seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Social Democratic and Labour Party


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Birth of Hugh Logue, Economist & SDLP Politician

Hugh Anthony Logue, former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician and economist who now works as a commentator on political and economic issues, is born on January 23, 1949, in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He is also a director of two renewable energy companies in Europe and the United States. He is the father of author Antonia Logue.

Logue grows up outside the village of Claudy in County Londonderry, the eldest of nine children born to Denis Logue, a bricklayer, and Kathleen (née Devine). He gains a scholarship to St. Columb’s College which he attends from 1961 to 1967. In 1967, he commences at St. Joseph’s Teacher Training college (Queen’s University) in Belfast from which he qualifies as a teacher of Mathematics in 1970. He first comes to prominence as a member of the executive of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the only SDLP member of the executive. He stands as a candidate in elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 and is elected for Londonderry, at the age of 24, the youngest candidate elected that year. With John Hume and Ivan Cooper, he is arrested by the British Army during a peaceful demonstration in Londonderry in August 1971. Their conviction is ultimately overturned by the Law Lords R. (Hume) v Londonderry Justices (972, N.I.91) requiring the then British Government to introduce retrospective legislation to render legal previous British Army actions in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland State Papers of 1980 show that together with John Hume and Austin Currie, Logue plays a key role in presenting the SDLP’S ‘Three Strands’ approach to the Thatcher Government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins in April 1980. The “Three Strands” approach eventually becomes the basis for the Good Friday Agreement. The Irish State papers from 1980 reveal that he is a confidante of the Irish Government of that time, briefing it regularly on the SDLP’s outlook.

Logue is also known for his controversial comments at Trinity College Dublin at the time of the power sharing Sunningdale Agreement, which many blame for helping to contribute to the Agreement’s defeat, to wit, that: [Sunningdale was] “the vehicle that would trundle Unionists into a united Ireland.” The next line of the controversial speech says, “the speed the vehicle moved at was dependent on the Unionist community.” In an article in The Irish Times in 1997 he claims that this implies that unity is always based on consent and acknowledged by Unionist Spokesman John Laird in the NI Assembly in 1973.

Logue unsuccessfully contests the Londonderry seat in the February 1974 and 1979 Westminster Elections. He is elected to the 1975 Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention and the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly. He is a member of the New Ireland Forum in 1983. In the 1980s he is a member of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace and plays a prominent part in its efforts to resolve the 1981 Irish hunger strike. His role is credited in Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike by David Beresford, Biting the Grave by P. O’Malley and, more recently, in Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-block Hunger Strike (New Island Books, 2016) and Afterlives: The Hunger Strike and the Secret Offer that Changed Irish History (Lilliput Press, 2011) by former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer Richard O’Rawe. Following the New Ireland Forum in 1984 and John Hume’s decision to represent the redrawn Londonderry constituency as Foyle and a safe seat, Logue leaves the Dublin-based, National Board for Science and Technology and joins the European Commission in 1984 in Brussels.

Following the 1994 Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, Logue, along with two EU colleagues, is asked by EU President Jacques Delors to consult widely throughout Northern Ireland and the Border regions and prepare recommendations for a Peace and Reconciliation Fund to underpin the peace process. Their community-based approach becomes the blueprint for the Peace Programme. In 1997, then EU President Jacques Santer asks the team, led by Logue, to return to review the programme and advise for a renewed Peace II programme. Papers published by National University Galway in 2016 from Logue’s archives indicate that he is the originator of the Peace Fund concept within the European Commission.

At the European Commission from 1984 to 1998, Logue creates Science and Technology for Regional Innovation and Development in Europe (STRIDE). In 1992, he is joint author with Giovanni de Gaetano, of RTD potential in the Mezzogiorno of Italy: the role of science parks in a European perspective and, with A. Zabaniotou and University of Thessaloniki, Structural Support For RTD.

Further publications by Logue follow: Research and Rural Regions (1996) and RTD potential in the Objective 1 regions (1997). With the fall of the Berlin Wall, his attention turns to Eastern Europe and in March 1998 publishes a set of studies Impact of the enlargement of the European Union towards central central and Eastern European countries on RTD- Innovation and Structural policies.

Logue convenes the first EU seminar on “Women in Science” in 1993 and jointly publishes with LM Telapessy Women in Scientific and Technological Research in the European Community, highlighting the barriers to women’s advancement in the Research world.

As the former vice-chairman of the North Derry Civil Rights Association, Logue gives evidence at the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday. He is special adviser to the Office of First and Deputy First Minister from 1998 to 2002 and as an official of the European Commission. In 2002–03, he is a fellow of the Institute for British – Irish Studies at University College Dublin (UCD). In July 2006, he is appointed as a board member of the Irish Peace Institute, based at the University of Limerick and in 2009 is appointed Vice Chairman. He is a Life Member of the Institute of International and European Affairs.

On December 17, 2007, Logue is appointed as a director to InterTradeIreland (ITI), the North-South Body established under the Good Friday Agreement to promote economic development in Ireland. There he chairs the ITI’s Fusion programme, bringing north–south industrial development in Innovation and Research. Integrating Ireland economically is a theme of his writing throughout his career, most recently in The Irish Times and in earlier publications as economic spokesman for the SDLP. He is economist at the Dublin-based National Board for Science and Technology from 1981 to 1984.

Logue, after leaving the European Commission in 2005, becomes involved in Renewable Energy and is chairman of Priority Resources as well as a director of two companies, one in solar energy, the other in wind energy. In November 2011, he is elected to the main board of European Association of Energy (EAE).

In November 2023, Logue is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Galway in recognition of “a lifetime dedicated to civil rights, human rights, equality and peace in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Europe.” He donates an archive of material, more than 20 boxes of manuscripts, documents, photographs and political ephemera, on the development of the SDLP from the early 1970s to the University of Galway.


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Birth of John Hume, Northern Ireland Nationalist Politician

John Hume KCSG, Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland, is born into a working-class Catholic family in Derry, County Londonderry, on January 18, 1937. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland and is credited as being the thinker behind many political developments in Northern Ireland, from the power sharing Sunningdale Agreement to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement. He wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 alongside the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), David Trimble.

Hume is the eldest of seven children of Samuel Hume, a former soldier and shipyard worker, and Anne “Annie” (née Doherty), a seamstress. He has a mostly Irish Catholic background, though his surname derives from one of his great-grandfathers, a Scottish Presbyterian who migrated to County Donegal. He attends St. Columb’s College and goes on to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the leading Catholic seminary in Ireland and a recognised college of the National University of Ireland, where he intends to study for the priesthood. Among his teachers is Tomás Ó Fiaich, the future cardinal and Primate of All Ireland.

Hume does not complete his clerical studies but does obtain an M.A. degree in French and history from the college in 1958. He then returns home to his native Derry, where he becomes a teacher at his alma mater, St. Columb’s College. He is a founding member of the Credit Union movement in the city and is chair of the University for Derry Committee in 1965, an unsuccessful fight to have Northern Ireland’s second university established in Derry in the mid-1960s.

Hume becomes the youngest ever President of the Irish League of Credit Unions at age 27. He serves in the role from 1964 to 1968. He once says that “all the things I’ve been doing, it’s the thing I’m proudest of because no movement has done more good for the people of Ireland, north and south, than the credit union movement.”

Hume becomes a leading figure in the civil rights movement in the late 1960s along with people such as Hugh Logue. He is a prominent figure in the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee. The DCAC is set up in the wake of the October 5, 1968, march through Derry which had caused much attention to be drawn towards the situation in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the DCAC is to make use of the publicity surrounding recent events to bring to light grievances in Derry that had been suppressed by the Unionist Government for years. The DCAC, unlike the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), is aimed specifically at a local campaign, improving the situation in Derry for everyone, and maintaining a peaceful stance. The committee also has a Stewards Association that is there to prevent any violence at marches or sit-downs.

Hume becomes an Independent Nationalist member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1969 at the height of the civil rights campaign. He is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 and serves as Minister of Commerce in the short-lived power-sharing Executive in 1974. He stands unsuccessfully for the Westminster Parliament for the Londonderry constituency in October 1974, and is elected for Foyle in 1983.

In October 1971, Hume joins four Westminster MPs in a 48-hour hunger strike to protest at the internment without trial of hundreds of suspected Irish republicans. State papers that have been released under the 30-year rule that an Irish diplomat eight years later in 1979 believes Hume supported the return of internment.

In 1977, Hume challenges a regulation under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922 which allows any soldier to disperse an assembly of three or more people. The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Robert Lowry, holds that the regulation is ultra vires under Section 4 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 which forbids the Parliament of Northern Ireland to make laws in respect of the army.

A founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Hume succeeds Gerry Fitt as its leader in 1979. He also serves as one of Northern Ireland’s three Members of the European Parliament and serves on the faculty of Boston College, from which he receives an honorary degree in 1995.

Hume is directly involved in secret talks with the British government and Sinn Féin, in an effort to bring Sinn Féin to the discussion table openly. The talks are speculated to lead directly to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.

The vast majority of unionists reject the agreement and stage a massive and peaceful public rally in Belfast City Centre to demonstrate their distaste. Many Republicans and nationalists also reject it, as they see it as not going far enough. Hume, however, continues dialogue with both governments and Sinn Féin. The “Hume–Adams process” eventually delivers the 1994 Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire which ultimately provides the relatively peaceful backdrop against which the Good Friday agreement is brokered.

On February 4, 2004, Hume announces his complete retirement from politics and is succeeded by Mark Durkan as SDLP leader. He does not contest the 2004 European Parliament election where his seat is won by Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin, nor does he run in the 2005 United Kingdom general election, in which Mark Durkan retains the Foyle constituency for the SDLP.

Hume and his wife, Pat, continue to be active in promoting European integration, issues around global poverty and the Credit Union movement. He is also a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations.

In 2015, Hume is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, of which he had first displayed symptoms in the late 1990s. He dies in the early hours of August 3, 2020, at a nursing home in Derry, at the age of 83. On his death, former Labour Party leader and prime minister Tony Blair says, “John Hume was a political titan; a visionary who refused to believe the future had to be the same as the past.” The Dalai Lama says on Twitter, “John Hume’s deep conviction in the power of dialogue and negotiations to resolve conflict was unwavering… It was his leadership and his faith in the power of negotiations that enabled the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to be reached. His steady persistence set an example for us all to follow.”

(Pictured: John Hume with U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1995)


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Birth of Joe Hendron, Northern Ireland Politician

Joseph Gerard Hendron, Northern Ireland politician and a member of the centre-left Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), is born on November 12, 1932, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Hendron, also a local GP physician for forty years, is first elected as a political representative of Belfast West in 1975 to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. He is later elected to Belfast City Council in 1981 and in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Hendron is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West between April 1992 and May 1997 in the UK Parliament in London. He takes the seat from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams at his third attempt with a majority of one percent. He becomes the only nationalist MP to defeat Adams. The seat had previously been held for the SDLP by Gerry Fitt, later Lord Fitt, until 1983. He attracts unprecedented cross-community support from Nationalists and Unionists in the constituency. This is the only example where an SDLP candidate receives a high enough number of Unionist votes in Belfast West to help unseat a Sinn Féin candidate. Adams regains the seat at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

In 1996, Hendron is elected to the Northern Ireland Forum and in 1998 to the newly reconvened Northern Ireland Assembly. However, he loses his seat in the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election to a member of Ian Paisley‘s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Hendron is appointed a member of the Northern Ireland Parades Commission in 2005. He retires from this role in December 2010.

On June 11, 2019, Hendron escapes with just bruising and a damaged collarbone after he is struck by a van and thrown up into the air while crossing Balmoral Avenue. He says he is probably partly to blame for the accident as he decided to cross the street in front of a van that was trying to pull out onto the main road. Apparently, the driver of the van did not see Hendron and began to pull out, striking him.

(Photo by Mark Pearce/Pacemaker)


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Prime Ministers Meet to Discuss the Ulster Crisis

Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Brian Faulkner, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch meet at Chequers, the country house retreat of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on September 27, 1971, to talk over the Ulster crisis. They meet for much of the day and continue their sessions the following day.

The meeting is held under conditions of tight secrecy. Each man has only one assistant with him and there is no briefing for the press afterward. No one expects a firm agreement on any issue of substance. The British appear to be satisfied with a promise to meet again and to keep the communication lines open.

The meeting, the first such tripartite conference since the partition of Ireland 50 years earlier, is itself a considerable accomplishment politically. Even six weeks earlier, it is considered an impossibility by most observers.

At that time, Faulkner is widely regarded as being under such heavy pressure from the right-wing of his Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) that he cannot talk with the Taoiseach. Lynch has been saying that he can meet with Faulkner only as the leader of the Unionist party, not as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. That is consistent with Dublin‘s view that the six counties of Ulster are part of the Republic of Ireland.

Heath also seems to have retreated from his previous position. In an angry exchange of telegrams in August, he suggests that the situation in Northern Ireland is a British affair and none of Lynch’s business. The exchange follows the decision to intern suspected members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ulster without trial. Faulkner, backed by the Heath government, begin arrests of suspects on August 9.

The interment policy arouses a bitter reaction among the Roman Catholics of Ulster, where they make up a third of the population. Lynch denounces the policy. The Catholic opposition members in the Ulster Parliament at Stormont say they will boycott all Government matters until the interned men are released.

What has softened the attitudes of the three leaders is the appalling extent of violence in Belfast and other towns in Northern Ireland since the internments began. In those seven weeks, 17 British soldiers, 36 civilians and one policeman are killed, most of them by IRA bullets and bombs.

The British Government and Faulkner offer broad changes in the constitutional setup of the Ulster regime. They talk about bringing Catholics — non‐Unionists — into the Government for the first time. But internment without trial remains an obstacle even to talking about those ideas with the main opposition group, the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP). The SDLP refuses to join in a proposed conference on political reform while internment goes on.

Ideally, the British would like Lynch to use his influence with the opposition leaders. They want him to urge them to talk about political reform in return for some concession on internment, perhaps the release of some of those currently held. But any such concession might get Faulkner in trouble with his own party or arouse Protestant violence. That is always the trouble in Northern Ireland – any gesture toward one side antagonizes the other.

A new and serious problem for Heath is an apparent waning of the British public’s willingness to bear the military and social burden of Northern Ireland. A poll just before the meeting at Chequers shows that 59% want to bring all British troops home from Ulster at once.

Even Lynch, though he is pledged to the principle of a United Ireland, does not want the hasty withdrawal of British troops. That would almost certainly mean an enlargement of the present terror into civil war.

(From: 3 Prime Ministers Confer on Ulster, The New York Times, September 28, 1971)


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Birth of Fr. Alec Reid, Facilitator in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Alexander Reid CSsR, Irish Catholic priest noted for his facilitator role in the Northern Ireland peace process, is born in Dublin on August 5, 1931. BBC journalist Peter Taylor subsequently describes Reid’s role as “absolutely critical” to the success of the peace process.

Reid is raised in Nenagh, County Tipperary, from the age of six following the death of his father. He studies English, history and philosophy at University College Galway.

Reid is professed as a Redemptorist in 1950 and ordained a priest seven years later. For the next four years, he gives Parish Missions in Limerick, Dundalk and Galway (Esker), before moving to Clonard Monastery in Belfast, where he spends almost the next forty years. The Redemptorist Monastery at Clonard stands on the interface between the Catholic nationalist Falls Road and the Protestant loyalist Shankill Road areas of west Belfast.

In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”

In 1988 in Belfast, Reid delivers the last rites to two British Army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood of the Royal Corps of Signals, who are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – an event known as the corporals killings – after they drive into the funeral cortège of IRA member Kevin Brady, who had been killed in the Milltown Cemetery attack. A photograph of his involvement in that incident becomes one of the starkest and most enduring images of the Troubles. Unknown until years later, he is carrying a letter from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams to Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume outlining Adams’ suggestions for a political solution to the Troubles. Adams later tells the BBC in 2019 that Reid also advised U.S Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith during the peace process, stating “He was talking to her on the side and she was talking to her brother Teddy.”

After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.

Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”

Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.


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Queen Elizabeth II & Duke of Edinburgh Visit Northern Ireland

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, make a historic visit to Northern Ireland on March 9, 1995. It is their first visit since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Loyalist ceasefires came into effect the previous year. It is also the first meeting between the Queen and the Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Cahal Daly, as well as his Anglican counterpart, the Archbishop of Armagh, Robin Eames.

The BBC‘s Northern Ireland correspondent says the historic trip is intended as a gesture to reassure the province’s unionists, while at the same time trying not to alienate the nationalist population.

The Queen is invited to Armagh by the authorities to present the royal charter renewing Armagh’s status as a city.

In her speech, the Queen addresses all the people of Northern Ireland. She says, “For many difficult years the people of Northern Ireland have shown courage and compassion of an extraordinary kind. Today as they begin to look towards a more peaceful future, Armagh with its two great cathedrals standing so close together presents a powerful symbol of the strength spirit and hopes of people across Northern Ireland.”

Cardinal Cahal Daly says the Queen’s visit is a tribute to the progress made in the peace process since the IRA ceasefire came into effect on August 31, 1994.

Archbishop Robin Eames says, “Look how far we’ve come in a year. It’s a message of symbolism. Be patient, we’ve a long, long way to go but today is one little part of that jigsaw.”

The Queen also visits Belfast, where she meets the city’s Lord Mayor, Hugh Smyth, and shakes hands with a representative of the most extreme unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Peter Robinson, as well as MP Joe Hendron from the mainly nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).

Hendron says, “Things are different now. People must stand up and be counted. You can’t hide in your home. There are two communities here and I think it’s important to go out and shake hands with people like the Queen and from my point of view, she’s very welcome.”

The Queen’s day ends with a visit to Hillsborough Castle.

(From: “1995: Queen marks peace in Belfast,” On This Day 1950-2005, BBC News, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk)


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Hardline Unionists Reluctant to Support David Trimble’s Re-election

On Monday, October 29, 2001, hardline unionists seek to block David Trimble‘s re-election as First Minister of Northern Ireland.

As the hardline Ulster Unionists express reluctance to support the current stance of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leadership, Trimble is bidding to win over crucial support for his campaign to be re-elected as First Minister.

Although the meeting of the UUP’s executive over the previous weekend endorses Trimble’s return to office in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the re-election bid can be thwarted by a failure to win grassroots support.

At least two Assembly Members express grave reservations about supporting Trimble’s re-election as First Minister, and anti-agreement factions within the UUP call a meeting of the party’s ruling council to be held within the next three weeks.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, Assembly Member Pauline Armitage says she remains unhappy about the direction the party is taking and the questions about decommissioning remains unanswered. Earlier North Down Assembly Member Peter Weir says that the Irish Republican Army‘s (IRA) move on decommissioning is a “one-off stunt.”

In order to be returned as First Minister, along with Deputy First Minister Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader-in-waiting Mark Durkan, Trimble must establish a majority amongst both unionist and nationalist Assembly Members.

While it is anticipated that the elections of the First and Deputy First Ministers will be held later in the week, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) calls on its members to prepare for Assembly elections. The anti-Good Friday Agreement DUP anticipate a collapse of the power-sharing Assembly if the re-elections of top ministerial posts fail to return a quorum of support from the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). The DUP says that meetings are to be held on October 29 to discuss the party’s strategy.

The Progressive Unionist Party’s (PUP) Billy Hutchinson says that too many concessions have been given to nationalists.

(From: “Trimble attempts to drum up re-election support,” 4NI.co.uk, October 29, 2001)


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Birth of Anne Devlin, Short Story Writer & Playwright

Anne Devlin, short story writer, playwright and screenwriter, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on September 13, 1951. She is a teacher from 1974 to 1978, and starts writing fiction in 1976 in Germany. Having lived in London for a decade, she returns to Belfast in 2007.

Devlin is the daughter of Paddy Devlin, a Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland and later a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). She is raised in Belfast.

In January 1969, while a student at the New University of Ulster, she joins a civil rights march from Belfast to Derry, organised by the People’s Democracy. At Burntollet Bridge, a few miles from Derry, the march is attacked by loyalists. She is struck on the head, knocked unconscious, falls into the river, and is brought to hospital suffering from a concussion. The march is echoed in her 1994 play After Easter.

Devlin subsequently leaves Northern Ireland for England. She is visiting lecturer in playwriting at the University of Birmingham in 1987, and a writer in residence at Lund University, Sweden, in 1990.

Devlin’s screenwriting works include the BBC television three-episode serial The Rainbow (1988), the feature film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992) and the film Titanic Town (1999). She receives the Samuel Beckett Award for TV Drama in 1985 and the Hennessy Literary Award for short stories in 1992.


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The Provisional Irish Republican Army Ceasefire Announcement

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) announces a ceasefire on August 31, 1994, after a quarter century of what it calls its “armed struggle” to get the British out of Northern Ireland. The statement comes just after 11:00 a.m. BST and says there will be a “complete cessation of military operations” from midnight and that the organisation is willing to enter into inclusive talks on the political future of the Province.

The statement raises hopes for peace and an end to 25 years of bombing and shooting that led to the deaths of more than 3,000 people. There is scepticism from the loyalist community and celebration in the Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry.

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dick Spring, says the statement is historic and meets his government’s demand for an unconditional end to IRA violence. The Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Albert Reynolds, calls on loyalist paramilitaries to follow suit.

But loyalists are suspicious of the declaration and fear it may lead to a sell-out in which Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom is under threat. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP James Molyneaux says no moves towards talks should begin until the IRA has added the word “permanent” to the ceasefire declaration.

The announcement comes 18 months after secret talks began between the British Government and Irish republicans. It leads to the Anglo-Irish Downing Street Declaration in December 1993 which states that any change in the partition of Ireland can only come with the consent of those living north of the border. It also challenges republicans to renounce violence.

Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume MP, who has been negotiating with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, is “very pleased.” However, British Prime Minister John Major is cautious in his reaction to the IRA announcement. “We are beyond the beginning,” he says, “but we are not yet in sight of the end.”

Ian Paisley, leader of the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), rejects the wording of the declaration and says it is an “insult to the people [the IRA] has slaughtered because there was no expression of regret.”

Seven weeks later, on October 13, the loyalist terrorist groups announce their own ceasefire. On December 9, British officials meet Sinn Féin representatives for their first formal talks in 22 years.

The IRA ceasefire ends on February 9, 1996, when it plants a huge bomb in the London Docklands. It kills two, injures more than 100 and causes more than £85m of damage.

A new ceasefire is finally announced in July 1997.

(Pictured: (L to R) Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Social Democratic and Labour Party leader John Hume)


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Loyalists Protest Sinn Féin Minister’s Refusal to Fly Union Flag

On Friday, August 4, 2000, Loyalists protest after Northern Ireland health minister Bairbre de Brún, a member of Sinn Féin, refuses to fly the Union flag outside her Belfast offices to mark the 100th birthday of Britain’s Queen Mother. First Minister David Trimble had written to the Northern Ireland secretary requesting that the Union Flag should be flown on all government buildings.

About 20 people take part in the picket organised by the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) as the minister leaves the Department of Health offices on Friday morning.

In Bangor, County Down, a group of loyalist protesters put up a Union Flag outside the offices of Sinn Féin education minister Martin McGuinness at his department’s Rathgael House headquarters. Another group of PUP protesters demonstrate at government buildings in Adelaide Street in Belfast city centre, where the Union Flag is flying above two of the government buildings in the street.

Protestors hold up posters showing the faces of de Brun and McGuinness printed on a Union Flag. The posters also show the face of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) agriculture minister Bríd Rodgers.

The PUP’s Billy Hutchinson criticises Sinn Féin ministers over their refusal to fly the Union Flag. “These people cannot even recognise that we have a monarch who’s 100 years old and they can’t even fly the flag, just because they think that everything that is British is no good,” he says. “These people forget that they have lived in Britain all their lives, most of them. They weren’t even born at Partition (of Ireland).” He adds that Sinn Féin’s ministers should accept that they are “British ministers in a British state.”

However, Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey condemns the protests as “intimidating and sectarian.” He says Sinn Féin’s position on the flying of flags is designed not to cause offence. “Where British cultural and political symbols are invoked in public life, equivalent Irish cultural and political symbols should be given equal prominence. Where this cannot be agreed, no such symbols should fly,” he says.

The issue of flags has been emotive and divisive in Northern Ireland. The Sinn Féin ministers anger unionists on May 2 by ordering their civil servants not to fly the flag as part of the Coronation Day celebrations. The row reaches a head when the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) attempts to guarantee the flying of the Union Flag with an assembly motion in June. However, the party fails to win enough support for their motion to be passed.

There are about 13 days in the year when the Union Flag is flown on designated government offices in the United Kingdom. Government buildings across the UK – from Whitehall ministries to town council offices are expected to raise the Union Flag on these days.

It is the second time in a week that the health minister has run into controversy. On Wednesday, August 2, she is confronted by angry loyalist protesters during an official visit to a County Antrim hospital. Around 20 demonstrators picket the Lagan Valley Hospital in Lisburn, while she is on a visit to see a GP scheme as part of a programme to learn about aspects of the health service. The tyres on the minister’s car are let down and an egg is thrown. De Brun is forced to leave the complex by another door.

(From: “Trimble joins Union Flag row,” BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk, Friday, August 4, 2000 | Pictured: Protesters picket the Department of Health)