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.
After 17 years in prison, the Birmingham Six could be freed within weeks. An announcement on February 25, 1991, by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alan Green, says the convictions of the Birmingham Six can no longer be considered safe and satisfactory. Hugh Callaghan, Paddy Joe Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power, and Johnny Walker, all from Northern Ireland, were all jailed in 1975 for an Irish Republican Army (IRA) attack on two pubs in Birmingham, England, in November 1974 in which 21 people died. The Birmingham Six have consistently maintained their innocence.
Speaking during a live radio broadcast by Irish broadcaster RTÉ, one of the six, Hugh Callaghan, speaks about his ordeal. “It should have happened a long time ago. It has been known for years and years that we were innocent,” he says.
The February 25 preliminary hearing is told both scientific and police evidence presented at the original trial can no longer be relied upon and that therefore the Crown‘s case against the men has collapsed.
Their third appeal is to be heard at the Court of Appeal on Monday, March 4, 1991. New evidence collected in the prior year is to be presented to the court, which will make the final decision on whether or not to release the men.
Friends, family and supporters are overjoyed by the news. The Irish government issues a statement saying it shares their relief and joy.
Gareth Peirce, the solicitor for five of the men, says the case is “a national disgrace” and calls for the evidence to be made public.
Patsy Power, William Power’s wife, says, “It’s over and done but the system has to be altered so nothing like this happens again.”
Former Master of the RollsTom Denning, Baron Denning, who rejected the men’s appeal in 1980, says he is saddened by the case. “As I look back I am very sorry, because I always thought that our police were splendid and am very sorry that in this case it appears the contrary,” he says.
The Birmingham Six are released amid scenes of wild jubilation on March 14, 1991, after their convictions are quashed by the Court of Appeal. Their case – and that of the Guildford Four freed in 1989 – lead to the creation of a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice which makes various recommendations in 1993.
The six men struggle to cope with freedom following their release. Several turn to drink and most of their marriages suffer as a result.
By early 1978, the British Army forces involved in Operation Banner have recently replaced their aging Bell H-13 Sioux helicopters for the more versatile Aérospatiale Gazelles. The introduction of the new machines increases the area covered on a reconnaissancesortie as well as the improved time spent in airborne missions. In the same period, the Provisional IRA receives its first consignment of M60 machine guns from the Middle East, which are displayed by masked volunteers during a Bloody Sunday commemoration in Derry. Airborne operations are crucial for the British presence along the border, especially in south County Armagh, where the level of IRA activity means that every supply and soldier has to be ferried in and out of their bases by helicopter since 1975.
The Royal Green Jackets have been in South Armagh since December 1977, and have already seen some action. Just a few days after arrival, two mortar rounds hit the C Company base at Forkhill, injuring a number of soldiers. In the aftermath of the attack, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers are wounded by a booby trap while recovering the lorry where the mortar tubes are mounted. Two days later, a patrol near the border suffers a bomb and gun attack, leaving the commanding sergeant with severe head wounds. The sergeant is picked up from the scene by helicopter. He is later invalided from the British Army as a result of his injuries.
On January 17, 1978, a Royal Green Jackets observation post deployed around the village of Jonesborough begins to take heavy fire from the “March Wall,” which draws parallel with the Irish border to the east, along the Dromad woods. The soldiers return fire, but the short distance to the border and the open ground prevents them from advancing.
The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Corden-Lloyd, along with Captain Philip Schofield and Sergeant Ives fly from the battalion base at Bessbrook Mill to assess the situation and provide information to the troops. They are escorted by a Scout helicopter with an Airborne Reaction Force (ARF), comprising a medic and three soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry. While hovering over the scene of the engagement, the Aérospatiale Gazelle receives a barrage of 7.62 mm tracer rounds. The pilot loses control of the aircraft during a turn at high speed to avoid the stream of fire. The Aérospatiale Gazelle hits a wall and crashes in a field, some 2 km from Jonesborough. According to the crew and passengers of the Scout, the Aérospatiale Gazelle hits the ground twice after losing power, with its rotor blades trashing into the soil following the second impact, and then cartwheels across the field. The Scout lands the ARF while still under IRA fire. The soldiers rush to the wrecked helicopter, some 100 metres away from the site of the initial crash.
Corden-Lloyd is killed and the other two passengers are wounded. The machine comes to rest on its right side. The pilot remains trapped inside the wreckage, but he survives thanks to his helmet. The IRA later claim they had shot at the helicopter with an M60 machine gun. The IRA unit vanishes into the Dromad woods to the Republic of Ireland. Some Gardaí witness the attack from the other side of the border.
The gun battle and Aérospatiale Gazelle shootdown is displaced from the headlines by the deaths of twelve civilians in the La Mon restaurant bombing on the same day, some of whom are burned to death. Initially the British Army downplays the IRA’s claim as published by An Phoblacht, that the helicopter was shot down, on the basis that no hits were found on the wreckage, but finally they acknowledged that the IRA action had caused the crash.
The death of Corden-Lloyd, a former Special Air Service officer, is deeply regretted by the British Army, who regarded him as promising. He is awarded a posthumous mentioned in despatches “in recognition of gallant and distinguished service in Northern Ireland.” In 1973, Irish republicans had accused Corden-Lloyd and his subordinates of brutality against Belfast Catholics during an earlier tour of the Royal Green Jackets in 1971, at the time of Operation Demetrius.
In 1924, James Clark Snr. changes the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old Protestant Ascendancy name Chichester, his wife’s maiden name, from dying out. On his mother’s side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and are the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.
Chichester-Clark marries widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola’s first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey, had been killed in the RAF Nutts Corner air crash in January 1953. She, while pregnant, is seriously injured in the crash and suffers a broken neck. He and his wife have two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Moyra’s son Michael from her previous marriage. Lady Moyola is a cousin of Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, Lord Lieutenant of County Londonderry (1975–2000). Chichester-Clark serves as his Vice Lord-Lieutenant.
Chichester-Clark is an officer in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, part of 24th Infantry Brigade attached to British 1st Infantry Division, and participates briefly in the Anzio landings. He is injured on February 23, 1944, by an 88m shell as he and his Platoon Sergeant take their first look at the ground in the “gullies” to the west of the Anzio–Albano Laziale road. His company is all but wiped out, and he spends most of the war in hospital recovering from injuries, the effects of which stay with him throughout his life.
Following the war, Chichester-Clark’s military career takes him from the dull duties of the post-war occupation of Germany, to Canada as aide-de-camp to Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, then Governor General of Canada. The popularity and competence of his senior officer makes this uneventful two-year period of his life the most remarkable element of his pre-parliamentary career. On returning from Canada, he continues in the Army for several years, refusing promotion to seniority before retiring a major in 1960.
In an uncontested by-election in 1960, Chichester-Clark takes over the South Londonderry seat in the Northern Ireland Parliament that had been held by his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker, since 1933. As Dehra Chichester, she is an MP for the county of Londonderry until 1929 when she stands down for a first time. Chichester-Clark’s father replaces her in 1929 when the county is split, but he suddenly dies in 1933. Dehra, by then remarried, willingly returns to Northern Ireland from England, and wins the ensuing by-election.
Chichester-Clark retains the seat for the remainder of the Parliament’s existence, and so the South Londonderry area is represented by three generations of the same family for the entire period of the Northern Ireland House of Commons. Between 1929 and the last election in 1969, the family is challenged for the seat on only two occasions, the second being in 1969, when future Westminster MP Bernadette Devlin stands, attracting 39% of the vote.
Chichester-Clark makes his maiden speech on February 8, 1961, during the Queen’s speech debate.
For the remainder of Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough‘s premiership, Chichester-Clark remains on the back benches. It is not until 1963, when Terence O’Neill becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, that he is appointed assistant whip, and a month later when William Craig is promoted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, he takes over as Government Chief Whip. Accounts of the period are that he enjoys the Whip’s office more than any other he is to subsequently hold in politics. This despite including references to anti O’Neill MP and future Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Westminster MP, John McQuade, and the occasional “good row.” From the outset, O’Neill takes the unusual decision to allow Chichester-Clark to attend and speak at all cabinet meetings while Chief Whip. Proving a competent parliamentary party administrator, O’Neill adds Leader of the House of Commons to Chichester-Clark’s duties in October 1966, a promotion that makes him a full member of the Cabinet. He is also sworn into the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1966.
In 1967, O’Neill sacks his Minister of Agriculture, Harry West, for ministerial impropriety, and Chichester-Clark is appointed in his place, a position he retains for two quiet years. On April 23, 1969, he resigns from the Cabinet one day prior to a crucial Parliamentary Party meeting, claiming that he disagrees with the Prime Minister’s decision to grant universal suffrage in local government elections at that time. He states that he disagrees not with the principle of one man one vote but with the timing of the decision, having the previous day expressed doubts over the expediency of the measure in Cabinet. It has since been suggested that his resignation was in order to accelerate O’Neill’s own resignation, and to improve his own position in the jostling to succeed him.
O’Neill “finally walked away” five days later on April 28, 1969. In order to beat his only serious rival, Brian Faulkner, Chichester-Clark needs the backing of O’Neill-ite MPs elected at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, to which end he attends a tea party in O’Neill’s honour only days after causing his resignation.
Chichester-Clark beats Faulkner in the 1969 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election by one vote on May 1, 1969, with his predecessor using his casting vote in the tied election for his distant cousin because “Faulkner had been stabbing him in the back for a lot longer.” Although Faulkner believes, until his death, that he is the victim of an upper-class conspiracy to deny him the premiership, he becomes a high profile and loyal member of Chichester-Clark’s cabinet.
Chichester-Clark’s premiership is punctuated by civil unrest that erupts after August 1969. He suffers from the effects of the Hunt Report, which recommends the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary, which his Government accepts to the consternation of many Unionists.
In April 1970, Chichester-Clark’s predecessor and another Unionist MP resign their seats in the Northern Ireland House of Commons. The by-election campaigns are punctuated by major liberal speeches by senior government figures like Brian Faulkner, Jack Andrews and the Prime Minister himself. Ian Paisley‘s Protestant Unionist Party (PUP), however, takes both seats in the House of Commons. Later that same month the O’Neill-ite group, the New Ulster Movement, becomes the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and his party begins passing votes of no confidence in him.
As the civil unrest grows, the British Government, particularly the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, becomes increasingly involved in Northern Ireland’s affairs, forcing Chichester-Clark’s hand on many issues. These include the disbanding of the “B” Specials of the Ulster Special Constabulary and, importantly, the handing over of operational control of the security forces to the British ArmyGeneral Officer Commanding Northern Ireland.
On March 9, 1971, the Provisional Irish Republican Army lures three off-duty soldiers from a pub in Belfast to a lane way outside the city, where they kill them. Chichester-Clark flies to London on March 18, 1971, to request a new security initiative from the new British prime ministerEdward Heath, who offers an extra 1,300 troops, and resists what he sees as an attempt by Chichester-Clark to gain political control over them. Chichester-Clark resigns on March 20.
On March 23, 1971, Brian Faulkner is elected UUP leader in a vote by Unionist MP’s, defeating William Craig by twenty-six votes to four. He is appointed prime minister the same day.
On July 20, 1971, Chichester-Clark is created a life peer as Baron Moyola, of Castledawson in the County of Londonderry, his title taken from the name of his family’s estate. He endorses the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum. He remains quiet about his political career in his retirement. Lady Moyola, however, says that her husband does enjoy the time – contrary to popular opinion – and that he thinks of life as an MP as akin to that of an army welfare officer.
Chichester Clark dies on May 17, 2002, at the age of 79, following a short illness. His funeral takes place at Christ Church in Castledawson on May 21. He is the last surviving Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
McCartney, born in 1971, is a Roman Catholic and lives in the predominantly nationalistShort Strand area of east Belfast, and is said by his family to be a supporter of Sinn Féin. He is the father of two children and is engaged to be married in June 2005 to his longtime girlfriend, Bridgeen Hagans.
McCartney is involved in an altercation in Magennis’ Bar on May Street in Belfast’s city centre on the night of January 30, 2005. He is found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and dies at the hospital the following morning. He is 33 years old.
The fight arises when McCartney is accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to the wife of an IRA member in the social club. When his friend, Brendan Devine, refuses to accept this or apologise, a brawl begins. McCartney, who is attempting to defend Devine, is attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed. Devine also suffers a knife attack, but survives. The throats of both men are cut and McCartney’s wounds include the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine is hospitalised under armed protection.
When Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers arrive at the scene, their efforts to investigate the pub and surrounding area are met with an impromptu riot. Rioting by youths, specifically attacking the police, force them to pull back from the area, which delays initial investigation. Police with riot gear arrive later in the evening and are also attacked. Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin claims, “It appears the PSNI is using last night’s tragic stabbing incident as an excuse to disrupt life within this community, and the scale and approach of their operation is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.” There are suggestions that the rioting is organised by those involved in the murder, so that a cleanup operation can take place in and around where the murder took place. Clothes worn by McCartney’s attackers are burned, CCTV tapes are removed from the bar and destroyed and bar staff are threatened. No ambulance is called. McCartney and Devine are noticed by a police car on routine patrol, who call an ambulance to the scene.
When the police launch the murder investigation they are met with a “wall of silence” None of the estimated seventy or so witnesses to the altercation come forward with information. In conversations with family members, seventy-one potential witnesses claim to have been in the pub’s toilets at the time of the attacks. As the toilet measures just four feet by three feet, this leads to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Sinn Féin suspends twelve members of the party and the IRA expels three members some weeks later.
Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, urges witnesses to come forward to “the family, a solicitor, or any other authoritative or reputable person or body”. He continues, “I want to make it absolutely clear that no one involved acted as a republican or on behalf of republicans.” He suspends twelve members of Sinn Féin. He stops short of asking witnesses to contact the police directly. The usefulness of making witness statements to the victim’s family or to a solicitor is derided by the McCartneys and by a prominent lawyer and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, Alban Maginness, soon afterward.
On February 16, 2005, the IRA issues a statement denying involvement in the murder and calls on the perpetrators to “take responsibility.”
On March 8, 2005, the IRA issues an unprecedented statement saying that four people are directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knows their identity, that two are IRA volunteers, and that the IRA has made an offer to McCartney’s family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.
In May 2005, Sinn Féin loses its council seat in the Pottinger area, which covers the Short Strand, with the McCartney family attributing the loss to events surrounding the murder.
Since this time, the sisters of McCartney have maintained an increasingly public campaign for justice, which sees Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness make a public statement that the sisters should be careful that they are not being manipulated for political ends.
Support for Sinn Féin by some American politicians is diminished. Adams is not invited to the White House in 2005 and Senator Edward Kennedy backs out of a meeting that had been previously scheduled. The McCartney family, previously Sinn Féin supporters, pledge to never support the party again, and a cousin of the sisters who raised funds for Sinn Féin in the United States insist that she will not be doing so in the future.
On May 5, 2005, Terence Davison and James McCormick are remanded in custody, charged with murdering McCartney and attempting to murder Devine respectively. McCormick is originally from England. They are held in the republican wing of HM Prison Maghaberry. Roughly four months later the accused are released on bail, and in June 2006, the attempted murder charge against McCormick is dropped, leaving a charge of causing an affray. On June 27, 2008, Terence Davison is found not guilty of committing the murder. Two other men charged with affray are also cleared.
In November 2005, the McCartney sisters and Bridgeen Hagans, the former partner of McCartney, refuse to accept the Outstanding Achievement award at the Women of the Year Lunch, because it would mean their sharing a platform with Margaret Thatcher, whom they dislike.
In December 2005, the McCartney sisters meet with UK Prime MinisterTony Blair, and tell him they believe the murder had been ordered by a senior IRA member, and that Sinn Féin was still not doing all it could to help them.
On January 31, 2007, two years after the murder, and in line with the party’s new policy of supporting civil policing, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says that anyone with information about the murder should go to the police.
On May 5, 2015, an IRA man believed to have been involved in the death of McCartney, Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison, is shot dead. Early in the investigation the police rule out either a sectarian attack or the involvement of dissident republicans.
The McCartney family has lived in the Short Strand area of Belfast for five generations. However, some local people in the Short Strand area, which is a largely nationalist area, does not welcome their dispute with the IRA. A campaign of intimidation by republicans drives members of the family and McCartney’s former fiancée to relocate and also causes one member to close her business in the city centre. The last McCartney sister to leave the area, Paula, departs Short Strand on October 26, 2005.
The family remain in contact with the family of Joseph Rafferty of Dublin, who dies under similar circumstances on April 12, 2005.
Charles Harding Smith, a Northern Irish loyalist and the first effective leader of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on January 24, 1931. An important figure in the Belfast-based “defence associations” that form the basis of the UDA on its formation in 1971, he later becomes embroiled in feuds with other UDA leaders and is eventually driven out of Northern Ireland by his opponents.
A former soldier in the British Army, Smith, at the time residing in Rosebank Street on the Shankill Road, calls a meeting of other locals at the Leopold Street Pigeon Fanciers Club to develop a response to attacks by republicans from the neighboring Ardoyne area. The location is chosen because Smith is himself a pigeon fancier and a member of the club. At the meeting, it is agreed to establish a vigilante group, the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA), with Smith in command and assisted by Davy Fogel, who organises military drilling for the forty or so recruits, and Ernie Elliott.
The WDA gains widespread notoriety and is blamed for a series of bomb attacks and shootings, most of which have been carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Nevertheless, Smith’s reputation as a hardline loyalist is boosted as a result and when his group merges with other similar vigilante movements to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in late 1971, he is chosen as chairman of the new group’s thirteen-member Security Council ahead of the other leading candidates, Tommy Herron and Jim Anderson. According to journalist Martin Dillon, Smith is heavily influenced by William Craig and William McGrath, both of whom see a need for a group to replace the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) and feel that they can easily influence Smith to their way of thinking.
Smith soon takes charge of procuring arms for the UDA. In early 1972, working in tandem with Belfast businessman John Campbell who agrees to bankroll the purchases, he is put in contact with a Scottish arms dealer from whom he is to purchase £50,000 worth of weapons. He sends three WDA associates, John White, Bobby Dalzell, and Robert Lusty (who is also a serving officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)), to meet the arms dealer in a London hotel, following them without attending the actual meeting. The “arms dealer” is actually an RUC Special Branch agent and, after recording the conversation with the WDA men, arrests all three. Smith goes to Scotland Yard the same day to inquire about his friends only to be arrested himself.
Smith remains in custody in England until December 1972 when his case comes to trial. Campbell claims that the deal had been organised for the RUC to entrap the arms dealer, whom they believe to be a Provisional Irish Republican Army member and a series of mistakes by the prosecution helps to ensure that the case collapses with Smith acquitted. The trial is used as part of early arguments regarding collusion between the RUC and loyalists as a list of RUC Special Branch suspects is uncovered in Smith’s house while he attempts to call Chief ConstableGraham Shillington as a character witness.
By the time Smith returns to Belfast in December 1972 there has been changes in the UDA with Tommy Herron in effective control of the organisation and Davy Fogel the dominant figure amongst the WDA. He immediately takes back control of his west Belfast stronghold, threatening Fogel with death if he does not fall into line. Fogel, a close ally of Ernie Elliott, who was killed in circumstances that Smith had been rumoured to be involved in, although it is later determined that Elliott was shot dead after a drunken brawl on Sandy Row had descended into a gunfight, decides it is best not to go up against Smith and stands down.
However, Smith is not satisfied and, after putting out intelligence that Fogel has been taking UDA funds for himself, arrests Fogel and holds him captive for three hours in a Shankill social club where he is told to leave the area. Fogel briefly leaves for east Belfast but when the UDA there makes it clear he is not welcome either he leaves to live in England, from where he controversially gives an interview about his time in the UDA to The Sunday Times. Among claims made by Fogel in this interview is one that Smith was attempting to take control of the UDA with the help of the UVF. Smith is a strong admirer of the UVF’s military structure and hopes to replicate it in the UDA but he has a deep dislike of UVF leader Gusty Spence. As part of his remit to instill military discipline, Smith moves against a culture of racketeering that has become endemic in the west Belfast UDA during his absence. It is this initiative that leads to the rumours concerning his involvement in the death of Elliott, who had been named by some of his rivals in the UDA as a gangster.
Despite Smith’s show of strength following his return to Belfast his public persona remains low-key, with Herron fast emerging as the public face of the UDA. Much of this is down to the fact that Smith is inarticulate and unable to project a good image, unlike Herron who is a good talker and fairly charismatic. The emergence of these two leaders at the same time however is to bring the fledgling movement into near civil war.
Following a period of marginalisation Jim Anderson, who is serving as caretaker leader of the UDA, resigns as chairman of the UDA and as a result a meeting is called of the group’s leaders in March 1973 to determine who will succeed him. By this time Smith and Herron are recognised as the undisputed leaders of the Belfast UDA. There is a fear that whichever of the two is chosen as chairman, the other one will automatically feel obliged to challenge his leadership. As a result, it is determined that someone else should be appointed chairman as a compromise candidate and as Highfield-based activist Andy Tyrie, a man noted for his skill as an organiser, is chairing the conference it is decided that he will be acceptable to both men as chairman of the UDA. Tyrie soon proves to be a powerful rival to the two leaders. In September 1973, Herron is kidnapped and shot dead. His murder remains unsolved.
Tyrie had not proven to be the puppet Smith had hoped and had consolidated his power through his close involvement with Glenn Barr and the Ulster Workers’ Council during the strike of May 1974, an event that had helped to give real credence to Tyrie’s leadership abilities. Fearing the growing power of Tyrie, Smith criticises the UDA leader for sending a delegation to Libya to meet Muammar Gaddafi, who is a hated figure for many loyalists due to his providing arms to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Smith, who had known about the trip in advance but had raised no objections, verbally attacks Tyrie over the Libya debacle in a meeting of the Inner Council in December 1974 before declaring the following January that he intends to split his West Belfast Brigade from the rest of the UDA.
Two weeks after announcing the schism, Smith is attending a meeting at the West Belfast UDA’s headquarters with Tommy Lyttle when he notices a sniper on a nearby roof. Smith, who is wearing a bulletproof vest, opens his coat as if to challenge the sniper to fire but is seriously wounded when the sniper shoots twice, hitting him both times with armour-piercing bullets. With Smith in hospital, Tyrie calls a meeting of the leading figures in the Shankill UDA and manages to convince Lyttle and other leading figures that Smith is too divisive a figure to remain in charge.
Smith is out of the hospital after only two weeks and declares himself back in charge, but before long he has fallen foul of a number of important people. Two Shankill UDA members are interned on the basis of evidence that rumours suggest had come from Smith, while he also clashed with the local UVF after suggesting that they merge but only on the basis that he will be in control. He begins to make threats against Barr and Chicken, two popular members who are leading figures on the UDA’s political side. Smith calls a meeting of his commanders, but, on February 6, 1975, in an attack arranged in advance by his opponents within the UDA, a gunman bursts in and shoots him twice in the chest. The gunman walks up to the injured Smith and prepares to shoot him in the head but the gun jams and he again survives an attempt on his life.
Smith spends another week in hospital after which he again returns to his Belfast home. Loyalist Davy Payne is sent to his house with another hitman and the two order Smith to leave Northern Ireland. He is taken to the airport the following day and leaves for England, leaving Tyrie as sole leader of the UDA. He settles in Southowram, West Yorkshire, where he works as a lorry driver before his death in 1997. During Dáil Éireann debates in 2005 he is named as a “self-confessed British intelligence agent.”
The Kingsmill massacre, also referred to as the Whitecross massacre, is a mass shooting that takes place on January 5, 1976, near the village of Whitecross in south County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Gunmen stop a minibus carrying eleven Protestant workmen, line them up alongside it and shoot them. Only one victim survives, despite having been shot 18 times. A Catholic man on the minibus is allowed to go free. A group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force claims responsibility. It says the shooting is retaliation for a string of attacks on Catholic civilians in the area by Loyalists, particularly the killing of six Catholics the night before. The Kingsmill massacre is the climax of a string of tit for tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s, and is one of the deadliest mass shootings of the Troubles.
On January 5, 1976, just after 5:30 p.m., a red Ford Transit minibus is carrying sixteen textile workers home from their workplace in Glenanne. Five are Catholics and eleven are Protestants. Four of the Catholics get out at Whitecross and the bus continues along the rural road to Bessbrook. As the bus clears the rise of a hill, it is stopped by a man in combat uniform standing on the road and flashing a torch. The workers assume they are being stopped and searched by the British Army. As the bus stops, eleven gunmen in combat uniform and with blackened faces emerge from the hedges. A man “with a pronounced English accent” begins talking. He orders the workers to get out of the bus and to line up facing it with their hands on the roof. He then asks, “Who is the Catholic?” The only Catholic is Richard Hughes. His workmates, now fearing that the gunmen are loyalists who have come to kill him, try to stop him from identifying himself. However, when Hughes steps forward the gunman tell him to “get down the road and don’t look back.”
The lead gunman then says, “Right,” and the others immediately open fire on the workers. The eleven men are shot at very close range with automatic rifles, which includes Armalites, an M1 carbine and an M1 Garand. A total of 136 rounds are fired in less than a minute. The men are shot at waist height and fall to the ground, some falling on top of each other, either dead or wounded. When the initial burst of gunfire stops, the gunmen reload their weapons. The order is given to “Finish them off,” and another burst of gunfire is fired into the heaped bodies of the workmen. One of the gunmen also walks among the dying men and shoots them each in the head with a pistol as they lay on the ground. Ten of them die at the scene: John Bryans (46), Robert Chambers (19), Reginald Chapman (25), Walter Chapman (23), Robert Freeburn (50), Joseph Lemmon (46), John McConville (20), James McWhirter (58), Robert Walker (46) and Kenneth Worton (24). Alan Black (32) is the only one who survives. He had been shot eighteen times and one of the bullets had grazed his head. He says, “I didn’t even flinch because I knew if I moved there would be another one.”
After carrying out the shooting, the gunmen calmly walk away. Shortly after, a married couple comes upon the scene of the killings and begin praying beside the victims. They find the badly wounded Alan Black lying in a ditch. When an ambulance arrives, Black is taken to a hospital in Newry, where he is operated on and survives. The Catholic worker, Richard Hughes, manages to stop a car and is driven to Bessbrook Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station, where he raises the alarm. One of the first police officers on the scene is Billy McCaughey, who had taken part in the Reavey killings. He says, “When we arrived it was utter carnage. Men were lying two or three together. Blood was flowing, mixed with water from the rain.” Some of the Reavey family also come upon the scene of the Kingsmill massacre while driving to hospital to collect the bodies of their relatives. Johnston Chapman, the uncle of victims Reginald and Walter Chapman, says the dead workmen were “just lying there like dogs, blood everywhere”. At least two of the victims are so badly mutilated by gunfire that immediate relatives are prevented from identifying them. One relative says the hospital mortuary “was like a butcher’s shop with bodies lying on the floor like slabs of meat.”
Nine of the dead are from the village of Bessbrook, while the bus driver, Robert Walker, is from Mountnorris. Four of the men are members of the Orange Order and two are former members of the security forces: Kenneth Worton is a former Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier while Joseph Lemmon is a former Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) officer. Alan Black is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours, for his cross-community work since the massacre.
The next day, a telephone caller claims responsibility for the attack on behalf of the “South Armagh Republican Action Force” or “South Armagh Reaction Force.” He says that it was retaliation for the Reavey–O’Dowd killings the night before, and that there will be “no further action on our part” if loyalists stop their attacks. He adds that the group has no connection with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA denies responsibility for the killings as it is on a ceasefire at the time.
However, a 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) concludes that Provisional IRA members were responsible and that the event was planned before the Reavey and O’Dowd killings which had taken place the previous day, and that “South Armagh Republican Action Force” was a cover name. Responding to the report, Sinn Féin spokesman Mitchel McLaughlin says that he does “not dispute the sectarian nature of the killings” but continues to believe “the denials by the IRA that they were involved”. Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Assemblyman Dominic Bradley calls on Sinn Féin to “publicly accept that the HET’s forensic evidence on the firearms used puts Provisional responsibility beyond question” and to stop “deny[ing] that the Provisional IRA was in the business of organising sectarian killings on a large scale.”
The massacre is condemned by the British and Irish governments, the main political parties and Catholic and Protestant church leaders. Merlyn Rees, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, condemns the massacre and forecasts that the violence will escalate, saying “This is the way it will go on unless someone in their right senses stops it, it will go on.”
The British government immediately declares County Armagh a “Special Emergency Area” and deploys hundreds of extra troops and police in the area. A battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) is called out and the Spearhead Battalion is sent into the area. Two days after the massacre, the British Prime MinisterHarold Wilson announces that the Special Air Service (SAS) is being sent into South Armagh. This is the first time that SAS operations in Northern Ireland are officially acknowledged. It is believed that some SAS personnel had already been in Northern Ireland for a few years. Units and personnel under SAS control are alleged to be involved in loyalist attacks.
The Kingsmill massacre is the last in the series of sectarian killings in South Armagh during the mid-1970s. According to Willie Frazer of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), this is a result of a deal between the local UVF and IRA groups.
(Pictured: The minibus carrying the textile factory workers is left peppered with bullet holes and blood stains the ground after the massacre, as detectives patrol the scene of the murders)
Since the Troubles began, the South Armagh area—especially around Crossmaglen and other similar republican strongholds—is one of the most dangerous places for the British security forces, and the IRA’s South Armagh brigade carries out numerous ambushes on the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). This includes the 1975 Drummuckavall ambush and the 1978 downing of a British Army Gazelle helicopter which leads to the death of one British soldier and four others being seriously injured.
A number of British security force members are killed in Crossmaglen during 1978. On March 4, British soldier Nicholas Smith (20), 7 Platoon, B Company, 2nd Royal Green Jackets, is killed by an IRA booby trap bomb while attempting to remove an Irish flag from a telegraph pole in Crossmaglen. On June 17, William Turbitt (42) and Hugh McConnell (32), both Protestant RUC officers, are shot by the IRA while on mobile patrol near Crossmaglen. McConnell is killed at the scene, but Turbitt is kidnapped. The next day, a Catholic priest, Fr. Hugh Murphy, is kidnapped in retaliation but later released after appeals from Protestant clergy. The body of Turbitt is found on July 10, 1978.
On December 21, 1978, when the patrol is near Rio’s Bar coming around a bend, a red Royal Mail-type van is spotted by the patrols commander Sergeant Richard Garmory. The van is fitted with armor plating and is facing away from the patrol. Garmory believes the van is in a suspicious place on the other side of the street. He notes what appear to be boxes in the back of the van, which actually provide cover for the IRA Volunteers. IRA members open fire from the back of the van with an M60 machine gun which is fitted down onto the floor in the back of the van. Three other IRA volunteers armed with AR-15-style rifles and another Volunteer with an AK-47 open up on the patrol. The British soldiers on patrol return fire but do not claim any hits. A handful of Christmas shoppers scramble for cover. Three soldiers at the front of the patrol are fatally wounded. They are treated by staff at a nearby health center and then taken to Musgrave Park Hospital but are declared dead on arrival. The soldiers killed are Graham Duggan (22), Kevin Johnson (20) and Glen Ling (18). All are members of the British Armies Grenadier Guards regiment. The patrol commander, Richard Garmory, says of the ambush:
On coming round the bend near the Rio Bar, I saw 40 yards away what looked like a British Rail parcel delivery van parked partly on the pavement on the left facing away from us. It had an 18-inch tailboard with a roll shutter that could be pulled down. The van immediately struck me as highly suspicious because I saw what looked like cardboard boxes piled to the top in the back, all flush with the tailboard so they would fall out if the van moved off fast. I instantaneously put my magnifying sight to my to my eye and saw four firing slits, two above the other two, among the boxes. I immediately opened fire.
Four months later the South Armagh brigade strikes again at British security forces, this time near Bessbrook which is several miles from Crossmaglen. Four RUC officers are killed in the 1979 Bessbrook bombing, when a 1,000 lb. land mine is detonated when the RUC patrol is passing by the bomb, killing all the officers outright.
(Pictured: South Armagh Brigade, Provisional Irish Republican Army, manning a temporary checkpoint close to Crossmaglen, 1978)
The attacks are linked to the Glenanne gang, a group of loyalist militants who are either members of the UVF, the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the closely linked UVF paramilitary the Red Hand Commando (RHC). Some of the Glenanne gang are members of two of these organisations at the same time, such as gang leaders Billy Hanna, who is in both the UVF and the UDR and who fights for the British Army during the Korean War, and John Weir from County Monaghan, who is in the UVF and is a sergeant in the RUC. At least 25 UDR men and police officers are named as members of the gang. The Red Hand Commando claim to have carried out both attacks.
The attacks are planned at the Glenanne farm of RUC reserve officer James Mitchell which is where most terrorist acts are planned by the gang and the farm also acts as a UVF arms dump and bomb-making site. After the attacks are finished everyone involved in both attacks is to meet at Mitchell’s farm. Then if there is any heat, Mitchell can claim the bombers and shooters were with him when the attacks happened.
The first phase of the plan starts at around 6:15 p.m. along Crowe Street in Dundalk when a 100-pound no-warning bomb explodes in a Ford sports car just outside Kay’s Tavern. The blast kills Hugh Watters, who is a tailor and has just dropped into the pub to deliver some clothes he has altered for the pub’s owner, almost instantly. Jack Rooney, who is walking past the town hall on the opposite side of the street, is struck in the head by flying shrapnel and dies three days later. A further 20 people are injured in the explosion, several of them very seriously. The car bomb is fitted with fake southern registration plates and placed in one of the busiest streets in Dundalk in the hope of causing maximum death and injury. According to Joe Tiernan, UVF commander Robin Jackson plants the bomb and along with other members of his unit escapes across the border in a blue Hillman Hunter around the time the bomb goes off.
At around 9:00 p.m., about three hours after the Dundalk bombing, the second phase of the coordinated plan begins. It is led by McConnell and takes place at Donnelly’s Bar & Filling Station in the small Armagh village Silverbridge, close to Crossmaglen.
The unit arrives in two cars and come unusually fast toward the pub. The publican’s son, Michael Donnelly (14), is serving petrol to a customer. He notices the strange speed of the cars. He tries to run toward the pub, but McConnell jumps out of one of the cars and shoots the teenage boy dead with a Sten gun. McConnell then shoots the man Michael Donnelly had been serving petrol to in the head. Although the man survives the shooting, he is maimed for life.
Then a second gunman, believed to be Billy McCaughey, a UVF volunteer and member of the RUC Special Patrol Group, shoots dead a second person, local man Patrick Donnelly (no relation to the pub owner’s family) who has been waiting for petrol. McConnell then goes inside the pub and sprays the bar with his Sten SMG, killing a third man, Trevor Bracknell, and seriously injuring three more people.
As McConnell withdraws to his car, two other members of the unit carry a 25-pound cylinder bomb inside the pub. As McConnell’s unit flees back to Mitchell’s farm, the bomb detonates inside the pub. However, by this time most of the people have already fled.
(Pictured: Photograph of the destruction at Kay’s Tavern after the loyalist car bomb explosion on December 19, 1975. Members of the Garda and Dundalk fire service are seen in the foreground. Also present are a number of visiting government ministers from Dublin.)
Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA has carried out many improvised land mine and roadside bomb attacks on British forces in the region. In September 1972, three British soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is blown up by an IRA land mine at Sanaghanroe, near Dungannon. In March 1974, two IRA members are killed on the Aughnacloy Road near Dungannon when a land mine they are planting explodes prematurely.
The Dungannon attack occurs just months after the Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, where the IRA kills eighteen British soldiers with roadside bombs in south County Down — the deadliest single attack on British forces during The Troubles.
On December 16, 1979, two armoured British Army Land Rovers are driving along Ballygawley Road, about two miles outside Dungannon. A unit of the IRA had planted a 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) improvised land mine in a culvert under the road at Glenadush. When the second vehicle reaches the culvert, the land mine is detonated by remote control from a concealed location, showcasing their evolving tactics in guerrilla warfare and ambush strategy. The blast is powerful enough to launch the armoured Land Rover into the air and killing four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Artillery outright: William Beck (23), Keith Richards (22), Simon Evans (19), and Allan Ayrton (23).
seamus dubhghaill 