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The Battle Of Pettigo And Belleek, May To June 1922

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The modern Belleek-Pettigo Triangle or Salient, Ireland
The modern Belleek-Pettigo Triangle or Salient, Ireland

The Battle of Pettigo and Belleek in the summer of 1922 was the largest military engagement between the Irish Republican Army and the British Occupation Forces in Ireland since the Easter Rising of 1916, and arguably the last significant action in the island nation’s War of Independence. Taking place from the 27th of May to the 8th of June the confrontation symbolised a final effort by revolutionary period republicans – already divided over opposition to a compromise peace deal with Britain – to contest the United Kingdom’s continued suzerainty over the north-east of the country. Within weeks of the encounter many Irish participants in the battle would find themselves on rival sides in the intra-nationalist Civil War of 1922-23.

The National Overview

Tuesday the 21st of January 1919 is often cited as the date on which Ireland’s four year War of Independence began. On that day nine volunteers (soldiers) of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army confronted two armed officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the UK’s locally-recruited paramilitary police force, on a rain-swept road near Soloheadbeg quarry, County Tipperary. The early afternoon ambush, in pursuit of arms and explosives, quickly turned violent when the constables failed to surrender, both men dying in a hail of gunfire. Though the fatalities were unusual the encounter itself was not, clashes between the “rebels” and the “Crown forces” occurring intermittently since March of the previous year. In truth what gave the event retrospective importance was its timing. On the same day as the rural attack representatives of Sinn Féin, the republican-nationalist party which had swept to an island-wide victory in the general election of December 1918, established Dáil Éireann or a republican parliament in the future capital city of Dublin. The Dáil gave form and substance to a revolutionary republic proclaimed three years earlier in the Easter Rising of 1916 and to the Irish people’s desire to regain their freedom from the colonial rule of the United Kingdom. This was the foundation-stone which convinced later generations to regard the incident at Soloheadbeg as the opening salvo of a democratically mandated armed struggle against the British empire.

For the next two-and-a-half years insurgent and counter-insurgent warfare between the several thousand volunteers of the IRA and the UK “garrison” on the island – the 57,000 members of the Imperial Armed Forces, the 4,400 officers of the regular Royal Irish Constabulary, the 9,800 temporary constables of the RIC Reserve Force (the infamous RICRF or “Black and Tans“), the 2,100 cadets of the Auxiliary Division of the RIC (the feared ADRIC or “Auxies“), some 1,100 men in the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the two dozen officers with the Belfast Harbour Police, the 32,000 militiamen of the Ulster Special Constabulary, and numerous individuals in various quasi-military groupings – shaped nearly all facets of contemporary Irish life. The insurrectionist republic, ratified by two further plebiscite-elections in 1920 and 1921, gained an Aireacht or government under the presidency of Éamon de Valera, complete with ministerial departments, a civil service, police, courts, diplomats and, of course, an underground defence force. Meanwhile centuries of foreign authority, haphazardly erected through historic layers of law and officialdom, collapsed in the face of a popular revolt, withdrawing to the main urban centres, as well as to the unionist north-east of the country: a geographically transplanted facsimile of the medieval English Pale. In time, domestic and international pressure, coupled with a general war weariness, would lead to a bilateral ceasefire, the Irish-British Truce of July 11th 1921.

Nearly six months later, and in circumstances that remain controversial to the present day, prolonged negotiations between the representatives of the Dublin and London administrations culminated in the signing of a peace deal in the cabinet room of No. 10 Downing Street. Under the “Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland” of December 6th the partition of the island into two separate jurisdictions, imposed by the British in 1920, would be formally recognised by the independence movement. A new, largely sovereign polity, the Irish Free State, would be established in the twenty-six counties of “Southern Ireland” while in the remaining six counties of “Northern Ireland” – the unionist-dominated north – there would be a semi-autonomous zone of the UK. This would result in one fifth of the territory of the island being left in British hands. The principle signees on behalf of the government of the Republic were Arthur Griffith, vice-president and secretary of state for foreign affairs, and Michael Collins, secretary of state for finance (who also served as the adjutant general and director of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army). Their opposite numbers in the government of the United Kingdom were David Lloyd George, prime minister, and Winston Churchill, the secretary of state for the colonies.

Michael Collins, the Sinn Féin TD for Armagh, addresses a massive rally in his constituency
Michael Collins, the Sinn Féin TD for Armagh, addresses a massive rally in his constituency, September 4th, 1921. Surrounded by units of the Irish Republican Army this was the first ever “public” appearance of the Republic’s secretary of finance and the IRA’s director of intelligence

The legitimacy of the treaty and the concessions it required split the independence movement and the country as a whole. Many critics argued that the negotiators had gone beyond the instructions given to them by their cabinet colleagues and president de Valera. Others pointed out that their actions violated the articles and spirit of Bunreacht Dála Éireann or the Dáil Constitution (adopted in January 1919) and the subsequent oath taken by all members of the government and defence forces to preserve it.

“I … do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I do not and shall not yield a voluntary support to any pretended Government, Authority, or Power within Ireland hostile and inimical thereto; and I do further swear (or affirm) that to the best of my knowledge and ability I will support and defend the Irish Republic, which is Dáil Éireann, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.”

Though the proposed accords gained parliamentary approval in the Dáil on January 7th 1922, with a voting majority of just seven TDanna or deputies out of 121, irreconcilable camps quickly emerged on both sides. The so-called “anti-treaty” group were led by Éamon de Valera, now resigned from the presidency, while the breakaway “pro-treaty” faction were led by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.

On January 14th the “treatyite” members of Sinn Féin and the IRA, in line with the settlement reached in London, began to form a transitional “Provisional Government of Ireland” under the chairpersonship of Collins (meaning Southern Ireland rather than the Irish Free State which would not come into formal existence until December of 1922). However many of those in the interim body retained their membership of the Aireacht. Collins was now the head of the Provisional Government and the minister of finance in the Republican Government while Griffith later served as the minister for external affairs in Provisional Government while holding the office of the President of the Republic. Though some people were clearly in one administration or the other, a majority found themselves with a foot in both camps as the rival authorities remained entangled well into the summer.

Meanwhile Dáil Éireann continued to function as the legislature of the Republic even as plans were laid for it to be subsumed into a treaty-required “Provisional Parliament” (the latter destined to become the assembly of the Free State). This process was made more complex by Britain’s insistence that the largely theoretical “House of Commons of Southern Ireland“, the UK-enacted home rule parliament for the twenty-six counties, was the only lawful legislature in the south until the Provisional Parliament took its place. In British eyes the Dáil remained an illegal entity, the chief cause of an armed rebellion against the authority of the crown. Yet for most of 1921 and 1922 they found it necessary to deal with its political and military representatives on an almost daily basis across Ireland and in Britain.

In some ways the chaos created through the competing claims of legitimacy on the island suited the needs of the pro-agreement Irish and British sides, aptly reflecting the creative ambiguities and outright deceptions both groups found necessary to deploy in order to bring about a compromise settlement that neither truly favoured. Given a constitutional black hole where anything seemed permissible the “Provisionals” readily exploited their lack of democratic or legal oversight during the early months of their existence to silence or push aside their critics.

Unsurprisingly the confusion of allegiances created by the Downing Street accords were also reflected in the Republic’s defence forces, the Irish Republican Army, which had been on a general ceasefire in the greater part of the country since July 1921. In the first quarter of 1922 the treaty was put to individual votes across the army and an overwhelming majority expressed opposition to what they saw as the unconstitutional “usurpation” of the 1916 republic with a self-ruling “vassal” of the British Empire. Ironically, given future events, aside from the isolated Dublin Brigade and a few other units, the greatest support for the proposed deal came from the war-weary volunteers of the army’s five divisions in Ulster where the 1921 truce had failed to take hold. Promises from the leadership of the pro-agreement camp, particularly Michael Collins, had convinced many of these men and women that the settlement was simply a ploy which would lead in time to the liberation of the north-east. What they demanded in the meantime was not debates but weapons to defend their embattled communities. As a result of the split the Irish and UK press began to describe the units loyal to the Dáil Constitution as the “Anti-Treaty IRA” while the minority favouring the accords with Britain were characterized as the “Pro-Treaty IRA“. (A third, loosely organised body also existed: the “Neutral IRA“. This grouping eventually took the republican position or simply quit the revolution altogether).

In January of 1922 the Provisional Government sought the loyalty of pro-agreement units by reorganising them as the Irish National Army (INA) with its chairperson, Michael Collins, as their new commander-in-chief. The core of this new force was the IRA’s elite Dublin Guard, a May 1921 amalgamation of the Special Service Unit or “Squad” attached to Collins’ Intelligence Department in the capital and the Dublin Brigade’s Active Service Unit. It was to be joined by the seventy-strong Belfast City Guard, also made up of pro-treaty volunteers, in February. While this controversial policy gifted the political and military leadership of the Provisionals to one man, supported by Griffith and his metropolitan colleagues, it also facilitated the supply of munitions and equipment from the UK to a force directly under the control of Sinn Féin’s breakaway faction (the British expected this force to suppress domestic opposition in Ireland to the treaty should it be required). One of the first signs of this new relationship was the adoption of British infantry uniforms, dyed a dark green, by the former guerillas.

However these changes were unpopular with many pro-deal volunteers, some older veterans refusing to describe themselves as anything but the “IRA” (later clarified as the “official IRA” or the “regular IRA“). For a few of these revolutionary fighters the new military title was rather too close to that of the old Irish National Volunteers, the armed wing of the Irish Parliamentary Party, former nationalist rivals of the independence movement. Furthermore since the Provisionals claimed authority over all parts of the defence forces the INA continued to refer to itself as the IRA in most of its official pronouncements and statements. It wasn’t until the autumn of 1922 that the Provisionals’ military bulletin, An tÓglach, ceased to be published in the name of the Irish Republican Army; from mid-September onwards it was issued simply by “the Army“.

In reality, putting aside all the grandiose titles, the INA began as a minor Dublin affair, with volunteers outside the capital acting as a near-unified force for several months after the signing of the Downing Street agreement. This ensured that the two competing chains of command, commonly known as the “Army Executive” (Anti-Treaty) and the “Army GHQ” (Pro-Treaty), would be very public in their support for the optimistically conceived “Army Re-unification Committee“. Indeed the GHQ Staff informally classed units as “regular” (or “the Regulars” and nominally pro-agreement) and “irregular” (or “the Irregulars” and nominally anti-agreement or neutral) until 1923. It was not until the outbreak of open warfare between the rival factions, and the mass recruitment of Irish-born, former British army soldiers and RIC officers into the ranks of the Provisionals, that the ties of comradeship were to be severed beyond all hope of recovery.

Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, 1922, wearing a mix of IRA uniforms and civilian clothing
Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, 1922, wearing a mix of IRA uniforms and civilian clothing, typical of the late revolutionary period

The North-East

Well away from the splits created in the independence movement by the 1921 Treaty, the governments in London and Stormont – the seat of the one-party unionist regime just outside Belfast – were busy securing the survival of the historic British colony on the island of Ireland; albeit now reduced to the six north-eastern counties of Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh, Down and Antrim: in other words, “Northern Ireland”. By the spring of 1922 the maintenance of this separatist zone and the disputed border around it required the deployment of some 50,000 soldiers, police officers and militiamen, the latter in the form of the locally recruited Ulster Special Constabulary. This organisation, known as the USC or more colloquially “the Specials“, was established by the UK authorities in 1920 using elements of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a pre-WWI pro-British terrorist grouping, to supplement the work of the RIC in the north of the island, eventually becoming an auxiliary police militia. However the USC had little regard for the views of Downing Street or Westminster, answering instead to local unionist leaders, its sectarian and racist nature quickly exacerbating the effects of the war across the province of Ulster and beyond. Within two years of its creation a despairing Lloyd George, who had initially agreed with unionist demands for its establishment, was comparing the force to the fascist gangs of Benito Mussolini in Italy. The aptness of that analogy was to become more apparent in the months and years ahead.

Under Sir James Craig, the first “prime minster” in June of 1921 (a former British army officer, Orangeman and co-founder of the UVF in 1913), the Stormont administration instigated or at least facilitated a campaign of violence known to history as the “Northern Pogroms“: that is the ethnic cleansing of several classes of perceived undesirables – Roman Catholics, Jews, atheists, socialists, and even trade unionists – from what was to become a deeply conservative, quasi-theocratic state. Or as Craig would later put it:

“All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.”

Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1921, and one of the architects of the Northern Pogroms
Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1921, and one of the architects of the Northern Pogroms

The prime culprits for the mayhem were the Specials, and by March of 1922 the rival Dublin authorities were struggling to respond to the orgy of blood-letting which had engulfed the “North“, and which had worsened in the wake of the previous year’s truce. Nationalist enclaves across the region were under siege, leaving hundreds of people dead and wounded, while thousands more were fleeing southwards to refugee camps around the capital. The city of Belfast alone would witness the expulsion of 22,000 Roman Catholics and “disloyal” Protestants by the year’s end (the latter excoriated by unionist politicians and journalists as “rotten Prods“). To make matters worse many members of the ruling establishment in Britain privately defended the “Orange Terror” as a necessary evil to safeguard the future of the United Kingdom. This was certainly the opinion of men like Sir Henry Wilson, a former field marshal in the British army and Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1918 to 1922. Born into the Anglo-Irish or Protestant “Ascendancy“, the colonial aristocracy in Ireland, Wilson had led the mutiny amongst the locally garrisoned UK armed forces against home rule for the island several years earlier in 1914, and by February of 1922 he was acting as a unionist MP and military adviser to the dictatorship in Stormont. His malign twenty-year influence upon Irish-British relations was to make him a high-profile target for retaliation, something that was to soon lead to catastrophic consequences for the whole country.

In the first half of 1922, then, the northern divisions of the Irish defence forces were mounting a fierce resistance to the carnage in the Six Counties but were loosing volunteers and equipment in crippling amounts. Consequently one of the few things most opponents or advocates of the treaty could agree upon was the need to support their desperately depleted units in “North-East Ulster“, regardless of their position on the London settlement.

Refugees fleeing the terror of the British unionist regime in Belfast
Refugees fleeing the terror of the British unionist regime in Belfast pour into the Irish capital, Dublin, 1922, at the height of the Northern Pogroms
Orphaned children fleeing the slaughter of the British and unionist instigated Northern Pogroms find refuge in Dublin, 1922
Orphaned children fleeing the slaughter of the British and unionist instigated Northern Pogroms find refuge in Dublin, 1922
A refugee child arrives in Dublin fleeing the Northern Pogroms, Ireland, 1922
A refugee child arrives in Dublin fleeing the Northern Pogroms, Ireland, 1922

Before this, in January and February, the British Occupation Forces had begun their gradual retreat from the Twenty-Six Counties by concentrating the majority of their troops in Dublin, Cork and Kildare (a number of specialist units, such as the cavalry, armour and artillery, were ordered to withdraw from the region immediately, either to the north-east of the country or to elsewhere within the empire). The disbandment of the RIC, already denuded of personnel, began soon thereafter, many officers seeking a transfer to the Six Counties or the further colonies. As the UK installations were evacuated rival units of the Irish Republican Army took up residence in the barracks and camps, the former authorities surrendering them to whichever faction arrived first  (the exceptions to this were high-profile places like the capital’s Beggars Bush Barracks – which became the INA HQ on January 31st – or the sprawling Curragh Camp in Kildare, handed over to the pro-treaty forces on May 16th). As a part of the process of retreat the British began to donate several tonnes of war materials to the regular INA, almost all of it from the vast stockpiles of weapons and equipment belonging to their withdrawing forces.

In a daring scheme senior Pro-Treaty commanders arranged with their Anti-Treaty counterparts for a portion of these munitions, principally rifles and handguns, to be covertly transferred to anti-agreement units of the army in Munster and Connacht. These units in turn dispatched their existing weapons, in some cases dating back to 1913, to the beleaguered divisions of the defence forces in the north (where a narrow majority of volunteers were aligned with the INA). Ironically of course this meant that the British Empire was unknowingly rearming the very insurgents who were most opposed to its presence in Ireland.

For those wishing to foster unity in the IRA this covert co-operation offered a potential solution to the growing split: renewing the war of independence in two-thirds of Ulster to forestall internecine conflict nationally. Downplaying the growing incidences of violence between opposing units of the army, in the early summer of 1922 many optimists believed that enmity to the UK’s continued presence in the country would supersede any disagreements over the nation’s constitutional future. Even in the Twenty-Six Counties the breakdown in military discipline caused by the emergence of the Collins-Griffith faction had largely manifested itself through attacks on the remaining enemy forces, and not just by anti-treaty volunteers. As recently as April the 28th four British intelligence agents had been arrested by the IRA in Macroom, County Cork, and executed at nearby Kilgobnet (three of the men, lieutenants Ronald A Hendy, George R A Dove and Kenneth R Henderson, were notorious war criminals associated with the British practice of torturing or killing prisoners by dragging them behind moving vehicles until their bodies were mutilated or dismembered. Two were also suspected of involvement in the fatal injuring of an elderly local woman during a house-raid the previous year. At the time of their deaths all three were under the orders of the brutally incompetent boss of the operations and intelligence section of the British 17th Infantry Brigade in the province of Munster, Major Bernard Law Montgomery. He, of course, later gained fame as Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein).

Eventually concrete plans were laid between Michael Collins and General Liam Lynch, chief-of-staff with the Army Executive wing of the defence forces and one of the ablest field commanders of the entire period, to launch an operation known variously as the “Northern Offensive” or the “May Rising“. Intended to collapse the Stormont dictatorship and harry the UK into renegotiating the more objectionable aspects of the treaty the first attacks by northern-based units against the British Occupation Forces began on the night of Friday the 19th of May, 1922. Unfortunately a lack of coordination, confused orders, and contrary actions by volunteers serving with three army divisions under the influence of the Provisionals meant that the campaign quickly faltered. In time events across the rest of Ireland were to take a far different and more tragic course than those hoped for by the architects of the joint-offensive.

Pettigo and Belleek, Counties Fermanagh and Donegal, Ireland
On a modern map, Pettigo and Belleek, Counties Fermanagh and Donegal, Ireland. Key places mentioned in the text are shown

The Triangle

Contemporary press reports referred to the triangular patch of land between the administrative counties of Donegal and Fermanagh as the “Pettigo and Belleek salient”, something of an exaggeration though one reflecting the language of the recent Great War and Britain’s view of the new “border” in Ireland as both an international boundary and the frontline in an ongoing struggle. In reality it was a sparsely populated area of wooded fields, small lakes, bogs and rugged terrain running along the northern shore of Lower Lough Erne, a forty-two kilometre elongated lake studded with dozens of islands, with the townlands of Pettigo to the north-east and Belleek some twenty-four kilometres to the south-west. Few serviceable roads existed in the region, limiting movement to a handful of well-known routes and a branch-line of the Great Northern Railway company which ran through the salient from the eastern Bundoran Junction pass the villages of Irvinestown, Kesh, Pettigo, Castle Caldwell, and Belleek before going westward to Ballyshannon and the seaside resort of Bundoran in County Donegal.

The main street of Pettigo, with the bridge into the village on the top right, and the train station to the fore, c.1900
The view from Drumhariff Hill looking north. The main street of Pettigo, with the bridge into the village on the middle-right, and the train station to the fore, c.1900.
The main street of Pettigo, with the bridge into the village on the top right, c.1900
The main street of Pettigo, with the bridge into the village on the top right, c.1900
The Square or Diamond in Pettigo
The Square or Diamond in Pettigo

The predominantly unionist village of Pettigo sat astride the Termon River, a narrow watercourse dividing the town in two before running south into Lough Erne. The majority of the population lived on the west bank, in Donegal, which also included the “diamond” or town square, the RIC barracks and the all-important train station. Steep hills dotted with woods and several small lakes dominated the countryside to the west and north, where much of the land was uncultivated. A short stone bridge connected the village to its eastern half in Fermanagh, a scatter of houses following the main road up a small slope until the countryside opened up into hedgerowed fields and copses. Before 1922 the village’s only real claim to fame stemmed from the regular cattle-markets held in the diamond and its association with the annual Lough Derg pilgrimages.

In contrast the mainly nationalist market-town of Belleek was built almost entirely on the eastern or Fermanagh side of the wide River Erne, the latter following a cascading course south-east into the northern waters of the lake. This is where most residences, retail outlets, a hotel, a pub and the famed pottery factory were to be found. A bridge of several arches crossed the river at an odd angle giving access to the west bank and Donegal, though the only notable feature here was the elevated Belleek Fort, an 18th century building covering the river-crossing from atop a embankment and thick stone walls. It enjoyed surprisingly good views over the neighbouring countryside and was to be the focus of much of the action in the forthcoming clashes.

At any other time in the history of Ireland these demographic characteristics would have been of little significance, crude indicators of colonial settlement and native displacement. However with the determination of the Stormont and London governments to impose a border around a separatist, pro-UK region of the island, suddenly such quirks of history and geography became the stuff of immediate war and terror.

The town of Belleek, with the River Erne, crossed by a bridge, running across the middle of the image, c.1900
A photo taken from the slope of Belleek Fort, Donegal, facing eastward across the town of Belleek, Fermanagh, with the River Erne, crossed by a bridge, running across the middle of the image, c.1900. Notice the pottery factory to the middle-right.
The town of Belleek, with the bridge crossing the River Erne, c.1900
The town of Belleek, with the bridge crossing the River Erne, c.1900. Taken from the western bank, Fermanagh is to the right, Donegal to the left
The elevated walls of Belleek Fort, or the Battery, with the bridge leading to County Fermanagh on the middle-left
The elevated walls of Belleek Fort, or the Battery, with the bridge leading to County Fermanagh on the middle-left. The river-bank to the right is in Donegal
Belleek from the County Donegal or western side of the River Erne
Belleek from the County Donegal or western side of the River Erne. The hill to the top right is where the British sited their observation post and artillery

In light of the planned offensive in the north-east the Pettigo-Belleek salient became a relatively secure forward-base for over one hundred volunteers from both sections of the divided defence forces, principally units attached to the anti-treaty 2nd Northern Division under Commandant-General Charles Daly (up to late April forces in the triangle had carried out a number of attacks on the British, including ambushing a USC patrol at Garrison in Fermanagh, though this was technically within the operational area of the treaty-split 3rd Western Division led by Commandant Liam Pilkington). In the aftermath of wide-scale arrests of republican activists in the north the salient also served as a safe haven for those being pursued by the UK authorities, including a large body of fatigued volunteers from Tyrone who were put to patrolling the countryside around Pettigo. The strategic importance of this otherwise rural backwater was reflected in the decision by Free State government to place “official” INA garrisons in the “southern” halves of the two divided villages in April of 1922, following the withdrawal of the RIC from the local barracks. Meanwhile IRA units, regardless of their official chain of command, were coordinating their activities in the area.

Unfortunately the Irish forces in the contested region were lightly armed at best, with a mixed variety of rifles, carbines and assorted handguns (not to mention some shotguns). The handful of available submachine guns and light machine guns were of limited use due to ammunition shortages. Hand grenades and landmines – whether conventional or improvised – remained scarce while artillery or mortars were non-existent. For transport civilian cars or captured military vehicles were employed, though even these were rare. In contrast the BOF were awash with standardised weapons and equipment, from armoured personnel carriers to aircraft. These differences were to be crucial in the coming days.

Magheramenagh Castle, Belleek, County Fermanagh, Ireland
Magheramenagh Castle, Belleek, County Fermanagh, Ireland

The First Assault on Belleek

Inevitably the presence of Irish forces in significant numbers along the “border” drew the ire of the unionist administration and community at large, leading the USC militias to launch a series of local pogroms against the nationalist populations in the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Even Donegal and Cavan, part of Ulster but technically in the “South“, were subject to shootings and house-burnings. This was a reminder that the boundary-line between the two “states” was a political construct that had yet to be given concrete form. Resident populations ignored it and rival formations criss-crossed it at will. Indeed many RIC and USC men were from counties which were now in “Southern Ireland” and they had no intention of abandoning those ties. Consequently the British press was full of stories charting the clashes between the opposing camps:

“LONDON, 31st May

NORTH AND SOUTH CLASH.

Troop Concentrations Continue.

WARSHIPS LEAVE FOR IRELAND.

A sudden volley rang out on the Ulster frontier, westward of Fermanagh, on Sunday evening. A motor driver fell dead from his seat and long lines of Ulstermen and Southerners immediately blazed with fierce rifle fire. A serious battle developed wherein five Southerners were killed and several injured. One Ulsterman was killed. The motor driver was one of the Northern force carrying supplies to beleaguered garrisons whom the Southerners endeavoured to isolate. So far the police have kept the communicating lines intact.

Fierce fighting is in progress on the Fermanagh border and Pettigo a strong Orange centre, was occupied this morning the Republicans, who joined the Free Staters, drove out the Protestants and occupied the houses. The rebels crossed the border and occupied the houses of leading Unionists. Refugees arriving, at Enniskillen report that a fight is progressing between Unionist forces and the rebels. Belleek was occupied by the Republicans this morning.

Bloodshed and outrage continue elsewhere. Isolated county houses and castles have been the scene of attacks by marauding armed men, and in many instances a heroic defence has been put up by the occupants and servants, who protracted the sieges and have beaten off the raiders.

There has been further fighting on the border at Clady, County Tyrone. The I.R.A. troops are concentrating in County Donegal.”

After weeks of similar incidences the racketing tension culminated in an alleged occurrence at Pettigo, an event reported in dramatic terms by the local newspapers and repeated in the House of Commons by unionist MPs:

“LONDON, 31st May

LOYALISTS KIDNAPPED

Sinn Feiners kidnapped a number of loyalists at Pettigo Market on the Fermanagh border, whence the loyalists are fleeing, leaving everything behind.”

The victims were later claimed to be four USC officers, though no names were ever presented and no relatives came forth to seek their whereabouts. Whatever the truth about the “kidnapping”, it provided the Stormont authorities with the casus belli they required to prepare a full-scale assault upon the salient, though significantly against the more vulnerable town of Belleek rather than Pettigo. On Saturday the 27th of May a large group of USC men assembled just outside the disputed enclave under the leadership of Sir Basil Brooke, a former infantry captain, Orangeman and founder of a notorious paramilitary gang know as the “Fermanagh Vigilance“. Twenty-one years later Brooke would become a “prime minster of Northern Ireland” and the author of an infamous speech to the Orange Order where he declared:

“Many in this audience employ Catholics, but I have not one about my place. Catholics are out to destroy Ulster… If we in Ulster allow Roman Catholics to work on our farms we are traitors to Ulster… I would appeal to loyalists, therefore, wherever possible, to employ good Protestant lads and lassies…”

However in 1922 he was merely a ruthlessly sectarian leader of unionism in south-west Ulster determined to suppress any dissent from the “minority” community. Crossing westward over Lower Lough Erne from Roscor in county Fermanagh, with a flotilla of small boats towed by a hastily-armed pleasure-steamer known as “The Lady of the Lake”, Brooke landed near the townland of Leggs before marching his colleagues a short distance to the grounds of Magheramenagh (Magherameena) Castle, seven kilometres east of Belleek. Magheramenagh was a 19th century stately home built in the Tudor-Gothic style by the influential Johnston family, members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in County Fermanagh. With the death in 1915 of the dynasty’s only son, Captain James Cecil Johnston, literally blown to pieces by a Turkish shell during the Allies’ disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the family emigrated to Britain (including Johnston’s widow and young daughter, the future novelist Myrtle Johnston).

By 1922 the sprawling house had become the dilapidated residence of Lorcán Ó Ciaráin, the recently appointed Roman Catholic parish priest in the district. Ó Ciaráin was an early member of Sinn Féin (indeed, he was credited with the naming of the party in 1905) and a pro-treaty confidant of Michael Collins, believing the promises from the Provisionals that the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone would be included within the future Free State. His strategically placed home – with a train-stop inherited from its former aristocratic owners – was well suited to his role as a conduit for information between the independence movement in western Ulster and the entangled governments in Dublin. It also housed sessions of the local Dáil Court, which included the participation of the noted republican journalist Cahir Healy (despite being imprisoned without trial by the Stormont regime in May he was elected as a nationalist MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone that November). Unsurprisingly Ó Ciaráin was a unionist hate-figure and he was ejected from his dwelling at gunpoint, Brooke’s expedition proceeding to shoot at anyone who approached their encampment, including inquisitive neighbours. The militants were now holding a position that commanded the road and rail routes between Belleek and Pettigo.

Cliff House on the banks of the River Erne, Belleek, County Fermanagh, Ireland
Cliff House on the banks of the River Erne, Belleek, County Fermanagh, Ireland

Fearing a larger British invasion a small IRA force commandeered the strategically-sited Cliff House in Donegal, just to the north-west of Belleek, an impressive mansion on the banks of the River Erne owned by a major in the USC who was also a grand master of the Orange Order (this residence was destroyed in the construction of the Cliff Hydroelectric Power Station in 1946). Further coordination saw the withdrawal of the regular INA garrison from the Belleek Fort – known informally as the “Battery” –  and its replacement with an Anti-Treaty contingent (in total there were no more than seventy volunteers on active service in the townland, the majority anti-agreement).

Shortly thereafter up to thirty IRA volunteers, following the railway line towards Pettigo, were intercepted by the Special Constables on the grounds of Magheramenagh demesne, a fierce fire-fight forcing the militiamen’s withdrawal. Pursued by the volunteers the USC abandoned the castle and conducted a chaotic boat-borne evacuation to Buck Island, a nearby islet with little in the way of natural cover at the mouth of Rossmore Bay. There they were reinforced by another one hundred paramilitary police, plus local doctors and nurses to attend their wounded colleagues. One unlikely figure to emerge from this rout was a Mrs. Laverton, owner and pilot of the steam-yacht “The Lady of the Lake” (renamed “HMS Pandora“), which was pressed into service during the rescue operations. She was hailed by the newspapers in Britain as the pistol-wearing “Ulster Admiral“:

“LONDON, June 3rd

RELIEF OPERATIONS.

HEROIC LADY.

The most romantic figure in the Irish border struggle is ‘Admiral’ Mrs. Lavorlon, of  ‘H.M.S. Pandora,’ the little steamer on Lough Erne,which, under fire, rescued the garrison of Ballynameena [i.e. Magheramenagh] Castle. Her achievement is the sensation of the North.

Smartly dressed in serge, she looks trim and business-like, with a revolver strapped to her waist, contrasting strangely with a becoming soft hat with a modest ‘Beatty’ tilt. She calmly related to an interviewer the story of the relief.

‘I ran in towards the castle,’ she said, ‘hove the ship to. The Specials aboard engaged the large bodies of Republicans whom we drove off with heavy losses. Then I noticed that, they opened the sluice-gates and there was danger of the Pandora stranding. I jumped into a row boat weighed the anchor, and pulled out into deep water.

‘I was constantly sniped at, but I had a rifle and I naturally fired back. I think I got several too.'”

In fact Laverton was forty-two year old Hazel Valerie West, the formidable daughter of a well-connected Ascendancy family from Wexford and the ex-wife of a former lieutenant-colonel in the British army, Herbert Curling Laverton OBE. Her paternal grandfather, Dublin-born William James West, had served as a Church of Ireland minister in Fermanagh and Tyrone for some time, and she and her husband of three years had moved to the relative solitude of Magheramenagh Castle as guests of the Johnston family in 1911 to aid his recovery from persistent ill-health. While the Lough Erne region was a popular hideaway for the wealthier scions of the settler nobility it seems that premature retirement from the imperial military did not suit Laverton and the outbreak of the Great War was his opportunity to abandon an itinerant, childless marriage at home for adventures overseas. By 1922 Hazel West was sojourning at the rather déclassé Imperial Hotel in Enniskillen, a year after her bitter divorce in London, where she owned the yacht that was to gain so much infamy in the coming weeks. Like most representatives of the colonial ruling class the middle-aged West had been unable to reconcile herself to the dramatic changes stemming from Sinn Féin’s victories in the elections of 1918, 1920 and 1921. However one cannot help but wonder if there were more personal reasons behind her desire to see the seizure of Magheramenagh than mere politics.

Mrs Laverton, owner of the steam-yacht
Mrs Laverton, owner of the steam-yacht “HMS Pandora”, pictured with USC militiamen in the aftermath of the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek, Ireland, 1922. Note the Lewis light machine gun

The Opening Attack on Pettigo and a Second Attack on Belleek

Early the next morning, Sunday the 29th, attention turned to the relatively quiet village of Pettigo, where the Irish forces numbered around sixty INA/Pro-Treaty volunteers and some thirty Anti-Treaty. The latter included Vice-Commandant Nicholas Smyth of the Fintona Battalion in the 2nd Northern Division. Alerted by night-time messengers from Belleek the Tyrone-born Smyth recounted that:

“Our officers decided to cut a trench across the road at Pettigo Bridge to prevent a rush through by enemy cars or tanks. While this work was in progress large numbers of enemy forces began to appear on the Fermanagh side of the border. As our working party was in grave danger should the enemy open fire, I was ordered to take a covering party of about 12 or 14 men to protect them. These men were armed with rifles. We took up positions overlooking the bridge. The enemy forces doubled and took up positions behind a hedge across from us. As the men making the trench were now in grave danger, being right in the line of fire from both sides, it was decided to withdraw the working party.

We didn’t wish to be the aggressors and I warned the men to withhold their fire and await orders. We must have been in that position for a couple of hours. The tension was great. The whole town had become very quiet and you could hear a pin drop when suddenly a shot ran out somewhere up the street. This was followed by three or four more single ones. This seemed to be a signal, because the whole place became alive with sound in a few minutes. Bullets were hitting the wall just over our heads and large lumps of lead were dropping on top of us. Our rifles were soon too hot to hold and the air was filled with the smoke and the smell of cordite. We had 100 rounds of ammunition each and most of it was gone before the enemy withdrew.”

After several hours of gunfire the USC men retreated eastward through the fields leaving wounded on both sides.

Meanwhile back in Belleek Commandant-General Joe Sweeney, head of the 1st Northern Division of the Pro-Treaty IRA/INA in west Ulster, who had been sent to report on the situation, narrowly escaped death when USC snipers targeted him in the village, curtailing his visit. Shortly thereafter a body of militiamen which had been dispatched to the enclave from the nearby town of Enniskillen in county Fermanagh, approached the area from the south-east in a convoy of three Crossley 20/25 Tenders (a type of unarmoured or lightly armoured military car) and two heavier Lancia Triota 1921 Armoured Trucks. Just outside Belleek, and actually inside Donegal, the convoy was ambushed by Irish units on a particularly narrow stretch of the road, the driver of the lead car dying in the initial volley, crashing into a ditch. Their way forward blocked, and subject to close fire from both flanks, the USC expedition panicked. Unable to turn their vehicles around on the confined route they resorted to driving in reverse for nearly two kilometres eastward along the Lough Shore Road, abandoning further vehicles on the way, dismounted men speeding on foot towards Lough Erne, where they came under further fire from the IRA sections now holding Magheramenagh Castle. The discarded equipment seized that day by the ambushers was to see service with the Anti-Treaty IRA in the coming months while the Pro-Treaty troops drove a captured Lancia Triota in triumph some fifty kilometres north to the INA’s Donegal HQ in Drumboe Castle, near Stranorlar.

british-paramilitary-police-officers-of-the-ric-in-an-unarmoured-crossley-20-25-tender
British paramilitary police officers of the RIC patrolling in an unarmoured Crossley 20/25 Tender. Notice the Lee–Enfield rifles, Webley revolvers, ammunition bandoliers and the forward-facing Lewis light machine gun. Some patrols carried Mills bombs or hand grenades as part of their kit
Units of the Anti-Treaty IRA pictured with some of the vehicles captured from the British Forces in the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek, August 1922
Units of the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army pictured with some of the vehicles captured from the British Forces in the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek, August 1922. Not the mix of military and civilian cars. Also the apparel of the volunteers, most in guerrilla mufti while the officers wear IRA uniforms

Further Attacks on the Pettigo Defenders

Later on Sunday evening a second convoy of USC men arrived in Pettigo, speeding eastward from their base at Clonelly House, Fermanagh, to secure a land-route via the townland of Lowery to the vulnerable militiamen on Buck Island in Lough Erne, who were under intermittent sniping from the Irish forces in Magheramenagh and Leggs. This sparked a further two-hour battle in and around the village as the British attempted to pass through it, eventually forcing the Special Constables to seek an alternative route to their trapped compatriots via a narrow sliver of marshland in the area of Toome, south-west of Pettigo, where the Waterfoot River and the Termon River entered Lough Erne. Unfortunately for the USC men by late Monday morning, the 29th of May, the IRA under Jim Scallon had successfully fortified themselves in this position – known locally as the Waterfoot – with a line of slit trenches and felled trees. The militia column proceeding on foot found its way blocked, leading to a quick fire-fight and even quicker retreat.

Sporadic clashes took place across the enclave throughout the following days, notably on Tuesday morning when another dawn-assault on Pettigo was thwarted. Commandant Smyth again witnessed some of the fighting at first-hand:

“…at daybreak a battle royal broke out around the village. From our positions we couldn’t see what was going on and I moved the men out along the railway line in order to be in position to cover the main road leading to the town. Some of the enemy were retreating down this road and our men opened fire on them. One of our men had a rifle fitted for firing grenades and he tried to get a few across the road. As far as I remember, they failed to hit the target. I found this experiment most interesting as I had never seen a rifle grenade fired before and I saw that at short range they could be very effective.”

Gunners of the Royal Field Artillery load their horses onto a train bound for the Pettigo-Belleek salient, Ireland, 3rd June 1922
Gunners of the Royal Field Artillery load their horses onto a train bound for the Pettigo-Belleek salient, Ireland, 3rd June 1922

The Deepening Crisis

By Monday evening the unionist dictatorship at Stormont was in a state of panic, believing the events in the south-west salient to be the herald of a full-scale “invasion” to retake the counties of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry. These fears were further stoked by regional newspapers which carried lurid reports of “Protestant” and “loyalist” families fleeing the fighting to seek safety in the eastern garrison-towns of Castlederg, Omagh and Enniskillen. Frantic telegrams and appeals to London were met with stalling from Downing Street, as Dublin prevaricated over its own involvement in the affair. Initial denials of INA troops operating in the area were soon switched to acceptance of their presence, though it was argued that they were acting purely defensively. In fact secrecy over the cooperation between Pro- and Anti-Treaty forces at the highest levels of the Provisional Government, particularly with the launch of the Northern Offensive, meant that no one in authority was exactly sure about the situation on the ground. Including the Provisionals’ leader, Michael Collins.

Meanwhile the UK prime minister, Lloyd George, was dismayed at the thoughts of being dragged into another war in Ireland, now that the last one had barely ended. He was also suspicious of unionist claims and the motivations of his own atavistic cabinet members over what he regarded as little more than a minor skirmish in the “swamps” of Fermanagh. In contrast to the relatively friendly relations he enjoyed with the Irish he found the unionists an embarrassment to the empire and its standing in the world. However the pressure to act, particularly from a bellicose Winston Churchill as the secretary of state for the colonies, forced his hand.

On Thursday the 1st of June, and under personal orders from Churchill who had staked his political reputation on the operation, a combined military and paramilitary force of regular British troops from the 18th Infantry Brigade, supported by drafted-in units of the RIC/RUC and Special Constabulary, approached the liberated townlands from the east in a long convoy of Crossley tenders, Lancia Triota trucks, Rolls-Royce armoured cars, and Medium Mark A Whippet tanks. Air-cover was provided by a newly dispatched squadron of Bristol F.2 Fighters from the Royal Air Force, based at the hastily upgraded Aldergrove aerodrome just outside Belfast, which were to carry out reconnaissance and artillery-spotting duties for the next two weeks.

British Medium Mark A Whippet tanks patrolling County Clare during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1919
British Medium Mark A Whippet tanks patrolling County Clare during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1919. The Whippets were a light, fast tank with a high-viewing platform that made them ideal for the more devloped regions of the island but they were frequently defeated by the narrow roads, high hedgerows and deep ditches of the Irish countryside

The Final Assaults On Pettigo

Spreading out into the countryside the BOF troops took up positions around the village of Pettigo while smaller groups marched or drove north- and south-west. After a period of quiet a vanguard of twelve Crossleys were sent ahead, unaware that forward-posts in the vicinity had been ordered to hold their fire, leaving the initial defence to positions nearer the town. A devastating first volley seems to have caught the British attackers off-guard though they eventually replied with a hail of bullets from machine guns and rifles, concentrating on the IRA sections at Drumhariff Hill, immediately south-west of the village, and at the railway station. However the demoralising impact of the first contact and sustained casualties over the course of thirty minutes forced a chaotic withdrawal, cars and people colliding as they attempted to turn around on the narrow country road leading down to the river-crossing. Both sides were soon greeted with the sight of a police officer springing from a hiding place in the fields, flinging his weapon to one side, and chasing after his comrades, apparently generating much cheering from the defenders of Pettigo. That night and into Friday sniping between both sets of combatants took place in several flashpoint locations, the more experienced British Army marksmen often creeping to within 200 meters of the IRA lines before opening up.

Detail of map, 1900, showing county Fermanagh, with the 1922 battlesites around Belleek and Pettigo added
Detail of map, 1900, showing county Fermanagh, with the main road and rail routes, and 1922 battlesites around Belleek and Pettigo added.

By the morning of Saturday, June 3rd, the British had commandeered all the craft on Lower Lough Erne and assembled them at Portonode, just outside the eastern village of Kesh, where they were used to transport part of an infantry battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment westward across the lake to the nearest tip of the elongated Boa Island. From there 200 soldiers marched north-west, carrying their boats to a point on the isle opposite the townland of Letter, just over three kilometres to the south-west of Pettigo, and west of the IRA strong-point of the Waterfoot. Under fire the British force crossed from Boa Island to the mainland in a battle that gave Hazel Valerie West an opportunity to make a reappearance:

“LONDON, June 7th

FIGHTING IN ULSTER.

REBELS OUTWITTED BY A WOMAN THEIR BOATS COMMANDEERED.

SUCCESSFUL REAR ATTACK.

The newspapers are giving prominence to Mrs. Laverton, the so-called “Woman Admiral” of the Lougherne [i.e. Lough Erne], who, aboard her yacht Pandora, commandeered a fleet of small boats for the transport of soldiers, who were thus able to take the Sinn Feiners in the rear. Some boats commandeered were in Sinn ‘Fein waters. The Sinn Feiners were chagrined, never believing that a woman would venture in bullet-swept waters. The “woman Admiral” wore a dainty pistol in her belt and on one occasion stalled off a Sinn Fein raid by mounting a brass telescope in the bow of her yacht and pretending it was a machine gun.”

In the meantime the rest of the battalion advanced from the village of Kesh to Lowery, immediately east of the Waterfoot, planning to link-up with the troops at Letter. However this required them to pass over the Irish-held isthmus. Throughout Saturday night the infantry battalion attacked less than thirty IRA men in the Waterfoot outposts on two fronts, in some of the most intense fighting seen in the confrontation. However the volunteers held their positions, relying on reinforcements from Pettigo who crept between the enemy lines to reach their isolated comrades. Nicholas Smyth led one of the sorties:

“When I arrived at Waterfoot we had to crawl for about 300 yards to get to the position held by Scallon and his men. He was under heavy cross fire from two sections of the enemy. I suggested to Scallon that we should try to move into a position directly between the enemy positions in order to get them to fire at each other in their efforts to reply to our fire. We did this and it worked out as we had anticipated. When we got them properly engaged in the darkness, we returned to the safety of our trench. Their fire at each other continued for some time and eventually both parties of the enemy evacuated their positions and retreated.”

Eventually most of the British forces in Letter were withdrawn by boat to the relative safety of Boa Island.

At the same time as the Pettigo attacks up to 200 USC militiamen crossed from Tyrone into Donegal at the isolated townland of Lettercran, about fifteen kilometres north-east of Pettigo, terrorising the local population along the way (two girls, Bridget McGrath and Susan McNeil, were wounded by marauding members of the same band earlier in the day, alerting local people to their presence). However the USC’s movements, delayed by their destructive forays, had been anticipated and the group was intercepted in an IRA ambush dispatched from Pettigo under the command of John Travers. After a ferocious encounter it beat a hasty retreat with heavy losses into Tyrone, weapons and ammunition strewn behind it. Meanwhile in Pettigo town itself an infantry battalion from the Lincolnshire Regiment, supported by two companies of the South Staffordshire Regiment, made a frontal – and ultimately futile – night-assault on the village in scenes of near chaos.

Medium Mark A Whippet tanks of the British Occupation Forces move through County Clare, Ireland, 1919
Medium Mark A Whippet tanks of the British Occupation Forces move through County Clare, Ireland, 1919. They are patrolling on a main road near a town or village where their speed, agility and imperviousness to small arms fire was ideal. In cross-country runs they were far more vulnerable to attack or mechanical failure

On the morning of June 4th, a Sunday, several armoured cars led a surprise British infantry attack on Pettigo, hoping to breach the barricaded road and bridge crossing the Termon River into the village. However the driver of the lead vehicle, a USC man, was almost immediately shot dead, causing his car to flip over and partially block the way. Despite desperate attempts to clear the road the troops behind were unable to advance until artillery was brought up from the 4th Howitzer Battery, Royal Field Artillery. Under a heavy barrage the IRA units were forced to abandon their improvised defences of railway sleepers, carts and barrels, a massed bayonet charge quickly overrunning their positions. Meanwhile another two columns of British troops struggled to encircle the town, but suppressive fire from Irish outposts slowed their advance in the open fields, allowing the main body of Pro- and Anti-Treaty volunteers to stage a fighting withdrawal westward under further bombardment to the wooded hills, while smaller groups were transported by friendly locals across Lough Derg several kilometres to the north-west. During the retreat two volunteers, twenty-three year old Bernard McCanny and twenty-four year old William Kearney, boyhood friends from the same small village of Drumquin in Co. Tyrone, were killed by artillery fire directed at their posts on Billhary Hill, immediately to the west of the village (their bodies were later recovered by the INA and reburied in the Church of St. Agatha, Clar, just outside Donegal Town).

However the small section of IRA volunteers in the machine gun post at Drumhariff Hill, Donegal, just south of the village, continued to resist until they ran out of ammunition, leading to their capture by bloodied and angry soldiers. One of their number, Patrick Flood, a local lad, was shot dead during the fighting while several more were wounded (the next day Flood’s partially buried body was recovered from one of the defenders’ trenches on the hill by a local priest who faced down hostile unionist crowds, reburying the young man in the parish cemetery). A similar dire military situation faced the units defending the Waterfoot which were overrun after two hours of close quarters combat in the marshes. Eventually most of those who fought free of the encirclement at Pettigo and deeper into the “south” were rescued by local residents or INA units in cars and horse-traps, and brought to safety in Donegal Town, some 26 kilometres away. There, up to fifty wounded and exhausted men were temporarily sheltered in the old workhouse, attended to by doctors and nurses.

British soldiers of the South Staffordshire Regiment, Pettigo, Ireland, June 8th 1922
British soldiers of the South Staffordshire Regiment, Pettigo, Ireland, June 8th 1922. This photograph was taken a few days after the UK forces had driven out units of the Irish Republican Army who had liberated the village some weeks earlier
A Lancia Triota 1921 Armoured Truck captured from the British Forces by the IRA and then recaptured during the Battle of Pettigo, 1922
A Lancia Triota 1921 Armoured Truck captured from the British Forces by the IRA and then recaptured during the Battle of Pettigo, 1922. Based upon Italian civilian vehicles, these trucks were up-armoured in Ireland for the BOF by the engineers of the the Great Southern and Western Railway, Inchicore, Dublin

After four years of repeated military humiliations in Ireland the newspapers in the UK reflected the sense of triumphalism felt by many in the imperial corridors of power:

“LONDON, June 6th

LIKE RATS IN A TRAP

MILITARY CATCHES THE REBELS

HIGH EXPLOSIVES IN PETTIGO SALIENT

Gunners Fight Till Wiped Out

The latest Irish telegrams confirm the seriousness of the fighting in the Pettigo Salient, where high explosive shells, machine guns, and bayonets played their part in a battle lasting five hours, which ended in the rout of the Republicans.

A military communique issued at Enniskillen says:—

In consequence of the aggression of the so-called Free State troops in the Pettigo salient it was decided that Imperial troops should occupy the same.

The operations, continued on Saturday and Sunday by land and water, resulted in the military occupying the salient for about a mile from the frontier in order to secure the high ground.

The military lost one man killed. The other side is known to have lost seven killed and eleven prisoners.

In order to dislodge the snipers in the hills it was necessary to fire six rounds of high explosive shells.

Later in the same report it was claimed that:

“…Pettigo was taken at bayonet point.

At least thirty Republican troops were killed.

As the British entered the village the Republicans machine gunned them and the British replied with artillery. After the first heavy shell some of the Republicans fled, but the machine gunners continued until wiped out. Four shells fell behind the village amid a party of fleeing Republicans inflicting heavy losses.

British troops secretly landed at Boa Island, and transferred to the mainland in the night time, caught the retreating Republicans in the rear like rats in a trap. After the more timid Republicans had fled to the hills, only a hundred remained to defend the village from a barricade at the end or the bridge. The British rushed the barricade with the bayonet, and captured the snipers. The artillery then joined in.

The countryside is swarming with British soldiers accompanied by Whippet tanks.

While the Republicans showed no violence towards the residents or Pettigo, they looted extensively. Female sympathisers with the rebels entered the local drapers, helped themselves, and paraded the streets in stolen finery.

When the British took possession of the salient every farmhouse displayed the Union Jack. Aeroplanes are now patrolling…”

Units of the British Occupation Forces move towards the IRA-liberated town of Belleek to reoccupy it
Units of the British Occupation Forces move towards the IRA-liberated town of Belleek to reoccupy it, Fermanagh, Ireland, 1922
British Troops Re-Take Belleek, Northern Ireland 1922.
British troops marching through the fields to Belleek, 1922

The Taking of Belleek

Over the next four days – and despite frequent sniping – the British set about securing their positions at Pettigo, carrying out reconnaissance and intelligence gathering operations in the locality. Prisoners were interrogated, often brutally, while the better-informed USC and RIC took revenge on the resident nationalist population through looting and arson. The squadron of Bristol F.2 Fighters were used to scout south-westward and reinforcements brought by rail to Enniskillen. The Irish, UK and international press, expecting a major confrontation to take place within the salient by the end of the week, dispatched a flock of correspondents to the region.

“LONDON, June 6th

SINN FEINERS ON THE BORDER.

SUCCESS OF MILITARY

HEAVY FIRING IN BELFAST

Enniskillen reports that many thousands of Sinn Feiners with armoured cars are massing on the border to reinforce the garrison at Belleek. The military now hold Free State territory to a depth of a mile north of Pettigo. It is ascertained that upwards of forty Republicans were killed by shellfire during Sunday’s battle.

Mr. Collins takes a most serious view of the aggression of the British troops. He is demanding a full inquiry, and is not going to London unless specially asked.”

On the morning of Thursday the 8th of June columns of troops from the Lincolnshire and Manchester Regiments, several hundred strong, moved on foot and by vehicle towards Belleek in two flanking movements, one from the north-east along the Pettigo Road and one from the south-east along the Enniskillen Road, with Lough Erne dividing them. Heliographs and signal flags were used to keep in contact across the waters of the lake, while a flotilla of commandeered boats moved back and forth. Hazel Valerie West, having joined the patrolling of Lough Erne to prevent aid reaching the isolated defenders, was again in the action, this time from a militia HQ on another island in the lake, just south-east of Magheramenagh:

“The famous woman “admiral,” Mrs. Laverton, assisted aboard Ulster’s “flagship” Pandora (her private yacht), with a base near Rough Island, and with a flotilla of motor launches in her wake, packed with armed men ready to land on the beach in front of Magherameena [Magheramenagh] Castle, the stronghold in Ulster territory, recently seized by the rebels.”

In the event the castle and its environs were taken without incident, the garrison having been withdrawn the previous evening, though it did not prevent some reporters claiming it’s storming as a great act of valour. Around noon a British armoured car entered Belleek itself and was almost immediately fired upon by units dug-in near the local schoolhouse, thus providing the excuse the expeditionary leaders required to launch a full-scale assault.

As the British soldiers advanced westward they came under rifle and machine gun fire from IRA volunteers stationed in the vicinity, particularly the depleted garrison at Belleek Fort, across the River Erne. Flares fired by the leading parties singled the artillery to open up, several 18-pounder shells hitting the fortified hillock, while more landed in the surrounding fields. After less than an hour of fighting the Irish forces withdrew to a defensive line nearly two kilometres to the west while their former positions continued to be bombarded for a further sixty minutes. By the late afternoon both sides of the townland were under the control of the UK forces, the Tricolour above the smoking fort replaced with a Union Jack, while troops posed for the press cameras.

British troops pose with an Irish Tricolour captured from Pro-Treaty and Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army units following the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek in late May and early June of 1922
British troops pose with an Irish Tricolour captured from Pro-Treaty and Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army units at Belleek following the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek in late May and early June of 1922

Afterward

Though isolated exchanges of gunfire between the Irish and British forces continued for several more days the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek was over. In all it had taken nearly fifteen hundred British troops, paramilitary police and militiamen up to a fortnight to overwhelm less than 150 volunteers of the Irish Republican Army/Irish National Army, a combined body of Anti- and Pro-Treaty IRA units. It was, in many ways, the last great battle of Ireland’s early 20th century War of Independence. In the immediate aftermath of the confrontation the local nationalist community was subject to a campaign of terror by elements of the British Occupation Forces, residents abandoning their homes and farms to join the swelling numbers of families fleeing “southward” (following the fall of Pettigo over a 1000 “Roman Catholic” refugees had been evacuated to the city of Glasgow from Belfast where unionists had gone on a celebratory rampage).

British troops reoccupying the town of Belleek following its temporary liberation by the Irish Republican Army
British troops reoccupying the town of Belleek following its temporary liberation by the Irish Republican Army, Fermanagh, Ireland, 1922

Meanwhile the international press reported dozens of deaths and injuries resulting from the thirteen-day battle, though there were in fact only four acknowledged fatalities on the Irish side, including William Deasley from Dromore, Co. Tyrone, who died from gunshot wounds despite reaching the workhouse at Donegal Town (he was buried alongside his two INA comrades in nearby Clar). British casualties were never officially acknowledged – unsurprisingly given the political and military sensitivity of the subject during a low-point in Dublin-London relations – though they were generally believed to be higher. At the same time nearly fifty captured men, Pro- and Anti-Treaty IRA as well as officially INA, were dispatched as prisoners to the city of Derry and elsewhere. Some of these were not to see their freedom until 1924.

For most civilian members of the Provisional Government – unaware of the joint-offensive against the “Orange junta” in Belfast – the clashes in Fermanagh-Donegal were an embarrassment, and a sign of things spiralling out of control. For the military members of the administration, notably Michael Collins as the chairman and commander-in-chief, the losses in men and territory represented a failure in a supposedly more assertive and unifying northern policy.

Exhausted British troops resting after the battle to seize the liberated Irish town of Pettigo from its IRA defenders, June 1922
Exhausted British troops resting after the battle to seize the liberated Irish town of Pettigo from its IRA defenders, June 1922

In UK circles the unionist leaders saw the two weeks of violence as a justification for their ethno-religious paranoia, while Winston Churchill used his “victory” on the “Irish frontier” to persuade his sympathetic cabinet colleagues to demand more action of the Provisionals against the authority of the republican government (ignoring Lloyd George’s dismissal of the whole affair as a “great bloodless battle“). Indeed the colonial secretary saw the events at Pettigo and Belleek as the military template that Michael Collins and his administration needed to follow in order to liquidate domestic opposition to the treaty, particularly after the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, one of the architects of the “Orange terror“, outside his London home on the 22nd of June 1922. While the authorities and newspapers in Britain and Ireland blamed the shooting on the anti-treaty IRA Collins knew better. The two captured assassins were almost certainly serving volunteers of the pro-agreement section of the London Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and were under his orders. The INA commander-in-chief had decided to execute the former field marshal when it was discovered that Wilson was urging unionist leaders to emulate the “successes” in Fermanagh and launch a major offensive against nationalists across the north of Ireland. Collins was to spend the next several weeks trying to organise the rescue of his men –  vice-commandant Reginald Dunne and volunteer Joseph O’Sullivan, both aged twenty-four – from captivity in Britain. However events leading up to the internecine blood-letting that was the Battle of Dublin in June and July of 1922 quickly overshadowed his efforts.

Consumed with the need to prosecute a war against former comrades the Provisionals hurriedly – and with little publicity – agreed to the creation of a “neutral zone” in the disputed salient. However this neutrality rested solely on the withdrawal of all Irish troops, the USC and the RIC/RUC from the area, surrendering the territory to the control of the regular British army. As a result the Free State parts of Pettigo were not freed from occupation until January 1923, while Belleek Fort and its environs were not liberated until August of 1924. Contemporary civilian accounts complained bitterly of the violence and intimidation they suffered from the UK garrisons – notably the Royal Sussex Regiment and the Corps of Royal Engineers – but little action was taken by Dublin beyond some token intergovernmental protests. The “northern” halves of the villages of Pettigo and Belleek, of course, remained under British occupation.

During the autumn of 1922 the belligerent record of Hazel Valerie West very nearly caught up with her, just like Sir Henry Wilson. Having benefited socially and materially from the violence that year her high-handed reputation in Fermanagh made her a prime target for reprisal.

“LONDON, Sept. 18

ULSTER LADY “ADMIRAL.”

ESCAPE FROM KIDNAPPERS.

An attempt to kidnap Mrs. Laverton, who on June 2 rescued from Irish rebels a police garrison on Lough Erne in her yacht Pandora during the fighting at Pettigo, was frustrated by the lady’s promptness in covering the enemy while she ran the gauntlet in a motor-car. Mrs. Laverton has been a marked woman since her Pettigo exploit. Latterly two men have persistently shadowed her. Before the attempt they were seen near the yacht Pandora on Lough Erne. Mrs. Laverton was walking to Lenaghan when she saw an empty motor-car in the middle of the road. The engine was running and Mrs. Laverton was going to investigate when a policeman drove up in a motor-car and warned her that men were lying behind the hedge. Mrs. Laverton drew an automatic revolver, entered the police motor-car, and escaped. The men pursued her.”

In June of 1926 she became the second wife of Augustus William West, a distant relative within the close-knit Ascendancy, and the step-mother to his two children from a previous marriage. They lived in the West’s palatial family residence, Leixlip House, County Kildare, until her death on the 3rd of September 1954. To the end she was unreconciled to the existence of a “free” Ireland and like many of her background simply chose to ignore it.

Note: It is very likely that some of the British artillery and personnel deployed in the Battle of Pettigo and Belleek were used some twenty-one days later by the Provisional Government to bombard the rival republican garrison in the Four Courts complex, beginning on the 28th of June. This of course initiated the Battle of Dublin and the subsequent civil war of 1922-23. This will be examined in a future article.

The town of Belleek filmed by the UK Pathé News following the withdrawal of the British Occupation Forces, 1924. Features shots of the Battery (flying a tricolour) and the bridge across the River Erne that served as the “border”.

In proud memory of Patrick Flood, Bernard McCanny, William Kearney who died fighting against British Forces in Pettigo 4-6-1922 and of William Deasley who died of wounds 6-6-1922
In proud memory of Patrick Flood, Bernard McCanny, William Kearney who died fighting against British Forces in Pettigo 4-6-1922 and of William Deasley who died of wounds 6-6-1922 (Íomhá: Kenneth Allen)

Some Sources:

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 711 Witness John Travers, Detective Branch, Garda Síochána, Dublin Castle. and four others.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 721
Witness. Nicholas Smyth, 4 Dollymount Ave., Dublin.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 879 Witness Brian Monaghan, Drumkeelan, Mounteharles, Co. Donegal.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 1741 Parr II Pages 186-377 Witness Michael V. O’Donoghue, Lismore, Co. Waterford.

Maps:

A detailed, contemporary map of County Fermanagh from “The Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland“, published 1900.

A detailed, contemporary railway map from the “Rail Ireland Viceregal Commission”, published 1906.

Irish Townlands

Open Street Maps

New York Times Newspaper Archive:

IRISH REBELS PLAN TO BILLET REFUGEES; They Intend to Force Dublin Protestants to Feed Victims of Belfast Pogrom. SEIZE MORE BARRACKS Free State Commander is Killed at Broadford–Duffy Is Taken From Platform.

SIX KILLED IN BATTLE ON FERMANAGH BORDER; Four More Are Killed When Car Carrying 10 Policemen Is Attacked in Belfast.

IRISH REPUBLICANS SEIZE ULSTER STRIP; BORDER WAR RAGES; Belfast Surrenders Fermanagh Salient and Southern Troops Take It Over. FIRST CLASH OF MILITARY Fighting on the Donegal-Tyrone Line Where 1,000 Sinn Fein ers Are Concentrated. LONDON REACHES DEADLOCK Cabinet Decides Not to Force a Crisis After Premier’s Conference with Irish Leaders.

GRIFFITH’S REPLIES SATISFY THE BRITISH; Responses to Six Questions Put by Cabinet Avert Break in Conferences. PREMIER GOES TO CRICCIETH Sir James Craig Asks for Control of Troops in Ulster if He Should Need Them.

BRITAIN IS RUSHING TROOPS TO ULSTER; Infantry, Artillery and Air Squadron Arrive and Some Leave for Border. LONDON FEARS AN INVASION Free State Leaders Meet and Announce They Don’t Expect a Break on the Treaty.

BRITISH SOLDIERS RETAKE PETTIGOE FROM IRISH REBELS; Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry and Tanks Storm Village on the Ulster Border. MEET LITTLE RESISTANCE Republican Commandant and Staff Are Captured and Heavy Casualties Are Reported. BRITISH LOSE ONE DEAD More Troops Land in Belfast– Catholic Magistrate Killed at Newry.

COLLINS PROTESTS BRITISH ARMY MOVE; Asserts Troops at Pettigoe Were Free State Regulars and Demands an Inquiry. BELLECK BEING EVACUATED Ship From New York Seized Off the Irish Coast With Contraband Arms.

BRITISH GUNS DRIVE IRISH FROM BELLEEK; Artillery Bombards Fort and Infantry With Armored Cars Takes Border Village. ONE SOLDIER IS WOUNDED Conferences on Constitution Continue Satisfactorily in London– Dail Eireann

FIX NEUTRAL ZONE ON BORDER.; British, Ulster and Free State Forces Make Policing Arrangement.

Other Newspaper Archives:

National Library of Australia, Trove, “Pettigo Belleek”

National Library of New Zealand, Papers Past, “Pettigo Belleek”

  • This Article is a Finalist In the Best Blog Post category, the Blog Awards Ireland, 2015 *

Filed under: Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: Arm na Breataine (British Army), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Béal Leice (Belleek), Constáblacht Ríoga na hÉireann - CRÉ (Royal Irish Constabulary - RIC), Fear Manach (Fermanagh), Hazel Valerie West, Herbert Curling Laverton, Nicholas Smyth, Paiteagó (Pettigo)

The British Army’s “Tuzo Plan” Of 1972

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Joint footpatrol of British UDA terrorists and British Army soldiers
Joint footpatrol of British UDA terrorists and British Army soldiers, British Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s

Over on the Broken Elbow blog the veteran Irish journalist Ed Moloney has a detailed examination of the British Army’s so-called “Tuzo Plan, named after its originator General Sir Harry Craufurd Tuzo. If the strategy had been implemented in 1972 it would have seen the UK Forces in Ireland and their counterparts in the British terror factions co-operating together in a military drive against the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army in the north-east of the country. While Tuzo and those around him clearly thought that the destruction of the Irish insurgency would be the outcome of the planned offensive, with hindsight we can see that a more likely outcome would have been an intensified and more wide-spread conflict. One that would still have required a political solution through concessions on all sides to bring it to an end.

“Prior to his posting as General Officer Commanding (GoC) of British troops in Northern Ireland (where he took over from someone rejoicing in the name of Vernon Erskine-Crum, an Indian Army veteran and aide to Lord Mountbatten when he was Viceroy to India), Harry Tuzo commanded a Gurkha Brigade in Borneo during an insurgency in the late 1960’s, which the British claimed had been inspired by an Indonesian regime suspected of being under Communist influence.

Born in Bangalore, India in 1917, Tuzo was a child of the British Raj, the colonial class which ruled the sub-continent from the days of the East India Company in the late 18th century onwards. His father was a British officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment and civil engineer who also saw service in East Africa. His mother, a memsahib, was the daughter of the Raj, her father an official in the Indian civil service. As a child, Harry Tuzo was sent home to England to prepare for a life of imperial service and was schooled at Wellington College and Oriel College, Oxford.

As things turned out Tuzo reached the apex of his miltary service in the twilight of empire. Like so many of his contemporaries, Northern Ireland was to be the last hurrah of a generation whose like would never be seen again: Tuzo, Kitson, Ford, Freeland, King, Wilsey and Creasey. Such names to conjure with!

Sliding effortlessly after Oxford into a military career that was guaranteed to bring rank and honours, and, in the aftermath of World  War II, moving from one post-colonial skirmish to another, Tuzo was, in the summer of 1972, charged with devising a plan to combat and annihilate the Provisional IRA, in much the same way as his Gurkhas disposed of Indonesian rebels in Borneo, with maximum force and minimum fuss.”

As we know the “Tuzo Plan” was never implemented but aspects of it were to shape Britain’s counter-insurgency war on this island nation for the next four decades. Including the use of British terrorist gangs as the proxy-forces of the UK state.


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: 1972, An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm na Breataine (British Army), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Béal Feirste (Belfast), Ed Moloney, Harry Tuzo

The Reorganisation Of The IRA In The Early 1970s

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Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army in surplus US Army combat uniforms, one armed with an American-supplied M16 assault rifle, Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s
Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army in surplus US Army combat uniforms, one armed with an American-supplied M16 assault rifle, Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s

Irish journalist and author Ed Moloney, now resident in New York, has an interesting article over on his Broken Elbow blog examining possible evidence of the reorganisation of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army into a “cellular” command and control structure primarily based upon Active Service Units (ASUs) at a date much earlier than previously thought.

“Way back in January 2013, myself and James Kinchin-White researched and wrote a lengthy article, based on British Army publications and a website, about the death of James Bryson, a famous IRA activist from Ballymurphy who was shot dead in a disputed incident in August 1973 along with Patrick Mulvenna, brother-in-law of Gerry Adams.

Local legend had it that the pair were killed by the Official IRA but this account makes it clear that the killers were undercover soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets regiment hidden in the roof space of a house overlooking the Bullring in Ballymurphy.

Bryson and Mulvenna were, before their deaths, slated to be key members in a new IRA cell in Ballymurphy set up by then Belfast commander, Ivor Bell, to replace the heavily compromised and infiltrated company structure. Bell had succeeded Gerry Adams as Belfast Brigade leader after Adams’ arrest along with Brendan Hughes the previous month.

The importance of the incident lies not just in the deaths of two of the IRA’s most valuable activists but in the challenge it presents to the official narrative behind the creation of the IRA cell structure. The conventional view is that cells were introduced largely in response to the setbacks suffered by the IRA as a result of Castlereagh-style interrogations which followed changes in British security policy which, so the internal critics had it, were facilitated by the misguided ceasefire of 1975-1976.

But this account challenges that version and shows that considerable infiltration of the Belfast Brigade by British intelligence forced an experiment with cells on the organisation in the city long before the 1975 ceasefire was thought of.”

Read it here.


Filed under: Cogaíocht (Warfare), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), APnaÉ Shealadach (Provisional IRA), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Béal Feirste (Belfast), Ed Moloney, Jim Bryson, Patrick Mulvenna

Shoot-To-Kill, Britain’s Summary Executions And Assassinations In Ireland

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Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, '80s and '90s
Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s

Sometimes I do wonder if the dozens of Irish and British journalists who spent most of their careers loftily dismissing the evidence of Britain’s criminal counter-insurgency war in Ireland as “republican propaganda” have any regrets now that the veracity of those allegations has been proven to be correct? Or do those newspaper columnists, press editors and TV producers who were wilfully blinded by their own ideological myopia in years past, fellow-travellers of the British Occupation and those who defended it, still maintain that they were in the right?

Do the journalistic champions of censorship really believe that all those deaths and injuries stemming from a needlessly extended conflict were worth the lies, falsehoods and cover-ups? And for what? Sinn Féin to be the largest nationalist party in the north-east of the country, and for Martin McGuinness – a former (P)IRA Chief-of-Staff – to be Deputy Joint First Minister in the regional administration at Stormont? For SF to be one of the most popular parties nationally and Gerry Adams to be one of the most popular TDanna?

From the Guardian newspaper, a report on what the UK press describes in its distorting lexicon of “Dirty War” language as the “shoot-to-kill” policy of the 1980s and ‘90s. In other words the assassination and summary execution of Irish (and nominally UK) citizens by the British forces on this island nation:

“Details of an alleged criminal conspiracy by MI5 to obstruct one of the most sensitive murder inquiries of the 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland have been exposed following the emergence of key sections of a previously secret police report on the affair.

The report details how officers of the security service were said to have concealed the existence of an audio recording of an incident in which RUC officers shot dead an unarmed teenage boy, Michael Tighe, and then destroyed the tape to prevent it falling into the hands of the detective who was investigating the killing.

Compiled at the height of a tumultuous 1980s political scandal known as the Stalker affair, the report recommended that two officers – thought to be the highest-ranking MI5 officers in the province – be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.

Its author, Colin Sampson, then chief constable of West Yorkshire, condemned MI5’s concealment of a key piece of evidence during a murder inquiry as “wholly reprehensible”, and said the officers responsible were guilty of “nothing less than a grave abuse of their unique position”. He added in his report that the excuse they had given for failing to surrender the recording was “patently dishonest”.

He also recommended that three senior police officers be prosecuted for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

In the event, none were prosecuted after the then attorney general, Sir Patrick Mayhew, said the government did not believe it to be in the interests of national security to bring them to trial.

The police ombudsman of Northern Ireland is currently investigating the actions of a group of former Special Branch officers, while detectives from Police Scotland are investigating the conduct of a number of former MI5 officers.”

In a related and more in-depth article the Guardian almost but not quite admits the real nature of the UK policy:

“…many nationalists in Northern Ireland were enraged by the killings, and senior members of the Roman Catholic clergy were demanding an independent inquiry. Sinn Fein accused the police of carrying out summary executions. The suspicion grew that the RUC was running some sort of a death squad. Few people were prepared to use such a term, however: instead, someone coined the ambiguous phrase “shoot-to-kill”.”


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm na Breataine (British Army), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Colin Sampson, John Stalker, Rialtas na Breataine (Government of Britain), Security Service [SS - MI5], Shoot-to-Kill

Jeremy Corbyn And The Self-Deluding British Press

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Watching the right-wing and nationalist press in the UK gnashing its teeth at the thoughts of left-wing MP, Jeremy Corbyn, becoming the next leader of the British Labour Party is laughable. It almost certainly won’t happen. Labour in Britain, like its counterpart in Ireland, is devoted to holding the political centre-ground with a strong strain of socio-economic conservatism inherited from the Blair years. The party is far more likely to elect a Blairite clone (of which there seems to be plenty), reflecting a greater reliance on chauvinistic English votes to sustain its electoral fortunes now that left-leaning Scotland is lost to the SNP.

Among the more amusing obsessions of the London metropolitans has been Corbyn’s historic record of attempting détente between Irish and British belligerents to the conflict in the north-east of Ireland. When the Labour representative for Islington North was reaching out to Sinn Féin in the hopes of initiating a peace process the news media believe he should have been amongst those leading the charge against the “terrorists”. A charge of course which ended up joining that of the infamous Light Brigade in its complete and abject failure. From the Daily Telegraph summation of Jeremy Corbyn’s career:

“From the mid-Eighties, a decade before the IRA ceasefire, he worked hard to build links between Labour and the Provos, regularly hosting senior figures from their political wing in Parliament, calling for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and paying tribute to deceased terrorists.

His defenders call him ahead of his time; his opponents say that, by giving the IRA hope that the armed struggle was working, he and others on the Left actually prolonged the conflict.”

One might have imagined that the UK government, through various Irish, British and international intermediaries, engaging in negotiations with the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army behind closed doors throughout the 1980s and early 90’s might have done more to convince the (P)IRA that the armed struggle was working than any number of meetings with opposition backbench MPs. Since it was manifestly doing so. As I have written before on ASF, the Irish have come to terms with the meaning and effect of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, and the manner in which the Long War all but ended. The hubristic British on the other hand are still in denial.

Pride comes before a fall, an’ all that.


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Polaitíocht (Politics) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Gerry Adams, Jeremy Corbyn, Máirtín Mag Aonghusa (Martin McGuinness), Páirtí an Lucht Oibre - Breatain (British Labour Party), Rialtas na Breataine (Government of Britain), Sinn Féin - SF

British Spies In The IRA, Myth Versus Reality

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A Volunteer of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army in a military training camp outside the town of Donegal, Ireland, 21st August 1986
A Volunteer of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army in a military training camp outside the town of Donegal, Ireland, 21st August 1986

Just a quick heads-up for those who have access to the series “Twentieth Century British History” from the Oxford Journals. A recent edition features an article titled “The Influence of Informers and Agents on Provisional Irish Republican Army Military Strategy and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy, 1976–94” by Thomas Leahy of King’s College, London. In it the researcher pretty much demolishes the myth of the British “super spies” in the ranks of (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. From the introductory abstract:

“This article investigates the impact of British informers and agents on Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) military strategy and British counter-insurgency strategy in Northern Ireland between 1976 and 1994. The importance of this topic was highlighted by revelations in 2003 and 2005 concerning two senior republicans who had both been working for British intelligence for decades. While acknowledging other important factors, various authors believe that these intelligence successes were vital in containing the IRA, and significantly influenced that organization to end its military campaign in the 1990s.

Yet after cross-referencing new interview material primarily with memoirs from various participants in the Northern Ireland conflict, this article reveals that the nature of many rural IRA units, its cellular structure in Belfast, and the isolation of the IRA leadership from the rest of the movement, prevented it from being damaged to any considerable extent by informers and agents.

In fact, by the 1990s the resilience of the IRA was a crucial factor encouraging the British government to include Provisional Republicans in a political settlement. The IRA’s military strength by the 1990s also points towards the prominence of political factors in persuading the IRA to call a ceasefire by 1994. The role of spies in Northern Ireland and the circumstances in which the state permitted negotiations with paramilitaries such as the IRA, are key considerations for those interested in other recent and current conflicts.”

This of course is an argument that I have been making myself since 2011, and can be found in such ASF posts as:

Playing Fantasy Troubles

Fantasy Troubles Part III – Britain’s Superspies!

More Cloak And Dagger Shenanigans In Fantasy Troubles

Fantasy Troubles Part 4

Tolerating The Armed Struggle


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Leabhair (Books), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Ian Hurst / Martin Ingrams, Secret Intelligence Service [SIS - MI6], Security Service [SS - MI5], Thomas Leahy

American Journalism Fails The Irish Test Once Again

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Kurt Eichenwald is a veteran American journalist of some thirty years standing who has specialised in everything from corporate malfeasance to defence issues for publications as diverse as the New York Times and Vanity Fair. For the last year he has been authoring a series of investigatory or analytical pieces for the current affairs magazine Newsweek, some of which have drawn much praise. In a recent article headlined “How Uninformed U.S. Politicians Help ISIS“, he laments the ignorance of the American political class in relation to militant political Islam and its habit of engaging in lazy stereotyping that misleads more than it illuminates, offering up this rhetorical equivalent from another conflict:

“…the greatest financial support for the radical Catholic terrorists in the Irish Republican Army came from American Christians. Despite the IRA’s murder of 1,800 people, American politicians proved they were soft on terrorism. Representative Peter King of New York even went to Ireland and hung out with the group’s sympathizers. Fortunately, the British were tough and used enhanced interrogation techniques—including waterboarding—on these radicals.”

Which is a fair enough analogy if Eichenwald was to go on and explain the falseness of such claims as they relate to the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the misleading nature of, for instance, British government propaganda in times past (particularly in the United States, where the “two warring tribes” misinformation campaign by the UK’s embassy in Washington and the consulates in New York and L.A. was hugely successful until thrown into disarray by the interventionist policies of the Clinton administration in the 1990s). There is a strong critique to be made here, with the obvious comparisons to the shallowness of understanding concerning the various inter- and intra-communal power struggles in the Middle East and beyond. However that is not what happens. Instead we are given this.

“Offended by what you’ve just read? Good. You’re supposed to be. That diatribe, while all true, is horrific. Sadistic lunatics, whether as individuals or groups, have nothing to do with Christianity. They have just appropriated a peaceful religion to justify their murderous impulses.”

Except the diatribe is not true, and that surely is the point? (P)IRA was not a “radical Catholic” guerilla force, the vast majority of its funding did not come from the US, and it never used religious sentiment to justify its actions. The organisation was a secular, left-leaning armed resistance, its beliefs very much reflected in the early quasi-Marxist policies of its political wing, Sinn Féin. Its military budget from the 1970s to late ’90s was largely funded through a process of domestic “revolutionary appropriation” here in Ireland; that is the voluntary or more usually intimidatory “taxing” of criminals and businesses, as well as the profits derived from smuggling, counterfeiting, etc. Nor for that matter was (P)IRA responsible for the deaths of 1,800 people, a throwaway statistic much favoured by sections of the right-wing press in Britain (who like their American counter-parts blithely ignore the casualties inflicted by the British military and paramilitary forces, both official and unofficial).

The great irony of Kurt Eichenwald’s analogy from the Long War, the insurgency and counter-insurgency conflict in Ireland, is the seeming ignorance or imprecision that shapes it, the same lack of insight that he accuses others of professing in relation to the global Muslim community and the perverse ideology of the Islamic State. Perhaps the article is simply poorly phrased? Remove the words “while all true“, and the Irish section of the article has a different meaning. However in its presence form it is simply another example of an opinion piece in the US public domain that further obfuscates and confuses the record of a faraway war that most Americans have – and had – little to no comprehension of. Including much of the news media.

It seems in this at least very little has changed indeed.


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek, Rialtas na Breataine (Government of Britain), Stáit Aontaithe Mheiriceá - SAM (United States of America - USA)

The Reality Of Cold War Politics In The North-East Of Ireland

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From 1995 to 2001 an organisation calling itself Direct Action Against Drugs, or DAAD, was involved in a series of “vigilante-style” attacks on a number of criminals and underworld gangs in the north-east of Ireland. The various assaults, involving the use of guns, bombs and so-called “punishment beatings”, took place against the background of the Irish-British peace process of the 1990s and early 2000s, and two negotiated ceasefires by the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the British Occupation Forces – the latter without formal acknowledgement by the UK authorities. Indeed it was widely accepted that DAAD was simply a flag of convenience for (P)IRA as the organisation dealt with anti-social elements amongst the northern nationalist communities in a more covert manner than was common during the decades-long period of open conflict. Moreover many of those involved in its activities were newly recruited volunteers rather than military veterans of the insurgency, and no small number gained deeply unsavoury reputations of their own. Unsurprisingly in the pursuit of “peace” and an end to the Long War (or “Troubles”) the governments in Dublin and London frequently turned a blind eye to the policy of “self-policing” by the (Provisional) Republican Movement until the early 2000s when the DAAD-strategy was largely abandoned by (P)IRA.

Unfortunately the violent genie once let loose from the bottle was never going to be returned and the same period witnessed increasing social and interpersonal conflict amongst some communities in the north-east as they eased their way out of a near half-century of military occupation and a communal resistance to that occupation. While hundreds of (P)IRA volunteers were happy to seek some form of normality in their lives after decades of clandestine activity others proved unable to let go of the past, joining those who sought new opportunities to assert their social standing or influence in a time of (relative) peace. One illustration of this post-war turbulence is the 2005 killing of Robert McCartney, a petty criminal who – along with a compatriot – was beaten and stabbed in a violent, drink-fuelled altercation with local republicans in Belfast. Following a lengthy internal investigation that some allege covered up as much as it revealed Sinn Féin suspended, expelled or forced into resignation several activists while (P)IRA court-martialled and dismissed three volunteers, including Gerard Davison, a senior brigade officer in Belfast, an SF member and the probable directer of DAAD’s anti-criminal operations in the city. Several other (P)IRA figures suspected of being involved in the murder were cleared of any responsibility, although to a great deal of public scepticism.

Fast-forward to May 2015 and Gerard Davison, still firmly within the Sinn Féin fold – despite his divisive reputation – and linked to anti-criminal campaigning in his neighbourhood, was shot dead by an assassin in the Markets area of Belfast while on his way to a community centre where he worked. Forensic evidence soon pointed to a notorious Lithuanian gang based in Dublin as the supplier of the Russian-made handgun used in the murder. Within weeks local witnesses and republican activists had identified one Kevin McGuigan, a former (P)IRA volunteer-turned-criminal, as the suspected gunman. Some three months later McGuigan also met a violent end, shot to death at his home in the Short Strand district of the city by two masked men armed with semi-automatic weapons. Remarkably both victims were former comrades in (P)IRA’s Belfast Brigade and McGuigan had served under Davison in the DAAD structure. Suspected corruption and personal animosity had led to McGuigan’s violent dismissal from (P)IRA, seemingly pushing him into closer association with criminal elements in Belfast and elsewhere.

Now the British paramilitary police in the north-east of the country, the PSNI, are briefing the news media that an existing vigilante organisation which claimed responsibility for Kevin McGuigan’s revenge killing, Action Against Drugs or AAD, is composed of former (P)IRA volunteers and activists from one or more of the republican Resistance groupings (the so-called “Dissidents”). Furthermore it seems that current volunteers within the stood-down (Provisional) Irish Republican Army may have co-operated, probably in a personal capacity, with AAD in planning the murder of McGuigan. The idea that (P)IRA continues to exist as a military organisation, however skeletal its nature, seems to have taken a lot of journalists, politicians and other commentators by surprise, which I suppose highlights the levels of wilful ignorance or feigned naivety that exists amongst the chattering classes. Of course the Executive, Army Council, GHQ Staff and various directorships and departments still exist, if only in nominal form. It doesn’t mean that (P)IRA has several hundred volunteers ready and willing to be placed on active service should the need arise, or units capable of being mobilised across the length and breadth of the country with the issuing of a communiqué from Dublin. Did it ever?

We exist not in a period of peace but in a period marked by an absence of war. This is the fíorpholaitíocht of the peace process between Ireland and Britain, this is the defining characteristic of the British Occupied North of Ireland and it will remain so until the occupation itself ends. The (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and the British Army have not gone away, nor have their allies and proxies. The Long War may be over but the Cold War is not.


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Béal Feirste (Belfast), Gerard Davison, Kevin McGuigan, Robert McCartney

Jeremy Corbyn, From Sinn Féin To The ANC

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Kevin Meagher’s article in the left-leaning New Statesman on the anti-establishment contender for the leadership of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and his decades old support for the reunification of Ireland presents some uncomfortable home-truths for a British audience. Particularly in relation to Sinn Féin:

“As a classic “campaigning backbencher”, Jeremy Corbyn holds radical views on a range of issues that sit outside the comfort zone of mainstream politics…

Likewise, his unflinching support of Irish republicans’ aspiration for a united Ireland, is another association routinely thrown at him. So in recent weeks he has refused to condemn the Provisional IRA in a BBC interview and even been criticised for sharing a coffee with Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

Two factors are pertinent here. First, was Corbyn’s support for Sinn Fein and engagement with Irish issues legitimate or not and, secondly, did it serve any useful purpose?

…it was entirely legitimate for Corbyn and others, take an interest in the pressing affairs of Northern Ireland, especially as we now know that Margaret Thatcher’s government was engaged in secret talks with the IRA from the time of the Hunger Strikes.

The problem is that Westminster has traditionally paid scant regard to events in Northern Ireland. It was, for too long, the British state’s dirty little secret.

It was legitimate, too, for Corbyn and others to have a point of view about events there. Northern Ireland is a zero-sum issue. When it boils down to it, you are either in favour of the maintenance of the union with Northern Ireland, or you favour Irish unity. It really is as straightforward as that. Indeed, Corbyn’s position was, and perhaps still is, common enough around the party and in line with Labour’s official policy at the time of “unity by consent”.

Turning to the second question: has Corbyn’s interest in Northern Irish affairs done any good? With the benefit of historical perspective, the answer is, yes, it probably has. Back in 1981, following the Hunger Strikes when ten republican prisoners starved to death over their contention that there were political prisoners, not ordinary criminals, Sinn Fein tentatively embarked on a strategy which would eventually bloom into the peace process.

Engagement of the kind offered by Corbyn and many others on Labour’s left during the 1980s spurred on those in Sinn Fein who wanted to go down the political route.

Like many on the left, Corbyn saw Ireland as a classic struggle for national self-determination against colonial rule. But he was by no means alone. Nelson Mandela may be the safest of safe options for any politician responding to the question “who do you most admire in politics,” but he was also a strong supporter of Irish republicanism.

It was an association that weathered his transformation into international statesman. Indeed, Gerry Adams was part of the honour guard for Mandela’s funeral. No British politicians or anti-apartheid activists were granted similar status.”

Indeed the close ties between Sinn Féin and the ANC, and more pertinently between the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army and Umkhonto we Sizwe, date back to the era when the UK’s views on apartheid and White minority rule were ambiguous at best, disingenuous at worse. If the Irish and South African insurgents saw parallels between their anti-colonial conflicts – and acted upon them – so too did the governments in London and Pretoria. After all, only Britain’s chattering classes could dismiss Nelson Mandela as a “Black Provo“, while Margaret Thatcher and her “Hang Mandela” Conservative Party seemed at times to be the principle apologists for apartheid in the capitals of Europe and beyond. Though in fairness, one supposes that a bit of political quid pro quo was the least the British could offer when they were using the services of the Whites-only government in South Africa to arm their terror factions in Ireland.

Quis separabit?

Specially invited by the ANC the president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams TD, is greeted with applause as he joins the Guard of Honour at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, the late president of South Africa, 2013
Specially invited by the ANC the president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams TD, is greeted with applause as he joins the Guard of Honour at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, the late president of South Africa, 2013

Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Afraic Theas (South Africa), Apairtéid (Apartheid),, Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Comhdháil Náisiúnta na hAfraice - CNA (African National Congress - ANC), Jeremy Corbyn, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Sinn Féin - SF

An Inconvenient Truth Of The Irish Revolution

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One of the great, populist myths on the right and far right of German politics during the 1920s and ’30s was the claim that the country had been “stabbed in the back” during the closing months of World War I by a minority cabal of left-wing agitators and Jewish financiers. Without that betrayal at home and the conspiracy abroad the empire would surely have overcome its enemies to emerge victorious from the battlefields of Europe. Certainly the humiliating defeat coupled with post-war reparations and territorial losses would never have happened. Or so the legend goes. A similar myth exists among the apologists for British rule on the island of Ireland, who claim that the nation’s peaceful development within the United Kingdom towards some sort of local autonomy or even independence was thwarted by a tiny, unrepresentative group of radical republicans and nationalists working against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people. This tale has been taken up by the academic and journalistic ideologues of the so-called revisionist movement in recent decades with all the pernicious effects on a contemporary understanding of Irish history that we might expect. Indeed no single event has been more subject to counterfactual speculation than the foundational Easter Rising of 1916.

The historian Brian Hanley touches upon these matters in a recent speech republished by the Cedar Lounge Revolution:

“Neo-Redmondites, nostalgic for an Ireland that never really existed suggest that the majority of nationalists were content to wait for the conclusion of the war and self-government; that it was only the Rising and the British reaction to it that produced support for republicanism.

I think the story is more complicated. Was it the case that nationalist Ireland was content with Home Rule? And what did Home Rule mean to ordinary people? What was the Home Rule party promising?

…by 1916, with Home Rule looking increasingly distant, the context of the war was crucial. Well before that conflict was over, most Irish people regretted that John Redmond had promised nationalist support for the war effort.

It was support for the war that fatally wounded Redmondism, not just the reaction to Easter 1916.

Anti-war sentiment was growing in Ireland well before then.”

While Hanley’s overall arguments in relation to the era of 1916 are far more complex and nuanced than the short excerpts above, they do indicate the importance of historical denialism amongst certain classes in modern Irish (and British) society, one that was being expressed by supporters of the redundant Irish Parliamentary Party as early as the 1920s. Whether it is a condemnation of the establishment of a Provisional Government of the Irish Republic in 1916 (a terrorist coup d’état) or a refusal to recognise the Sinn Féin electoral victories in the general and local elections of 1918, 1920 and 1921 (rigged or lacking plurality), the conspiracy theories grow with every telling.

One of these tall-tales, and one nearer our own time, is the belief that the celebrations around the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966 were the spark that lit the north-eastern conflagration. No matter that the only militarist violence witnessed that year came from the British terror groupings, notably the murders of two Roman Catholic men and a Protestant woman by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). No, it was the staging of official parades in Dublin and the broadcasting of TV dramas on RTÉ that brought the radical republicans and nationalists to the fore once again (albeit a factually inconvenient four or five years later). Brian Hanley opens his speech by criticising the fears of those I have labelled the “1969 Truthers“:

“It is fairly certain that when those charged with developing a programme of commemoration for the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ first met it was how to remember Easter 1916 which above all else caused the most angst. It is unlikely, to say the least, that anyone thought that commemorating the Dublin Lockout would lead to a surge in trade union membership or a wave of sympathetic strikes. But in the build-up to 2016 there is a real sense, among some commentators at least, that in one historian’s words, we are ‘entering dangerous territory.’ Much of the discussion about how the events should be remembered seems predicated on the idea that too much commemoration, let alone (God forbid) celebration, could lead directly to a popular revival of militant armed republicanism.

Journalists such as Stephen Collins of the Irish Times for example, have warned about the centenary being used ‘as a cover for those still wedded to violence’ and claimed that previous commemorations (especially 1966) were a ‘simplistic glorification of violence.’ Partly this is a result of a misreading of how the 1966 50th anniversary events resonated north of the border. It also reflects a curious pessimism about the ability of post-Agreement Northern Ireland to withstand debates about an event that took place 100 years ago. This sense of fear seems to have inspired the at times vaguely ridiculous attempts at ‘branding’ Easter 2016 as some sort of tourist marketing opportunity. The fearful approach encourages the bland, as the assumption seems to be that too much politics will frighten people off.

The issues that deeply divided Irish people a century ago are simplified or glossed over and the role of Britain virtually ignored. That Ireland and Britain share a history is a historical fact but they did not share an equal history: only one was conquered by the other and only one became a global empire. Ultimately, and allowing for all the complexities and nuances that British rule in Ireland involved, in the last resort the Crown depended on force to hold this country. Attempting to commemorate 1916 and avoiding mentioning this lest it give offence will ultimately satisfy nobody.”

Hanley has plenty of strong words for Irish republicans and their own cherished myths of 1916 that deserve greater prominence. Unfortunately the negative reaction to the myth-peddling, academic censorship and outright lies of the revisionist school has had a detrimental effect on the critical faculties of some republican-leaning authors. Meeting British apologisms with a form of super-republicanism is not the answer, at least not in the long-term.

Related to the above is this interesting study of Michael Collins by the historian John M. Regan. It’s likely to raise a certain amount of ire amongst the Collinites and Neo-Redmondites who both fetishize the questionable politico-military “legacy” of the Chairman and Commander-in-Chief of the Provisional Government. In the case of the latter faction their grudging admiration principally focuses on his role as the Irish “strongman” who usurped an all-Ireland republic with a southern free state, thus securing partition and the UK’s continued stranglehold of the north-east (whatever his future plans may actually have been). That these actions involved, at least latterly, the initiation of a wholly self-destructive civil war seems to weigh in his favour on the scales of revisionist judgement rather than against. When all is said and done, the slaying of revolutionary republicans is the one form of killing most British apologists continue to greet with perfect equanimity.


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éirí Amach na Cásca 1916 (The Easter Rising of 1916), Éire (Ireland), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Brian Hanley, Cogadh na Saoirse (War of Independence), John M. Regan, Sinn Féin - SF

Dissident Republicans With Their Rockets And Their Guns

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Improvised rockets developed by Irish republican insurgents along with AKM and AIM rifles
Improvised rockets developed by Irish republican insurgents along with AKM and AIM rifles

Did someone mention, “general election“? With April the 8th serving as the legal cut-off point for the holding of the next Dáil vote things are beginning to get a wee bit tense, almost excitable, in Irish politics. Perhaps not entirely unrelated to this is the decision by An Garda Síochána to stage a presentation of arms and equipment seized from “Dissident” or “Resistance Republicans” over the last two years, an event which made something of a splash with sections of the Irish and British press. From a report in Wednesday’s Irish Times:

“Weaponry seized from dissident republicans has been growing steadily more sophisticated over the past five years, according to gardaí.

Assistant commissioner John O’Mahony, who leads the force’s crime and security division, told reporters there was also evidence of increased sophistication in the activities of dissident republicans.

During the briefing, members of the Garda ballistics unit showcased a range of weapons seized from dissident republicans.

They included a beer keg bomb recovered from Kilcurry in May 2014, mortars, sniper rifles, AK47 rifles, associated ammunition, a phone trigger circuit, timer power units, rockets and a sample of explosives.

Mr O’Mahony said the three main dissident groups operating in the Republic were the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, and Óglaigh na hÉireann.

He said that while the number of dissident republicans is small, they are “very focused and very clear” in their objectives. “As a result of that, we spend a significant amount of time and resources combating their activities,” he said.

Mr O’Mahony said that “idealism and peer pressure” were the most common mechanisms used by dissidents to recruit followers.

“We’ve seen in the history of this country that there will be somebody there to replace others,” he said.

“We are finding that as we disrupt one area, there are people ready to take over. I can tell you that in just the last two years, we have over 30 firearms seized, over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, a number of mortars and rocket-launchers. One very significant find in the last few years was in Co Dublin where we had a significant seizure of semtex explosive.”

To be clear, the “range of weapons” put on display covered the years 2014-15 and came from the counties of Cork, Mayo, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Kildare and Dublin. Aside from one interesting development, which will be discussed below, the mixed bag of thirty firearms, some one thousand rounds of assorted and heavily corroded ammunition, several kilos of decomposing explosives and various rusty projectile parts or devices featured nothing particularly new or startling. Quite literally. Though described in most newspaper reports as “machine guns” what was actually shown in the conference were two Kalashnikov AK47/AKM 7.62mm automatic assault rifles and three AIM 7.62mm rifles, a Romanian-produced variant of the Russian AK47/AKM and the default squad-level weapon of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army in the 1980s and ’90s. Indeed these guns, in relatively poor shape judging by the photographic and video evidence, were almost certainly taken from previous (P)IRA stocks at the end of the 20th century and are nearly three decades old (most of which will have been spent in containers buried underground). Added to these were an ancient Sten submachine gun, a UK-made weapon dating to the 1950s or ’60s, and a bolt-action hunting rifle.

Two Romanian AIM 7.62mm automatic assault rifles seized from Irish republican insurgents
Two Romanian AIM 7.62mm automatic assault rifles seized from Irish republican insurgent
Volunteers of the East Tyrone Brigade, Irish Republican Army, armed with AIM assault rifles, British Occupied North of Ireland
Volunteers of the East Tyrone Brigade, Irish Republican Army, armed with AIM assault rifles, British Occupied North of Ireland

The corroded mortar parts put on display belonged to a model-type dubbed the “Mark 17” by the British, which was developed by the technicians of (P)IRA’s engineering department in the mid-to-late 1990s. Indeed, many of these sections may be old, original parts rather than recently milled ones. Likewise the several kilos of badly degraded Semtex-H explosives, presented in large red cases helpfully printed “SEMTEX-H”, also date back to the 1980s. With an expected shelf-life in that era of ten to twenty years under optimal conditions (i.e. not in a hole in the ground) their viability must be highly questionable.

Just about the only firearms on display that may have post-dated the (P)IRA ceasefire of 1997 were the semi-automatic Zastava M76 sniper’s rife, a Yugoslavian-made weapon from the 1970s partially based on the Russian AK47/AKM, and a single Glock pistol, an Austrian semi-automatic handgun. However the Zastava M76 may well have been imported by (P)IRA’s quartermaster general’s department in the 1990s from the Balkans or elsewhere in the former communist eastern Europe while the Glock pistol could have been one of several dozen smuggled into Ireland from the United States by (P)IRA activists in Florida during the same period. This again highlights a point that I have made repeatedly over the last four years. The vast majority of the weapons, explosives and equipment in the hands of the “Dissident Republicans”, a would-be Irish insurgency, derive from the former munition stocks of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. Without the popular, if minority, support that (P)IRA enjoyed during the course of the 1969-2005 Long War no campaign of armed resistance to the continued British occupation of the north-east could have been initiated, let alone sustained. It was sympathy or passive acceptance of the necessity for armed struggle that contributed to a well-armed, technically-proficient, regionally embedded guerilla army. Something the so-called Dissidents cannot emulate. Hence their reliance on firearms and explosives taken, stolen or otherwise acquired from old (P)IRA sources, mainly predating the cessation announcement of 2005.

A supposed improvised rocket prototype developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána
A supposed improvised rocket prototype developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána

A more interesting feature of the Garda briefing to the press was the presence of four, small and medium sized rocket-style weapons or missiles. In typical fashion the Irish Independent newspaper turned the rhetoric-factor up to eleven, making a not entirely convincing propaganda-association with the “Kassam” rockets deployed by the Palestinian armed resistance in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

“Dissident republicans are developing deadly rockets, similar to those fired by the military arm of Hamas into southern Israel, gardaí have revealed.

A raid by Garda anti-terrorist units resulted in the seizure of a prototype model of the Kassam rocket, capable of being fired over a distance of six kilometres.

The seizure is regarded by senior garda officers as evidence of the increasing sophistication of dissident “engineers” as they develop the technology of their terrorist organisations. After the weapons trawl was revealed, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said he was willing to enter talks with dissident groups in an attempt to bring an end to their activities.

Garda technical experts said this was the first time they had come across the self-propelled Kassam rocket prototype in a dissident “factory”. Four rockets were seized in total.”

The Irish Examiner offers a similar report:

“Detectives from the Garda national security units seized four rockets last year, including two large ones, modelled on the Kassam rockets used by Hamas in attacks on Israel — the first seizures of their kind here.

Gardaí said the large rockets were “prototypes” and that dissidents were developing them to use on major targets, such as PSNI and British army stations.

Experts said the rockets have a maximum range of 6km and could store a couple of kilograms of Semtex, enough to create a “50ft blast zone” on impact.

The weapons are crude and can only be directed by changing the degree of their trajectory. Gardaí believe dissidents are working on designing guidance systems and are conducting tests in remote locations.”

Improvised rocket prototypes developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána
Improvised rocket prototypes developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána
Improvised rocket prototypes or dummies developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána
Improvised rocket prototypes or dummies developed by Irish republican insurgents in Ireland and seized by the Garda Síochána

The term, “Qassam” (rather than, “Kassam”) originally refers to a range of man-portable, artillery rockets developed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, since 2001, though it has now become a generic term in the Israeli and sympathetic foreign media for any type of “home-made” missile used by the Palestinian resistance. At its most basic the low-cost weapon is made from a single steel tube with a rectangular block of a sugar and potassium nitrate mix propellant at the base, and a conical warhead containing improvised or commercial explosives at the top. Though fitted with fins for basic stability in flight Qassams are notoriously inaccurate, making them more of a “terror” or “counter-terror” weapon than a strictly military one. The rockets seized in the Garda searches, despite the claims above and elsewhere in the press, were all dummy prototypes, that is proof-of-concept models or even – as some have suggested – propaganda tools for photographic and video purposes. None of the four were fitted with propellant, explosives or electronics. Two of them, if they were intended for testing and development, seem better suited to the role of a pre-positioned, short-range projectile for use against stationary or slow-moving vehicles, or fortifications, similar to (P)IRA’s horizontal-launch anti-armour mortars of the 1990s (an example of their use against a heavily-fortified military target can be seen in the video recording below of an attack by the South Armagh Brigade of (P)IRA in 1989). Indeed the two smaller rockets bear a marked resemblance to some models of anti-tank missile.

The methods by which unnamed “experts” can claim that untested, empty tubes have a range of “6 kms” and a blast radius of “50 feet” is beyond me. How are they calculating the propellant-to-warhead weight ratio, the composition of the explosives, the angle of trajectory which increases or decreases the force of impact, and so on and so forth? Taking these as yet unknowable facts with the mixing of metric and imperial measures in the report, I think one can treat all of the above with a pinch of salt (as with previous nonsense stories of a Taliban-equipped New IRA). In any case, if some republican resistance grouping was reckless enough to fire a Qassam-style rocket at a British military or paramilitary installation, given the UK forces deliberate use of Irish civilian properties as “human shields”, the consequences would be disastrous, unless they could improve on technology that even the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades struggle with.

Examples of the man-portable Qassam range of artillery rockets developed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas
Examples of the man-portable Qassam range of artillery rockets developed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas

It is worth remembering at this point the occasion in early 2015 when the recovery of another cache of weapons by the Garda Síochána was brought to the public’s attention, but this time from one of Ireland’s sub-terrorist nacro-gangs, a greater threat – in reality – to the safety and well-being of the Irish people as a whole than any number of ill-armed guerillas waging war in the north-east. No rusty, thirty year old, former Warsaw Pact AKMs or AK47s here. Instead we have brand new firearms, including an Austrian AUG Para submachine gun (a 9mm version of the standard 5.56×45mm rifle of the Defence Forces Ireland), a German Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and a German Sport Guns GSG-5, a semi-automatic rimfire rifle.

That’s some contrast, is it not? Though it is small fry compared to the detention and arrest of a well-known criminal in 2008 who was found to be transporting a haul of weapons including a relatively modern AK74 5.45 assault rifle, a rechambered and upgraded model of the venerable AK47/AKM, and two one-shot anti-tank rocket launchers, a Serbian M80 Zolja and Russian RPG-22 Netto. Yes, a drugs gang armed with primed anti-tank rockets.

An AUG Para submachine gun, Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun and a German Sport Guns GSG-5 rifle taken from Irish criminal gang in Dublin
An AUG Para submachine gun, Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun and a German Sport Guns GSG-5 rifle taken from Irish criminal gang in Dublin

All sorts of explanations could be offered for the timing of the Garda conference, and people have not been slow in coming forward with their own. One of the more conspiratorial offerings is the suggestion by veteran Irish journalist, Ed Moloney, arguing that the event was little more than a stunt to drum up support for Sinn Féin in the forthcoming general election. Which takes logic and deductive reasoning to a whole new level.

An Garda Síochana as vote-getting cheerleaders for SF? I think not.

A more likely explanation is one focused on deterring support for Sinn Féin by reminding right-wing and conservative voters of the bad old, good old days of the northern conflict. The only beneficiaries of that would be Fine Gael and the desperate kleptocrats of the Labour Party. Of course there is always this, as pointed out by Newstalk:

“Gardaí say they fear that the centenary of the 1916 Rising will be used by dissident republicans as a recruitment tool for new members.”

Technically An Garda Síochána is the institutional descendant of the Irish Republican Police (IRP), the law enforcement arm of Dáil Éireann during the late revolutionary period. However there are some in the organisation who look to the old, British colonial police, the Royal Irish Constabulary, as their predecessors. One wonders if their concern is less the rising tide of Sinn Féin and more the celebration of an insurrection which led to the eventual destruction of the UK’s paramilitary police force in Ireland? Or perhaps both?

 


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: Anti-Tank Missile, Anti-Tank Rocket, Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Óglaigh na hÉireann - ÓnaÉ (The Irish Volunteers - IV), Easaontóirí Poblachtacha (Dissident Republicans), Garda Síochána na hÉireann (The Peace Guard of Ireland), Hamas, Improvised Explosive Device - IED, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades

The African-American And Irish Civil Rights Movements

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From NBC News, an article by Chandra Thomas Whitfield examining the influence of the African-American civil rights movement on its Irish counterpart in the UK administrated north-east of Ireland during the 1960s and early ’70s:

“It was a Sunday afternoon in January. Hundreds gathered to protest what they considered rampant injustices in the criminal justice system. Linked arm-and-arm, many marched through the streets belting out, We shall overcome.

By most accounts it was a peaceful demonstration, but the tone changed dramatically just after 4 p.m. Soldiers, decked out in riot gear, pelted the crowd with gunfire and tear gas. Chaos erupted. Ten minutes later, 13 people were dead, according to the BBC; including several teenagers.

Ultimately, troops shot 26 unarmed civilians during the protest march against internment – imprisonment without trial; a 14th died from his injuries months later. Witnesses say many of the victims were marchers and bystanders wounded by soldiers while fleeing the gunfire; some shot in cold blood as they tended to the wounded.

This may sound like a typical scene from most anywhere in the Southern United States during the mid 1950s to late 1960s – familiar footage from say, Eyes On The Prize, the famed documentary series on the civil rights movement; or maybe even moments from Black Lives Matter demonstrations of current day.

Only these protestors were in Northern Ireland, in the Bogside area of Derry to be exact, the shooters were British forces and the year was 1972 – four years after American civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated outside a Memphis motel.

Many scholars of history say those campaigners, and others like them, had long aligned themselves with the ideological framework of nonviolent direct action modeled by King, whose official federal holiday is observed nationwide today.”

Which is a fair enough outline of events around the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 1972. Unfortunately it is followed by this pop-culture comparison:

“…Maurice Hobson, an historian and African American Studies professor at Georgia State University. “The fight in Northern Ireland was like that TV show Game of Thrones; the United Kingdom is made up of several kingdoms and many in Northern Ireland wanted their own separate nation apart from the UK. Their movement was about, some Irish identifying as nationalists and wanting their own nation-state.””

Nooooooooo… The British occupied north of Ireland was not like “…the Game of Thrones” nor is the United Kingdom made up of “…several kingdoms“. Good god almighty, how many times are people going to explain contemporary or past issues by referencing the television adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s literary fantasy series? Especially when the references rarely work? There are actual historical events that could, y’know, be used instead. Or are people so utterly lacking in education that they can only contextualise issues in terms of a fleetingly popular TV show? And not even a good contextualisation! No one but the bug-eyed fringe of the “Ulster separatists”, the believers in the Lost Tribes of Israel and the Middle-earth dialect of “Ulstèr-Scotch”, actually wanted Britain’s rump colony on the island of Ireland to become a nation-state in its own right. Irish nationalists were campaigning, fighting, for an end to government-sanctioned discrimination against their communities and identity, the British occupation itself, partition, and for the reunification of the country as a whole. Contrary to some opinions, the Irish Republican Army was not the Night’s Watch!

Vótáil Sinn Féin!

 

 

 


Filed under: Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm na Breataine (British Army), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Éire (Ireland), Doire (Derry), Domhnach na Fola (Bloody Sunday Massacre), Game of Thrones

The Shankill Bombing And Britain’s Proxy-War In Belfast

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Just after 1 pm on the afternoon of Saturday the 23rd of October 1993, Thomas Begley and Seán Kelly, two volunteers of the 3rd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army, entered Frizzell’s, a busy two-storey fishmonger’s shop on the Shankill Road, a traditionally pro-UK or unionist enclave in the nationalist west of the city. Having parked their requisitioned van a short distance away in Berlin Street the pair were disguised as delivery men in white coats and hats. While Kelly stood at the doorway, possibly shouting at startled staff and customers to flee the building, Begley rushed to a refrigerated counter, carrying a white box containing a device packed with over two kilograms of explosives, intent on placing it beneath the ceiling. The bomb was purposely designed by the (P)IRA engineers to direct the blast upwards, hopefully penetrating the secure rooms situated on the top level of the shop. The twenty-three year old volunteer lit a fuse on the device expecting a short delay to allow everyone on the ground floor to evacuate the premises. In the event the bomb exploded almost instantaneously, collapsing the interior of the old building and killing ten people, including Thomas Begley and two young children, thirteen year old Leanne Murray and seven year old Michelle Baird. His comrade and fifty-six others were injured, while locals and the emergency services spent several hours digging trapped survivors from beneath the devastated structure.

The intended target of the attack had been the Belfast leadership of the UDA-UFF, a semi-legal British terrorist faction, which held meetings every Saturday lunchtime in the closely guarded offices of the Loyalist Prisoners’ Association (LPA), a front-organisation situated on the first floor above the shop. On the morning of the attempted “decapitation strike” a prominent unionist gunman, Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, who was allied with a UK military intelligence grouping known as the Force Research Unit (FRU), was spotted by a (P)IRA observation team entering the building, confirming that the weekly gathering was going ahead. In fact the meeting of the militant leaders was cancelled at the last minute, with Adair exiting the building unobserved by the (P)IRA scouts, accompanied by his colleague, William “Winkie” Dodds. Later investigations proved that only one UDA-UFF fatality was numbered among the casualties, twenty-seven year old Michael Morrison, the father of Michelle Baird, though two other “loyalists” were injured.

The wanton slaughter on the Shankill Road was a propaganda disaster for (P)IRA and its political leadership in (Provisional) Sinn Féin, garnering opprobrium both at home and abroad. Paradoxically, however, it weakened internal opposition among the frontline units of the underground army’s Northern Command, especially the Belfast Brigade, to the burgeoning Irish-British peace process and contributed to the ordering of an open-ended ceasefire on the 31st of August 1994, facilitating further covert negotiations between the (Provisional) Republican Movement and the UK government. Meanwhile various armed British gangs, principally the UDA-UFF and UVF, stepped up their campaign of murder against the nationalist community, killing and wounding dozens of men, women and children in the months that followed the botched attack.

Nine years later, on the evening of Sunday the 17th of March 2002, a car containing three men in business suits passed through the blast-proof barriers at the heavily fortified Castlereagh Police Station in unionist East Belfast, a place made infamous for its role as a British torture centre during the 1970s and ’80s. By the early 2000s the installation was a local headquarters of the Special Branch (SB), the eight hundred strong detective unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the UK’s paramilitary police force in the north-east of Ireland. By this period it was also housing the regional headquarters of the British Army’s Joint Support Group (JSG), successor to the notorious FRU, and carrying out many of the same tasks: controlling pro-UK terrorist proxies and double-agents or spies in the counter-insurgency struggle against (P)IRA and its off-shoots. Indeed a government enquiry in Britain led by Sir John Stevens, head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, revealed that around the time of the atrocity on the Shankill Road the former Neo-Nazi skinhead turned UDA-UFF terrorist, Johnny Adair, had been invited to a dinner in the sprawling complex by the FRU’s commanding officer, secretly chauffeured there by soldiers in civilian clothing, where he was gifted with intelligence files on suspected (P)IRA volunteers and their families. However in 2002 the intent of the newest clandestine visitors was entry to Room 220, a temporary work-centre for Special Branch personnel on the first floor that had come into use just a short time earlier.

Flashing UK military identification cards the men proceeded through the bunker-like buildings, passing beneath high netting designed to trigger falling grenades and mortars, following a flight of stairs up to the guarded SB offices where they calmly knocked on the locked door. When the sole duty-officer inside opened it they rushed him, knocking the man to the floor before tying him to a chair with a bag over his head. Thirty minutes later they drove away from Castlereagh’s towering walls of steel and concrete, laden with dozens of paper files and thousands of electronic ones which were smuggled to the north-western city of Derry and then to a secret location elsewhere in Ireland. By Monday evening press reports were giving credit for the “break-in” to the GHQ Intelligence Department of the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army. It was soon recognised that (P)IRA had staged one of the most successful espionage operations of the Long War or northern conflict. With no evidence or clues, beyond the fact that one of the intruders had spoken with an unidentified English accent, the RUC was left helpless.

Despite half-hearted attempts to downplay the losses the panic which gripped Britain’s intelligence machine – regardless of ceasefires and the ongoing peace process – was visible to even the most jingoistic or gung-ho of British journalists. Hundreds of paramilitary police and army officers or agents were hurriedly moved or withdrawn from the field, in some cases family members joining them. Though newspaper and TV sources speculated that the operation was yet another “inside job” by British spy agencies wishing to cover up evidence of their “dirty war” in Ireland it soon became evident that this time around the document losses were different. Within months the RUC investigators were seeking the whereabouts of a former American employee at the base, suspected of involvement in the case, either as a (P)IRA intelligence officer or sympathiser.

The immediate aftermath of the bomb-blast at Frizzell’s fish shop, Shankill Road, West Belfast, 1993

Now, some fourteen years since the penetration of the Castlereagh base and twenty-three since the mass-murder on the Shankill Road, the Irish News has made a serious of shocking allegations which have sparked new controversy.

” CLASSIFIED documents stolen during the break-in at Castlereagh have shown the IRA ‘commander’ at the time of the Shankill bomb was working as an informant and passed information to his handlers that could have potentially prevented the atrocity.

The former ‘blanketman’, now aged in his late 50s, was known as agent AA and calls made to his special branch handlers are logged throughout the documents stolen by the IRA during the raid at PSNI headquarters almost 15-years ago.

The files stolen during a robbery on St Patrick’s Day 2001 were heavily encrypted had to be deciphered by the IRA who used a handful of trusted members to decode the information.

The north Belfast man was ‘stood down’ by the organisation’s ruling army council in 2002 after they pieced together the coded information and discovered he had been working as a double agent for almost a decade.

The Irish News has seen documents which show the Ardoyne IRA chief was in contact with his handlers in the run up to the bombing and passed on details of ‘scouting missions’ to the Shankill.

Plans to kill UDA leader Johnny Adair in his office, situated above Frizzell’s fish shop in the weeks leading up to the bombing were known to special branch who were receiving regular information from AA.

On the day of the bomb the office above the shop was empty and no UDA members were caught up in the blast that injured over 50 people.

Less than 10 months later the IRA called a ceasefire.”

The Independent newspaper in Britain has made further claims in relation to the bombing:

“The ex-IRA man reported to have been a security force double-agent who tipped off his handlers about the October 1993 Shankill Road bombing is suspected by a number of former Belfast IRA comrades of having deliberately “jarked” the device so it exploded prematurely, to cause maximum civilian casualties and so weaken the “hawk” wing within the Provos opposed to an IRA ceasefire.

This means the Shankill bombing joins a list of Troubles incidents that are being investigated over alleged security force or service complicity by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), or judicial reviews and inquests. These include the Omagh bombing in 1998, when the Real IRA slaughtered 29 people and two unborn twins and maimed hundreds, the loyalist “UVF” 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings which killed 34 and injured hundreds, Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, and claims about an IRA double-agent codenamed “Stakenife”, who is said to have murdered scores of people while working for the security forces.

Ex-IRA prisoners say they strongly believe “AA” was given the go-ahead by his handlers to “jark” the device. Asked how this could have been done, one former prisoner said: “It would have been easily booby-trapped. Those carrying it would not have known the timer could have been altered. They would have been given 45 seconds to clear the premises and then detonate the device, giving them time to also get out, but not those upstairs who were the target. But, if it was a time-lag switch, it could have been secretly adjusted, without a doubt.”

Reports over the years suggested that the IRA had been unable to decipher the Special Branch documents, but it can now be revealed that – after recruiting a former prisoner turned top academic, who in turn recruited a small team of helpers – the IRA did indeed establish the extent to which it had been penetrated by the British state.”

In a follow-up story we are told:

“THE Stormontgate arrest of Sinn Féin special adviser Denis Donaldson was orchestrated to protect the senior republican after his cover as a double agent was blown when the IRA stole classified documents from Castlereagh, it has been alleged.

Senior IRA sources have claimed that it was his own associates and not Special Branch who ‘outed’ Donaldson forcing him to make a shock public confession in 2005, four months later he was shot dead at a rural cottage in Donegal.

It is now believed that the IRA had known about Donaldson’s double life since his arrest in 2002 when they deciphered the stolen Castlereagh documents and that his arrest may have been orchestrated by the PSNI to protect their agent.

Information Donaldson had passed on during his time as an informer was politically rather than ‘militarily’ sensitive. His codename P O’Neill appears repeatedly throughout the stolen Castlereagh documents.

He was said to have been the British government’s mole within the party during the Good Friday peace negotiations.

As a close friend and confidant of Gerry Adams, his outing as a double agent made him the most high profile member of Sinn Féin to have been discovered working as an informant.

In February 2008, Roy McShane, a former IRA commander turned chauffeur for Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams fled the Divis Tower flat he was sharing with his his girlfriend after also being outed as an informer.

…the Irish News has learned that it was members of his own organisation that threatened to out him after he was discovered to be an informer and was named throughout the stolen Castlereagh documents under the codename ‘Chiefy’.

While dozens of other informants, some low level, others higher up, were unmasked when the classified Castlereagh papers were decoded by the IRA, only those close to the Sinn Féin leadership have so far been ‘outed’ others were quietly told to leave the country for their own safety or left to get on with their lives as ‘retired’ IRA members.”

So what are we to make of it all, of accusation and counter-accusation? Some are expressing disbelief, others are highlighting the closeness of the revelations to national and regional elections in Ireland this year, while a few believe that the UK intelligence services or former, disgruntled RUC men are the real sources of the allegations.

For the present moment, in the aftermath of Britain’s dirty war in Ireland, anything seems possible.

Below are some extremely rare images taken in 2002 showing the exterior and interior of the feared RUC complex at Castlereagh.

Castlereagh Holding Centre Exterior

Lookout Post at Castlereagh Holding Centre

Cell Block at Castlereagh Holding Centre

Prisoner Records at RUC Station, Castlereagh

Records at Castlereagh Holding Centre

 


Filed under: Cúrsaí Reatha (Current Affairs), Cogaíocht (Warfare), Polaitíocht (Politics), Stair (History) Tagged: An Cogadh Fada (The Long War), Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann - APnaÉ (Irish Republican Army - IRA), Béal Feirste (Belfast), Bóthar na Seanchille (Shankill Road), Cumann Cosanta Uladh - CCU (Ulster Defence Association - UDA), Frizzell's Fish Shop, Johnny Adair, Shankill Road Bombing, Thomas Begley
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