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Tag Archives: Provisional Irish Republican Army


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Death of Hunger Striker Frank Stagg

frank-stagg

Frank Stagg, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker from County Mayo, dies on February 12, 1976, in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire, England after 62 days on hunger strike.

Stagg is the seventh child in a family of thirteen children. He is born on October 4, 1942, in Hollymount, County Mayo. His brother, Emmet Stagg, is a Labour Party politician, formerly a Teachta Dála (TD) for Kildare North.

Stagg is educated to primary level at Newbrook Primary School and at CBS Ballinrobe to secondary level. After finishing his schooling, he works as an assistant gamekeeper with his uncle prior to emigrating to England in search of work.

Once in England he gains employment as a bus conductor in north London and later becomes a bus driver. Whilst in England he meets and marries fellow Mayo native, Bridie Armstrong from Carnacon. In 1972, he joins the Luton cumann of Sinn Féin and soon after becomes a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

In April 1973, Stagg is arrested with six others alleged to comprise an IRA unit planning bombing attacks in Coventry. He is tried at Birmingham Crown Court. The jury finds three of the seven not guilty. The remaining four are all found guilty of criminal damage and conspiracy to commit arson. Stagg and English-born priest, Father Patrick Fell, are found to be the unit’s commanding officers. Stagg is given a ten-year sentence and Fell twelve years. Thomas Gerald Rush is given seven years and Anthony Roland Lynch, who is also found guilty of possessing articles with intent to destroy property, namely nitric acid, balloons, wax, and sodium chlorate, is given ten years.

Stagg is initially sent to the top security Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight. In March 1974, having been moved to Parkhurst Prison, he and fellow Mayo man Michael Gaughan join a hunger strike begun by the sisters Marion Price and Dolours Price, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly.

Following the hunger strike that results in the death of Michael Gaughan, the Price sisters, Feeney, and Kelly are granted repatriation to Ireland. Stagg is denied repatriation and is transferred to Long Lartin Prison. During his time there he is subject to solitary confinement for refusing to do prison work and is also subjected, along with his wife and sisters during visits, to humiliating body searches. In protest against this he begins a second hunger strike that lasts for thirty-four days. This ends when the prison governor agrees to an end to the strip-searches on Stagg and his visitors. Stagg is bed-ridden for the rest of his incarceration in Long Lartin, due to a kidney complaint.

In 1975 Stagg is transferred to Wakefield Prison, where it is demanded that he again do prison work. He refuses and is placed in solitary confinement. On December 14, 1975, Stagg embarks on a hunger strike in Wakefield, along with a number of other republican prisoners, after being refused repatriation to Ireland during the IRA/British truce. Stagg’s demands are an end to solitary confinement, no prison work, and repatriation to prison in Ireland. The British government refuses to meet any of these demands. Stagg dies on February 12, 1976, after 62 days on hunger strike.

Frank Stagg’s burial causes considerable controversy in Ireland, with republicans and two of his brothers seeking to have Stagg buried in the republican plot in Ballina in accordance with his wishes, while his widow, his brother, Emmet Stagg, and the Irish government wish to have him buried in the family plot in the same cemetery and to avoid republican involvement in the funeral. As the republicans wait at Dublin Airport for the body, the Irish government orders the flight to be diverted to Shannon Airport.

His body is taken to Ballina and buried near the family plot. In order to prevent the body being disinterred and reburied by republicans, the grave is covered with concrete. In November 1976, a group of republicans tunnel under the concrete to recover the coffin under cover of darkness and rebury it in the republican plot.


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The M62 Coach Bombing

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The M62 coach bombing occurs on February 4, 1974, on the M62 motorway in Northern England, when a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes in a coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members. Twelve people, nine soldiers and three civilians, are killed by the bomb, which consists of 25 pounds of high explosive hidden in a luggage locker on the coach.

The coach has been specially commissioned to carry British Army and Royal Air Force personnel on leave with their families from and to the bases at Catterick and Darlington during a period of railway strike action. The vehicle departs from Manchester and is making good progress along the motorway. Shortly after midnight, when the bus is between junction 26 and 27, near Oakwell Hall, there is a large explosion on board. Most of those aboard are sleeping at the time. The blast, which can be heard several miles away, reduces the coach to a “tangle of twisted metal” and throws body parts up to 250 yards.

The explosion kills eleven people outright and wounds over fifty others, one of whom dies four days later. Amongst the dead are nine soldiers – two from the Royal Artillery, three from the Royal Corps of Signals, and four from the 2nd battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. One of the latter is Corporal Clifford Haughton, whose entire family, consisting of his wife Linda and his sons Lee (5) and Robert (2), also die. Numerous others suffer severe injuries, including a six-year-old boy, who is badly burned.

The driver of the coach, Roland Handley, is injured by flying glass, but is hailed as a hero for bringing the coach safely to a halt. Handley dies at the age of 76 after a short illness in January 2011.

Suspicions immediately fall upon the IRA, which is in the midst of an armed campaign in Britain involving numerous operations, later including the Guildford pub bombing and the Birmingham pub bombings.

Reactions in Britain are furious, with senior politicians from all parties calling for immediate action against the perpetrators and the IRA in general. The British media are equally condemnatory. According to The Guardian, it is “the worst IRA outrage on the British mainland” at that time, whilst the BBC describes it as “one of the IRA’s worst mainland terror attacks.” The Irish newspaper The Sunday Business Post later describes it as the “worst” of the “awful atrocities perpetrated by the IRA” during this period.

IRA Army Council member Dáithí Ó Conaill is challenged over the bombing and the death of civilians during an interview and replies that the coach had been bombed because IRA intelligence indicated that it was carrying military personnel only.

Following the explosion, the British public and politicians from all three major parties call for “swift justice.” The ensuing police investigation led by Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldfield is rushed, careless, and ultimately forged, resulting in the arrest of the mentally ill Judith Ward who claims to have conducted a string of bombings in Britain in 1973 and 1974 and to have married and had a baby with two separate IRA members. Despite her retraction of these claims, the lack of any corroborating evidence against her, and serious gaps in her testimony – which is frequently rambling, incoherent, and “improbable” – she is wrongfully convicted in November 1974.

The case against Ward is almost completely based on inaccurate scientific evidence using the Griess test and deliberate manipulation of her confession by some members of the investigating team. The case is similar to those of the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, and the Maguire Seven, which occur at the same time and involve similar forged confessions and inaccurate scientific analysis. Ward is finally released in 1992, when three Appeal Court judges hold unanimously that her conviction was “a grave miscarriage of justice,” and that it had been “secured by ambush.”


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Death of IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding

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Cathal Goulding, former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA, dies in Dublin on December 26, 1998.

Goulding is born on January 2, 1923, one of seven children born on East Arran Street, north Dublin to an Irish republican family. As a teenager Goulding joins Fianna Éireann, the youth wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He joins the IRA in 1939. In December of that year, he takes part in a raid on Irish Army ammunition stores in Phoenix Park, Dublin. In November 1941 he is gaoled for a year in Mountjoy Prison for membership in an unlawful organisation and possession of IRA documents. Upon his release in 1942, he is immediately interned at the Curragh Camp, where he remains until 1944.

In 1945, he is involved in the attempts to re-establish the IRA which has been badly affected by the authorities in both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. He is among twenty-five to thirty men who meet at O’Neill’s Pub, Pearse Street, to try to re-establish the IRA in Dublin. He organises the first national meeting of IRA activists after the World War II in Dublin in 1946 and is arrested along with John Joe McGirl and ten others and sentenced to twelve months in prison when the gathering is raided by the Garda Síochána.

Upon his release in 1947, Goulding organises IRA training camps in the Wicklow Mountains and takes charge of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade in 1951. In 1953, Goulding, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin and Manus Canning, is involved in an arms raid on the Officers Training Corps armoury at Felsted School, Essex. The three are arrested and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, but are released in 1959 after serving only six years at Pentonville, Wakefield, and Stafford prisons. During his time in Wakefield prison, he befriends EOKA members and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born spy who has passed information about the U.S. nuclear programme to the Soviet Union, and becomes interested in the Russian Revolution.

In 1959, Goulding is appointed IRA Quartermaster General and in 1962 he succeeds Ruairí Ó Brádaigh as IRA Chief of Staff. In February 1966, together with Sean Garland, he is arrested for possession of a revolver and ammunition. In total, Goulding spends sixteen years of his life in British and Irish jails.

Goulding is instrumental in moving the IRA to the left in the 1960s. He argues against the policy of abstentionism and develops a Marxist analysis of Irish politics. He believes the British state deliberately divides the Irish working class on sectarian grounds to exploit them and keep them from uniting and overthrowing their bourgeois oppressors. This analysis is rejected by those who later go on to form the Provisional IRA after the 1969 IRA split.

Goulding remains chief of staff of what becomes known as the Official IRA until 1972. Although the Official IRA, like the Provisional IRA, carries out an armed campaign, Goulding argues that such action ultimately divides the Irish working class. After public revulsion regarding the shooting death of William Best, a Catholic from Derry who is also a British soldier, and the bombing of the Aldershot barracks, the Official IRA announces a ceasefire in 1972.

Goulding is prominent in the various stages of Official Sinn Féin‘s development into the Workers’ Party. He is also involved in the anti-amendment campaign in opposition to the introduction of a constitutional ban on abortion along with his partner, Dr. Moira Woods. However, in 1992, he objects to the political reforms proposed by party leader Proinsias De Rossa and remains in the Workers’ Party after the formation of Democratic Left. He regards the Democratic Left as having compromised socialism in the pursuit of political office.

In his later years, Goulding spends much of his time at his cottage in Raheenleigh near Myshall, County Carlow. He dies of cancer in his native Dublin and is survived by three sons and a daughter. He is cremated and his ashes scattered, at his directive, at the site known as “the Nine Stones” on the slopes of Mount Leinster.


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The Remembrance Day Bombing

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The Remembrance Day bombing, also known as the Enniskillen bombing or Poppy Day massacre, takes place on November 8, 1987, in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes near the town’s war memorial during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony, which is being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people, many of them old age pensioners, are killed and 63 are injured.

The bomb explodes as a parade of Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers is making its way to the memorial and as people wait for the ceremony to begin. It blows out the wall of the Reading Rooms, where many of the victims are standing, burying them under rubble and hurling masonry towards the gathered crowd. Bystanders rush to free those trapped in the rubble.

Eleven people, all Protestant, are killed by the Provisional IRA that day, including three married couples. The dead are Wesley and Bertha Armstrong, Kitchener and Jessie Johnston, William and Agnes Mullan, John Megaw, Georgina Quinton, Marie Wilson, Samuel Gault, and Edward Armstrong. Armstrong is a serving Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer and Gault has recently left the force. Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie dies in the blast and who is himself injured, goes on to become a peace campaigner and member of Seanad Éireann. The twelfth fatality, Ronnie Hill, dies after spending 13 years in a coma. Sixty-three people are injured, including thirteen children. Ulster Unionist politicians Sam Foster and Jim Dixon are among the crowd. Dixon receives extensive head injuries but recovers. A local businessman captures the immediate aftermath of the bombing on video camera. His footage, showing the effects of the bombing, is broadcast on international television.

A few hours after the blast, the IRA calls a radio station and says it has abandoned a 150-pound bomb in Tullyhommon, twenty miles away, after it failed to detonate. That morning, a Remembrance Sunday parade, which includes many members of the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, has unwittingly gathered near the Tullyhommon bomb. Soldiers and RUC officers were also there, and the IRA says it attempted to trigger the bomb when soldiers were standing beside it. The bomb is defused by security forces and is found to have a command wire leading to a “firing point” across the border.

The IRA apologises, saying it had made a mistake and that the target had been the UDR soldiers who were parading to the memorial. The bombing leads to an outcry among politicians in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says, “It’s really desecrating the dead and a blot on mankind.” The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Tom King, denounces the “outrage” in the House of Commons, as does the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan, in Dáil Éireann. Seanad Éireann Senator Maurice Manning speaks of people’s “total revulsion.” It also facilitates the passing of the Extradition Act, which makes it easier to extradite IRA suspects from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom.

The bombing is seen by many Northern Irish Protestants as an attack on them, and loyalist paramilitaries ″retaliate″ with attacks on Catholic civilians. The day after the bombing, five Catholic teenagers are wounded in a shooting in Belfast, and a Protestant teenager is killed by the Ulster Defence Association after being mistaken for a Catholic. In the week after the bombing, there are fourteen gun and bomb attacks on Catholics in Belfast.

The Remembrance Day bombing has been described as a turning point in the Troubles and an incident that shook the IRA “to its core.”


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The Deal Barracks Bombing

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The Deal barracks bombing, an attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the Royal Marines School of Music building at the Royal Marine Depot in Deal, England, takes place on September 22, 1989. The building collapses, killing eleven marines from the Royal Marines Band Service and wounds 21 others.

Throughout the 1980s, the IRA has been waging a paramilitary campaign against targets in Britain and Northern Ireland with the stated aim of achieving the separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom. These operations have included an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 and a similar attack on a military band in London in 1982.

At 8:22 AM on September 22, 1989, a 15 lb. time bomb detonates in the recreational centre changing room at the Royal Marines School of Music. The blast destroys the recreational centre, levels the three-story accommodation building next to it, and causes extensive damage to the rest of the base and nearby civilian homes. The blast is heard several kilometres away, shaking windows in the centre of Deal, and creating a large pall of smoke over the town. Most of the personnel who use the building as a barracks have already risen and are practising marching on the parade ground when the blast occurs. These marines witness the buildings collapse and many of the personnel are in a state of shock for days afterwards.

Some marines remain behind in the building and thus receive the full force of the explosion. Many are trapped in the rubble for hours and military heavy lifting equipment is needed to clear much of it. Kent Ambulance Service voluntarily agrees to end its industrial strike action to aid those wounded by the blast. Ten marines die at the scene with most trapped in the collapsed building, although one body is later found on the roof of a nearby house. Another 21 are seriously injured and receive treatment at hospitals in Dover, Deal, and Canterbury. One of these men, 21-year-old Christopher Nolan, dies of his wounds on October 18, 1989. Three of those killed are buried nearby at the Hamilton Road Cemetery in Deal.

The IRA claims responsibility for the bombing, saying it is a continuation of their campaign to rid Northern Ireland of all British troops who have been deployed there since 1969. Many British people are shocked at the attack, carried out on a ceremonial military band whose only military training is geared towards saving lives.

The British Government also condemns the IRA’s attack. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher makes a statement from Moscow, where she is on an official visit, saying that she is “shocked and extremely sad.” Leader of the Official Opposition, Neil Kinnock, describes the attack as an “awful atrocity” and says, “Even the people who say they support what the IRA calls its cause must be sickened by the way in which such death and injury is mercilessly inflicted.”

One week after the bombing, the staff and students at the School of Music march through the town of Deal, watched and applauded by thousands of spectators. They maintain gaps in their ranks to mark the positions of those unable to march through death or serious injury.


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Birth of Hunger Striker Edward Martin Hurson

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Edward Martin Hurson, Irish republican hunger striker and a volunteer in the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born in Cappagh, County Tyrone, on September 13, 1956.

Hurson is one of nine children born to Johnnie and Mary Ann Hurson. Both of his parents come from the Cappagh district, and every member of the family is born into the white-washed farmhouse perched precipitously on top of the thirty hilly acres of rough land. Martin is close to the land as he grows up. He is educated to a primary level at Crosscavanagh Primary School in Galbally and at secondary level in St. Patrick’s, Galbally. When he is not at school, he is more often than not helping out about the farm, driving a tractor, helping to rear “croppy pigs,” or looking after cattle.

After leaving school, he works as an apprentice fitter welder for a while before going to Manchester, England where he stays for eighteen months with his brother Francis and works in the building trade. Returning to County Tyrone around Christmas of 1974, both he and his brother spend time in Bundoran, County Donegal, a known IRA training and supply centre.

Hurson, together with Kevin O’Brien, Dermot Boyle, Peter Kane, and Pat O’Neill are arrested and taken to the Omagh Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks on November 11, 1976. He is beaten about the head, back, and testicles, spread-eagled against a wall and across a table, slapped, punched, and kicked. Under torture Martin signs statements admitting involvement in republican activity. On Saturday night, November 13, Martin is charged with a landmine explosion at Galbally in November 1975.

This charge is later dropped, but he is then further charged with IRA membership and explosive offences. Hurson spends a year on remand before being convicted in November 1977 and sentenced to 20 years for possession of landmines and conspiracy. He appeals his conviction on the grounds that the judge had ignored medical evidence about his ill-treatment.

The appeal is dismissed but he is granted a retrial. At the four-day trial in September 1979, the Omagh statements are ruled inadmissible, but instead of Martin walking free the judge goes on to accept the admissibility of the Cookstown statements, themselves extracted under threat of renewed torture. Following his retrial, he appeals his conviction once again, challenging the admissibility of the Cookstown statements, but his appeal is disallowed in June 1980.

Hurson becomes engaged to his long-term girlfriend, Bernadette Donnelly, while in prison. He is part of the blanket protest and joins the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike on May 28, replacing South Derryman Brendan McLaughlin who withdraws following a perforated stomach ulcer.

He loses the ability to hold down water after approximately 40 days on hunger strike and suffers a horrifically agonising death due to dehydration at 4:30 AM on July 13, after only 46 days on hunger strike, considerably shorter than any other hunger striker. Near the end his family considers the possibility of intervening to save his life, but they are told that he will likely have permanent brain damage.


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Assassination of Irish Criminal Martin Cahill

martin-cahill

Martin Cahill, prominent Irish criminal from Dublin, is assassinated on August 18, 1994. Cahill generates a certain notoriety in the media, which refers to him by the sobriquet “The General.” During his lifetime, Cahill takes particular care to hide his face from the media and is rarely photographed.

At age 16, Cahill is convicted of two burglaries and sentenced to an industrial school run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at Daingean, County Offaly. With his brothers, he continues to commit multiple burglaries in the affluent neighbourhoods nearby, at one point even robbing the Garda Síochána depot for confiscated firearms.

In 1983, Cahill and his gang famously steal gold and diamonds with a value of over €2.55 million from O’Connor’s jewelers in Harold’s Cross. The jewelers subsequently are forced to close, with the loss of more than one hundred jobs. He is also involved in stealing some of the world’s most valuable paintings from Russborough House in 1986 and extorting restaurants and hot dog vendors in Dublin’s nightclub district.

On November 1, 1993, Cahill’s gang abducts National Irish Bank CEO Jim Lacey, his wife, and four children and holds them hostage in an attempt to force the bank to hand over the estimated €10 million in cash in the bank’s vault. Ultimately, the plan fails, and the gang is arrested.

With all gang members from the Lacey kidnapping released on bail, on August 18, 1994, Cahill leaves the house at which he has been staying at Swan Grove and begins driving to a local video store to return a borrowed copy of Delta Force 3: The Killing Game. Upon reaching the intersection of Oxford Road and Charleston Road he is repeatedly shot in the face and upper torso and dies almost instantly. The gunman, who is armed with a .357 Magnum revolver, jumps on a motorbike and disappears from the scene.

There are a number of theories about who murdered Martin Cahill and why. Within hours of Cahill’s murder, the Provisional Irish Republican Army claims responsibility in a press release. The reasons cited are Cahill’s alleged involvement with a Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force, which had attempted a bomb attack on a south Dublin pub which was hosting a Sinn Féin fund-raiser.

Another theory surfaces that reputedly claims that two of Cahill’s underlings, John Gilligan and John Traynor, had put together a massive drug trafficking ring. When Cahill demanded a cut of the profits, the Gardaí believe that Traynor and Gilligan approached the IRA and suggested that Cahill was importing heroin, a drug that the IRA despised and were trying to prevent from being sold in Dublin. Gilligan reputedly paid the Provisional IRA a considerable sum in exchange for Cahill’s assassination. Frances Cahill’s memoir, Martin Cahill, My Father, alleges the General detested and steered clear of the drug trade.

After a Roman Catholic requiem mass, Martin Cahill is buried in consecrated ground at Mount Jerome Cemetery. In 2001, his gravestone is vandalised and broken in two.


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Founding of the Gaelic League

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The Gaelic League (Irish: Conradh na Gaeilge), a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide is founded in Dublin on July 31, 1893.

Conradh na Gaeilge is founded by Douglas Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland rector from Frenchpark, County Roscommon, with the aid of Eugene O’Growney, Eoin MacNeill, Thomas O’Neill Russell, and others. The organisation develops from Ulick Bourke‘s earlier Gaelic Union and becomes the leading institution promoting the Gaelic Revival, carrying on efforts like the publishing of the Gaelic Journal. The League’s first newspaper is An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light) and its most noted editor is Patrick Pearse. The motto of the League is Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin amháin (Ourselves, Ourselves alone).

The League encourages female participation from the start and a number of women play a prominent role. They are not restricted to subordinate roles, but play an active part in leadership, although males are in the overwhelming majority. Local notables, such as Lady Gregory in Galway, Lady Esmonde in County Wexford, and Mary Spring Rice in County Limerick, and others such as Norma Borthwick, found and lead branches in their communities. At the annual national convention in 1906 women are elected to seven of the forty-five positions on the Gaelic League executive. Executive members include Máire Ní Chinnéide, Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh (who writes pamphlets on behalf of the League), Bean an Doc Uí Choisdealbha, Máire Ní hAodáin, Máire de Buitléir, Nellie O’Brien, Eibhlín Ní Dhonnabháin, and Eibhlín Nic Néill.

Though apolitical, the organisation attracts many Irish nationalists of different persuasions, much like the Gaelic Athletic Association. It is through the League that many future political leaders and rebels first meet, laying the foundation for groups such as the Irish Volunteers. However, Conradh na Gaeilge does not commit itself entirely to the national movement until 1915, causing the resignation of Douglas Hyde, who feels that the culture of language should be above politics. Most of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation are members. It still continues to attract many Irish Republicans. Seán Mac Stíofáin, the first chief of staff of the Provisional IRA was a prominent member in his later life.

After the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the organisation has a less prominent role in public life as Irish is made a compulsory subject in state-funded schools. It does unexpectedly bad in the Irish Seanad election of 1925, when all the candidates it endorses are defeated, including Hyde.


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Bloody Friday in Belfast

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At least twenty Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs explode in Belfast on July 21, 1972, during the Troubles in what has become known as “Bloody Friday.” Most of the bombs are car bombs and most target infrastructure, especially the transport network. Nine people are killed, including two British soldiers and five civilians, while 130 are injured.

In late June and early July 1972, a British government delegation led by William Whitelaw holds secret talks with the Provisional IRA leadership. As part of the talks, the IRA agrees to a temporary ceasefire beginning on June 26. The IRA leaders seek a peace settlement that includes a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975 and the release of republican prisoners. However, the British refuse and the talks break down. The ceasefire comes to an end on July 9.

Bloody Friday is the IRA’s response to the breakdown of the talks. According to the IRA’s Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the main goal of the bombing operation is to wreak financial harm. It is a “message to the British government that the IRA could and would make a commercial desert of the city unless its demands were met.” Some also see it as a reprisal for Bloody Sunday in Derry six months earlier. The attack is carried out by the IRA’s Belfast Brigade and the main organiser is Brendan Hughes, the brigade’s Officer Commanding.

The bombings occur during an 80-minute period on the afternoon of Friday, July 21. At least 24 bombs are planted. At least 20 explode and the rest fail to detonate or are defused. At the height of the bombing, the middle of Belfast “resembled a city under artillery fire; clouds of suffocating smoke enveloped buildings as one explosion followed another, almost drowning out the hysterical screams of panicked shoppers.” According to The Guardian, “for much of the afternoon, Belfast was reduced to near total chaos and panic. Thousands streamed out of the stricken city…and huge traffic jams built up. All bus services were cancelled, and on some roads, hitchhikers frantically trying to get away lined the pavements.”

Nine people are killed and 130 are injured, some of them horrifically mutilated. Of those injured, 77 are women and children. All of the deaths are caused by two of the bombs – at Oxford Street bus depot and at Cavehill Road. The Oxford Street bomb kills two British soldiers and four Ulsterbus employees. One employee is a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) reservist, one is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, and the other two are civilians. The Cavehill Road bomb kills three civilians.

The IRA’s Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombings and says that it had given warnings to the security forces before the bombs exploded. It says that the Public Protection Agency, the Samaritans and the press “were informed of bomb positions at least 30 minutes to one hour before each explosion.” Mac Stíofáin says, “It required only one man with a loud hailer to clear each target area in no time” and alleged that the warnings for the two bombs that claim lives are deliberately ignored by the British for “strategic policy reasons.”


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Death of Francis McCloskey, First Fatality of “The Troubles”

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Francis McCloskey, a 67-year-old Catholic civilian, dies on July 14, 1969, one day after being hit on the head with a baton by an officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) during street disturbances in Dungiven, County Derry. McCloskey is sometimes considered to be the first fatality of The Troubles.

McCloskey is found unconscious on July 13 near the Dungiven Orange Hall following a police baton charge against a crowd who had been throwing stones at the hall. Witnesses later say they had seen police beating a figure with batons in the doorway where McCloskey is found, although police claim he had been unconscious before the baton charge and may have been hit with a stone.

The Troubles is the common name for the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that begins in the late 1960s and is deemed by most to end with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mainly take place in Northern Ireland, violence spills over at times into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.

The conflict is primarily political, but it also has an ethnic or sectarian dimension, although it is not a religious conflict. A key issue is the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists, who are mostly Protestants and consider themselves British, generally want Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists and republicans, who are mostly Catholic and consider themselves Irish, generally want it to leave the United Kingdom and join a united Ireland. The conflict begins amid a campaign to end discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government and police force in 1968. The campaign is met with violence, eventually leading to the deployment of British troops and subsequent warfare.

The main participants in the Troubles are republican paramilitaries such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and political activists and politicians. The security forces of the Republic of Ireland play a smaller role. More than 3,500 people are killed in the conflict, of whom 52% were civilians, 32% are members of the British security forces, and 16% are members of paramilitary groups. There has been sporadic violence since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, including a campaign by anti-ceasefire republicans.