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

by Tim Pat Coogan

It was against this background that a British government leak (on 27 July) revealed that the British Government had told the Irish Ambassador to the UK that it was under no obligation to consult the Republic about Northern Ireland.

The incoming government took up John Hume’s theme that the assembly envisaged by James Prior ‘was unworkable’, and at their first meeting in London (on 1 February 1983) the new Irish Foreign Minister, Peter Barry, told Prior that Dublin did not think the assembly had a future.

For example, the evolution of the IRA, the ‘shoot-to-kill’ and ‘dirty tricks’ issues, the hunger strikes, and other developments which help to illustrate how the war was really fought, out of sight of the media.

Later in the year the Provisionals carried out no-warning pub bombings at Guildford, on 5 October, and at Birmingham, on 21 November. In the former, five people were killed and fifty-four injured. In the latter nineteen died and 182 were injured.

resulted in innocent people being sentenced for all three mainland bombings.

after eighteen years,

served sentences of between four and fourteen years.

served fourteen years,

after a file which contained evidence that he had been in London on the night of the Guildford bombing was marked by the prosecuting authori...

Conlon said that he signed a confession after being threatened by a police officer that ‘…an accident would be ar...

The Birmingham Six, who were first beaten up by police to obtain a confession, and subsequently by prison warders – to account for their injuries – served seventeen years before being freed in 1991.

The year 1975 was remarkable for the truce negotiated between the Provisional IRA and the British Government (see Chapter 9), which triggered an increase in Loyalist violence.

On 4 January, two other UVF attacks claimed five Catholic lives. The following day there was a massacre of Protestant workers at Kingsmill, South Armagh.

This was claimed not to be the work of the Provisional IRA but of a cover grouping calling itself the Republican Action Force.

it should be noted that the Government announced on 21 January that 25, 000 houses had been damaged since the Troubles began.

This was the setting in which developed one of the largest peace movements of the entire Troubles. On 12 August of that year, the women’s Peace Movement began, after three children of the Maguire family died as a result of the army shooting dead the driver of a stolen car which went out of control. In its early stages, huge processions of Protestant and Catholic women marched together through both Republican and Loyalist parts of Belfast.

Maire Drumm, vice-president and the leading woman member of Provisional Sinn Fein, was shot dead while receiving treatment in the Mater Hospital, Belfast.

The year 1977 was characterised by the usual bombings and shootings, an increase in the number of SAS men sent to the province, an increase in unemployment, and the failure of another attempt by Loyalists to stage a power strike.

1978 saw one of the worst atrocities of the entire period. A function at La Mon House Hotel at Comber, Co. Down was firebombed by the Provisional IRA, and failure to allow for vandalised phone boxes meant that delayed warning calls resulted in the place not being cleared when the bombs went off. Twelve young people died in the conflagration and twenty-three were injured.

to vote at its annual conference on 4 November for a British withdrawal.

the House of Commons on 28 November passed a motion by a majority of 7 to 1 for increasing the parliamentary representation from the North to Westminster by five seats.

Pope Benedict had in fact been trying to dissuade the rebels from staging the rising when an emissary, Count Plunkett, startled him by informing him that he was in Rome as a matter of courtesy to inform His Holiness that a rebellion was being planned in Dublin, but that the Pontiff had no cause for alarm, the rebels were not communists!

The Provisionals rejected his appeal at Drogheda on 29 September: ‘On my knees I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence.’ A statement issued to the press by the Provisionals on 2 October said that the British would not withdraw unless force continued to be used.

The statement said however that: ‘…upon victory, the Catholic Church would have no difficulty in recognising us’.6 The year ended with five soldiers being killed by IRA bombs on 16 December.

Five days later, on 21 January, the IRA shot dead two prominent Unionist politicians, Sir Norman Stronge and his son James.

The hunger strikes caused increasing US interest in the situation. President Reagan mirrored this on 28 April when he said, while declaring that the US would not take an interventionist position, that he was nevertheless ‘deeply concerned at the tragic situation’.

It took one of the biggest police operations ever seen in Dublin to save the British Embassy when, on 18 July, an H Block march attempting to pass the embassy ended in one of the most ferocious riots of the period. Four days earlier, the Irish Government had appealed, without result, to America to intervene with Britain over the hunger strike.

1992 saw a growth in approaches to America by Dublin to bring pressure to bear on Britain to further Irish unity by consent.

Bombings and shootings continued, the most notable of these being two attacks in London on 20 July in which eleven soldiers were killed and fifty-one people injured.

For example, in July the marching season’s tensions were heightened by the IRA blowing up four UDR members with a landmine, the biggest single loss that the regiment had suffered.

supergrasses – that is, informers who were promised immunity and a new start in life in return for giving evidence against IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries

emergence of Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein on to the par...

Adams and Hume were the only two Nationalists to win seats in the Westminster election of 9 June. Fifteen Unionists were returned t...

The Provisionals received a huge morale boost on 25 September, when thirty-eight of their top men broke out of Long Kesh. It was the biggest jail break in British prison history.

The northerners took over the leadership of Provisional Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams being elected president.

By contrast with the increasing professionalism of PSF, the disorganised state of another Republican movement, the Irish National Liberation Army, was seen a week later when an unauthorised attack by members of the INLA killed worshippers at a Pentecostal service in Darkley, Co. Armagh.

1984, the year when, as described earlier, Margaret Thatcher rejected the findings of the New Ireland Forum, thus involving herself in controversy with the Irish Government, began with the Iron Lady also clashing with the Irish church leadership.

‘If a person is convinced that he is joining for these reasons [Sinn Fein’s community activities] and that his positive reasons outweigh any interpretation that may be given his membership as condoning support for violence and crime, he may be morally justified.’

Dominic McGlinchey, the INLA leader whose activities are described in Chapter 10, became the first political offender of the Troubles to be extradited from the south to the north.

Robinson stated that he had been ordered by his superiors to tell lies. His statements were apparently well founded, because on 4 April the British Government apologised to the Irish Government for RUC undercover actions which had taken place in the Republic the previous

year.

The continuing interest of American politicians in things Irish was underlined on 25 May when both houses of Congress unanimously backed the New Ireland Forum report. But the difference in approach by the Democrats and the Republicans was underlined during a visit made by President Reagan to the Republic a few days later. In a joint address to the Dail and Senate on 4 June, he too praised the New Ireland Forum report but went on to say that current US policy was not to interfere in Irish matters.

However, a fortnight later, on 12 October, the IRA demonstrated that they had other sources of explosives when they detonated the bomb in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, which came within an ace of killing Margaret Thatcher and several members of her cabinet.

Margaret Thatcher make an address to Congress on 20 February during which she appealed to Americans not to support Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), an Irish-American support organisation.

1986 was marked by intense Loyalist indignation at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Protests of all sorts took place, including the petrol-bombing of the homes of RUC officers.

As a result of this display of ‘loyalism’ the British Government was forced to send extra troops to the Six Counties to help the RUC withstand the onslaughts on the forces of the Crown to which the protestors were claiming to be loyal.

There were continuous Loyalist strikes and protests of all sorts, including an invasion of the Republic. Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party heightened the temperatures of the marching season by leading some 500 Loyalists on an after-dark descent on the Monaghan town of Clontibret, two miles inside the Republic’s border, on 7 August. The raid, which terrorised the villagers, won Robinson some favourable publicity in DUP circles, particularly after it generated some Belfast-style rioting and petrol-bombing in Dundalk when his case came to trial on 15 August.

On St Patrick’s Day Reagan acknowledged the importance of the Irish-American vote by authorising the first tranche ($50m) of a $150m American grant to further the work of the Anglo-Irish Agreement by helping Six County employment projects.

On 8 May, the IRA suffered one of its worst reverses of the entire campaign when an active service unit was wiped out by the SAS at Loughall, Co. Armagh.

Then on 8 November the IRA detonated a bomb during the Remembrance Day ceremony at Enniskillen which killed eleven and badly injured sixty-three others.