Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

The Provisional IRA's East Tyrone Brigade was one of the most active Republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland over the course of the 'Troubles'. They are believed to have drawn their membership from right across the eastern side of County Tyrone as well as north Monaghan and south Londonderry. The east of the county has a long history of militant Republicanism from Tom Clarke, J.J. McGarrity, Liam Kelly, Gerry McGeough, Bernadette Devlin and Martin Hurson. One of the most widely publicised failures in the Brigades campaign was at Loughgall where a group of eight men were ambushed and killed by the British special forces, the SAS, during an attack on the RUC barracks on May 8, 1987.

Mural Commemorating those killed in the Loughgall ambush
Enlarge
Mural Commemorating those killed in the Loughgall ambush

Contents

[edit] Lynagh's Strategy

In the 1980s, the PIRA in East Tyrone and other areas close to the border, such as South Armagh, were following a Maoist military theory devised for Ireland by Jim Lynagh, the leader of the IRA in East Tyrone (but a native of County Monaghan). The theory involved creating "zones of liberation" that the Security forces of Northern Ireland did not control and gradually expanding them to make the country ungovernable. Lynagh's strategy was to start off with one area which the British military did not control, preferably a Republican stronghold such as East Tyrone. The South Armagh area was considered to be a liberated zone already, since British troops and the RUC could not use the roads there for fear of roadside bombs. Thus it was from there that the PIRA East Tyrone Brigade attacks were launched, with most of them occurring in East Tyrone in areas close to South Armagh, which offered good escape routes. The first phase of Lynagh's plan to drive out the Northern Ireland Security Forces from East Tyrone involved destroying isolated rural police stations and then killing any building contracters who were employed to rebuild them.

[edit] Previous attacks

The East Tyrone Brigade carried out two successful attacks on RUC bases in East Tyrone. Both attacks were begun by driving a JCB digger with a 200 lb (91 kg) bomb in its bucket through the reinforced fences the RUC had around their bases, then exploding the bomb and raking the barracks with gunfire. On these two occasions the barracks had been destroyed, and most or all of the occupants killed. It was therefore with some confidence that the PIRA tried the same tactics on the Loughall RUC barracks on May 8 1987.

[edit] The Loughgall ambush

The SAS, however, had set a trap to kill the unit. They had placed an SAS soldier inside the barracks, and deployed a squad of 24 soldiers split into six groups around the barracks building. It has been alleged, but never proved that the RUC had an informer in the group, and that he was killed by the SAS in the ambush. However, in his book "Big Boys' Rules" Mark Urban points to the fact that a Loughgall woman Colette O'Neill was abducted by the IRA several weeks later and hypothesises that she was the informer.[1]

Just after 7pm, Declan Arthurs drove the JCB through the perimeter fence of the barracks. The van carrying the rest of the PIRA unit pulled up and they jumped out and opened fire on the station, intending to provide cover for Arthurs until he could get clear.

The SAS riddled the JCB and the van with bullets. Passer-by Anthony Hughes, 36, was killed and his brother badly wounded when they were caught up in the crossfire. All eight PIRA men were killed, all from head wounds. The soldiers fired more than 600 bullets; the PIRA men fired 70 bullets but did not hit any of the soldiers. It was later alleged that one of the dead men was in fact an informant for the RUC, although this was denied by them and by some journalists, who claimed that the information on the unit was gained from electronic surveillance.

The British recovered eight IRA weapons from the scene - three Heckler & Koch rifles, one FN rifle, two FNC rifles, a Ruger revolver and a Spas-12 shotgun. The Royal Ulster Constabulary linked the guns to 7 murders and 12 attempted murders in the mid Ulster area.[2] One of the guns had been taken from a reserve RUC constable murdered in an attack on police two years earlier.

An innocent civilian, Anthony Hughes, was also shot dead by the SAS. He had been travelling in a car with his brother, Oliver, unaware of the ambush. Unfortunately, both brothers were wearing overalls, the same as the IRA men engaged in the attack. As they attempted to reverse out of the gunfire, SAS troopers postioned elsewhere mistook them as part of the IRA unit and opened fire. Forty shots were aimed at the car, killing Anthony and wounding his brother. Hughes' widow later received compensation from the British Government for the death of her husband.[3]

[edit] Aftermath of the ambush

SAS operations against the PIRA continued well into the 1990s. The PIRA conducted a long investigation in search of the informer in their ranks although some would say it was a waste of time given that the informer had allegedly been killed in the ambush.

The group became known as the "Loughgall Martyrs" among Republicans, who alleged that their deaths were part of a deliberate shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. In the short term, their deaths may have galvanised militant republican support among the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. Thousands of people attended the funerals of the dead IRA men, the biggest republican funerals in Northern Ireland since those of the IRA hunger strikers of 1981. Gerry Adams in his graveside oration said the British Government understood that it could buy off the government of the Republic of Ireland, which he described as the "shoneen clan" (pro-British), but "It does not understand the Jim Lynaghs, the Pádraig McKearneys or the Séamus McElwaines. It thinks it can defeat them. It never will" [4].

In 2001 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the eight IRA men (among others) had had their human rights violated by the failure of the British government to conduct a proper investigation into the circumstances of their deaths.[5]

[edit] Subsequent Brigade activity

The killing of the veteran IRA men at Loughgall was a heavy blow to the IRA in East Tyrone. Many of their remaining activists were young and inexperienced and fell into further ambushes leading to very high casualties by the standards of the low intensity guerrilla conflict in Northern Ireland. Ed Moloney, Irish journalist and author of the Secret History of the IRA, states that the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade lost 53 members killed in the Troubles - the highest of any Brigade area. Of these, 28 were killed between 1987 and 1992. [6] In August 1988, an SAS ambush killed IRA members Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin. In October 1990, two more IRA men, Dessie Grew and Michael McGaughey were shot dead near Loughgall by undercover soldiers. In June 1991, three IRA men, Lawrence McNally, Peter Ryan and Tony Dorris were lured into yet another SAS ambush at Coagh, where their car was raked with gunfire and rocket propelled grenades.[7]

On February 11, 1990, the Brigade managed to shot down a BA Lynx helicopter near Clogher by machine gun fire[8].

In January 1992, IRA East Tyrone Brigade members killed eight building workers with a landmine at Teebane near Omagh. One of the workers killed, Robert Dunseath, was also a member of the Royal Irish Rangers.[9] The men were working to re-build British Army bases damaged by IRA bombs. The men were all Protestants and this was widely perceived as a sectarian attack.[10]

Another four IRA members were killed in February 1992. The four, Peter Clancy, Kevin Barry O'Donnell, Sean O'Farrell and Patrick Vincent, were killed at Clonoe after an attack on the RUC station in Coalisland. Whereas the previous ambushes of IRA men had been well planned by British special forces, the Clonoe killings owed much to the inexperience of the IRA men in question. They had mounted a heavy DShK machine gun on the back of a stolen lorry, driven to the RUC/British Army station and opened fire with tracer ammunition at the fortified base. They then drove past the house of Tony Dorris, the IRA man killed the previous year, where they fired more shots in the air and were heard to shout, "Up the 'RA, that's for Tony Dorris". This gave ample time for the British Army to respond. The IRA men were intercepted by the British Army as they were trying to dump the lorry and escape in cars in the car park of Clonoe Roman Catholic church. Two IRA men got away from the scene, but the four named above were killed. One witness has said that some of the men were wounded and tried to surrender but were then killed by British soldiers.[11]

In addition, the IRA in Tyrone was the victim of an assassination campaign carried out by the loyalist paramilitaries of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF killed 40 people in east Tyrone between 1988 and 1994. Of these, most were Catholic civilians with no paramilitary connections, but six of their victims were IRA members. Three of them were killed in a pub in Cappagh in March 1991. The IRA responded by killing senior UVF man Leslie Dallas[12].

An IRA bomb attack against British Paratroopers, also near Cappagh, during which a soldier lost both legs, triggered a series of clashes between troops and local residents in mid-May 1992. The riots lasted for several days, ending up with the paratroopers assault on three bars, where they injured seven civilians. Another street fracas between a King's Own Scottish Borderers platoon and Republican sympathizers in Coalisland resulted in the theft of an army machine gun, later recovered nearby[13]. Six Paratroopers were charged with criminal damage in the aftermath, but were later acquitted.

During the period 1993-1994, the Brigade executed a total of eight mortar attacks against British security facilities and was also responsible for at least sixteen bombings and shootings. They killed four members of the security forces on the same period[14]. These actions exposed the fact that, even after suffering heavy losses, the Brigade was still able to keep pressure on British forces in the region.

[edit] Membership of the Loughgall Unit

The East Tyrone Brigade members killed at Loughgall in 1987 consisted of:

Arthurs, Donnelly, Gormaley and Kelly were all from the village of Cappagh, and had joined the PIRA after the death of Martin Hurson, another Cappagh man, on hunger strike in Long Kesh in 1981.

[edit] Song

An Irish rebel song was written as a tribute to the IRA members, entitled "Loughall Martyrs". It's lyrics state that the Provisionals were "brave volunteers", and that Lynagh was a "gallant soldier". The SAS are described as "butchers", and are accused of using dispropotionate force, as well as not offering the oppourtunity to surrender. The final verse pays tribute to the 8 men by name. Anthony Hughes and his brother are not mentioned.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Big Boys' Rules, Mark Urban, Faber and Faber (1992), ISBN 0-571-16112-X
  2. ^ The Long War, Brendan O'Brien (1995) p141
  3. ^ Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin, Peter Taylor (1997) pg274
  4. ^ (Quoted in the Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney, 2002, page 325)
  5. ^ * BBC News: IRA deaths: The four shootings
  6. ^ p319, The Secret History of the IRA, E Moloney
  7. ^ p318, A Secret History of the IRA, E Moloney
  8. ^ See this British Commons account about the NI violence for the first month of 1990: For some details on the helicopter crash-landing, go to this archive page of the New York Times:
  9. ^ Palace Barracks Memorial Garden
  10. ^ pp219-220, The Long War, B O'Brien
  11. ^ pp232-233, The Long War, B O'Brien
  12. ^ p322, A Secret History, E Moloney
  13. ^ See the May 12 and May 17 entries at the 1992 CAIN chonology: Read the detailed Republican version of this incidents in the following link:
  14. ^ Retrieved from the following chronologies:

    [edit] Sources

    [edit] External links

    Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../p/r/o/Provisional_IRA_East_Tyrone_Brigade_1031.html"