Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade

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The Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade was a PIRA brigade during the Troubles in south Armagh, a predominantly Nationalist area along the border with the Republic of Ireland. It was originally organized into three battalions. The South Armagh Brigade is thought to consist of about 60 members. It has been commanded since the 1970s by Thomas 'Slab' Murphy who is also alleged to be a member of the IRA's Army Council. As well as paramilitary activity, the IRA South Armagh Brigade has also been widely accused of smuggling across the Irish border. Unlike many other IRA command areas, the South Armagh Brigade has not been extensively penetrated by informers or British Army agents [1]. Between 1970 and 1997 the brigade was responsible for the deaths of 165 members of British security forces (123 British soldiers and 42 RUC officers). A further 75 civilians have been killed in the area in the conflict [2]. During this period 10 IRA South Armagh brigade members were killed [3]. Far more however were imprisoned as a result of policing operations.

Contents

[edit] The 1970s

South Armagh has a long Irish Republican tradition. Many men in the area served in the Fourth Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and on the republican side in the Irish Civil War (1922-23). Men from the area also took part in IRA campaigns in the 1940 and 1950s [4].

At the beginning of the Northern Ireland Troubles in 1969, rioters, led by IRA men, attacked the RUC barracks in Crossmaglen, in retaliation for the attacks on Catholic and nationalist areas in Belfast. After the split in the IRA in that year, the South Armagh unit sided with the Provisional IRA rather than the Official IRA. The following August, two RUC constables were killed by a bomb in Crossmaglen. A week later, a British soldier was killed in a firefight along the border.

However, the IRA campaign in the area did not begin in earnest until 1971. In August of that year, two South Armagh men were shot and one killed by the British Army in Belfast, having been mistaken for gunmen. This caused outrage in the South Armagh area, provided the IRA with many new recruits and created a climate where local people were prepared to tolerate the killing of security force members [5].

During the early seventies the brigade was mostly engaged in ambushes of British Army patrols. In one such ambush August 1972, a British Army Ferret armoured car was destroyed with 600 lb landmine, killing one soldier. There were also frequent gun attacks on British foot patrols. Travelling overland in south Armagh eventually became so dangerous that the British Army began using helicopters to transport troops and supply its bases - a practice that had to be continued until the late 1990s. A noted IRA commander at that time was the commanding officer of the first battalion, captain Michael McVerry. He was eventually killed during an attack on the RUC barracks in Keady in November 1973. Around this time IRA engineers in south Armagh developed the home-made mortars which were relatively inaccurate but highly destructive[citation needed].

In 1975 and 1976, as sectarian violence increased in Northern Ireland, the South Armagh Brigade under the cover-name of the South Armagh Republican Action Force carried out two horrible attacks against Protestants. In September 1975 an IRA unit attacked an Orange Lodge in Newtownhamilton killing five Orangemen. Then, in January 1976, after a series of loyalist UVF attacks in the border areas that had killed six Catholics the previous day, the IRA shot and killed ten Protestant workmen at the "Kingsmill massacre" near Bessbrook. The worker's bus was stopped and the one Catholic worker taken aside before the others were killed [6]. As a response to this attack, the British government dispatched the Special Air Service to south Armagh. According to Willie Frazer, a local Protestant, the cycle of sectarian attacks was brought to an end after Kingsmills by a deal between the IRA and UVF. "The IRA agreed, 'we'll leave the ordinary Prods [Protestants] alone if you leave the Catholics alone' " [7]

By the end of the seventies the IRA in most of Northern Ireland had been restructured into a cell system. South Armagh, however, where the close knit rural community and family connections of IRA men diminished the risk of infiltration, retained its larger "Brigade" structure. In August 1979 the IRA South Armagh active service unit killed 18 British soldiers in an ambush near Warrenpoint [8]. This was the biggest single loss of life inflicted on the British Army in its deployment in Northern Ireland.

A number of South Armagh IRA members were imprisoned by the end of the 1970s and took part in the blanket protest and Dirty protest in pursuit of political status for IRA prisoners. Raymond McCreesh a South Armagh man, was among the ten republican hunger strikers who died on hunger strike in 1981 for this goal. The South Armagh Brigade retaliated for the deaths of the hunger strikers by killing five British soldiers with a mine that destroyed their armoured vehicle near Bessbrook.

[edit] 1980s and 1990s

During the mid-eighties the brigade focused its attacks on the RUC, killing 20 of its members between 1984 and 1986. Nine of these were killed in a mortar attack on the RUC barracks in Newry in February 1985 [9]. In March 1989 two senior RUC officers were killed in an ambush near Jonesborough. Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan were returning from a meeting with the Garda Síochána in the Republic of Ireland where they had been discussing a range of issues including ways of combating IRA attacks on the cross-border rail link when they were ambushed [10]. This incident is being investigated by the Smithwick Tribunal which is looking into alleged collusion between the IRA and the Gardaí [11].

In 1986, the British Army erected ten hilltop observation posts in south Armagh. These bases acted as information gathering centres and also allowed the British Army to patrol South Armagh with their personnel. Between 1971 and the erection of the hilltop sites in the mid-1980s (the first in 1986) 84 members of the security forces were killed in the Crossmaglen and Forkhill areas by the IRA. After this, 24 security force personnel along with a high profile civilian servant (Lord Justice Gibson) and his wife were killed in the same areas [3].

South Armagh became the most heavily militarized area in Northern Ireland. In an area with a population of 23,000 the British stationed around 3000 troops in support of the RUC to contain an unknown number of paramilitaries.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the PIRA elsewhere in Northern Ireland found it increasingly difficult to carry out successful attacks, largely due to being penetrated by informers. However, the South Armagh brigade was exceptional in that it stepped up its attacks in this period.

In December 1990 an IRA and Sinn Fein member, Fergal Caraher, was killed by Royal Marines near a checkpoint in Cullyhanna. His brother Mícéal Caraher, who was severely wounded in the shooting, later became the commander of one of the South Armagh sniper squads. These squads were responsible for killing seven soldiers and two policemen until the Caraher team was finally caught by the SAS in April 1997 [12]. The South Armagh Brigade built the bombs that were used to wreck economic parts of London during the nineties [13]. The IRA in south Armagh was by far the most effective brigade in shooting down British helicopters during the conflict. It made 23 attacks on British military helicopters during the Troubles, bringing four down on separate occasions in 1978, 1988, and 1994 [14]. The other successful PIRA attack against an Army helicopter took place near Clogher, County Tyrone, on February 11 1990[15].

[edit] Ceasefires and the peace process

The IRA ceasefire of 1994 was a blow to the South Armagh Brigade, in that it allowed the British security forces to operate openly in the area without fear of attack and to build intelligence on IRA members. When the IRA called off its ceasefire in 1996-97, the South Armagh IRA unit was one of the only ones to carry out successful attacks on British forces, but it also lost a number of its most skilled members, such as Michael Carraher, who were arrested and imprisoned.

In 1997, several members of the South Armagh Brigade, based in Jonesborough and Drumintee, following Michael McKevitt, left the Provisional IRA because of its acceptance of the Mitchell Principles of non-violence at a General Army Convention in October of that year and joined the dissident grouping, the Real IRA, which rejected the peace process. Their discontent was deepened by Sinn Féin's signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Most of the South Armagh IRA stayed within the Provisional movement, but there were reports of them aiding the dissidents throughout 1998 [16] The Omagh bombing of August 1998, a botched RIRA operation which killed 30 civilians, was prepared by dissident republicans in South Armagh [17]. Tom Murphy and the leadership of the PIRA in the area have since re-asserted their control, expelling dissidents from the district under threat of death. Michael McKevitt and his wife Bernadette were evicted from their home near Dundalk [18]. Just as significantly, PIRA members in South Armagh ceased cooperating with the RIRA after the Omagh bombing.

In 1999, Eamon Collins, a former IRA man, who had written a book on his paramilitary past and testified against Murphy in civil trial, was murdered by South Armagh IRA members.

After the Provisional IRA announced its intention to disarm and accept peaceful methods in July 2005 the British government announced a demilitarisation plan which involves a full British Army withdrawal from South Armagh by 2007. The normalisation process, negotiated under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement in exchange for the full decommissioning of PIRA weaponry, and executed by the UK government according to the improving security, was one of the main goals of the Republican political strategy in the region[19].

Senior PIRA figures in South Armagh, notably Tom Murphy, have become very wealthy over the course of the Troubles. It is strongly suspected that this is a result of large scale smuggling across the Irish border and money laundering. Other alleged illegal activities involve fraud through embezzlement of agricultural subsidies and false claims of property loss. In 2006, the British and Irish authorities mounted joint operations to clamp down on smuggling in the area and to seize Murphy's assets.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Brendan O'Brien, The Long War, The IRA and Sinn Féin, page 206. "RUC sources said that there was an almost total absence of informers in south Armagh".
  2. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 11
  3. ^ Brendan O'Brien, The Long War, The IRA and Sinn Féin, page 160
  4. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 92-112
  5. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 37-40
  6. ^ Richard English, Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA, page 172
  7. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, The IRA and South Armagh, page 140
  8. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 135
  9. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 167
  10. ^ [1]
  11. ^ [2]
  12. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh page 291
  13. ^ Harnden, Bandit Country, page 230
  14. ^ Toby Harnden, Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh, page 258-9
  15. ^ See this British Commons debate about the NI violence for the period of 1989-90 (it located the site of the crash in County Fermanagh): For some details on the helicopter crash-landing, go to this archive page of the New York Times:
  16. ^ Harnden, Bandit country, page 311-313)
  17. ^ Harnden, page 316
  18. ^ Harnden, Bandit Country, page 31l
  19. ^ Statement made by Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy retrieved from Sinn Féin website on April 2006:
    • Sinn Féin has actively sought the removal of Britain's war machine from South Armagh and right across the Six Counties. This has been a crucial element of our discussions with the British Government over this past number of years. Consistent pressure from Sinn Féin has ensured movement on this issue.
    See also this remarks made by Sinn Féin assembly member Davy Hyland on May 2006:
    • What this announcement (the announcement of the removal of the last home-based RIR battalions) does do today is free up significant amounts of land which opens up exciting opportunities for communities who have suffered for so long with British war apparatus in their midst. It is important that these sites are developed with the interests of these communities at the core of any future plans."
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