Hughes is born in Bellaghy, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on February 28, 1956, into a republican family, the youngest of four brothers in a family of ten siblings. His father, Joseph, had been a member of the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s and one of his uncles had smuggled arms for the republican movement. This results in the Hughes family being targeted when internment is introduced in 1971, and his brother Oliver is interned for eight months without trial in Operation Demetrius. He leaves school at the age of 16 and starts work as an apprentice painter and decorator.
Hughes is returning from an evening out in Ardboe, County Tyrone, when he is stopped at an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) checkpoint. When the soldiers realise he comes from a republican family, he is badly beaten. His father encourages him to see a doctor and report the incident to the police, but he refuses, saying he “would get his own back on the people who did it, and their friends.”
Hughes initially joins the Official Irish Republican Army but leaves after the organisation declares a ceasefire in May 1972. He then joins up with Dominic McGlinchey, his cousin Thomas McElwee and Ian Milne, before the three decide to join the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1973. He, Milne and McGlinchey take part in scores of IRA operations, including daylight attacks on Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stations, bombings, and attacks on off-duty members of the RUC and UDR. Another IRA member describes the activities of Hughes:
“He led a life perpetually on the move, often moving on foot up to 20 miles during one night then sleeping during the day, either in fields and ditches or safe houses; a soldierly sight in his black beret and combat uniform and openly carrying a rifle, a handgun and several grenades as well as food rations.”
On April 18, 1977, Hughes, McGlinchey and Milne are travelling in a car near the town of Moneymore when an RUC patrol car carrying four officers signals them to stop. The IRA members attempt to escape by performing a U-turn but lose control of the car which ends up in a ditch. They abandon the car and open fire on the RUC patrol car, killing two officers and wounding another, before running off through the fields. A second RUC patrol comes under fire while attempting to prevent the men from fleeing, and despite a search operation by the RUC and British Army the IRA members escape. Following the Moneymore shootings, the RUC name Hughes as the most wanted man in Northern Ireland, and issue wanted posters with pictures of Hughes, Milne and McGlinchey. Milne is arrested in Lurgan, County Armagh, in August 1977, and McGlinchey later in the year in the Republic of Ireland.
Hughes is arrested on March 17, 1978, at Lisnamuck, near Maghera in County Londonderry, after an exchange of gunfire with the British Army the night before. British soldiers manning a covert observation post spot Hughes and another IRA volunteer approaching them wearing combat clothing with “Ireland” sewn on their jackets. Thinking they might be from the Ulster Defence Regiment, one of the soldiers stands up and calls to them. The IRA volunteers open fire on the British troops, who return fire. A soldier of the Special Air Service (SAS), Lance Corporal David Jones, is killed and another soldier wounded. Hughes is also wounded and is arrested nearby the next morning.
In February 1980, Hughes is sentenced to a total of 83 years in prison. He is tried for, and found guilty of, the murder of one British Army soldier (for which he receives a life sentence) and wounding of another (for which he receives 14 years) in the incident which leads to his arrest, as well as a series of gun and bomb attacks over a six-year period. Security sources describe him as “an absolute fanatic” and “a ruthless killer.” Fellow republicans describe him as “fearless and active.”
Hughes is involved in the mass hunger strike in 1980 and is the second prisoner to join the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike in the H-Blocks at the Long Kesh Detention Centre. His hunger strike begins on March 15, 1981, two weeks after Bobby Sands began his hunger strike. He is also the second striker to die, at 5:43 p.m. BST on May 12, after 59 days without food, refusing requests from the IRA leadership outside the prison to end the strike after the death of Sands. The journey of his body from the prison to the well-attended funeral near Bellaghy is marked by rioting as the hearse passes through loyalist areas. His death leads to an upsurge in rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.
Hughes’s cousin Thomas McElwee is the ninth hunger striker to die. Oliver Hughes, one of his brothers, is elected twice to Magherafelt District Council.
Born in Blackwater Street off Grosvenor Road in west Belfast in 1916, White is one of ten children (five sons and five daughters) of Billy White, water technician with Belfast Corporation, and his wife Kathleen (née McKane). As a boy he sings in the choir of Clonard Monastery. He plays in a céilí band as a teenager and is a lifelong aficionado of Irish music and plays the banjo and other string instruments (often smuggling guns in their cases). As a young man he is also an active member of Granuaile GAA club, playing hurling and Gaelic football.
White works as a plumber and joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at an early age, being imprisoned several times during the 1930s. He travels to England to take part in the IRA’s “S-Plan” bombing campaign of 1939 to 1940, then returns to Dublin to pass his bomb-making skills on to new recruits, including Brendan Behan. He then returns to England to become the IRA’s Manchester Operations Officer but, after a bomb he is working on goes off in the flat he is renting, he flees to Glasgow, then back to Ireland.
Shortly after returning to Ireland, White is arrested while giving a lecture on explosives in County Offaly and is interned at the Curragh Camp. The republican prisoners are split into two groups, one led by Pearse Kelly, and the other by Liam Leddy. White is unhappy with the situation and refuses to take sides. Shortly after his arrival, IRA Chief of StaffSeán McCool is also interned, and is concerned that the locations of many of the IRA’s arms caches are known only to him. McCool asks him to get the information to the new leadership by “signing out,” declaring that he is no longer involved with a paramilitary group. He refuses as doing so would be breaking IRA orders, but McCool persists, suggesting that he could resign from the army before signing out, thereby not contravening IRA rules. Once released, he immediately rejoins the IRA and passes on the information. He is also made IRA Quartermaster General by Chief of StaffCharlie Kerins. However, he is suspected of involvement in the killing of a police officer, Dinny O’Brien – something which he always denies – and has to go on the run.
In October 1942, White and a comrade are cornered in a house. Here the details are unclear. Tim Pat Coogan claims that White is in a house in Donnycarney in County Dublin with Maurice O’Neill (executed in Mountjoy Prison on November 12, 1942), while Danny Morrison claims that White is at a wedding reception in Cavan with Paddy Dermody. Both agree that there is a shoot-out in which one officer is killed, enabling White to escape, but he falls down a railway embankment and hides for two days before emerging, hoping that the police hunt is over. In Coogan’s version, he catches a bus to Dublin, covered in blood and mud; while, according to Morrison, he is assisted by a sympathetic soldier who helps him recover and cycles to Dublin with him. They agree that he reaches a safe house once in the capital. Morrison claims that the Donnycarney shootout occurs four months later and that White travels north, rather than returning to Dublin a second time.
On arrival in the north, White is made Officer Commanding of the IRA Northern Command. Kerins is arrested in Dublin in June 1944, and later tried for murder and hanged. White becomes the only member of the IRA leadership still free. A wanted man, he travels around until work is arranged for him by supporters in Altaghoney, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. There, he works as a handyman and barber and sets up a dance band, also managing to acquire some explosives from a local Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer who wants rocks cleared from his field. For at least part of his time in Altaghoney, he serves as the IRA Chief of Staff.
White is finally captured and tried in October 1946, and is handed over to the Irish authorities. He is sentenced to death, but this is reduced to twelve years’ imprisonment on appeal, a defence in which his former comrade Seán MacBride is involved. He is actually released early in 1948 following a change in government which leaves Mac Bride in a ministerial post.
Following his release, White remains active in the IRA, but in a less high-profile way, as he is married and settles in Dublin. He supports the Provisional IRA following its split in 1970 and is involved in smuggling weapons across the border.
White publishes his autobiography in 1985, actually ghostwritten by Uinseann MacEoin. Entitled Harry, it attracts press attention for naming the IRA members who killed Kevin O’Higgins, names which Peadar O’Donnell separately confirms. White’s nephew, Danny Morrison, becomes a prominent Irish republican from the 1970s onward.
Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that has a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents are killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. In February 1992, four IRA volunteers are killed in a gun battle with the SAS during their escape after a machine gun attack on the RUC/British Army barracks there. Three months later, an IRA bomb attack on a British Army patrol at Cappagh, in which a paratrooper loses his legs, triggers a series of clashes between local residents and British troops on May 12 and 17. A number of civilians and soldiers are injured, a soldier’s backpack radio destroyed, and two British weapons stolen. The melee is followed by a 500-strong protest in the town and bitter exchanges between Republic of Ireland and British officials. Further scuffles between civilians and soldiers are reported in the town on March 6, 1994.
At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 1997, a grenade is thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence. The RUC reports that a 1 kg device hit the fence ten feet off the ground. Another source claims that the device is a coffee-jar bomb filled with Semtex. The grenade is thrown or fired by two unidentified men. At the time of the attack, there is an art exhibition at Coalisland Heritage Hall, also known as The Mill, from where the explosion and the gunshots that follow are clearly heard. The incident lasts less than two minutes.
Just one minute after the IRA attack, bypassers hear high-velocity rounds buzzing around them. A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, get out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with “Army” stamped on the front. A source initially describes them as members of the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company. The men are firing Browning pistols and Heckler & Kochsubmachine guns. Witnesses say there are eight to ten gunshots, while a republican source claims that up to eighteen rounds are fired. Nineteen-year-old Gareth Doris is shot in the stomach and falls to the ground. He is allegedly returning from the local church and is in the company of a priest when he is shot. A local priest, Seamus Rice, is driving out of the church car park when his car is hit by bullets, smashing the windscreen.
Three minutes after the blast, hundreds of angry residents gather at the scene and confront the undercover soldiers. The soldiers fire live rounds at the ground and into the air to keep people back. The crowd keeps drawing back and moving forward again until 9:50 p.m., when the RUC arrives and begins firing plastic bullets at the protesters. Two women are wounded by plastic bullets and the undercover soldiers then flee in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time. Sinn FéincouncillorFrancie Molloy claims that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris’s life in the process. Witnesses allegedly fear an undercover soldier brandishing a pistol would have killed the wounded Doris with a shot to his head.
Afterward, hundreds of residents are forced to leave their homes as security forces search the area near the base. This keeps tensions high, according to local republican activist Bernadette McAliskey. Two men are later questioned by the RUC about the attack.
The attack, along with two large bombings the same day in Wilmslow, England, raise concerns that the IRA is trying to influence the upcoming UK general election. Martin McGuinness describes the shooting as “murderous,” while independent councillor Jim Canning says that more than a dozen soldiers “were threatening to shoot anybody who moved […] while a young man lay shot on the ground.” Republican sources claim that this is another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MPKen Maginnis, however, praises the SAS for their actions.
Gareth Doris is admitted to South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon, where he is arrested after undergoing surgery. He is later transferred to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He is later convicted for involvement in the bombing and sentenced to ten years in jail, before being released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Gareth is the cousin of Tony Doris, an IRA member killed in an SAS ambush in the nearby village of Coagh on June 3, 1991, and a cousin of Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill. According to Sinn Féin councillor Brendan Doris, another cousin of Gareth, “He absolutely denies being involved in terrorist activity of any description.” Amnesty International raises its concerns over the shooting and the fact that no warning is given beforehand.
DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting leads to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack. In February 2020, he is convicted by a Diplock court in Belfast. He denies the charges but receives a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. The prosecutor acknowledges that Campbell would have been released by this time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement but argues that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.
On July 5, 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base is the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engages an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks. One female officer is wounded. The former RUC station at Coalisland is eventually shut down in 2006 and sold for private development in 2010.
(Pictured: Coalisland RUC/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland)
McGlinchey is one of eleven siblings born into a staunchly republican home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father owns a garage and some of his father’s police customers later die at McGlinchey’s hands. His mother Monica is a devout Catholic. He is educated at the local school. When he was sixteen, he begins an apprenticeship in his father’s garage. About this time, he is joining the numerous civil rights marches that are taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but speculation is that he is reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offers glamour and a close identification with his own community.
In 1971, McGlinchey is interned without charge for ten months in Long Kesh Detention Centre. Not long after his release the following year, he is imprisoned again on arms charges. On July 5, 1975, during his imprisonment, he marries Mary O’Neil, daughter of Patrick O’Neil from Toomebridge. Together they have three children.
Following his release, McGlinchey joins Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikersFrancis Hughes and Thomas McElwee and wages a campaign of shooting and bombing throughout the county and beyond. Together, they later join the Provisional IRA. The gang spends the late 1970s on the run, carrying out operations and evading both the British Army and the Garda Síochána. Following a mailvan robbery, the latter force arrests McGlinchey in County Monaghan in 1977 for carjacking a Garda patrol vehicle and threatening the officer with a pistol, although he claims that the gun is actually a wheel brace. He fails to make bail at Dublin‘s Special Criminal Court after a Garda Superintendent argues that McGlinchey would fail to attend court if bailed. He is convicted and sent to the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison. In 1982, while serving his prison sentence, he clashes with the prison’s IRA leadership and is either expelled by them for indiscipline or leaves the organisation due to strategic differences.
Following his departure from the IRA and his release from prison, McGlinchey joins the INLA. Due to his experience, he rises through the ranks, becoming chief of staff by 1982. Under his leadership, the INLA, which had previously had a reputation for disorganisation, becomes extremely active in cross-borderassassinations and bombings. These include many individual assassinations and woundings, but also massacres such as the Droppin Well bombing of 1982 in which both civilians and soldiers die. There are some failed operations, and McGlinchey, who believes this is the result of an informer within the ranks, devotes much time and energy to finding the cause. Those suspected of betraying the organisation are treated brutally, often by McGlinchey personally. As a result of this resurgence of activity and his high profile, the press nicknames him “Mad Dog.” Under his tenure the Darkley massacre is carried out, ostensibly by another group but using a weapon supplied by McGlinchey. In late 1983, while still on the run, he gives an interview with the Sunday Tribune newspaper in which he condemns the Darkley killings but also lays out his political philosophy and plans for the future.
By 1984, McGlinchey has fallen out with members of a powerful Republican family from South Armagh over what he considers missing funds. Men loyal to this family are subsequently killed by McGlinchey’s unit, which includes his wife. In March of the same year, he is captured in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, following a gunfight with the Gardaí. At this time, he is wanted in Northern Ireland for the shooting of an elderly woman, but republicans have traditionally been able to avoid extradition by claiming their offences were political. The bloody war in the north is leading the Republic of Ireland to re-evaluate its position, however, and he becomes the first republican to be extradited to Northern Ireland. Although convicted and sentenced there to life imprisonment, this is overturned in 1985. As a result, he is returned to the Republic, where he is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment on firearms charges. While he is incarcerated, his wife is shot dead at her Dundalk home.
McGlinchey is released in March 1993 and claiming to have no further involvement with the INLA, moves to Drogheda. He survives an assassination attempt soon after his release from prison, but in February 1994, his enemies catch up with him. At around 9:30 on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 1994, he visits and dines with friends of his in Duleek Road, near his home. He leaves about forty minutes later, intending to take a video back to a shop in Brookville, on the north side of town. At around 11:00 p.m. he and his 16-year-old son Dominic are returning home, when he pulls up to make a phone call from a public kiosk on Hardman’s Gardens, near Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Almost immediately and despite the presence of four witnesses, a red Mazda pulls up alongside him. While his son watches from the car, three men get out and beat McGlinchey. Once he is on the ground the men, who are armed with three pump action shotguns and a pistol, fire into him fourteen times. The attack finishes with a coup de grâce to the head, although he is already dead. His last words are reputed to be “Jesus, Mary help me.” His son yells for an ambulance.
The following day, an autopsy is carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, which indicates McGlinchey had been hit in the neck, skull, the left upper chest, the left arm, and both legs. His inquest is held in Drogheda two weeks later, suspended and then reopened in November 1996. Gardaí forensic officers tell the coroner that they had compared the shell casings they had found with the database, but no matches have been made to other known weapons. The officer notes that no such information has been received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The shotguns used are impossible to trace ballistically, but it is ascertained that the Mazda was registered in the north. His and his wife’s killers have never been found.
McGlinchey’s funeral is held on February 13, 1994, in Bellaghy, with no republican accoutrements. There is no INLA colour guard, and only an Irish tricolor draped over the coffin. Over 1,500 people attend and are watched closely by 200 RUC. Police armoured vans are held on the perimeter. He is buried alongside his wife and their young daughter Máire. His coffin is carried from the McGlinchey family home to St. Mary’s Church by pallbearers who are swapped out from the crowd every 40-yards or so. Martin McGuinness is among them, as is Bernadette McAliskey and her daughter Róisín. His sons carry the coffin for the final yards.
McGlinchey’s posthumous reputation ranges from being a “psycho” to his enemies to being an inspiration to those who followed him. Commentators have speculated on what he would have contributed to Irish politics had he lived. Some have suggested that he would have contributed to the Northern Ireland peace process, while others have argued that dissident republicans, opposed to that process, would have found him a willing rallying point. He remains an influence on Irish fiction and music, with both Edna O’Brien and Martin McDonagh producing acclaimed pieces based on his life and career. He is also featured in popular songs.
Gallagher is always on time. He often reprimands colleagues for their lack of punctuality. He arrives to sign on at the social security office on the Falls Road at exactly 11:00 a.m. every two weeks. Usually a friend goes with him, however, on this day he goes alone. He is talking to the woman at the counter when a man approaches from behind. He does not get a chance to turn around. Four bullets are fired into the back of his head. He slumps to the ground and dies instantly.
As the office descends into chaos, the killer calmly walks out. He is in his mid-20s but well disguised in a woolen cap, pony-tail wig and glasses. He was only 5’3″ tall.
The INLA vows revenge and immediately begins an investigation. Early on there are no concrete clues. “It was an unbelievably clean killing,” says one source in the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the INLA`s political wing. “People in the dole office, the street, the houses nearby were all questioned. Nobody really saw anything. We don’t know if the gunman acted with others or alone. We don’t know where he drove to. No car has been found. He did a very professional job.”
In June 1994, Gallagher had shot dead three loyalists on the Shankill. But the INLA rules out possible retaliation by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) or Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), believing that a loyalist assassin would not move so confidently in a republican area.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Sinn Féin politicians point to an INLA feud. The group has historically been riven by internal disputes and it suffered serious difficulties the previous April. A statement read aloud in a Dublin courtroom by four Northern Irish men arrested following an arms find in Balbriggan announces an unconditional INLA ceasefire.
Gallagher, supported by others, says that the men lack the authority to make the statement. He takes over as Chief-of-Staff, and the four are expelled from the republican socialist movement. They receive almost no internal backing, and a violent split is avoided.
The gut reaction of some members of the INLA is that people loyal to these former members could have carried out the attack on Gallagher. But others think it unlikely. “I don’t believe these people are leading suspects,” says one source. “They’re a beaten docket. It would be illogical anyway. They wanted an end to violence so why provoke conflict with us by killing Gino?”
Gallagher’s killing bears no resemblance to previous INLA feuds, when attacks were claimed by each faction. No one admits responsibility for his death. No splinter group is set up claiming to be the “real INLA” and no gang warfare breaks out on the streets.
There is some speculation that elements of British intelligence could be responsible. The INLA, which describes itself as Marxist, is the only paramilitary group in Northern Ireland which refuses to call a ceasefire. Although substantially smaller than the IRA, it is well armed. It has engaged in an 18-month suspension of violence, but there is a strong possibility it will eventually return to conflict. Gallagher had said that Irish unity and socialism could not be achieved through constitutional politics. He foresaw violence “having some part to play in our strategy.”
“He was a real threat to the state, and some of its agents could have wanted him out of the way before he caused any trouble,” says an IRSP source.
One of the most popular and controversial theories is that the IRA had killed Gallagher. In an internal IRSP document two weeks prior to his assassination, Gallagher expresses fear that his life is in danger from the IRA. He has also been warned by contacts in the Provisionals that he is at risk.
Gallagher was reorganising the INLA into a more formidable force than it had been in years. It was building a base in areas where it had been dormant. He had also taken over as the IRSP’s national organiser.
In December 1996, the IRSP refused to make a submission to the Mitchell Commission, saying to do so would be “collaborating” with the peace process. It had just started giving regular media interviews and had reopened offices on the Falls Road. It was considering contesting any elections to a talk’s convention in the North and challenging Sinn Féin in nationalist areas. Gallagher’s high profile as a gunman made him popular with IRA grassroots and it was feared that he could become a rallying point for dissidents.
“He led an organisation which was nowhere near the size of the Provos,” says one republican source, “but he really had them worried. He saw a vacuum emerging as republican supporters became disillusioned with the peace process and he wanted to fill it. Given time, he could have caused trouble. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Provos wanted to nip that in the bud.”
Notably, Sinn Féin does not condemn the killing. An unnamed spokesman, an unusual move, describes it as “tragic.” Similar language has been used about the assassination of drug dealers when the IRA has not wanted to admit responsibility.
The IRA issues a statement denying responsibility but, as one source says, “they aren’t likely to admit it.” If IRA involvement is established, the INLA will have to decide whether or not to retaliate. Arguments are made not to allow the Provisionals to walk over the INLA, but the organisation also fears being wiped out in a bitter republican feud.
If clues about the killing remain scarce, the less likely it is that former INLA members are involved. “They wouldn’t be able to fully cover their tracks,” says one source. “If the group responsible is able to do that, then it’s a really professional outfit. That points to the IRA or elements of British intelligence.”
(From: “Gallagher murder ‘an unbelievably clean killing'” by Susanne Breen, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, February 3, 1996)
On December 12, 1993, a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army‘s (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade ambushes a two-men unmarked mobile patrol of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Fivemiletown, County Tyrone. Two constables, Andrew Beacom and Ernest Smith, are shot and killed instantly. A military helicopter is also fired at by a second IRA unit in the aftermath of the incident, during a follow-up operation launched in the surroundings of the town by both the British Army and the RUC. A number of suspects are questioned, but the perpetrators make good their escape. The action occurs just three days before the Downing Street Declaration.
Fivemiletown lays in the western edge of the Clogher Valley, near the border between County Fermanagh and County Tyrone. No deaths directly related with paramilitary activity has occurred there during the Troubles prior to the 1993 IRA shootings, though there are a number of incidents in the region in the previous months.
On May 7, 1992, members of the IRA South Fermanagh Brigade detonate a 1,000-pound bomb delivered by a tractor after crossing through a hedge outside the local RUC part-time barracks. The huge explosion leaves ten civilians wounded and causes widespread damage to the surrounding property. The security base itself is heavily damaged and the blast is heard 30 miles away. According to a later IRA statement, the destruction of the security base compels the British forces to organise their patrols from the nearby RUC barracks at Clogher, allowing the East Tyrone Brigade to study their pattern and carry out the 1993 ambush at Fivemiletown’s main street.
A secondary incident occurs some hours later, on May 9, when a British soldier kills his company’s sergeant major in a blue-on-blue shooting at the same place while taking part in a security detail around the wrecked facilities.
On January 20, 1993, the RUC base in Clogher is hit and severely damaged by a Mark-15 “barrack buster” mortar bomb launched by the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade. A number of constables receive minor injuries.
Constable Andrew Beacom and Reserve Constable Ernest Smith are patrolling Fivemiletown’s Main Street in a civilian-type, unmarked Renault 21 on the early hours of December 12, 1993. Both men are part of the RUC Operational Support Unit, which surveils the border along with the British Army. The constables are based at Clogher RUC barracks.
The IRA reports that two active service units from the East Tyrone Brigade had taken up positions in the centre of Fivemiletown and identified the RUC unmarked vehicle before the ambush.
At 1:30 a.m., up to the junction of Main Street and Coneen Street, at least two IRA volunteers open fire from both sides of the road with automatic weapons, hitting the vehicle with more than 20 rounds. Beacom and Smith die on the spot. Constable Beacom lives in Fivemiletown, just a hundred metres from the site of the ambush, where his wife owns a restaurant. She is one of the first persons to arrive to the scene of the shooting. Smith resides with his family at Augher.
According to a colleague in the Operational Support Unit, himself a reserve constable deployed at Lisnaskea and a former Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier, their deaths “hit the unit very hard.” The men are appreciated for their in-depth knowledge of the area.
A “major” follow-up security operation is mounted between Fivemiletown and the border with the Republic of Ireland, supported by airborne troops and RUC reinforcements, in an attempt to block the attacker’s escape.
Approximately an hour after the ambush, an Army Air Corps (AAC) Westland Lynx helicopter comes upon a number of IRA volunteers in the searching area, just a few miles from the site of the shooting, but the aircraft becomes the target of automatic rifle fire and is forced to disengage. Though the helicopter is not hit, the assailants break contact successfully. The IRA East Tyrone Brigade report claims that the attack on the Westland Lynx is carried out by a second active service unit, which set up a firing position on the predicted path of the British helicopters carrying reinforcements into Fivemiletown after the initial shooting. A number of people are arrested and questioned about the killings, but the perpetrators manage to slip away.
The shootings are widely condemned. RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley says that “At a time when the whole community is looking toward peace, the Provisional IRA has yet again shown they have absolutely nothing to offer but deaths and suffering.”
Presbyterian Moderator Rev. Andrew Rodgers calls on the governments to break any contact with Sinn Féin and other “men of blood in both sections of the community.”
A former IRA member cites instead the answer of an IRA volunteer in the area when questioned by him about the futility of the actions at Fivemiletown. He replies that “The war must go on.”
(Pictured: A photograph showing a British Army sentry guarding the scene of the IRA ambush on a Royal Ulster Constabulary mobile patrol, December 12, 1993)
Four paramilitary bombings take place in the centre of Dublin between November 26, 1972, and January 20, 1973. On December 1, 1972, two separate car bombs explode within a 20-minute period in Eden Quay and Sackville Place. The bombings occur at the end of what is the bloodiest year in the entire 30-year-old religious-political conflict known as the Troubles, which had erupted at the end of the 1960s.
The first of the four bombs had exploded on November 26, 1972, in the laneway connecting Burgh Quay with Leinster Market outside the rear exit door of the Film Centre Cinema.
On Friday, December 1, 1972, at 7:58 p.m., a blue Hillman Avenger, registration number OGX 782 K, explodes at 29 Eden Quay close to Liberty Hall tower block. The blast blows the Avenger apart and what remains of the vehicle is catapulted 18 feet away to rest outside an optician’s office. A wall of flame shoots up which is visible to people across the River Liffey on the opposite Burgh Quay. Six cars parked in the vicinity of the Avenger are set on fire and piled on top of each other. Most of the windows of Liberty Hall and other nearby buildings implode and the edifices are damaged. Although a number of people suffer injuries – some horrific – nobody is killed. One of the injured is a pregnant woman. Customers inside the quayside Liffey Bar, near the explosion’s epicentre, are hurt by flying glass and some have open head wounds. Following the explosion, a huge crowd of people hurries to the scene where police and ambulances have already arrived.
At exactly the same time the carbomb detonates in Eden Quay, the Belfast News Letter receives a telephone call from a man using a coin box speaking with a Belfast English type of accent. He issues a warning that two bombs will explode in Dublin. He gives the locations as Liberty Hall and Abbey Street behind Clerys department store. The newspaper immediately phones the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who in turn relay the warnings to the Garda Control Room at Dublin Castle at 8:08 p.m. A team of Gardaí are sent to investigate the area around Sackville Place and Earl Street.
A policeman runs into a CIÉ company canteen in Earl Place warning the employees inside to clear the building as there is a bomb scare. Just after the building is evacuated, at 8:16 p.m., a silver-grey Ford Escort, registration number 955 1VZ, explodes in Sackville Place forty feet away from its intersection with Marlborough Street, throwing people up in the air and in all directions, killing two CIÉ employees who moments before had left the canteen. The victims are George Bradshaw (30), a bus driver and Thomas Duffy (23), a bus conductor. Both men are married with children. Bradshaw, whose body is rendered unrecognisable by the effects of the blast, dies of severe head injuries and Duffy is killed by a flying metal fragment which lacerates his aorta. Henry Kilduff, a CIÉ bus driver, later tells Gardaí that he had seen Bradshaw and Duffy en to twenty yards away walking down Sackville Place towards Marlborough Street when the carbomb exploded beside them.
Denis Gibney, another co-worker, informs police that Bradshaw had been headed in the direction of Liberty Hall after hearing that a bomb had gone off near there. Bradshaw is found lying badly mangled beside a damaged car and is carried into a ruined shop front where a priest performs last rites. As at Eden Quay, the Sackville Place bombing causes considerable damage to buildings and vehicles near the blast’s epicentre. Sackville Place is a narrow street off O’Connell Street, Dublin’s main thoroughfare. There is further panic amongst the survivors when the petrol tank inside the burning bomb car explodes. A total of 131 people are injured in both explosions.
The two bombings have immediate political ramifications. Just as the bombs are exploding in the city centre, Dáil Éireann is debating the controversial bill to amend the Offences Against the State Act, which would enact stricter measures against the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other paramilitary groups. As a result of the two attacks, the Dáil votes for the amendment which introduces special emergency powers to combat the IRA. In particular this means that a member of the IRA or any other paramilitary group can be sentenced on the sworn evidence of a senior Garda officer in front of three judges. Before the bombings, many commentators had actually believed the bill, considered by some to be ‘draconian,’ would be defeated. It is believed that the November 26 and December 1 bombings are executed to influence the outcome of the voting.
Thirteen days after the double-bombing, three incendiary devices are found in Dublin – one inside Clerys department store and the other two in the toilets of the Premier Bar in Sackville Place. The devices had failed to explode. According to journalists Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald, the devices were planted by the same Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bomb unit that was responsible for the Eden Quay and Sackville Place car bombs.
Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissions an official inquiry into the bombings. The findings are published in a report in November 2004. The Inquiry concludes that it “seemed more likely than not” that the bombing of the Film Centre Cinema on November 26, 1972, was “carried out by Republican subversives as a response to a Government ‘crackdown’ on the IRA and their associates” and to influence the outcome of the voting in the Dáil regarding the passage of the controversial amendment to the Offences Against the State Acts. Regarding December 1, 1972, and January 20, 1973, carbombings, the Inquiry concludes that confidential information obtained by the Gardaí indicates the three attacks were perpetrated by the UVF, “but no evidence was ever found to confirm this. Nor was there any evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the security forces in the attacks.”
The Dublin City Coroner’s Court holds an inquest in February 2005 into the deaths of George Bradshaw, Thomas Duffy, and Thomas Douglas. The jury of three men and four women returns a verdict of unlawful killing by persons or persons unknown for the three dead men.
The UVF has never admitted responsibility for the bombings.
(Pictured: The scene of destruction at Sackville Place, off O’Connell Street, Dublin, following the explosion. Photograph credit: Paddy Whelan)
Adams is born in 1926. He marries Anne Hannaway, also a Republican from an established republican family, by whom he has thirteen children, three of whom die in infancy. His children include Gerry Adams, a former abstentionistMP for Belfast West and former TD who becomes a leading figure in Sinn Féin and serves as its president until 2018, as well as Liam Adams, who dies serving a prison sentence in Northern Ireland for raping his daughter.
Adams is captured after being shot and wounded during an IRA operation in 1942 after he shot a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officer in the foot. He is sentenced to eight years in prison and serves five. He is interned in 1971 along with his son, Gerry Adams.
Adams dies “a lonely old man” on November 17, 2003. He is buried with the Irish tricolour, despite the private reservations of family members over alleged abuse that would only be made public some years later. His son, Gerry, says that he felt his father had “besmirched” the flag.
In December 2009, six years after Adams’s death, his family claims that he had subjected some members of his family to emotional, physical and sexual abuse over many years. The family says that this abuse “had a devastating impact” on the family, with which they are still then coming to terms. The family decides to go public about the abuse in order to help other families in similar circumstances.
(Pictured: Gerry Adams, Sr. (L) pictured with his son, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams)
Ó Brádaigh is born into a middle-class republican family. His father, Matt Brady, is an IRA volunteer who is severely wounded in an encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in 1919. His mother, May Caffrey, is a Cumann na mBan volunteer and a 1922 graduate of University College Dublin (UCD). His father dies when he is ten and is given a paramilitary funeral led by his former IRA colleagues. His mother, prominent as the Secretary for the County Longford Board of Health, lives until 1974. He is educated at Melview National School at primary level and attends secondary school at St. Mel’s College, leaving in 1950, and graduates from University College Dublin in 1954. That year he takes a job teaching Irish language at Roscommon Vocational School in Roscommon. He is a deeply religious Catholic who refrains from smoking or drinking.
Ó Brádaigh joins Sinn Féin in 1950. While at university, in 1951, he joins the Irish Republican Army. In September 1951, he marches with the IRA at the unveiling of the Seán Russell monument in Fairview Park, Dublin. A teacher by profession, he is also a Training Officer for the IRA. In 1954, he is appointed to the Military Council of the IRA, a subcommittee set up by the IRA Army Council in 1950 to plan a military campaign against Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks in Northern Ireland.
On August 13, 1955, Ó Brádaigh leads a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks, near Arborfield, Berkshire, England, a depot for the No. 5 Radar Training Battalion of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It is the biggest IRA arms raid in Britain. Most, if not all, of the weapons are recovered in a relatively short period of time. A van, traveling too fast, is stopped by the police and IRA personnel are arrested. Careful police work leads to weapons that had been transported in a second van and stored in London.
The IRA Border Campaign commences on December 12, 1956. As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) officer, Ó Brádaigh is responsible for training the Teeling Column in the west of Ireland. During the Campaign, he serves as second-in-command of the Teeling Column. On December 30, 1956, he partakes in the Teeling Column attack on RUC barracks in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. RUC Constable John Scally is killed in the attack and is the first fatality of the new IRA campaign. Ó Brádaigh and others are arrested by the Garda Síochána across the border in County Cavan the day after the attack. They are tried and jailed for six months in Mountjoy Prison. A leading abstentionist, upon his arrest he refuses to recognize the authority of the Irish government and refuses to renounce violence in exchange for his release.
Upon completing his prison sentence, Ó Brádaigh is immediately interned at the Curragh Camp along with other republicans. On September 27, 1958, he escapes from the camp along with Dáithí Ó Conaill. While a football match is in progress, the pair cuts through a wire fence and escapes from the camp under a camouflage grass blanket. This is an official escape, authorised by the officer commanding (OC) of the IRA internees, Tomás Óg Mac Curtain. He is the first Sinn Féin TD on the run since the 1920s.
In October 1958, Ó Brádaigh becomes the IRA Chief of Staff, a position he holds until May 1959, when Seán Cronin is elected as his replacement. He is arrested in November 1959, refuses to answer questions, and is jailed in Mountjoy Prison under the Offences against the State Act. He is released in May 1960 and, after Cronin is arrested, again becomes Chief of Staff. Although he always emphasises that it is a collective declaration, he is the primary author of the statement ending the IRA Border Campaign in 1962. At the IRA 1962 Convention he indicates that he is not interested in continuing as Chief of Staff.
After Ó Brádaigh’s arrest in December 1956, he takes a leave from teaching at Roscommon Vocational School. He is re-instated and begins teaching again in late 1962, just after he is succeeded by Cathal Goulding in the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. He remains an active member of Sinn Féin and is also a member of the IRA Army Council throughout the decade.
Ó Brádaigh opposes the decision of the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop abstentionism and to recognise the Westminster parliament in London, the Stormont parliament in Belfast and the Leinster House parliament in 1969/1970. On January 11, 1970, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin, he leads the walkout from the 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis after the majority votes to end the policy of abstentionism, although the vote to change the Sinn Féin constitution fails to receive the required two-thirds majority. The delegates who walk out reconvene at the Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, Dublin, and establish Provisional Sinn Féin.
Ó Brádaigh is voted chairman of the Caretaker Executive of Provisional Sinn Féin. That October, he formally becomes president of the party. He holds this position until 1983. In his presidential address to the 1971 Provisional Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, he says that the first step to achieving a United Ireland is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable. He apparently also serves on the Army Council or the executive of the Provisional Irish Republican Army until he is seriously injured in a car accident on January 1, 1984.
On May 31, 1972, Ó Brádaigh is arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and immediately commences a hunger strike. A fortnight later the charges against him are dropped and he is released. With Dáithí Ó Conaill he develops the Éire Nua policy, which is launched on June 28, 1972. The policy calls for a federal Ireland.
On December 3, 1972, Ó Brádaigh appears on the London Weekend TelevisionWeekend World programme. He is arrested by the Gardaí again on December 29, 1972, and charged in the newly established Special Criminal Court with Provisional IRA membership. In January 1973 he is the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1972 and is sentenced to six months in the Curragh Camp.
On December 10, 1974, Ó Brádaigh participates in the Feakle talks between the IRA Army Council and Sinn Féin leadership and the leaders of the Protestant churches in Ireland. Although the meeting is raided and broken up by the Gardaí, the Protestant churchmen pass on proposals from the IRA leadership to the British government. These proposals call on the British government to declare a commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners.
The IRA subsequently calls a “total and complete” ceasefire intended to last from December 22, 1974 to January 2, 1975, to allow the British government to respond to proposals. British government officials also hold talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as president of Sinn Féin from late December to January 17, 1975.
On February 10, 1975, the IRA Army Council, unanimously endorses an open-ended cessation of IRA “hostilities against Crown forces,” which becomes known as the 1975 truce. The IRA Chief of Staff at the time is Seamus Twomey of Belfast. It is reported in some quarters that the IRA leaders mistakenly believe they had persuaded the British Government to withdraw from Ireland and the protracted negotiations between themselves and British officials are the preamble to a public declaration of intent to withdraw. In fact, as British government papers now show, the British entertain talks with the IRA in the hope that this would fragment the movement further and score several intelligence coups during the talks. This bad faith embitters many in the republican movement, and another ceasefire does not happen until 1994.
In late December 1976, along with Joe Cahill, Ó Brádaigh meets two representatives of the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC), John McKeague and John McClure, at the request of the latter body. Their purpose is to try to find a way to accommodate the ULCCC proposals for an independent Northern Ireland with the Sinn Féin’s Éire Nua programme. It is agreed that if this can be done, a joint Loyalist-Republican approach can then be made to request the British government to leave Ireland. Desmond BoalQC and Seán MacBrideSC are requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions. For months they have meetings in various places including Paris. The dialogue eventually collapses when Conor Cruise O’Brien, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, becomes aware of it and condemns it on RTÉ Radio. As the loyalists had insisted on absolute secrecy, they feel unable to continue with the talks as a result.
In the aftermath of the 1975 truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership comes under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who becomes a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978. By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh’s position as president of Sinn Féin is openly under challenge and the Éire Nua policy is targeted in an effort to oust him. The policy is rejected at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and finally removed from the Sinn Féin constitution at the 1982 Ard Fheis. At the following year’s Ard Fheis, Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill resign from their leadership positions, voicing opposition to the dropping of the Éire Nua policy by the party.
On November 2, 1986, the majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis vote to drop the policy of abstentionism if elected to Dáil Éireann, but not the British House of Commons or the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, thus ending the self-imposed ban on Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats at Leinster House. Ó Brádaigh and several supporters walk out and immediately assemble at Dublin’s West County Hotel and set up Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). As an ordinary member, he had earlier spoken out against the motion (resolution 162) in an impassioned speech. The Continuity IRA becomes publicly known in 1996. Republican Sinn Féin’s relationship with the Continuity IRA is similar to the relationship between Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA when Ó Brádaigh was Sinn Féin’s president.
Ó Brádaigh believes RSF to be the sole legitimate continuation of the pre-1986 Sinn Féin, arguing that RSF has kept the original Sinn Féin constitution. RSF readopts and enhances his Éire Nua policy. His party has electoral success in only a few local elections.
Ó Brádaigh remains a vociferous opponent of the Good Friday Agreement, viewing it as a programme to copperfasten Irish partition and entrench sectarian divisions in the north. He condemns his erstwhile comrades in Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA for decommissioning weapons while British troops remain in the country. In his opinion, “the Provo sell-out is the worst yet – unprecedented in Irish history.” He condemns the Provisional IRA’s decision to seal off a number of its arms dumps as “an overt act of treachery,” “treachery punishable by death” under IRA General Army Order Number 11.
In July 2005, Ó Brádaigh hands over a portion of his personal political papers detailing discussions between Irish Republican leaders and representatives of the British Government during 1974–1975 to the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.
In September 2009, Ó Brádaigh announces his retirement as leader of Republican Sinn Féin. His successor is Des Dalton. He is also a long-standing member of the Celtic League, an organization which fosters cooperation between the Celtic people and promotes the culture, identity and eventual self-determination for the people, in the form of six sovereign states, for the Celtic nations – Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland.
After suffering a period of ill-health, Ó Brádaigh dies on June 5, 2013, at Roscommon County Hospital. His funeral is attended by 1,800 mourners including Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan and is policed by the Garda Emergency Response Unit and Gardaí in riot gear, for “operational reasons,” a show of force believed to have been to deter the republican tradition of firing a three-volley salute of shots over the final place of rest during the graveyard oration. As a result, there are some minor scuffles between gardai and mourners.
On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1971, the security forces launch Operation Demetrius, the main focus of which is to arrest and intern suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Parachute Regiment is selected to carry out the operation. The operation is chaotic and informed by poor intelligence, resulting in a number of innocent people being interned. By focusing solely on republicans, it excludes violence carried out by loyalistparamilitaries. Some nationalist neighbourhoods attempt to disrupt the army with barricades, petrol bombs and gunfire. In the Catholic district of Ballymurphy, ten civilians are shot and killed between the evening of August 9 and the morning of August 11, while another dies of heart failure.
Members of the Parachute Regiment state that they were shot at by republicans as they entered the Ballymurphy area and returned fire. The press officer for the British Army stationed in Belfast, Mike Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, includes a disputed account of the shootings in his autobiography, stating that those killed in the shootings were republican gunmen. This claim is strongly denied by the families of those killed in the shootings, including in interviews conducted during the documentary film The Ballymurphy Precedent. The claim is found to be without basis by a later coroner’s inquest, which establishes that those killed were “entirely innocent.”
The six civilians killed on August 9 are Francis Quinn (19), shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, Father Hugh Mullan (38), a Catholic priest, shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, reputedly while waving a white cloth to indicate his intentions, Joan Connolly (44), shot by three soldiers as she stands opposite the army base, Daniel Teggart (44), shot fourteen times mostly in the back as he lay injured on the ground, Noel Phillips (20) and Joseph Murphy (41), shot as they stand opposite the army base. Murphy is subsequently taken into army custody and after his release, as he is dying in hospital, he claims that he had been beaten and shot again while in custody. When his body is exhumed in October 2015, a second bullet is discovered in his body, which activists say corroborates his claim.
Edward Doherty (28), is shot and killed on August 10 while walking along Whiterock Road.
Another three civilians are shot on 11 August: John Laverty (20) and Joseph Corr (43) are shot at separate points at the top of the Whiterock Road. Laverty is shot twice, once in the back and once in the back of the leg. Corr is shot several times and dies of his injuries on August 27. John McKerr (49), is shot in the head by an unknown sniper while standing outside a Catholic church and dies of his injuries on August 20. While a number of eyewitnesses state that soldiers were seen shooting toward the area, the 2021 inquest cannot establish who had killed him. The coroner notes that a more specific finding is not possible, in large part, due to an “abject failing by the authorities to properly inquire into the death of [McKerr at the time].”
Paddy McCarthy (44), an eleventh civilian, dies on August 11 following an altercation with a group of soldiers. His family allege that an empty gun is put in his mouth and the trigger pulled, he suffers a heart attack and dies shortly after the alleged confrontation.
In February 2015, the conviction of Terry Laverty, younger brother of John Laverty, one of those killed, is quashed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He had been convicted of riotous behaviour and sentenced to six months on the eyewitness evidence of a private in the Parachute Regiment. The case is referred to court because the sole witness retracts his evidence.
In 2016, Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, recommends an inquest into the killings as one of a series of “legacy inquests” covering 56 cases related to the Troubles. These inquests are delayed, as funding has not been approved by the Northern Ireland Executive. The Stormont first minister, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), defers a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a decision condemned by the human rights group Amnesty International. Foster confirms she has used her influence in the devolved power-sharing executive to hold back finance for a backlog of inquests connected to the conflict. The High Court says her decision to refuse to put a funding paper on the Executive basis is “unlawful and procedurally flawed.”
In January 2018, the coroner’s office announces that the inquest will begin in September 2018. On May 11, 2021, this coroner’s inquest finds that the ten civilians killed were innocent and that the use of lethal force by the British Army was “not justified.” The circumstances of the 11th death are not part of the inquest since Paddy McCarthy died from a heart attack, allegedly after being threatened by a soldier. Following the inquest verdict, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, apologises for the deaths at Ballymurphy in a phone call to Foster and deputy First MinisterMichelle O’Neill. The lack of public apology is criticised by some relatives of the victims and Northern Irish politicians.
In May 2021, families of those shot dead by British soldiers in Ballymurphy urge the Irish government to oppose any attempt to prevent the prosecution of British soldiers alleged to have committed crimes during the Troubles.
The killings are the subject of the August 2018 documentaryThe Ballymurphy Precedent, directed by Callum Macrae and made in association with Channel 4.
seamus dubhghaill 