Gerard Steenson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gerard Steenson was an Irish republican socialist paramilitary activist. He was a member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) group during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Christened "Doctor Death" by sections of the Irish media, he is widely associated with internecine violence between Irish republican groups. He joined the INLA from a young age, he came to notoriety as a sixteen year old for killing Billy McMillen the Official IRA's Belfast leader during the IRSP/INLA's feud with the Official IRA from whom they had split in 1974.

Gerard Steenson along with Harry Flynn, Jimmy Brown and others formed the Irish People's Liberation Organisation with the express intention of wiping out the INLA and IRSP which they had seen as becoming corrupt and an obstacle to the fight for socialism and Irish freedom. Steenson argued in letters written while he was in prison in the early 1980s that the INLA had become militarily inefficient and undisciplined and that this had led to involvement in criminality and sectarian attacks.

In 1987, Steenson himself was killed with his friend Tony McCarthy by the INLA. Two revenge killings of INLA men followed before the end of the feud.