The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

Evidence of a yearning for peace was not easy to come by, as at this stage the Loyalist paramilitaries’ response to the fears of ‘a pan-Nationalist front’ was taking the form of assassinating Catholics practically every day. The Provisional IRA, in a botched attempt at killing the leaders held to be responsible for the slaughter, detonated a bomb in a fish shop in the Shankill Road, which on 23 October claimed ten innocent lives and injured fifty-eight people. The controversy over this atrocity was heightened when Gerry Adams helped carry the coffin of an IRA bomber, Thomas Begley, who died in the attack. Before the month ended, Protestant gunmen had killed twelve people in response, seven of them in a gun attack on a bar in Greysteel, Co. Derry. Overall, the violence during that October, 1993, was the worst for seventeen years.