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History > UK > Northern Ireland
Timeline
A 45-foot “peace wall,” erected by the British authorities, separating Catholic neighborhoods, left, from Protestants in Belfast.
Photograph: Abbas Magnum Photos
50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland NYT Oct. 4, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/
An aerial view of the Maze prison in 1983.
Photograph: PA
Gerry Adams was interned illegally during Troubles, supreme court told Wrong minister approved order, court hears during appeal to overturn convictions for escaping Maze prison in 70s G Tue 19 Nov 2019 13.30 GMT Last modified on Tue 19 Nov 2019 18.15 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/19/
The Troubles > Documentaries
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/22/
Bridget Rose Dugdale (born March 1941)
better known as Rose Dugdale
Rose Dugdale, Dublin, 1974.
Photograph: PA Images/Alamy
The enigma of Rose Dugdale: what drove a former debutante to become Britain and Ireland’s most wanted terrorist? G Sun 10 Mar 2024 10.00 CET
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/10/
former debutante who rebelled against her wealthy upbringing, becoming a volunteer in the militant Irish republican organisation, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
As an IRA member, she took part in the theft of paintings worth IR£8 million and a bomb attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station using a hijacked helicopter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/10/
Freddie Scappaticci c. 1946-April 2023
The man said to be the British army’s most important agent inside the Provisional IRA (...)
west Belfast former bricklayer who was alleged to have been a top mole known as Stakeknife
During the Troubles, Scappaticci headed the IRA’s informer-hunting unit known as “the nutting squad” and allegedly relayed secrets.
He denied being Stakeknife and left Northern Ireland in 2003 after media outlets identified him as the alleged mole.
He moved to England.
Stakeknife is accused of being responsible for multiple murders of alleged IRA informers, which would mean that while operating as a paid agent of the state he was allowed to commit serious crimes in order to bolster his authority within the republican movement.
His alleged activities and the role of the state, including MI5, are under investigation by Operation Kenova, led by the former Bedfordshire chief constable Jon Boutcher.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/14/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/14/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/11/
In Northern Ireland, "the Troubles" — the long and bloody conflict between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestants — formally came to an end with a peace agreement in 1998.
But before the deal established a power-sharing government in the region, more than 3,600 lost their lives in three decades of sectarian violence.
The Protestant loyalists wanted to remain part of the U.K., and the Catholic nationalists wanted to end British rule.
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/18/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/16/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/11/
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/18/
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/11/28/
2 June 2016
Irlande du Nord, les protestants à l'épreuve du processus de paix
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/levy-yann/blog/020616/
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/levy-yann/blog/020616/
murders of alleged informers by the IRA
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/15/
Timeline - Worst IRA bomb attacks on mainland Britain
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-security-bombings/
May 2014
Helen McKendry, daughter of Jean McConville, files a civil suit against Sinn Fein
Helen McKendry, daughter of Jean McConville, has filed a civil suit against Sinn Fein.
Photograph: Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
Where ‘Say Nothing’ Is Gospel, I.R.A. Victim’s Daughter Is Talking NYT MAY 21, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/world/europe/
March 2014
Man arrested in Northern Ireland over 1972 case of 'disappeared' mother (Jean McConville)
Jean McConville, left, with three of her 10 children.
She was abducted in 1972 and murdered.
Photograph: Associated Press
A Heinous Crime, Secret Histories and a Sinn Fein Leader’s Arrest By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE NYT MAY 1, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/
77-year-old held by detectives investigating IRA's kidnapping, killing and secret burial of Belfast widow Jean McConville
A former IRA chief of staff and negotiator for the Provisionals with the British government in 1972 is in custody tonight being questioned about the murder and disappearance of a widow whose death in the same year left 10 children orphaned.
West Belfast republican Ivor Bell was arrested in the city earlier today in connection with one of the most controversial murders of the early years of the Northern Ireland Troubles – the case of "disappeared" mother of 10 Jean McConville.
The 77-year-old was detained in the city earlier today by detectives investigating the IRA's kidnapping, killing and secret burial of the Belfast woman in 1972.
Bell was part of an IRA delegation that met William Whitelaw at future Tory minister Paul Channon's flat in London six months before McConville's disappearance.
He and other IRA leaders were trying to negotiate a ceasefire with the British which broke down in the summer of 1972.
The republican veteran went on to become a leading figure in the Provisionals but was later sentenced to death by the organisation for allegedly trying to stage a coup d'etat against Gerry Adams in the early 1980s because he became convinced the then West Belfast Sinn Féin MP and others around him were determined to "run down the war" and abandon armed struggle.
Since his departure from the IRA, Bell has kept a low profile and effectively bowed out of republican politics.
Jean McConville became one of the most famous of the "disappeared" and her body was not found until 2003 on a beach in Co Louth.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/18/northern-ireland-
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/21/
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/14/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/30/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/world/europe/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/24/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/22/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/21/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/18/
February 2014
IRA Hyde Park bombing: man accused of 1982 attack walks free
Judge rules promise made by UK government as part of Good Friday agreement mean trial of John Downey cannot go ahead
A man accused of murdering four soldiers in an IRA bomb attack in London's Hyde Park in 1982 has walked free from court after a judge ruled his trial should not go ahead because of British government assurances he received under the Good Friday peace agreement.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/25/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/18/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/25/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/25/
April 2011
A booby-trap car bomb kills Constable Ronan Kerr outside his home in Omagh
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/apr/11/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/04/omagh-bomb-informant-call-sinn-fein
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/04/editorial-ireland-murder-ronan-kerr
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/04/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/03/omagh-bomb-policy-chief-tribute
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/03/raf-budget-defence-dalton-libya
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/02/omagh-booby-trap-bomb-policeman-killed
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/apr/02/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-irish-bomb/
2008-2009
Republican attacks
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/03/10/
11 March 2009
Peace protests across Northern Ireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/11/northern-ireland-peace-protests
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/11/ireland-peace-rallies-murders
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/11/gordon-brown-northern-ireland-murders
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2009/mar/11/northern-ireland-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/audio/2009/mar/11/policeman-murder-northern-ireland
9 March 2009
PC Stephen Paul Carroll is shot dead by dissident republicans, the Continuity IRA, at Lismore Manor, Craigavon, County Armagh
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/11/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/11/northern-ireland-violence-fear
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/11/ira-peace-threat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/11/northern-ireland-peace-process
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/4970459/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7934426.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7935734.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7936622.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_7968000/7968956.stm
Saturday 7 March 2009
Sapper Mark Quinsey, 23, and Sapper Patrick Azimkar, 21, are shot dead at the gates of Massereene Army base, Antrim, Northern Ireland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8553776.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8162266.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/cartoon/2009/mar/10/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/real-ira-murders-massereene-soldiers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/northern-ireland-soldiers-azimkar-quinsey
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/massereene-security-officer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/brown-arrives-massereene-barracks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/09/gerry-adams-sinn-fein-soldiers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/faq-northern-ireland-shootings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/09/british-soldiers-killed-northern-ireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2009/mar/09/northernireland-northernireland?picture=344332207
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7936622.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_7968000/7968956.stm
https://www.gov.uk/government/fatalities/
2008
The full extent of a secret 20-year "back channel" between the British government and the IRA is revealed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/18/northernireland.past
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/18/northernireland.northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/18/northernireland.past1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/audio/2008/mar/18/watt.powell.part2
26 March 2007
Deal to restore Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration
The Independent Tuesday 27 March 2007
L to R:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/08/northernireland.northernireland4
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/mar/27/uk.northernireland
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/27/comment.politics
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/27/politics.northernireland
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/mar/26/northernireland.devolution
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/26/northernireland.northernireland3
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/26/northernireland.northernireland2
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/mar/26/northernireland.devolution1
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/26/northernireland.northernireland1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6496065.stm
1969-2007
Operation Banner, the British army's longest continuous campaign, comes to a close (...) after 38 years.
The military operation to assist the police began in Northern Ireland when the Troubles flared up, in 1969.
In total, 763 soldiers would go on to die as a direct result of terrorism in the conflict with republican paramilitaries.
During the course of the operation, the army was also accused of murdering civilians, including the 13 who were shot dead on Bloody Sunday in 1972. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/31/northernireland.military1
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/aug/01/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/31/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/31/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/31/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2007/jul/31/
5 April 2006
IRA turncoat > Denis Donaldson's murder
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/21/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/apr/05/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/apr/05/
25 February 2006
Orange march
The first loyalist march in Dublin since Partition
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/26/
2006
Ken Barrett, the loyalist gunman convicted of killing the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, is freed under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, after serving
three years in jail
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/24/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/24/
Lord Merlyn-Rees 1920-2006
Labour home secretary and Northern Ireland secretary in the 70s
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jan/05/labour.uk
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jan/05/labour.uk1
2006
The St Andrews agreement
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/oct/17/
The Bloody Sunday inquiry / sat between April 1998 and January 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/11/saville-inquiry-revelations-bloody-sunday
"... it is expedient that a Tribunal be established for inquiring into a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely the events on Sunday 30th January 1972 which led to loss of life in connection with the procession in Londonderry on that day, taking account of any new information relevant to events on that day"
Resolution of the House of Commons, 30th January 1998, and of the House of Lords, 2nd February 1998 http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/15/bloody-sunday-inquiry-key-findings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/jun/15/bloodysunday-northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/11/saville-inquiry-revelations-bloody-sunday
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/10/bloody-sunday-inquiry-northern-ireland
http://report.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org/ - broken link
4 October 2005
A former loyalist leader is shot dead in east Belfast (...) while awaiting trial on money laundering charges
Jim Gray, 47, was a brigadier in the Ulster Defence Association until April this year, when he was forced out of the paramilitary group because of concerns over his lavish lifestyle and thuggish methods.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/05/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/05/
September 2005
Belfast riots
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/13/
https://www.theguardian.com/cartoons/stevebell/
September 2005
Decommissioning of IRA arms
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/26/northernireland.northernireland1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1578767,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1578828,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1578815,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/03/
28 July 2005
IRA declares end to armed struggle
The IRA formally orders an end to its armed campaign and says it will pursue exclusively peaceful means. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/28/newsid_4948000/4948188.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/28/newsid_4948000/4948188.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1537901,00.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/northernirelandassembly/story/0,9061,1537995,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/jul/28/
January 2005
Robert McCartney murder
Robert McCartney (1971-2005)
Robert McCartney was murdered by an IRA gang which had, ironically, just returned from mourning the dead of another infamous injustice – the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972.
The men who murdered McCartney, seriously injured Brendan Devine, the friend he tried to help, and then covered up their crime and threatened witnesses, had been to Derry for the 33rd anniversary of the killing of 14 unarmed civilians by the Parachute Regiment.
After attending the commemoration on January 30, 2005, the IRA members from Belfast's Short Strand, Markets and Lower Ormeau Road areas returned to the city and opted to end the evening with a few drinks in Magennis's bar.
It was a decision that was to prove fatal for McCartney, as was his choice of drinking companion.
There had been a history of animosity between Devine and some IRA men.
So his presence in the pub full of IRA members and supporters created a tense atmosphere.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/jun/27/
https://www.bbc.com/news/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/jun/27/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/15/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/27/ukcrime.northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/mar/08/northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/feb/13/northernireland.focus
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/northernirelandassembly/story/0,9061,1480431,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1498877,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1440592,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1411855,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4232753.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4364882.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/31/
1968-2003
The Troubles
A Chronology of the Conflict
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch68.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/15/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/01/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/16/
Brian Nelson 1948-2003
Nelson, a fanatical and sectarian Protestant from Belfast's Shankill Road, (...) was recruited in 1985 by British military intelligence to act as an army agent in the UDA, which he had joined a decade earlier.
Nelson, a former soldier, had served with the Black Watch, and later took a building job in Germany.
He performed his delicate and dangerous new task with great enthusiasm.
His house and car, plus £200 a week expenses, were paid for by the British army (the British taxpayer).
In 1987, soon after his recruitment, Nelson went to South Africa to shop for arms for the UDA and supervised the shipment of two huge batches of arms, at least one of which ended up in the hands of the paramilitaries.
Throughout his time in the UDA, Nelson worked closely with army intelligence, whose policy at the time was shamelessly to take sides:
for the Protestant paramilitaries, who were seen as pro-British;
and against the IRA, who were seen as the enemy.
This policy drew British military intelligence into a gang war.
Drawing on his sources in British intelligence, Nelson would pass on the names and addresses of known IRA activists to the UDA, whose gunmen would promptly go out and "execute" the suspects. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/17/guardianobituaries.northernireland
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/17/
23 October 2001
IRA begins decommissioning weapons
The Northern Ireland peace process reaches an historic breakthrough as the IRA announces they have begun decommissioning their weapons http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/23/newsid_2489000/2489099.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/23/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/oct/23/
September 2001
Violence at Holy Cross school
Catholic schoolchildren are attacked by Protestants as they make their way to a disputed school in north Belfast
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/04/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/sep/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/04/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/04/
Friday July 28, 2000
The last of Ulster's 428 political prisoners are released from Maze prison
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/28/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/28/
24 July 2000
Loyalist killer Michael Stone is freed from Maze prison
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/24/newsid
29 November 1999
NI power-sharing executive appointed
Northern Ireland moves a step closer to ending 25 years of direct rule from London after the election of a Northern Ireland Assembly http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/29/newsid_4067000/4067119.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/29/
August 1999
Terror group says Ulster war is over
INLA confirms ceasefire amid fear of violence from republican splinter groups
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/09/
15 March 1999
Rosemary Nelson murder
Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson died after a booby-trap bomb planted by loyalists exploded under her car
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12972857
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/19/northernireland
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/apr/10/northernireland.northernireland1
8 September 1998
Real IRA announce ceasefire
The dissident republican group behind Northern Ireland's worst atrocity declares its violence at an end.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/8/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/8/
August 17, 1998
Omagh bombing
Northern Ireland's worst-ever terrorist attack
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/01/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/10/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/07/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/5476676/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/08/omagh-real-ira-leaders-liable
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/08/omagh-bombing-real-ira-leaders
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/26/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/apr/02/northernireland.henrymcdonald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/dec/19/northernireland?picture=331849502
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jul/26/northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2231141,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230858,00.html
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mick_fealty/2007/12/omaghs_last_victim_justice.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230587,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230590,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230247,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230387,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2230357,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,617648,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/dec/20/northernireland1
https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2007/dec/19/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jul/26/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/14/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/16/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1998/aug/16/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1998/aug/17/
https://www.theguardian.com/fromthearchive/
10 April 1998
was little short of an historic breakthrough.
The 65-page document, signed in 1998, sought to address relationships within Northern Ireland;
between Northern Ireland and the Republic;
and between both parts of Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales.
The process, however, was gruelling.
The Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble insisted that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair amend the agreement to ensure that no one in the proposed Northern Ireland Assembly could take office if it had links to paramilitary groups still engaged in violence.
Mr Blair refused to make amendments but offered an assurance that politicians linked to paramilitaries who refused to hand over weapons would not hold office in a Northern Ireland government.
He also promised decommissioning would have to begin immediately after the Assembly came into being.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/audio/2023/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/04/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/03/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/14/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/09/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/05/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/27/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/10/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4079267.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_12_04_ni_agreement_01.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/agreement/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4079267.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/may/20/uk.northernireland
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/aug/20/guardianobituaries.politics
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1998/apr/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1998/apr/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1998/apr/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1998/apr/11/
27 April 1997
Robert Hamill murder
Mr Hamill, a 25-year-old Catholic, was beaten to death by a loyalist mob in Portadown, County Armagh
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12597209
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/apr/10/
December 27, 1997
Billy Wright murder
The Loyalist Volunteer Force founder was shot dead inside the Maze prison by two members of the Irish National Liberation Army
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/14/billy-wright-killing-report-mi5
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2010/sep/14/billy-wright-maze
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2010/sep/14/northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/sep/14/billy-wright-northern-ireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/13/billy-wright-assassin-maze-security
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/30/ian-paisley-junior-fined-billy-wright
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/apr/10/northernireland.northernireland1
12 February 1997
IRA sniper Bernard McGinn shoots dead Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, the last British soldier to be killed before the Good Friday agreement
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/
1996
Bomb blast destroys London bus
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/18/
15 June 1996
The largest ever IRA bomb to hit the British mainland explodes in Manchester injuring at least 200 people
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1996/jun/17/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1996/jun/17/
1996
an IRA bomb explodes in London's Docklands
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1996/feb/10/
1968-1995
Northern Ireland's Troubles
Timeline
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/07/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/jun/22/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/11/northern-ireland-making-peace-past
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/11/northern-ireland-terrorists-miscarriages-justice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/20/saville-inquiry-killings-soldiers-troubles-northern-ireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/20/call-for-ballymurphy-massacre-inquiry
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/world/europe/16nireland.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/4968645/
17 July 1994
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
a female Catholic civilian from Belfast (Caroline Moreland) was shot dead by the IRA as an alleged informer.
Her body was dumped at Clogh, near Rosslea, County Fermanagh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Caroline Moreland was last seen alive ironing in her kitchen, before being abducted, tortured and shot dead.
Photograph: Pacemaker Press
Families demand justice over IRA victims 'executed' as informers Relatives believe victims sacrificed to preserve position of British army agent Stakeknife G Mon 1 Jun 2015 07.00 BST Last modified on Wed 18 Dec 2019 15.22 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/
Loughinisland massacre County Down 18 June 1994
'No Stone Unturned' Video Trailer IndieWire 17 October 2017
From the Oscar winning director of "Taxi to the Dark Side" comes an unsolved mystery about a deadly mass shooting in Ireland.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB9XqkZD1yc
The funerals of two of the Loughinisland victims, Barney Green and his nephew Dan McCreanor.
Photograph: John Giles PA
Is Northern Ireland a democracy or a police state? Nobody has ever been tried for the 1994 Loughinisland massacre but police arrested two journalists. It’s a scandal worthy of Kafka G Mon 3 Jun 2019 06.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/03/
Loughinisland massacre
a loyalist gang burst into a quiet rural pub in County Down and opened fire.
Six men were killed.
They had been watching a World Cup match between Ireland and Italy, their backs to the door.
Five more were injured.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/03/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/03/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/31/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/03/
May 1994
Roseanne Mallon
The 3,478th victim of Northern Ireland's conflict
One Sunday evening, Roseanne Mallon was sitting on the sofa at her sister-in-law's bungalow near Dungannon, County Tyrone, when a gunman walked up the drive, aimed his Czech-made assault rifle at the living room window, and pulled the trigger.
She was hit several times in her back, arms and legs and died instantly.
The following night, the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force telephoned a Belfast television station to claim responsibility.
Mallon was 76, and the 3,478th victim of Northern Ireland's conflict.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/13/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/13/
1993-1994
The Downing Street Declaration and the IRA ceasefire in August 1994
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-13945530 - 3 August 2020
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/northern_ireland/history/69283.stm
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/low/events/northern_ireland/history/69283.stm
15 December 1993
John Major and Albert Reynolds sign a peace declaration
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1993/dec/16/northernireland.
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/dsd151293.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/
June 1993
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Joseph Mulhern, 23, from Belfast
(his) remains were discovered in June 1993 at Ballymongan in Castlederg in Co Tyrone.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
1993
IRA bombings
Tim Parry was one of two young boys killed by the Warrington bomb in 1993
Photograph: Parry family
Mother's Day: Warrington bomb film 'shows life after losing a child' BBC Published 3 September 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-45396814
Johnathan Ball was killed alongside 12-year-old Tim Parry in 1993 when two bombs detonated in Warrington, Cheshire, injuring 54 people.
(...)
within a minute of each other on Bridge Street.
The first went off outside a Boots store and the second outside a McDonald's in an area crowded with shoppers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/
https://www.bbc.com/news/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/31/
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/
https://www.bbc.com/news/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/01/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/20/
July 1992
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
The bodies of John Dignam, 32, Gregory Burns, 33, and Aiden Starrs, 29, all from Portadown, (...) were all found at different places along the Irish border on the same day in July 1992.
All three had been shot in the head.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
Bishopsgate bombing 24 April 1993
July 1991
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Thomas Oliver, 33, from Riverstown in Dundalk in the Irish Republic, (...) was discovered in July 1991, days after his birthday.
His body was found in a field in Belleeks, a village in Co Armagh
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
June 1991
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Rory Finnis, 21, from Derry, (...) was found dead in June 1991.
His hands had been tied behind his back and his eyes taped closed at Central Drive in the city’s Creggan estate.
He had been shot in the head.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
The Birmingham six are freed - 14 March 1991
18 February 1991
Two IRA bombs explode in London, killing one and injuring at least 40 people
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1991/feb/19/northernireland.
19 October 1989
Guildford Four released after 15 years
The Guildford Four have their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal following an extensive inquiry into the original police investigation http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/19/newsid_2490000/2490039.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/19/
summer of 1989
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
John McAnulty,48, from Warrenpoint in Co Down, (...) was abducted in the summer of 1989 from a pub in Armagh.
His body was recovered in Crossmaglen in south Armagh.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
20 March 1989
murder of top Ulster RUC policemen Buchanan and Breen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/11/ira-murders-claim-to-smithwick
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/smithwick-tribunal-ian-hurst-analysis
Sunday, 12 February 1989
a Belfast civil rights lawyer, is murdered by loyalist gunmen working with British security forces
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/17/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/14/wikileaks-revelations-finucane-inquiry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/13/gerry-adams-mi5-offer-pat-finucane-murder
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/13/wikileaks-legacy-distrust-finucane-killing
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/17/guardianobituaries.northernireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2110996,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2053425,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1677046.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1311707,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,739914,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,1303592,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,938953,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/apr/17/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/12/
Belfast's Milltown cemetery massacre - 16 March 1988
6 March 1988
Spain
SAS killing of three unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar
On March 6, the SAS shoots dead three unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar.
A car packed with explosives is found in nearby Marbella and Britain says the soldiers acted because they thought they were in danger, but there is widespread criticism from republicans.
At the funerals of the IRA members in Belfast's Milltown cemetery on the 16th, loyalist gunman Michael Stone opens fire and throws grenades at mourners, killing three and wounding 50. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/three_ira_members_shot_dead_in_gibraltar
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/northern_ireland/history/
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/mar/08/
8 November 1987
An IRA bomb kills 11 people and injures 63 in Enniskillen
A bomb explodes during a Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen in County Fermanagh http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/8/newsid_2515000/2515113.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1987/nov/09/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/8/
March 1987
German bombing claimed by IRA
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1987/mar/25/
1986
Sinn Fein votes to abandon abstentionism and fight for seats in the Dail
In November 1986, Sinn Fein voted to overturn the longstanding policy of abstaining from the Irish parliament
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2020/feb/09/
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2020/feb/09/
November 1985
The Hillsborough agreement / Anglo-Irish Agreement
Britain and the Republic of Ireland sign a deal giving Dublin a role in Northern Ireland for the first time in more than 60 years.
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/aia/ https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/aia/aiadoc.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/northern_ireland/history/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1985/nov/16/
August 6, 1985
Derry
IRA Volunteer Charles English is killed by an explosion
August 1985 McGuinness acts as one of the pallbearers at the Derry funeral of IRA man Charles English
Photograph: PA
A life in pictures – Martin McGuinness From republican activist in the 1970s to Northern Ireland deputy first minister, a look at McGuinness’s political journey G Tue 21 Mar 2017 15.38 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/gallery/2017/jan/19/
IRA Volunteer Charles English is killed by an explosion while trying to attack an RUC patrol in Abbey Street [ Derry ] on August 6, 1985.
https://www.derryjournal.com/news/
https://www.derryjournal.com/news/
A mural in the Falls Road in west Belfast in 1985, warning against ‘touts’ or informers.
Photograph: Kaveh Kazemi Getty Images
Some of IRA's victims mistakenly killed as 'informers', files show Government list includes some of most notorious cases from the Northern Ireland Troubles G Mon 30 Dec 2019 00.01 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
during Conservative Party conference - 12 October 1984
12 August 1984
Belfast
police killing of Sean Downes
Sean Downes’s coffin is carried.
Photograph: Alain Nogues/Sygma/Getty Images
‘A freeze frame death in front of the world’: the police killing of Sean Downes at the height of the Troubles In 1984, an Irish republican was shot dead by police in front of journalists and TV crews. In an extract from a new book, the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent at the time remembers the incident and its aftermath at the height of the Troubles G Thu 24 Mar 2022 08.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 24 Mar 2022 12.58 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/24/
John 'Sean' Downes clutches his chest as he is fatally wounded by a plastic bullet on 12 August 1984 in Falls Road, Belfast.
Photograph: Alan Lewis
‘A freeze frame death in front of the world’: the police killing of Sean Downes at the height of the Troubles In 1984, an Irish republican was shot dead by police in front of journalists and TV crews. In an extract from a new book, the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent at the time remembers the incident and its aftermath at the height of the Troubles G Thu 24 Mar 2022 08.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 24 Mar 2022 12.58 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/24/
In 1984, an Irish republican was shot dead by police in front of journalists and TV crews.
(...)
Eight months later, in April 1985, Constable Nigel Hegarty, 27, appeared at a Belfast court charged with unlawful killing.
It emerged that in a statement made on the day, he said he had fired from a distance of 20 to 25 yards (18-23 metres).
At Hegarty’s trial, it emerged that Downes had been convicted, as a 16-year-old, of membership of the junior IRA and possession of a weapon.
Mr Justice Hutton said he believed Hegarty when he said he thought that his life and those of his colleagues were in danger.
He took into account “the stress of the moment and the obvious determination of the deceased”.
Hegarty was acquitted.
Downes’s funeral took place three days after he was killed; an estimated 5,000 people joining the cortege to the vast Milltown cemetery.
In the crowd were Adams, with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and Danny Morrison.
It was only when the shiny nameplate on the side of the coffin was visible that it became clear that the victim’s name was not Sean but John, and that was how he was known to his family.
John Downes left a widow, Brenda, aged 20.
She had been at the rally but had gone home, with their 18-month-old daughter, Claire, when trouble broke out.
She tried to get the court’s decision overturned and believed her solicitor was making progress.
At one point Brenda went to Australia, but returned to Belfast, immersing herself in the Irish Palestine support campaign, women’s causes and the support group Relatives for Justice.
Her solicitor was Pat Finucane.
He was shot dead by the Ulster Defence Association, with security forces collusion, in 1989.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/24/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/17/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/24/
14 March 1984
Sinn Fein leader is shot in street attack
Gunmen shot and wounded the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, in an attack in central Belfast.
He was hit in the neck, shoulder and arm as several gunmen riddled his car with about 20 bullets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/14/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/14/newsid
17 December 1983
London
A car bomb explodes outside Harrods, killing five
https://www.theguardian.com/fromthearchive/
Hyde Park and Regent Park bombings 20 July 1982
April 1982
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Patrick Scott, 27, from Twinbrook in west Belfast, (...) was found shot dead in that area in April 1982.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
March 1982
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Seamus Morgan, 24, from Dungannon in Co Tyrone, (...) was found dead in the south Armagh village of Forkhill in March 1982.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
Republican hunger strikes in the Maze prison
Danny Devine plays outside his home in Northern Ireland in 1981
Photograph: Homer Sykes
Growing up in Belfast: ‘I saw British soldiers holding guns every day, so I must have copied them’ G Fri 1 Dec 2017 14.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 18 Dec 2019 15.19 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/dec/01/
27 August 1979
IRA bomb kills Lord Mountbatten (1900-1979)
The Queen's cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, is killed by a bomb blast on his boat in Ireland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/27/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/27/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/world/europe/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/19/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/from-the-archive-blog/2015/may/19/
July 1979
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Michael Kearney, 20, from Belfast, (...) was found dead on the Concession Road in Clones, County Monaghan, just south of the border in July 1979.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
30 March 1979
The hardline republican terror group INLA kills the Conservative MP Airey Neave (1916-1979) in a car bomb in the House of Commons car park
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/30/
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104085
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/mar/31/2
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/11/
June 1978
alleged informers shot dead by the Provisional IRA between 1978 and the 1994 ceasefire
people killed by the IRA for supposedly “informing” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles
Daniel McErlean, 25, from Rasharkin in Co Antrim, (...) was found dead in June 1978 at the border near the Co Armagh village of Jonesborough.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/
August 10 1977
The Queen visits Northern Ireland as part of her jubilee year tour
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1977/aug/11/
Children play among debris from hijacked burning vehicles after riots in west Belfast during the Troubles, August 1976.
Photograph: Alain Le Garsmeur Getty Images
Does Terrorism Work? by Richard English – review G Sunday 24 July 2016 09.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/24/
The British army in the streets of Derry, Northern Ireland, after the Apprentice Boys’ march during the Troubles.
Photograph: Alain Le Garsmeur Getty Images
Does Terrorism Work? by Richard English – review G Sunday 24 July 2016 09.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/24/
Related http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/420061.stm
Maguire children’s funeral August 1976
‘We can’t go on like this’ … a father carries a coffin at the funeral of three of his children in August 1976.
Photograph: Alain Le Garsmeur
– Alain Le Garsmeur’s best photograph G Wed 17 Nov 2021 15.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 17 Nov 2021 17.38 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/17/
This was taken in August 1976 on a trip to Belfast with the writer David Blundy, who was later killed by a sniper in El Salvador.
It was a horrendous week but it was a significant one, because the events – and this picture – helped start the peace movement.
On our first day, Sunday the 8th, there were riots in the street and I got some dramatic pictures of soldiers silhouetted against the barricades.
On Monday, I was on the Falls Road, a well-known Republican area, and took a picture of children playing on the wreckage of a lorry that had been hijacked and burned.
Tuesday saw a really horrible incident.
The army were chasing Provisional IRA volunteers who were driving a stolen car, and shot the driver, Daniel Lennon, killing him.
The car went careering off the road into railings as a family were walking past. Anne Maguire and three of her children were crushed by the car.
Two of the children died instantly; the third died in hospital the next day. I photographed the crash: the mashed-up pram and a baby’s bottle.
There were more incidents on Wednesday: burning vehicles, hijackings.
On Thursday, the IRA held a funeral for Lennon, and the Maguire children’s funeral took place on the Friday.
This photograph is of that, and their father.
Thousands lined the procession route, both Catholics and Protestants.
People were saying: “We can’t go on like this.”
And that’s what started the peace movement.
Maguire’s sister, Mairead Corrigan, helped organise a peace rally of 10,000 women for the day after the funeral.
The following year, Corrigan and Betty Williams, co-founders of the Peace People, were awarded the Nobel peace prize.
In this picture, there’s a woman giving me quite a stare and I felt I was obviously intruding, but I had to get the pictures.
There was no other way around it: I couldn’t do it from down the road or somewhere.
And the photograph was important in driving the peace movement.
The army would fire rubber bullets.
We didn’t have helmets like photojournalists have now.
We just ducked
In those days, most photojournalists shot in black and white, but the Sunday Times and Observer magazines required colour, which added another aspect to this.
The white coffin, the red flower on top, just gave it another edge.
The very Irish-looking sky, very Irish-looking faces – as a documentary photographer, you have to record these things in such a way that the pictures tell the story.
The test is: if you take the caption away, could you still get the gist?
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/17/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/17/
5 January 1976 South Armagh Kingsmills massacre
The killers forced 11 men to line up outside the van before opening fire.
Photograph: PA
Inquest delivers findings 48 years after 10 Protestant workers were shot dead when their minibus was ambushed in County Armagh G Fri 12 Apr 2024 20.17 CEST Last modified on Fri 12 Apr 2024 20.56 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/12/
10 Protestant workers were shot dead when their minibus was ambushed in County Armagh
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/12/
the killers freed the only Catholic man on the workers minibus before gunning down his colleagues.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/05/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/05/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/23/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/17/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/5/
1976
SAS hard men join attack on Ulster anarchy
https://www.theguardian.com/century/1970-1979/
13 December 1975
Marylebone, London Balcombe Street Siege
A member of the IRA surrenders to police at a flat at 22b Balcombe Street in Marylebone, London, at the end of the Balcombe Street Siege, 13 December 1975
The photography of John Downing The photojournalist, who visited Chernobyl with Kim Willsher, captured award-winning images during his time as one of 64 Daily Express staff photographers in the halcyon days of Fleet Street G Sat 15 Jun 2019 17.30 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2019/jun/15/
A death list and the names of potential bombing targets that included the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and part of Buckingham Palace were found in a London flat occupied by the IRA's Balcombe Street gang, according to a confidential Downing Street file released by the National Archives (...).
The prime minister, Harold Wilson, asked for a copy of the death list found in an IRA bomb factory at Milton Grove, Stoke Newington, in December 1975 after the surrender of the Balcombe Street gang following a six-day siege.
The four-man IRA active service unit, made up of Hugh Doherty, Joe O'Connell, Eddie Butler and Henry Duggan, carried out a 14-month bombing campaign across London that involved 40 explosions and left 35 people dead, including the Guinness Book of Records co-founder and rightwing political activist Ross McWhirter.
(...)
Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin's president, described the four men as "our Nelson Mandelas" when they were presented to the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (annual conference) after their release from prison.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2019/jun/15/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/
27 November 1975
TV presenter Ross McWhirter shot dead
Guinness Book of Records co-founder and editor Ross McWhirter is shot dead outside his North London home by the provisional IRA, after he had offered a £50,000 reward for information on terrorists http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/newsid_2528000/2528787.stm http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/apr/21/guardianobituaries.obituaries
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/apr/21/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/
21 November 1974
Birmingham pub bombings / The Birmingham six
A police officer stands outside one of the Birmingham pubs that were bombed in 1974.
Photograph: Alamy
Birmingham pub bombings coroner has 'significant' new information G Thursday 12 May 2016 15.05 BST Last modified on Thursday 12 May 2016 18.36 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/12/
Bombs devastate two central Birmingham pubs, killing 19 people and injuring over 180
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/21/
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/images/cartoons/douglas98c.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/17/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/01/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/12/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/10/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jun/09/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1974/nov/25/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/21/
Guildford pub bombing / The Guildford four
Four people are killed and more than 50 injured
It was one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
Three Belfast men and an English woman spent 15 years in prison after police fabricated confessions for the IRA bombing of the Horse and Groom pub in Guildford in 1974.
But even after their convictions were quashed in 1989, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Paddy Armstrong and Carole Richardson, had spoken of the clinging stigma and the black hole of post-traumatic stress.
Some felt there was a whispering campaign in the corridors of power that they had been freed on a technicality and a "cloud of suspicion" remained. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/10/northernireland.northernireland
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/world/europe/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/22/gerry-conlon-dies-freed-guildford-four
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/21/gerry-conlon-guildford-four-dies-belfast-ira
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2014/jun/21/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/21/gerry-conlon-dies-ira-belfast-guildford-four
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/02/legal-aid-cuts-widespread-miscarriages-justice
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/may/20/guildford-four-detectives-cleared
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/10/northernireland.northernireland
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/feb/09/northernireland.devolution
http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/In_Name_Father.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/10/northernireland.northernireland
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/feb/09/northernireland.devolution
https://www.theguardian.com/fromthearchive/
https://www.theguardian.com/fromthearchive/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/5/
Dublin and Monaghan bombings
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974 were a series of co-ordinated bombings in counties Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland, carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force.
Three bombs exploded in Dublin during the evening rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan almost ninety minutes later.
They killed 33 civilians and injured almost 300.
The bombings were among the deadliest attack of the conflict known as the Troubles, and the deadliest attack in the Republic's history.
Most of the victims were young women, although the ages of the dead ranged from 19 up to 80 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/11/
A roadblock in the Catholic area of Belfast in 1974.
Photograph: Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
With Good Friday Agreement Under Threat, Voters Urged to ‘Stand Up’ NYT April 9, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/
10 September 1973
King's Cross and Euston stations bombings
Two bombs at mainline stations injured 13 people and brought chaos to central London.
The first explosion injured five people at King's Cross.
Fifty minutes later a second blast rocked a snack bar at Euston station, injuring a further eight people http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/10/newsid_2504000/2504619.stm
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1973/sep/11/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/10/
February 1973
(a Catholic minibus driver), Eugene “Paddy” Heenan, 47, was killed (by loyalist paramilitaries) when a grenade was thrown into the vehicle carrying him and 14 others to a building site in east Belfast
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/27/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/27/
Marian Price
Price, now known as McGlinchey, along with her late sister Dolours, were imprisoned in the 1970s for their part in the explosions outside the Old Bailey which marked the start of the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign in Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/30/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/30/
Northern Ireland secretary in the 1970s
Dolours Price 1951-2013
Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey (on March 8) 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to one person's death of heart failure.
The ex-IRA prisoner, who went on hunger strike with her sister Marian in the 1970s and was subjected to forcefeeding in English prisons, had struggled with alcohol problems later in life.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/24/
Dolours Price was born in Belfast on June 21, 1951, into a family steeped in Irish republican politics.
Her father, Albert, was an I.R.A. founding member.
“My father never saw his firstborn child because she was born and died while he was interned,” she wrote.
An aunt, Bridie Price, lost both hands and her eyesight when a bomb she was assembling accidentally blew up.
Her sister Marian, who was among the 10 I.R.A. members involved in the 1973 London bombings, was released from prison in the early ’80s but rearrested several years ago on charges of plotting an attack on the government. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/europe/dolours-price-defiant-ira-bomber-dies-at-61.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/europe/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/28/stephen-rea-dolours-price-funeral
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/24/old-bailey-bomber-dolours-price
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21181174
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2267634/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9824209/
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-446557/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/14/
Stephen Rea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/28/
14 November 1973
IRA gang convicted of London bombings
Six men and two women have been convicted of exploding two IRA car bombs in London in March this year.
All eight were active members of the Provisional IRA.
A ninth defendant, 18-year-old Roisin McNearney, was acquitted.
One person died and almost 200 were injured in the two bombs.
One blew up outside the Old Bailey criminal court, while the other went off outside Scotland Yard. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/14/newsid_4724000/4724181.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/14/
9 March 1973
Northern Ireland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1973/mar/10/
8 March 1973 London Old Bailey bombing
Bamber: ‘An IRA car bomb blew up the west front of the Old Bailey on a terrible day of tension and bomb scares in London.
I ran down Fleet Street and, as I ducked past the police trying to rope off the area, I saw this barrister being rescued.
His ripped, blood-soaked shirt, dazed gaze and bandaged head told the whole story in a frame.
Later, a box of cheese and wine from El Vino’s, the legal watering hole of choice in Fleet Street, was delivered to me.
A card inside from the barrister James Crespi read: ‘Dear Roger, thank you for the best portrait of me ever taken’
A life less ordinary: Roger Bamber’s state of the nation – in pictures An IRA bomb victim, a miniature railway obsessive and Thatcher with a handful of cow dung – these superb images tell a vivid tale of Britain G Tue 4 Apr 2023 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/apr/04/
The 1973 Old Bailey bombing (dubbed as Bloody Thursday by newspapers in Britain)
car bomb attack carried out by the Provisional IRA (IRA) which took place outsid the Old Bailey Courthouse on 8 March 1973. Wikipedia - 4 April 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/apr/04/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/22/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/may/16/
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/mar/09/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/
1972-2023
Liam Holden's case
Shortly after 2pm on 17 September 1972, a bright Sunday afternoon, six soldiers from the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment were patrolling near the Ballymurphy estate in west Belfast.
If you were a British soldier stationed in Northern Ireland at that time, the area around Ballymurphy was not a place to stand still for too long.
Even when pausing briefly in a doorway, the young soldiers would sway from side to side, performing a life-or-death street ballet.
There were three soldiers on either side of the road.
The last man on the left-hand side was an 18-year-old private, Frank Bell.
When the patrol reached an exposed and potentially dangerous spot by a side street, the section commander, a corporal, quickly crossed before pausing to watch his men follow one at a time.
As private Bell crossed the road, the soldiers heard the crack and fizz of an incoming high-velocity round.
Bell was flung backwards.
Three of the soldiers leapt for cover.
The corporal ran to Bell to drag him out of the open road.
In a subsequent statement to the Royal Military Police, he said:
“I loosened Pte Bell’s clothing and noticed he had a hole in the left side of his head which was bleeding quite badly.”
A local woman ran from her house with cotton wool, which the corporal used to try to stem the bleeding.
The woman went back to her home and returned with a blanket.
Despite local hostility to the paras, a number of other people emerged from their homes, and one of the soldiers later said in a statement that “some were sympathetic and trying to aid us as much as possible”.
An armoured ambulance arrived and Bell was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
The other five soldiers continued with their patrol.
At the hospital, after a blood transfusion, Bell was transferred to the intensive care unit, where, three days later, he died.
The year of Bell’s murder was the bloodiest of the Troubles.
On 30 January, the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, 14 civil rights demonstrators had been fatally shot in Derry by soldiers of the parachute regiment.
Six months later, nine people were killed in Belfast city centre and 130 injured when the IRA detonated 19 bombs in little more than an hour.
There was a further surge in violence when the British army demolished makeshift barriers so that soldiers could patrol neighbourhoods that local nationalists had declared to be “no-go areas” for the security forces.
The parachute regiment was sent into Ballymurphy.
(...)
At their home in the Wirral, members of Frank Bell’s family told a reporter from the Liverpool Echo that he had been engaged to marry his childhood sweetheart, Christine, and that he had joined the army because he needed a job.
He was the 599th person to be killed in Northern Ireland’s 30-year conflict, known as the Troubles, and the 108th soldier to die that year.
A few hundred yards south of the junction where Bell was shot, another 18-year-old lived with his family.
Liam Holden, one of 13 children, had left school with no qualifications and was working as a junior chef at a hotel north of Belfast where his father had a job as a security guard.
Like many people in Ballymurphy, he had some sympathies with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and had attended one meeting of the group’s youth wing, the Fianna, but did not take an oath of allegiance and never went back.
In the early hours of 16 October, a month after Frank Bell was shot, soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment raided the family home and told Liam Holden’s parents that he and his older brother Patrick were wanted for questioning.
The brothers were driven to a primary school in a nearby unionist neighbourhood that the army had partly requisitioned as a base.
The brothers were led into a portacabin and each placed in a small cubicle.
After a while Patrick was released, but Liam was told that an informer had named him as the sniper who had shot Bell.
Holden was held and questioned throughout the night by soldiers from the parachute regiment.
By the morning, he had made a confession.
He was transferred to Castlereagh police station in the east of the city.
There he was questioned by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) for just 25 minutes.
That evening, on the eve of his 19th birthday, he was charged with Frank Bell’s murder.
(...)
Holden always maintained he was innocent of killing Frank Bell, claiming that his confession was concocted by his interrogators and signed under duress.
The MoD’s reluctance to produce evidence for its version of events, or to accept submissions to the contrary, have seemed at times to be part of a sustained effort to bury the past.
It was not until last month, more than 50 years after Liam Holden was first arrested, that a judge finally delivered his verdict.
Holden’s criminal trial had opened in April 1973, seven months after Bell’s death.
It was held in the grand Neoclassical courthouse known as Belfast City Commission, before the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Sir Robert Lowry.
Because Holden was alleged to have murdered, as the indictment put it, “a soldier in the service of the Crown”, he had been charged with capital murder, meaning it was a death penalty case.
In England, Scotland and Wales, hanging had not been used as a punishment since 1964, and had been officially abolished in 1969, but in Northern Ireland it remained on the statute books.
The evidence against Holden was entirely based on the confession made on the night of his arrest, first to the army, and then repeated when he was in RUC custody.
There was no forensic evidence against him, and no more was heard of the anonymous “informant” who had identified him as the shooter.
Before the case got underway, there was a form of trial-within-a-trial, in the absence of the jury, after Holden’s lawyers argued that his confessions should be ruled inadmissible.
Two soldiers – a captain and a sergeant from the parachute regiment who had questioned Holden on the night of his arrest – gave evidence and were then cross-examined by Holden’s lawyers about the training they had received in interrogation techniques, and the way in which they had treated the teenager.
They denied any wrongdoing, and the judge ruled that the confessions could be put before the jury.
Holden then gave the court his account of what happened in army custody.
After being forced against the wall in a stress position, he said, he was punched in the stomach and burned with a lighter.
When questioned about the shooting, he denied any involvement.
At this point, he said, the sergeant called for a bucket and towel.
Several soldiers held him down on the floor, a towel was placed over his face, and water was poured on to it.
“It nearly put me unconscious,” Holden told the jury.
“It nearly drowned me and stopped me from breathing.
This went on for a minute.”
This tactic, later known as waterboarding, was repeated three or four times.
Holden said he was then hooded, beaten, placed in a vehicle, and told he was being taken to an area on the outskirts of Belfast where the bodies of a number of murdered Catholic men had been discovered.
He said he was told he was going to be shot.
At this point, Holden said, he agreed to confess to shooting Bell.
Holden also told the court that before being handed over to the RUC, the soldiers had instructed him to repeat his admission to the police, threatening that they would bring him back to their base if he failed to do so.
When he told the police what had happened to him, he said, they threatened to hand him back to the army if he did not sign a confession.
The court heard that he had signed a statement confessing that he had fired the fatal shot using a .303 rifle with eight bullets in its magazine, which had been conveyed to him by a young girl.
The sergeant said Holden had confessed because “he said he wanted to get it off his chest”.
At the time of Holden’s trial, in 1973, it was widely known that the British army abused its prisoners in Northern Ireland.
The abuses were even officially acknowledged, although government ministers insisted that they fell short of torture.
In March the previous year, the British prime minister Ted Heath had told Parliament that there would be no further use of an interrogation method known as the “five techniques”: hooding, starvation, sleep deprivation, enforced stress positions and the use of loud noise.
In combination and over a few days, they caused not only pain, exhaustion and distress, but the danger of severe psychological disintegration.
(...)
Throughout Holden’s trial, soldiers from the parachute regiment denied waterboarding prisoners.
And the jury at Belfast City Commission appears to have remained unconvinced by a defendant who said he confessed to murder because he had had some water splashed over his face.
After deliberating for just 90 minutes, the jury found Holden guilty.
Lord Justice Lowry told him there was only one sentence he could pass:
“The sentence of the court is that you will suffer death in the manner authorised by law.”
(...)
Holden knew there was at least a chance his sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment: shortly before he went on trial, another man, a Loyalist named Albert Browne who had been convicted of murdering a police officer, had had his death sentence commuted.
A quiet, reserved man, Holden later recalled the dreadful uncertainty of those days.
“Twenty-four hours a day of thinking, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, thinking.
You’d think: ‘They’re not going to do it.’ And then, ‘Yes they are.’
Nor was Holden aware of what lay beyond the empty bookshelf: a spring mechanism ensured that it could be moved swiftly to one side, and beyond it was a concealed doorway that led to the gallows.
The noose was a few paces from his bed.
After a month in the condemned man’s cell, Holden’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the man who had been appointed Northern Ireland secretary the previous year. In his memoirs,
Willie Whitelaw wrote that he had once been “mildly in favour of capital punishment”, but had changed his mind over time.
Hanging people in Northern Ireland at that time, in particular, “would only succeed in promoting the mayhem and killings which it was my purpose to stop”.
After Holden’s sentence was commuted, capital punishment was abolished as a punishment for murder in Northern Ireland, bringing it into line with the rest of the UK.
Holden had been the last person to be sentenced to death.
Holden was transferred to the recently built Maze Prison, 10 miles south-west of Belfast.
His relationship with his girlfriend collapsed, and his mother, who had suffered a breakdown on the day he was sentenced, became very ill.
He discouraged his family from visiting as he found their obvious distress deeply upsetting.
He lost his religious belief.
One of his brothers went to jail, convicted of a terrorism-related offence. Holden spent 17 years behind bars, before being released on licence in 1989.
(...)
At the 2012 appeal hearing, the prosecution said it would not be opposing Holden’s appeal.
The court of appeal’s judgement remained silent on the issue of waterboarding.
Nevertheless, the 40-year-old conviction was quashed. Holden and his children were jubilant.
His lawyer, Belfast solicitor Patricia Coyle, said the family were “grateful that they are dealing with a quashed conviction, and not a posthumous pardon” for a hanged man.
Asked by reporters about the way he said he had been treated in army custody, Holden said he regarded the term “waterboarding” as a euphemism, and abhorrent. “It was torture.”
(...)
In Liam Holden’s case, at least, the outcome of the Legacy Bill won’t matter.
On 24 March 2023, a high court judge in Belfast, Mr Justice Kevin Rooney, delivered his 61-page judgement.
“I am persuaded, on the balance of probabilities, that the plaintiff was subjected to the acts of impropriety as alleged against the defendants,” he said.
“It is my decision that the plaintiff was subjected to waterboarding; he was hooded; he was driven in a car flanked by soldiers to a location where he thought he would be assassinated; a gun was put to his head, and he was threatened that he would be shot dead.
It is the view of this court that the said ill-treatment caused the plaintiff to make admissions and a confession statement.”
Holden, the judge noted, had steadily maintained his account for almost half a century.
“Despite the passage of time, in my judgment there has been a constant thread of consistency in the plaintiff’s evidence to this court when compared to his previous accounts of the events.”
It was the army, rather than the police, that faced the greater criticism in Rooney’s judgment:
“I conclude that the plaintiff was exposed to humiliation and degradation and that the soldiers behaved in a high-handed, insulting, malicious and oppressive manner.”
Holden’s estate was awarded a further £350,000 in damages.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/11/
Rioters throwing stones at British soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972.
Photograph: Gilles Peress Magnum
50 Years on, Bloody Sunday’s Wounds Are Still Felt A half-century after the killings in Northern Ireland, symbols of division and hostility still hold their potency. NYT Jan.29, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/
Related > Rioters throwing stones at British troops in Londonderry in 1972.
Photograph: Gilles Peress/Magnum Photos
50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland NYT Oct. 4, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1972 A woman wounded in an IRA bomb explosion in the city centre is given first aid
Photograph: Abbas
Photojournalist Abbas - a career in pictures
The Iranian-born photographer Abbas, who covered wars and revolutions across the world, has died aged 74.
Abbas joined Magnum in 1981 and covered conflicts and unrest in Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Middle East, Iran, Chile and Cuba as well as documenting South Africa under apartheid.
‘He was a godfather for an entire generation of young photographers,’ Magnum’s president, Thomas Dworzak, said
Warning: contains images some readers may find disturbing G Thu 26 Apr 2018 13.26 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/apr/26/
Jean McConville 1934-1972
née Murray
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/03/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/01/jean-mcconville-daughter-names-ira-killing
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/01/jean-mcconville-gerry-adams-sinn-fein
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/30/gerry-adams-held-jean-mconville-killing
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/northern-ireland-jean-mcconville-editorial
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/01/gerry-adams-jean-mcconville-dolours-price
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/01/
31 July 1972
Operation Motorman
Operation Motorman was a large operation carried out by the British Army (HQ Northern Ireland) in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
The operation took place in the early hours of 31 July 1972 with the aim of retaking the "no-go areas" (areas controlled by residents, usually Irish republican paramilitaries) that had been established in Belfast and other urban centres.
In Derry Operation Carcan (or Car Can), initially proposed as a separate operation, was executed as part of Motorman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Motorman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/15/
31 July 1972
Daniel Hegarty murder
A former British soldier is to be prosecuted for the murder of a teenage boy who was shot dead in Northern Ireland in 1972.
The veteran, identified as “Soldier B”, will face the charge of murdering 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty in the Creggan area of Derry, prosecutors have announced.
He will also be charged with wounding with intent in the case of the teenager’s cousin, Christopher Hegarty, then aged 17, who was shot and injured in the incident.
The shootings occurred on 31 July 1972, during Operation Motorman, when thousands of troops were deployed into Derry and Belfast to break into so-called no-go areas – republican districts that the security forces could not previously enter.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/15/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/15/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/08/
Direct rule was initiated in response to increased violence in the province and the apparent unwillingness of the ruling Unionist politicians to accommodate changes at that time.
It brought half a century of unionist control to an end and effectively conceded that Northern Ireland had become ungovernable from Belfast because of the inability of the two communities to work together http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/northern_ireland/understanding/events/direct_rule.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/northern_ireland/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/25/from-the-archives
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1972/mar/25/past.ianaitken
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/11/northernireland
1972
In 1972, at the height of the Troubles, the Irish Republican Army allowed an American TV crew to film its members as they engaged in weapons training, patrols, gun battles and bombing missions across Northern Ireland.
The operations were real, not staged, and senior commanders appeared on camera without concealment.
The TV crew shadowed one unit as it packed a car with explosives, drove it into the centre of Derry and detonated the bomb, injuring 26 people.
Europe’s deadliest guerrilla force had declared 1972 the year of victory and wanted it captured on film.
The result was a propaganda documentary, The Secret Army, that was intended for American audiences.
It showed remarkable scenes never seen before or since – the nuts and bolts of how IRA men and women went about planning and unleashing mayhem, and what they thought about it.
But the story behind the film, it turns out, is even more extraordinary than what appeared on screen.
The US production tangled Martin McGuinness, British intelligence, the CIA, a Nazi hunter and Muammar Gaddafi in a strange web of intrigue – and then the film vanished, largely unseen and forgotten, for almost 50 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/30/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/30/
Catholic youth taunting British soldiers in the Bogside, Londonderry, Northern Ireland. 1971.
Photograph: Don McCullin Contact Press Images
Don McCullin at War NYT Nov. 6, 2015
https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/
Street fighting in Londonderry in 1971.
Photograph: Bruno Barbey Magnum Photos
50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland NYT Oct. 4, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/
Benn Keaveney, third from left running away, in Derry, 1971.
Photograph: Don McCullin Contact Press Images
‘Teargas is awful – it gets you in the back of your throat’: escaping a gas attack
Benn Keaveney escapes a CS gas attack in Derry, 1971 G Fri 12 Jan 2018 14.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 18 Dec 2019 15.19 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/12/
4 December 1971
McGurk's massacre
Fifteen people are killed when the Ulster Volunteer Force explode a bomb at McGurk's bar (at the Catholic-owned bar) in the city on 4 December 1971.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/12/
August 1971
The “hooded men”
maltreatment of 14 men interned without trial at the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
(..)
The “hooded men” were mainly republican suspects seized in predawn raids across North Ireland in August 1971.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/11/
9-11 August 1971
Ballymurphy massacre / shootings
The killings took place when the army swept through republican districts across Northern Ireland to round up suspects for internment without trial.
Violent street protests erupted.
The Parachute regiment spent several chaotic days detaining and shooting people in Ballymurphy from 9 to 11 August.
There were no TV crews or newspaper photographers to document what happened, unlike in Derry five months later when the same regiment massacred protesters and triggered worldwide condemnation.
The inquest concluded that soldiers killed nine of the Ballymurphy dead.
The coroner, Mrs Justice Keegan, could not establish who killed the 10th victim, John McKerr.
“All of the deceased in the series of inquests were entirely innocent of wrongdoing on the day in question,”
her report said.
Her blistering report rejected army claims that troops had opened fire only when they perceived they were under threat.
No weapons were recovered from any of the dead, who included a parish priest, Hugh Mullan, and a mother of eight, Joan Connolly.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/12/
10 people are killed in West Belfast by the army
All 10 were killed in one small neighbourhood of west Belfast over little more than 36 hours in August 1971 during the disturbances that were triggered by the introduction of internment without trial.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/26/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/11/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/26/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2014/jun/26/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/20/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8483497.stm
British soldiers charging Catholic youths in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in 1971.
Photograph: Don McCullin Contact Press Images
50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland NYT Oct. 4, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/
Irish youths confronting British soldiers in Londonderry in 1971.
Photograph: Gilles Peress Magnum Photos
50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland NYT Oct. 4, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/
Annette McGavigan 1957-1971
Annette McGavigan was still wearing her school uniform when she was shot dead in Bogside on 6 September 1971.
Photograph: Annie and William McGavigan Wikipedia
Two army veterans will not be prosecuted over 1971 Troubles deaths Prosecutors say there is not enough evidence to convict the former soldiers for the shooting of a girl, 14, and a man, 41, in Derry G Mon 29 Apr 2024 21.15 CEST Last modified on Wed 1 May 2024 23.34 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/29/
14-year-old girl fatally wounded by a gunshot in crossfire between British soldiers and the IRA on 6 September 1971.
McGavigan's family has claimed that the bullet which killed her was fired by a British soldier.
After three years of conflict in Northern Ireland, Annette became the 100th civilian to be killed in the Troubles.
No individual has been charged with her death. Wikipedia - May 6, 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/29/
1971-75
Internment
Nearly 2,000 people are arrested and held without trial on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
26 June 1970
Violence flares as Devlin is arrested
Riots broke out in Londonderry after it was revealed Bernadette Devlin had been arrested.
The Mid-Ulster MP was to address a meeting in Bogside before handing herself in to police after she lost an appeal against her December conviction.
Miss Devlin, 23, was sentenced to six-months in jail for her part in the Bogside riots in 1969.
She appealed against the decision but the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal rejected her application earlier today. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/26/newsid_2519000/2519711.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/26/
Derry youths throw petrol bombs at the RUC during the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969.
Photograph: Peter Ferraz Getty Images
Northern Ireland’s lost moment: how the peaceful protests of ’68 escalated into years of bloody conflict Fifty years ago civil rights activists took to the streets of Derry, Belfast and Armagh. Their bid to effect peaceful change is arguably one of the great ‘what if?’ moments in Irish history, now remembered in a new exhibtion G Sun 22 Apr 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/22/
A loyalist parade passing through the nationalist Bogside area of Derry on 12 August sparks two days of rioting.
As sporadic violence spreads across the province, troops are called in.
At first they are welcomed by the Catholic community, but sectarian violence continues.
The Provisional IRA becomes more active, and the army increasingly concentrates on fighting it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/northern-ireland-timeline
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/22/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
15 August 1969
The burning of Bombay street
On 15 August 1969 in an increasingly tense Belfast, Bombay Street was burned to the ground by a Loyalist mob.
A typical west Belfast working class street, Bombay Street was situated in the shadow of the well known Clonard Monastery.
It also neighboured Cupar Street, an unmarked dividing line between the Nationalist Clonard Area and the Loyalist Shankill Area.
On the night of 14 August 1969 sectarian tensions exploded in west Belfast.
Republicans exchanged shots with the RUC and Loyalist gunmen amid riots along the interface areas.
When the RUC pressed into the Nationalist district it was followed by a Loyalist mob.
By the end of the following day, the mob had burned Bombay Street to the ground. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2011/02_february/28/bombay_street.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2011/02_february/28/
1969
Provisionals emerge
Northern Ireland slid into violence in the late 1960s as the unionist-dominated state resisted demands from Catholics for civil rights and equality.
Apart from some sporadic campaigns, the IRA had long been dormant and as the violence worsened, some of its traditional supporters accused it of failing to defend the Catholic community:
Graffiti reading "IRA - I Ran Away" appeared in many areas.
Such was the near anarchy, the Irish government even suggested that it would be forced to intervene.
Amid the violence and rows over how to react, what remained of the IRA was already heading for a split over the place of constitutional politics in its movement.
The more Marxist "Official" IRA wanted at least a token recognition of parliamentary politics and the Dublin government.
Hardliners not only demanded action on the streets but regarded political abstention as an article of faith.
They said that recognition of the Dail, Dublin's parliament, would entrench partition.
They split to form the "Provisional" IRA.
It was the Provisional IRA, later to be just the IRA, which became the main republican paramilitary organisation resisting British rule in Northern Ireland. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/northern_ireland/2001/provisional_ira/1969.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/
1968
The civil rights movement
Catholics complain of unfair treatment at the hands of a largely Protestant political establishment, saying among other things that electoral boundaries are gerrymandered to ensure Protestant majorities.
On 5 October, a civil rights march is stopped by the RUC.
Rioting follows and the province's government agrees to undertake reforms. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/northern-ireland-timeline
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/northern-ireland-timeline
1922
Partition
Six counties in the north of the island opt to stay in the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland becomes independent and later a republic.
Many of the inhabitants are descended from Protestant settlers brought in by James I in the 17th century, although there is still a large Catholic minority, just as there continues to be a significant Protestant minority in the Republic.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
1921
hanging of IRA volunteers
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/02/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/02/
1921
The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (Irish: An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of Independence.
It provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the "community of nations known as the British Empire", a status "the same as that of the Dominion of Canada". It also provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which it exercised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Treaty - 28 February 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/28/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/20/
1919
Lloyd George, the prime minister, outlines the government's proposals for home rule in Ireland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/
Easter Rising / Ireland’s rebellion 1916
British soldiers stand guard in an area of Dublin destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
My family’s link to the 1916 Easter Rising G Sunday 27 March 2016 09.00 BST Last modified on Sunday 27 March 2016 10.47 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/
week-long rebellion in Dublin
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/mar/26/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/mar/28/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/mar/27/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/26/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/25/
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/mar/26/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/25/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/
19th century
Fenian Movement
The Fenian Movement consisted of revolutionary groups determined to overthrow British rule of Ireland and establish an independent Irish state.
The movement was started in Ireland in 1850 when James Stephens and Thomas Clarke Luby created the Irish Republican Brotherhood;
the nickname, "Fenians," came from the ancient Irish warriors called the Fianna.
John O'Mahoney, Michael Doheny, and Stephens started the Fenian Movement in the United States in a ceremony in front of Tammany Hall in New York City in October of 1858.
Their objective in starting an organization in the United States was to rally Irish-Americans politically behind a revolution in Ireland against Britain.
In Ireland, the movement was quickly stamped out by the British, who launched a vigorous crackdown.
The Fenians had better luck in the United States, however, for the American government made no efforts to suppress the group. http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/fenians.html
https://library.harvard.edu/collections/
Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century > Northern Ireland
20th century > Northern Ireland
UK > Definition, maps and flags
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
terrorism, politics > Northern Ireland
terrorism, politics > Northern Ireland > Catholics
terrorism, politics > Northern Ireland > Protestants
miscarriage of justice > UK, USA
Related > Anglonautes > Arts > Photography > War photographers > UK
Reuters > Factbox: Fraught Anglo-Irish conflict goes back centuries
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ireland-britain-relations/
Reuters > Timeline: Long road to Northern Irish settlement
https://www.reuters.com/article/
Reuters > Timeline: Worst bomb attacks on mainland Britain 1974-2001
https://www.reuters.com/article/
BBC > Timeline: Northern Ireland's road to peace 1987-2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4072261.stm
BBC > Ireland timeline https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17480250
The Guardian > Northern Ireland timeline 1919-2009
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/08/
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