seamus dubhghaill

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

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The Battle of St. Matthew’s

The Battle of St. Matthew’s, also known as the Battle of Short Strand, is a gun battle that takes place on the night of June 27-28, 1970, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is fought between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Ulster loyalists in the area around St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic church. This lies at the edge of the Short Strand, a Catholic enclave in a mainly-Protestant part of the city. Violence erupts there, and in other parts of Belfast, following marches by the Orange Order. The battle lasts about five hours and ends at dawn when loyalists withdraw. The British Army and police are deployed nearby but do not intervene. Three people are killed and at least 26 wounded in the fighting, while another three are killed in north Belfast.

The battle is the Provisional IRA’s first major action during the Troubles, and a propaganda victory for the Irish nationalist organization. It presents itself as successfully defending a vulnerable Catholic enclave from armed loyalist mobs. Loyalists, however, argue that the IRA lured them into a carefully prepared trap.

During the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969 in Belfast, Catholic Irish republicans clash with Protestant Ulster loyalists and the mainly-Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland’s police force. Catholics believe that they are about to become “victims of a Protestant pogrom” and Protestants believe they are on the “eve of an IRA insurrection.” Hundreds of Catholic homes and businesses are burned out and more than 1,000 families, mostly Catholic, are forced to flee. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has few weapons or members and is unable to adequately defend the Catholic areas. The rioting ends with the deployment of British troops. In December 1969, the IRA splits into the Official Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army—with the Provisionals vowing to defend Catholic areas in future.

The Short Strand is a Catholic/nationalist enclave in East Belfast, a mainly Protestant/Ulster unionist part of the city. In the early years of the Troubles, Catholics in Short Strand number about 6,000, while their Protestant neighbours total about 60,000.

On Saturday, June 27, 1970, a large march by the Orange Order takes place in west Belfast, which is joined by loyalist bands from other parts of the city. Violence breaks out as the march enters the Catholic Springfield Road area on its way to Whiterock Orange Hall. Missiles are thrown by both sides, a bakery is set ablaze, and the British Army fires CS gas to disperse crowds. The riot sparks violence in other parts of Belfast.

In north Belfast, another Orange march proceeds along the Crumlin Road, the boundary between the Catholic Ardoyne and the Protestant Shankill areas. According to Crown prosecutors, a crowd emerges from Ardoyne throwing bottles and stones. As the riot descends into a gun battle, the IRA—who according to Gerry Adams were “ready and waiting”—kill three Protestants: William Kincaid (28), Daniel Loughins (32) and Alexander Gould (18). Others are wounded, including a Royal Navy petty officer who is shot in the jaw while driving a field ambulance. Earlier in the month, British troops divert an Orange march away from Ardoyne, leading to serious rioting by Protestants in the Shankill.

In the predominantly Protestant east of the city, an Orange parade also takes place along the Newtownards Road. At the bottom of the road is the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand, and here a gun battle breaks out between the IRA and Protestants, though the cause of it is disputed by both sides.

Violence erupts at St. Matthew’s Catholic church on the evening of June 27. It begins after a loyalist band and supporters march through the area on their return from the main parade. Rival groups gather, taunting leads to stone-throwing, and eventually, shots are fired.

As the situation worsens, Catholic residents fear that the gathering crowds of loyalists will attempt to invade the Short Strand and burn them from their homes. Local IRA members retrieve weapons from arms dumps. A young resident, Jim Gibney, recalls, “I saw neighbours, people I knew, coming down the street carrying rifles. I was just dumbstruck by this experience. I’d never seen such a thing before.”

The battle begins at about 10:00 p.m. and continues for the next five hours. Loyalists begin attacking the church and surrounding property with petrol bombs. A small house on the church grounds, where the sexton lives with his family, is set ablaze. A nearby Catholic pub is also looted and burned.

A small group of IRA members and members of the Citizens’ Defence Committee take up positions in the church grounds and in adjoining streets. The IRA members are armed with M1 carbines and are led by Billy McKee, commander of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade. Also present is Billy Kelly, commander of the Belfast Brigade’s 3rd Battalion. The IRA members fire at the loyalists, some of whom are positioned on the roofs opposite. Jim Magee, a local loyalist, sees wounded people lying on the road and asks the police (RUC) for help. According to Magee, “[they] said ‘if you have anything, get it out and protect your people.’ So we got an old rifle and went into Frazer Street and started firing back.”

The security forces are deployed in the area at the time but do not intervene to end the fighting. Shortly after the shooting begins, Stormont MP Paddy Kennedy goes with Short Strand residents to the local RUC base and demands protection for their homes. Across the River Lagan, in the Markets area, other IRA members assemble and prepare to reinforce the Short Strand should it be invaded. British soldiers eventually arrive in armoured vehicles and cordon off the roads around the Short Strand, which denies the IRA “any hope of reinforcement.” At the time, the British Army says that its soldiers fired no shots because “owing to the confused situation, it was impossible to identify targets.” British Army Colonel Mike Dewar later says, “The whole incident had taken its course because the Army was so chronically overstretched that night in Belfast. The one spare platoon in the whole of west Belfast was not able to get through rioting Protestants to the Short Strand.” Journalist Tony Geraghty writes that sometimes “The gunfire eased long enough to allow an occasional British Army personnel carrier (a ‘Pig‘) to whine past, illuminated by the flames in a token gesture of law-and-order.”

Another journalist who witnesses the battle, Peter Taylor, later says, “The shooting intensified but the soldiers still declined to intervene and separate the two sides – either because they felt they were not numerically strong enough or because they did not wish to get caught up in the middle of a sectarian fight, in the darkness, with shots being fired by both sides.”

Liz Maskey, who is a volunteer nurse that night, says that the Short Strand is surrounded by loyalists and claim they attacked her ambulance as it tried to leave the area.

The loyalists withdraw after about five hours, as dawn breaks. IRA leader Billy McKee claims that his unit had fired 800 rounds during the battle.

Three people are killed in the fighting. At least 26 are wounded, including Billy McKee, who is shot five times.

  • Robert Neill, a 38-year-old Protestant, died instantly when a shot fired from the church bounced off the pavement and hit him in the spine.
  • James McCurrie, a 34-year-old Protestant, is shot dead on Beechfield Street.
  • Henry McIlhone, a 33-year-old Catholic, is helping to defend Short Strand when he is accidentally shot from the republican side. He dies on June 29. However, McKee maintains that McIlhone is shot by loyalists. Tírghrá, the IRA’s official list of its fallen, lists McIlhone as a “volunteer” but adds “although not a member of the IRA, Henry McIlhone was included in the republican roll of honour as a mark of respect for this great Irishman by republican comrades he fought alongside.”

Republicans and loyalists disagree over who started the violence and fired the first shots. Republicans claim that the violence was started by a mob of loyalists returning from an Orange march. They say that the loyalists tried to set the church alight and invade Short Strand, with the intention of burning the residents from their homes. Hence, republicans argue that they were defending the Short Strand from a loyalist attack. Loyalists claim the violence was begun by republicans, allegedly when the returning Orangemen and supporters were attacked on Newtownards Road. They argue that republicans attacked Protestants to lure them into “a carefully prepared trap.”

The following day, loyalists expel 500 Catholic workers from the nearby Harland & Wolff shipyard. Shortly after, the British government’s representative at Stormont says that the decision to allow Orange marches to go ahead on that day was “the greatest single miscalculation I have ever seen made in the course of my life.”

Many Catholics and nationalists believe that the IRA had been unable to defend them during the August 1969 riots. However, it is argued that the IRA’s defence of Short Strand redeemed it in the eyes of many Catholics and nationalists. Prior to the gun battle, the IRA had been waiting for an opportunity to portray themselves as defenders of the Catholic community. Among republicans, the battle is seen as a key event in the growth of the Provisional IRA.

Less than a week later, the British Army seizes a large haul of Official IRA weapons during a three-day operation in west Belfast. Nationalists see this as a confiscation of their defences.


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The Walker’s Bar Attack

The Walker’s Bar attack, also known as the Store Bar shooting, is a mass shooting which takes place on June 25, 1976, at Walker’s Bar on Lyle Hill Road in Templepatrick, County Antrim, in Northern Ireland. It is carried out by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF). The attack, in which three people are killed, is one of several “tit for tat” mass shootings that take place during The Troubles in mid-1976.

Three weeks after the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) undertakes a gun attack on the Chlorane Bar in Belfast, a Republican Action Force group attacks Walker’s Bar in County Antrim.

At the time of the attack, a Friday evening, a cabaret show is taking place, and the bar contains approximately forty people. The attackers spray the pub with an ArmaLite AR-15 assault rifle. While some sources suggest that a grenade is thrown into the bar before the attackers escape, contemporary news sources state that a bomb is left behind.

Three people are killed and approximately six are injured. Those killed, all Protestant civilians from the same extended family, included Ruby Kidd (28), Francis Walker (17) and Joseph McBride (56).

The “West Belfast Republican Action Force” subsequently claims responsibility for the shooting, stating that it was “carried out in retaliation” for the Chlorane Bar attack earlier in June 1976.

A week after the gun attack in Templepatrick, the UVF carries out a gun attack on a Catholic-owned pub, the Ramble Inn. While described as a “reprisal” for the Walker’s bar attack, five of the six people killed in the Ramble Inn attack are Protestants, while the other victim is Catholic. Considered a failure or “own goal” by the UVF, the attack is carried out because the bar owners are Catholics and the gunmen expect that the patrons would mainly be Catholic.


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The Chlorane Bar Attack

The Chlorane Bar attack is a mass shooting at a city centre pub on June 5, 1976, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation, apparently in retaliation for the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing attack on the Times Bar on York Road, in which two Protestant civilians were killed. In the Chlorane attack, five civilian men are killed, three Catholics and two Protestants. The gunmen are militants from the UVF Belfast Brigade’s Shankill Road battalion. The assault is a joint operation by the platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar, drinking haunts in the Shankill Road district frequented by UVF members.

On June 5, 1976, a bomb explodes at the door of the Times Bar on York Road, killing two Protestants. The pub is frequented by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a legal loyalist paramilitary group. Irish republicans are blamed for the bombing. Shortly after, the UVF Brigade Staff (its Shankill Road-based leadership) decide to hit back by attacking the Chlorane Bar. It is a hastily arranged operation devised by its military commander “Bunter,” whom investigative journalist Martin Dillon refers to as “Mr. F.” The Chlorane Bar is located at 23 Gresham Street in Belfast’s city centre, near Smithfield Market. Its clientele is mixed (Protestant and Catholic), which is unusual during The Troubles. On August 17, 1973, the Chlorane Bar had been firebombed, however, no one was injured as the pub was closed at the time of the attack. Later that same month, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name sometime used by the UDA, claim responsibility for a car bomb which exploded in Gresham Street. Although there were no human casualties, a pet shop located near the bomb’s epicentre was damaged in the blast and a number of animals inside the building were either killed or injured.

The attack is planned and executed by the UVF platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar respectively. These are two pubs located on the Shankill Road and regularly frequented by UVF members. Dillon sometimes refers to the former platoon as the “Brown Bear Team” because the members generally meet at that particular pub, which faces Shankill Library on the corner of Mountjoy Street. To carry out the attack, along with the procuring of weapons and masks, a black taxi is hijacked by two young men outside the Long Bar on the Shankill Road to transport the gunmen to the Chlorane Bar. Taxi driver Mark Hagan and a passenger are held hostage at the Windsor Bar.

The Chlorane Bar is likely chosen for its nearness to the Shankill Road, affording the attackers a speedy getaway. There is not much of a security presence that evening in the area. The driver of the taxi, with four specifically chosen armed men seated in the rear of the vehicle in the manner of genuine passengers, makes his way from the Shankill Road to North Street and turns south into Gresham Street. Upon arrival outside the Chlorane Bar, the four gunmen don their masks, devised from yellow money bags, and exit the taxi.

At 10:00 p.m., the four masked gunmen storm through Chlorane Bar’s front door leading to the public bar. There are about sixteen customers inside the pub at the time. One of the four gunmen is Robert “Basher” Bates, a member of the violent Shankill Butchers gang led by Lenny Murphy, who is in police custody at the time the attack against the Chlorane takes place. Bates is the only one of the four to have been from the “Brown Bear Team.” The hit squad is commanded by a “Mr. G,” leader of the Windsor Bar UVF platoon, with “Mr. D” as his second-in-command and “Mr. C” completing the team. Entering the bar in single file, “Mr. G” orders everybody to stand up, and then asks the startled customers whether there are any “Prods” (Protestants) among them. William Greer, a Protestant, thinking the gunmen are from the Irish Republican Army, quickly flees to the men’s toilet where he places his feet up against the door. Customer Frederick Graham and his girlfriend, Pat Mahood, assume the same thing. “Mr. G” tells the customers to separate into two groups, with the Protestants standing at the bottom end of the bar, and the Catholics at the top.

When one man, Edward Farrell, admits to being a Catholic, the UVF men open fire. Farrell tries to run toward the toilet but is shot dead. The Catholic owner of the Chlorane, 64-year-old James Coyle, is standing behind the bar when he is hit at close-range. The bullet enters his heart and he dies instantly. The gunmen continue firing and two Protestant men, Daniel McNeil and Samuel Corr, are also struck by the hail of bullets. McNeil is killed on the spot and Corr is fatally wounded. Another Catholic man, John Martin, is shot and dies of his injuries on June 23. Several other customers are hit as gunfire is sprayed around the bar. One customer pretends to be dead, however, a gunman walks over to where he lay and deliberately fires three shots into his thigh, knee, and below the ankle. The man later recounts that he had then looked up to see “men lying shot all over the place.” William Greer, hiding in the toilet, is shot when one of the gunmen fire through the door. He survives despite being hit in the leg and neck. There are more customers upstairs in the lounge area, but although they hear the gunshots, the gunmen never go near them. Dillon maintains that it had not been the UVF unit’s intention to kill any Protestants.

“Mr. G” calls a halt to the shooting, saying “that’s it,” and the four-man UVF team nonchalantly walks out of the pub and re-enters the hijacked black taxi, which is parked so the driver has easy access to North Street. This route offers a quick return to the Shankill. After the four men get into the back seat, the driver (“Mr. H”) drives off. As the taxi passes by the Catholic Unity Flats area, three shots are fired from the vehicle. Two young men walking nearby get a look at the driver. He is described as being around 38 to 40 years old and having shoulder-length, black curly hair. Upon the taxi’s return to the Shankill, Mark Hagan and the passenger are released. They immediately go to the Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Station off the Shankill where they report the taxi’s hijacking. The shooting team proceeds to the Long Bar pub where “Mr. I” (commander of UVF 1st Battalion) procures a forty-ounce bottle of vodka for “Mr. G” and “Mr. D” – their payment for leading the operation.

Having heard the gunshots, a barmaid serving in the upstairs lounge goes downstairs to investigate and discovers the body of her employer, James Coyle, lying on the floor behind the bar and those of the other dead and wounded. The first policeman on the scene is Constable George McElnea, from the RUC Special Patrol Group in Tennent Street. He quickly notices the pile of bodies near the men’s toilet as Samuel Corr stumbles toward him, gravely injured. McElnea places Corr on a bench and offers what assistance he can but to no avail. Corr dies of his gunshot wounds before the ambulance arrives. Alan McCrum, a Scenes of Crime officer, appears at the Chlorane fifteen minutes after the shootings. He retrieves 24 spent bullet casings from the floor and determines that most of the shots had been fired at the rear of the pub. Later ballistic testing establishes that the weapons used in the attack were a .22 caliber pistol, a 9 mm pistol, and two .45 snub-nosed revolvers. Police believe one of the victims, Daniel McNeil, had tenuous UVF connections, although he is not an active member.

The hijacked black taxi is found by police the following morning in a cul-de-sac in Beresford Street, off the Shankill Road. A cyclist, who had witnessed the masked gunmen entering the Chlorane Bar, describes the four men as having been in the 20 to 30 age group, all about 5’10 in height and well-built. The last gunman to enter had shoulder-length brown hair. The witness had gone to a nearby British Army post where he told soldiers what he had seen.

Ten days after the gun attack, the Chlorane Bar is blown up by a bomb. Three weeks after the attack the Provisional IRA, using their sometime cover-name of the “Republican Action Force“, enter Walker’s Bar in Templepatrick and kill three Protestant civilians in retaliation for the Chlorane attack. As part of this series of deadly tit for tat attacks on pubs, the UVF responds by killing six customers at the Catholic-owned Ramble Inn outside Antrim.

No one is ever charged with the shootings. In February 1979, Bates is convicted of the murders he had committed as part of the Shankill Butchers, and given ten life sentences. In his statement to the police following his arrest in 1977, he recounts his role in the Chlorane Bar attack. He alleges while working as a barman in the Long Bar on the evening of June 5, 1976, he is approached by the UVF military commander, “Mr. F”, who informs him of a job in which he is to take part that same evening. It is decided to attack the city centre pub in retaliation for the IRA’s earlier bombing of The Times pub. Bates goes on to say that “Mr. I” provides the weapons which are used in the shooting and “Mr. J” (UVF Provost Marshal) procures the masks. Bates claims that his revolver malfunctions and therefore he never fires his gun during the attack. However, forensic evidence proves that two .45 revolvers had been fired inside the Chlorane. Upon his release from the HM Prison Maze, Bates is gunned-down in June 1997 by the son of James Curtis Moorhead, a UDA man he had killed in 1977.


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Donnelly’s Bar and Kay’s Tavern Attacks

During the evening of December 19, 1975, two coordinated attacks are carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in pubs on either side of the Irish border. The first attack, a car bombing, takes place outside Kay’s Tavern, a pub along Crowe Street in Dundalk, County Louth, Republic of Ireland – close to the border. The second, a gun and bomb attack, takes place at Donnelly’s Bar & Filling Station in Silverbridge, County Armagh, just across the border inside Northern Ireland.

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.

According to journalist Joe Tiernan, the attacks are planned and led by Robert McConnell and Robin “The Jackal” Jackson who are both alleged to have carried out dozens of sectarian murders during The Troubles, mainly from 1974 to 1977, mostly in south County Armagh – which in 1975 is virtually lawless. Loyalist paramilitaries and the Provisional Irish Republican Army roam the streets and countryside and can set up bogus military checkpoints freely.

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.)


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Death of Philip Shanahan, Sinn Féin Politician

Philip Shanahan, Irish Sinn Féin politician, dies in Hollyford, County Tipperary, November 21, 1931. He is elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1918 and serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) in Dáil Éireann from 1919 to 1922.

Shanahan is born in Hollyford on October 27, 1874. At some point he moves to Dublin, where he is a licensed vintner, maintaining an Irish pub in the notorious Monto red-light district.

Shanahan is involved in the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916. This leads to him having legal difficulties over the licence of his public house. He consults the lawyer and politician Tim Healy who comments:

“I had with me today a solicitor with his client, a Dublin publican named Phil Shanahan, whose licence is being opposed, and whose house was closed by the military because he was in Jacob’s during Easter week. I was astonished at the type of man – about 40 years of age, jolly and respectable. He said he ‘rose out’ to have a ‘crack at the English’ and seemed not at all concerned at the question of success or failure. He was a Tipperary hurler in the old days. For such a man to join the Rebellion and sacrifice the splendid trade he enjoyed makes one think there are disinterested Nationalists to be found. I thought a publican was the last man in the world to join a rising! Alfred Byrne, MP, was with him, and is bitter against the Party. I think I can save Shanahan’s property.”

Shanahan is elected for Dublin Harbour at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, defeating Alfred Byrne. Like other Sinn Féin MPs, he does not take his seat at Westminster, but becomes a member of the revolutionary Dáil. He represents Dublin Harbour in the First Dáil from 1919 to 1921. He is arrested and detained in custody by the British government in April 1920 but is released in time to attend the next meeting of the Dáil on June 29, 1920.

During the Irish War of Independence, Billy Dunleavy recalls, “The IRA were the best men we ever had at that time. The Tans used to go around in the tenders with a wire over the top and if it was going by up there in Talbot Street they’d (IRA) say, ‘Get out of the way, quick!’ and they’d throw a hand grenade into the car. Now Phil Shanahan, he owned a pub over there on the corner, he was a great man and he used to hide them after they’d been out on a job. He had cellars and all the IRA men used to go there and hide their stuff.”

In 1921 a general election is held for the House of Commons of Southern Ireland. Republicans use this as an election for the Second Dáil. Shanahan is elected unopposed for the four member Dublin Mid constituency. He is defeated at the 1922 Irish general election to the Third Dáil, as a member of the Anti-Treaty faction of Sinn Féin, which opposes the creation of the Irish Free State in the place of the Republic declared in 1919.

Shanahan leaves Dublin in 1928 and returns to his home village of Hollyford, County Tipperary. He dies there on November 21, 1931, at the age of 57.


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The Woolwich Pub Bombing

The Woolwich pub bombing is an attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the Kings Arms, a public house in Woolwich in southeast London, on November 7, 1974. Two people are killed in the explosion.

Standing at 1 Frances Street to the south of Woolwich Dockyard and the Royal Marine Barracks, and northwest of the Royal Artillery Barracks, the Kings Arms was built in the 19th century. In the 1881 census it is listed as the Kings Arms Hotel.

The pub is attacked by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on November 7, 1974, and two people are killed: Gunner Richard Dunne (aged 42), of the Royal Artillery (whose barracks are just 100 yards away), and Alan Horsley (aged 20), a sales clerk. A further 35 people, including the landlady, Margaret Nash, are injured. Echoing similar attacks in Guildford the previous month, a bomb, made of 6 lbs. of gelignite plus shrapnel, is thrown through a window into the pub.

Initially a left-wing extremist group called Red Flag 74 says it had placed the bomb, but responsibility is subsequently claimed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army and specifically by part of the Active Service Unit apprehended in December 1975 at the Balcombe Street siege. Two of the Guildford Four are wrongfully charged in December 1974 with involvement in the Woolwich pub bombing, and their convictions in October 1975 are eventually quashed in 1989 after a long campaign for justice.

The bombing is most likely the work of the Balcombe Street ASU, which claims sole responsibility during the 1977 trial of four members apprehended at the siege and include Joe O’Connell, who states from the dock: 

“We have instructed our lawyers to draw the attention of the court to the fact that four totally innocent people – Carole Richardson, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong – are serving massive sentences for three bombings, two in Guildford and one in Woolwich, which three of us and another man now imprisoned, have admitted that we did.”

The other three members apprehended at the siege are Hugh Doherty, Eddie Butler and Harry Duggan. Liam Quinn (a US-born member) and Brendan Dowd are also active within the unit. Sentenced to life imprisonment, the “Balcombe Street four” serve 23 years in English prisons until transferred to Portlaoise Prison, County Laois, in early 1998. They are then released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Neither the Woolwich bombing nor the wrongful imprisonments result in further charges or convictions. Three British police officers—Thomas Style, John Donaldson and Vernon Attwell—are charged in 1993 with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but each is found not guilty.

In continuation of a “troubles” overseas offensive, the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich are bombed by the IRA in December 1983.

On April 17, 2018, P2P Residential Limited obtains full planning permission to demolish the pub and redevelop it as 19 residential units, nine parking spaces and a replacement pub across the ground floor and basement.

Similar plans had been proposed in 2013. Permission was granted in 2015 for 12 residential units and a pub, but the then owner did not implement the consent. The pub is demolished for redevelopment in 2020. Following a 2022 planning application, a Tesco Express supermarket is opened on the ground floor of the building.


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Attempted Assassination of Sir John French

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts to assassinate British General John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in his car at Phoenix Park, Dublin, on December 19, 1919. French is unhurt, but one IRA Volunteer, Martin Savage, is killed. IRA volunteer Dan Breen and two Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) men and a driver are wounded. A Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) sergeant is knocked unconscious.

On a cold December day in 1919, a group of young IRA volunteers wait at a public house near the Ashtown gate of Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Some are from Dublin, members of Michael Collins’ recently created assassination unit, the Squad. Others are from farther afield, like Dan Breen and Seán Treacy from County Tipperary and Martin Savage from County Sligo.

They are waiting for Sir John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the most senior British official in the land. He is returning from a visit to the west of Ireland and has alighted at Ashtown train station before returning by car to his official residence, the Viceregal Lodge, in the Phoenix Park.

The IRA men have a signaler in a tree and when French’s car approaches, they attempt to block the road with a farm cart. However, they are too late to block the Lord Lieutenant’s car which sweeps through the impromptu barricade. Shots are fired and one policeman is wounded but French himself emerges unscathed.

A second car, which the IRA believes to contain French, bears the brunt of the volunteers’ revolver fire and grenades. Though the car is badly damaged, there are no casualties.

The third car in the convoy contains French’s military escort and the soldiers inside the vehicle return fire, killing one of the attackers, Martin Savage. Some of the volunteers attempt to recover his body but the Crown forces’ fire is too heavy. Savage’s body is left on the scene as the IRA party flees on bicycles back to the city.

The Irish Times, for one, expresses outrage at the attack, “the attempted assassination of the greatest of Irishmen” which it says will “shock Ireland” and force Sinn Féin, victorious in the election of the previous year, to reflect on whether it wants to be associated with “outrage and assassination.” “There will now be many throughout the world ready to attribute the character of a murder society to the whole new Irish movement.”

But some, even British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, are surprisingly unsympathetic. “They are bad shots” is his only remark on hearing of the attack.

Many in Ireland are even less sympathetic to hear of the escape of the Lord Lieutenant. The Irish Catholic bishops issue a statement the next day condemning not the attack but British rule in Ireland, which they characterise as “rule of the sword, utterly unsuited to a civilised nation.”

The attack is, in hindsight, a turning point, moving the standoff over Irish independence toward all out guerrilla warfare, but also, in a way, symbolising the eclipse of French and of his vision for what the country should be.

Sir John French’s health declines in 1920 and though he holds the position of Lord Lieutenant until April 1921, his central role in Irish affairs is eclipsed by new Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood. He wants to retire to his estates in Ireland in 1922 but is told it is simply too dangerous for him. During the Irish Civil War (1922-23), his country house at Drumdoe, County Roscommon, is raided by armed men who carry off much of the furniture.

French dies from cancer of the bladder at Deal Castle in Deal, Kent, England, on May 22, 1925.

(From: “Today in Irish History: 19 December 1919, The Attempted Assassination of Sir John French” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, December 18,2019 | Pictured: L to R, Sir John French and Martin Savage)


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Death of Fr. Des Wilson, Irish Catholic Priest & Church Dissident

Father Des Wilson, Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern Ireland Troubles embraces ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology, dies in his native Belfast on November 5, 2019. He believes the Word of God can never be silent in the face of oppression, injustice and suffering. He seeks to apply the ideas of liberation theology to the North, supporting and empowering marginalised communities, and acting as a voice for the voiceless.

Wilson is born in Belfast on July 8, 1925, the youngest of five sons to William Wilson, a publican and native of County Cavan, and his wife Emma (née McAvoy), a native of south County Down. He spends his earliest years above his father’s pub in Belfast, before the family moves to a house in the suburbs.

Wilson attends primary school locally, then receives secondary education at St. Malachy’s College. During his time there Belfast is blitzed in April and May 1941. Almost 1,000 are killed. The carnage he sees is a factor in his deciding on the priesthood.

After secondary school Wilson enters the seminary at St. Malachy’s, while studying English and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. He proceeds to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, being ordained on June 19, 1949, for the Diocese of Down and Connor.

After ordination Wilson serves as chaplain in Belfast’s Mater Infirmorum Hospital, then spends 15 years in St. Malachy’s as spiritual director. Former pupils remember him as fair, and able to play jazz excellently on the organ.

Wilson lives out his beliefs, spending half a century in Belfast’s Ballymurphy estate, among the North’s most deprived, and one of the areas which suffers worst from the Troubles. There he plays a role in community development, establishing projects to provide employment in the area. He suffers, finding himself for years outside the official Catholic Church.

Wilson plays a significant role in providing adult education. He wants an education that does not just provide qualifications and open career paths but is psychologically liberating.

Life changes in 1966 when Wilson is moved to St. John’s Parish in West Belfast as a curate. Having come from a comfortable background in Ballymurphy, he is shocked by the poverty, the poor housing and the treatment of women. Unusual for a priest at the time, he moves into a terraced house in the estate. He finds the Catholic Church unable to respond to the multiple problems people are facing. That inability worsens as the Troubles erupt.

Wilson’s personal probity is so recognised that he is accepted as a mediator in feuds between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Official Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and is able to broker permanent peace. He also helps bring about the ceasefires in the 1990s.

Wilson does not shirk unpopular stances. In the 1970s he refuses to condemn the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Later he says the conviction of former Real Irish Republican Army leader Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism is unsafe. He also publicly visits and supports a Ballymurphy couple which has a very bitter falling out with Sinn Féin, leading to a picket on their home.

By 1975 relations with his bishop has broken down and Wilson resigns but continues ministering in Ballymurphy. Forbidden to say Mass in a church, his pay cut off, he says Mass in his house. He suffers hardship, living from savings, some earnings from writing, broadcasting and lecturing, and help from Quaker and Presbyterian friends. By the early 1980s his Ballymurphy home becomes too small for the many classes he organises. His classes are rehoused and expanded as the Conway Education Centre in a vacant mill. He is able to offer a range of vocational and non-vocational courses with almost 1,000 students. In the mid-1980s his relationship with the Dioceses of Down and Connor is re-established, and he is allowed to continue his ministry.

Personally, Wilson has great gifts of head and heart and is incapable of rancour. A strong belief is that it is important to share food to talk, as happened in Biblical times. Thus, a lunch would last an afternoon.

Wilson dies on November 5, 2019, in Belfast. Instead of wreaths, he asks mourners to donate to the Ballymurphy Massacre Memorial Garden. The garden is dedicated to the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971, which saw the killing in the district of eleven civilians by soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The victims include Fr. Hugh Mullan, who had been a student of Wilson’s at St. Malachy’s. He was shot while going to the aid of a wounded man.

Following a Requiem Mass at Corpus Christi Church in Ballymurphy, Wilson is buried in Milltown Cemetery. Senior Sinn Féin politicians Gerry Adams and Michelle O’Neill are among those who take turns carrying his coffin.

(From: “Fr Des Wilson obituary: Priest who fought oppression and injustice in North,” The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, December 7, 2019)


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Death of Concertina Player Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty (née Markham), concertina player better known as Mrs. Crotty, dies in Kilrush, County Clare, from angina pectoris on December 27, 1960.

Markham is born on January 8, 1886, at Gower, Cooraclare, County Clare, the youngest in the large family of Michael Markham, farmer, and Margaret Markham (née Keane). She attends national school in Cooraclare from 1893 to 1899. Although she does not speak or understand the Irish language, as do her father and likely her mother, the Rosary is recited in Irish at home. She and a sister are the only siblings not to emigrate. Her mother plays the fiddle, while her older sister Margaret (Maggie) plays the concertina and probably influences her to do likewise. She has no single teacher and acquires tunes and her style of playing from neighbours and family friends. She begins to play a two-row German-type concertina at house dances throughout west Clare and becomes very much in demand.

In 1914, Markham marries Michael (Miko) Crotty from Gowerhass, the townland next to Gower. Miko had been in the United States for a couple of years and uses the money earned there to buy a public house on the Market Square in Kilrush, now known as “Crotty’s Pub.” They live in the Square in Kilrush and Miko bottles his own whiskey. The pub is an important venue for Irish traditional music, especially for those who wish to hear Crotty play. She remains relatively unknown outside of Clare until the early 1950s, and there are a relatively small number of recordings of her playing the concertina. The broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna conducts recording sessions in her house in 1955 and she is to be heard on A Job of Journeywork, his programme on Radio Éireann. She possesses a number of concertinas, but the Lachenal that she purchases in the 1950s is her favourite and the one with which she is most closely identified. In 1954, she is a founder member and the first president of the Clare branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. During her time as president, the All Ireland Fleadh is held in Ennis in 1956.

Crotty often sings the traditional song “An draighneán donn,” which is one of her favourites. Among tunes she enjoys playing are the “Ewe reel,” the “Dublin reel,” and “The maid of Mount Cisco,” along with “The wind that shakes the barley.” Her straight style of playing for dancing and dancers increases her popularity. Seán Ó Riada regards her as one of the finest concertina players he ever heard. Although she does not read or write staff notation, she creates a written code for herself by giving the concertina keys a number and by using a symbol for the press or draw movement on the concertina keys.

Crotty suffers from severe angina which necessitates visits for medical treatment to Dublin, where she becomes friends with fiddle player Kathleen Harrington (née Gardiner). They attend the Pipers’ Club in Thomas Street, play together on Radio Éireann, and travel together to fleadhanna.

Crotty dies on December 27, 1960, of an anginal attack while at her home. She is buried in (old) Shanakyle cemetery. She loses her first three children, and a son drowns in the River Shannon in 1945. Another son, Thomas, becomes a priest. A festival, ‘Éigse Mrs Crotty’, is held in her memory each summer in Kilrush. Her son Paddy gives three perpetual trophies for presentation at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil.

(From: “Crotty, Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’)” by Ríonach uí Ógáin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Birmingham Pub Bombings

The Birmingham pub bombings are carried out on November 21, 1974, when bombs explode in two public houses in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others. The bombings are one of the deadliest acts of the Troubles, and the deadliest act of terrorism to occur in England between World War II and the 2005 London bombings.

In 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) extends its campaign to mainland Britain, attacking military and symbolically important targets to both increase pressure on the British government, via popular British opinion, to withdraw from Northern Ireland and to maintain morale amongst their supporters. By 1974, mainland Britain sees an average of one attack — successful or otherwise — every three days.

In the early evening hours of November 21, at least three bombs connected to timing devices are planted inside two separate public houses and outside a bank located in and around central Birmingham. It is unknown precisely when these bombs were planted. If official IRA protocol of preceding attacks upon non-military installations with a 30-minute advance warning to security services is followed, and subsequent eyewitness accounts are accurate, the bombs would have been planted at these locations after 7:30 p.m. and before 7:47 p.m.

According to testimony delivered at the 1975 trial of the six men wrongly convicted of the bombings, the bomb planted inside the Mulberry Bush pub is concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase, whereas the bomb planted inside the Tavern in the Town is concealed inside a briefcase or duffel bag (possibly concealed within a large, sealed plastic bag) and Christmas cracker boxes. The remnants of two alarm clocks recovered from the site of each explosion leaves the possibility that two bombs had been planted at each public house. The explosion crater at each location indicates that if two bombs had been planted at each public house, they would each have been placed in the same location and likely the same container.

Reportedly, those who plant the bombs then walk to a preselected phone box to telephone the advance warning to security services. However, the phone box has been vandalised, forcing the caller to find an alternative phone box and thus shortening the amount of time police have to clear the locations.

At 8:11 p.m., an unknown man with a distinct Irish accent telephones the Birmingham Post newspaper. The call is answered by operator Ian Cropper. The caller says, “There is a bomb planted in the Rotunda and there is a bomb in New Street at the tax office. This is Double X,” before terminating the call. (“Double X” is an IRA code word given to authenticate any warning call.) A similar warning is also sent to the Birmingham Evening Mail newspaper, with the anonymous caller again giving the code word, but again failing to name the public houses in which the bombs had been planted.

The Rotunda is a 25-story office block, built in the 1960s, that houses the Mulberry Bush pub on its lower two floors. Within minutes of the warning, police arrive and begin checking the upper floors of the Rotunda, but they do not have sufficient time to clear the crowded pub at street level. At 8:17 p.m., six minutes after the first telephone warning had been delivered to the Birmingham Post, the bomb, which had been concealed inside either a duffel bag or briefcase located ner the rear entrance to the premises, explodes, devastating the pub. The explosion blows a 40-inch crater in the concrete floor, collapsing part of the roof and trapping many casualties beneath girders and concrete blocks. Many buildings near the Rotunda are also damaged, and pedestrians in the street are struck by flying glass from shattered windows. Several of the victims die at the scene, including two youths who had been walking past the premises at the moment of the explosion.

Ten people are killed in this explosion and dozens are injured, including many who lose limbs. Several casualties are impaled by sections of wooden furniture while others have their clothes burned from their bodies. A paramedic called to the scene of this explosion later describes the carnage as being reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. One fireman says that, upon seeing a writhing, “screaming torso,” he begs police to allow a television crew inside the premises to film the dead and dying at the scene, in the hope the IRA would see the consequences of their actions. However, the police refuse this request, fearing the reprisals would be extreme.

The Tavern in the Town is a basement pub on New Street located a short distance from the Rotunda and directly beneath the New Street Tax Office. Patrons there hear the explosion at the Mulberry Bush, but do not believe that the sound, described by one survivor as a “muffled thump,” is an explosion.

Police have begun attempting to clear the Tavern in the Town when, at 8:27 p.m., a second bomb explodes there. The blast is so powerful that several victims are blown through a brick wall. Their remains are wedged between the rubble and live underground electric cables that supply the city centre. One of the first police officers on the scene, Brian Yates, later testifies that the scene which greeted his eyes was “absolutely dreadful,” with several of the dead stacked upon one another, others strewn about the ruined pub, and several screaming survivors staggering aimlessly amongst the debris, rubble, and severed limbs. A survivor says the sound of the explosion is replaced by a “deafening silence” and the smell of burned flesh.

Rescue efforts at the Tavern in the Town are initially hampered as the bomb had been placed at the base of a set of stairs descending from the street, the sole entrance to the premises, had been destroyed in the explosion. The victims whose bodies are blown through a brick wall and wedged between the rubble and underground electric cables take up to three hours to recover, as recovery operations are delayed until the power can be isolated. A passing West Midlands bus is also destroyed in the blast.

This bomb kills nine people outright, and injures everyone in the pub, many severely. Two later die of their injuries. After the second explosion, police evacuate all pubs and businesses in Birmingham city centre and commandeer all available rooms in the nearby City Centre Hotel as an impromptu first-aid post. All bus services into the city centre are halted, and taxi drivers are encouraged to transport those lightly injured in the explosions to hospital. Prior to the arrival of ambulances, rescue workers remove critically injured casualties from each scene upon makeshift stretchers constructed from devices such as tabletops and wooden planks. These severely injured casualties are placed on the pavement and given first aid prior to the arrival of ambulance services.

At 9:15 p.m., a third bomb, concealed inside two plastic bags, is found in the doorway of a Barclays Bank on Hagley Road, approximately two miles from the site of the first two explosions. This device consists of 13.5 pounds of Frangex connected to a timer and is set to detonate at 11:00 p.m. The detonator to the device activates when a policeman prods the bags with his truncheon, but the bomb does not explode. The device is destroyed in a controlled explosion early the following morning.

The bombings stoke considerable anti-Irish sentiment in Birmingham, which then has an Irish community of 100,000. Irish people are ostracised from public places and subjected to physical assaults, verbal abuse and death threats. Both in Birmingham and across England, Irish homes, pubs, businesses and community centres are attacked, in some cases with firebombs. Staff at thirty factories across the Midlands go on strike in protest of the bombings, while workers at airports across England refuse to handle flights bound for Ireland. Bridget Reilly, the mother of the two Irish brothers killed in the Tavern in the Town explosion, is herself refused service in local shops.

The bombings are immediately blamed on the IRA, despite the organisation not having claimed responsibility. Due to anger against Irish people in Birmingham after the bombings, the IRA Army Council places the city “strictly off-limits” to IRA active service units. In Northern Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries launch a wave of revenge attacks on Irish Catholics and within two days of the bombings, five Catholic civilians have been shot dead by loyalists. The Provisional IRA never officially admits responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings.

Six Irishmen are arrested within hours of the blasts and in 1975 are sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The men, who become known as the Birmingham Six, maintain their innocence and insist police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in prison, and a lengthy campaign, their convictions are declared unsafe and unsatisfactory, and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. The episode is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

In 2001, each of the Birmingham Six is subsequently paid between £840,000 and £1.2 million in compensation.

(Pictured: The Mulberry Bush pub after the November 21, 1974, bombing)