m., IRA members remotely detonate a roadside bomb containing 200 pounds (91 kg) of Semtex. According to police, the bomb had been planted in a vehicle by the roadside and had been detonated by command wire from 330 yards (300 m) away. A statement by one of the survivors claims instead that the roadside bomb was made of “two fertilizer bags filled with Semtex.” The blast hurls the bus 30 metres down the road and throws the soldiers into neighbouring hedges and fields. It leaves a crater 6 feet deep and scatters body parts and twisted metal over a wide area. Witnesses describe finding dead, dying and wounded soldiers strewn on the road and caught in the wreckage of the bus. Others are walking around “stunned.” Some of the first to arrive on the scene and offer help are loyalist bandsmen of the Omagh Protestant Boy’s Band returning from a parade in Portadown, who have also been traveling in buses.
Eight of the soldiers are killed and the remaining 28 are wounded. The soldiers killed are: Jayson Burfitt (aged 19), Richard Greener (aged 21), Mark Norsworthy (aged 18), Stephen Wilkinson (aged 18), Jason Winter (aged 19), Blair Bishop (aged 19), Alexander Lewis (aged 18) and Peter Bullock (aged 21). This is the single biggest loss of life for the British Army from an IRA attack in Northern Ireland since the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979, although eleven off-duty British soldiers had been killed in the Droppin Well bombing in 1982, carried out by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). An account from one of the survivors is published in Ken Wharton‘s book A Long Long War: Voices from the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1969–98 (2008).
An inquest into the attack is told that the road is usually off-limits to military vehicles, due to the threat from the IRA. The driver of the bus, who is also a soldier, claims he had been directed on to the road by diversion signs. The inquest hears that signs had not been placed by the police or the roads service. The IRA denies placing any signs and says that military buses often use the road. The mother of one of those killed accuses the British military of negligence and claims it is “trying to conceal the truth.”
Shortly thereafter, the Provisional IRA issues a statement claiming responsibility. It says that the attack had been carried out by its Tyrone Brigade and adds: “We will not lay down our arms until the peace of a British disengagement from Ireland.” The security forces suspect that an informer may have told the IRA of the bus’s route and the time it would pass a specific spot. After the attack, the British military decides to start ferrying their troops to and from East Tyrone by helicopter to avoid any future attacks like this.
Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, says there is “some evidence” that the explosives used are part of a consignment from Libya. He also states that the possibility of reintroducing internment is “under review”. Libyan weaponry enables the IRA to mount some of its biggest operations during its campaign. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to be one of these attacks. One former IRA member later suggests that Semtex explosive was not crucial to the outcome of the attack, saying, “we were having plenty of success without Semtex… at Ballygawley we ‘only’ got eight, but it was a bus of about fifty-six. If we’d used a fertiliser bomb, the whole bus would have been destroyed.”
On August 30, 1988, three IRA members are ambushed and killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) at Drumnakilly, County Tyrone. According to author Nick Van der Bijl, the men—Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin—are identified by British intelligence as the perpetrators of the bombing. Peter Taylor, instead, says that only Mullin is suspected, and that plans for the SAS operation were already underway at the time of the IRA attack.
Two months after the attack, the British Government introduces the broadcasting ban. It means that the voices of Sinn Féin and IRA members are not allowed to be broadcast on television or radio. The Ballygawley bus bombing is believed to have influenced the Government’s decision to introduce the ban.
According to state papers declassified in 2019, the attack sparks “panic” in the British Government, and tension between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the British Army over who is at fault for the security lapse. British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher warns RUC chief, John Hermon, that she will no longer send British troops over “in waves to be killed.”
Wright attracts considerable media attention at the Drumcree standoff, where he supports the Orange Order‘s desire to march its traditional route through the Catholic/Irish nationalist area of Portadown. In 1994, the UVF and other paramilitary groups call ceasefires. However, in July 1996, Wright’s unit breaks the ceasefire and carries out a number of attacks, including a sectarian killing. For this, Wright and his Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade are stood down by the UVF leadership. He is expelled from the UVF and threatened with execution if he does not leave Northern Ireland. Wright ignores the threats and, along with many of his followers, defiantly forms the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
In March 1997, Wright is sent to the HM Maze Prison for having threatened the life of a woman. While imprisoned, he continues to direct the LVF’s activities. On December 27 of that year, he is assassinated at the prison by Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners as he is led out to a van for a visit with his girlfriend. The LVF carries out a wave of sectarian attacks in retaliation.
Owing to his uncompromising stance as an upholder of Ulster loyalism and opposition to the Northern Ireland peace process, Wright is regarded as a cult hero, cultural icon, and martyr figure by hardline loyalists. His image adorns murals in loyalist housing estates and many of his devotees have tattoos bearing his likeness.
Wright’s funeral procession moves at a snail’s pace on a grey and windy day. Groups of mourners take turns carrying the coffin. Women carry a wreath that simply says “Billy.” Twenty men with tight haircuts and white shirts with black armbands flank the cortège. There is heavy security. Troops stand guard on bridges and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Land Rovers prowl the housing estates. A spotter plane flies overhead. A lone piper plays “Abide with Me” before a banner bearing the letters “LVF.”
Wright is buried at Seagoe Cemetery, Portadown, Northern Ireland.
Fulton is born in Portadown, County Armagh in 1961, one of the children of Jim Fulton, a former British soldier who works as a window cleaner. His mother, Sylvia (née Prentice), comes from a family of wealthy car dealers. He grows up in the working classProtestant Killycomain area.
Fulton leaves school early and promptly joins the Mid-Ulster UVF, being sworn in at the age of 15. His early activity includes being part of the UVF gang that opens fire on a Craigavon mobile sweetshop on March 28, 1991, killing two teenaged girls and one man, all Catholics. The attack is allegedly planned by Robin Jackson.
In the early 1990s, Billy Wright, also from Portadown, takes over command of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade from Jackson. The Mid-Ulster Brigade, founded in 1972 by its first commander, Billy Hanna, operates mainly in the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Fulton soon becomes Wright’s closest associate and right-hand man and has an “extreme fixation and obsession over Wright.” He even has an image of Wright tattooed over his heart.
Fulton is alleged to have perpetrated twelve sectarian killings in the 1990s, and reportedly is implicated in many other attacks. His victims are often questioned about their religion prior to their killings, and sometimes they are killed in front of their families. He is very violent and has a quick temper. Wright is the only person who is able to control him. A Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detective who knows both of them says that whenever they are stopped by the police in the 1990s, Wright is “coolness personified,” while Fulton rage’s, shouts and makes threats.
The Mid-Ulster Brigade calls themselves the “Brat Pack,” which journalist Martin O’Hagan of the Sunday World altered to “Rat Pack.” After the nickname of “King Rat” is given to Wright by local Ulster Defence Association commander Robert John Kerr as a form of pub bantering, O’Hagan takes to describing Wright by that term. This soubriquet is thereafter used by the media, much to Wright’s fury. This leads him to issue threats against O’Hagan and all journalists who work for the newspaper. The unit initially welcomes the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire in October 1994; however, things change drastically over the next few years.
Following the order given in August 1996 by the UVF’s Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) for Wright and the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade to stand down, Fulton remains loyal to Wright and defies the order. This comes after the Mid-Ulster UVF’s killing of a Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, while the UVF are on ceasefire. After Wright defies a UVF order to leave Northern Ireland, he forms the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force, taking the members of the officially-disbanded Portadown unit with him, including Fulton.
Fulton, as Wright’s deputy, assumes effective control of the LVF when Wright is sent to the Maze Prison in March 1997. When Wright is shot dead by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in December 1997, in a prison van while being taken to the Maze’s visitor block, Fulton assumes control of the LVF. He is deeply affected by Wright’s death, and reportedly spends many nights alone by his grave. In May 1998, the LVF calls a ceasefire. It is accepted by the Northern Ireland Office six months later.
Fulton is arrested in 1998 after shooting at an off-duty soldier in Portadown. He is heavily intoxicated at the time and sentenced to four years imprisonment. While he is out on compassionate leave in early 1999, he allegedly organises the killing of Catholic lawyer Rosemary Nelson. During the Drumcree standoff, Nelson had represented the Catholic Portadown residents who opposed the Orange Order‘s march through the predominantly nationalist Garvaghy area. She is blown up by a car bomb on March 15, 1999, outside her home in Lurgan. The bomb is allegedly made by a man from the Belfast UDA but planted by Fulton’s associates acting on his orders.
Colin Port, the Deputy Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary who heads the investigation into Nelson’s death, says “without question” Fulton is the person who had masterminded her killing. Although he is back in prison at the time, he is excited when he hears the news of her death on the radio. He is linked to the killing by police informers but not forensics. It is also revealed that prior to his own death, Wright had threatened to kill Nelson in the belief she had defended Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers. Fulton is released from prison in April 2001.
On June 10, 2002, Fulton, who has been held on remand in HM Prison Maghaberry since December 2001, is found dead in his prison cell with a leather belt around his neck. He is found on his bed rather than hanging from the ceiling, leading to speculation that his death had been accidentally caused by autoerotic asphyxiation. Friends claim he had expressed suicidal thoughts due to both his failure to recover from his close friend Wright’s death, as well as his fears that he was suffering from stomach cancer. Some reports suggest his unstable mental state had seen him stand down as leader several weeks before his death, with the LVF’s power base transferred to Belfast. He was also afraid that rival loyalist inmates wished to kill him inside the prison.
At the time of his death, Fulton is awaiting trial, having been charged with conspiracy to murder Rodney Jennett, a member of a rival loyalist paramilitary organisation, in connection with an ongoing feud. He leaves behind his wife, Louise and two children, Lee and Alana. His funeral is attended by 500 mourners, including a number of senior loyalist paramilitaries, including Johnny Adair and John White, who act as pallbearers alongside Fulton’s brother Jim and son, Lee. After a service at St. Columba’s Parish Church, he is interred in Kernan Cemetery in Portadown.
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. 58assault 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 & Wessonrevolver, 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)
seamus dubhghaill 