The name Catholic Reaction Force (CRF) was used to claim responsibility for attacks and threats against Protestants in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles". In 1983 it claimed responsibility for shooting dead three Protestant civilians at a church service near Darkley, County Armagh. That was claimed as retaliation for attacks on Catholic civilians. An Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) member was involved, but the INLA said it had not ordered the attack.
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The name was first used to claim responsibility for a shooting on 20 November 1983. That night, two masked men[1] opened-fire outside Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church near Darkley, County Armagh. A church service was taking place at the time. Three Protestant civilians were shot dead at the entrance: Harold Brown (59), David Wilson (44) and Victor Cunningham (39).[2] The gunmen then sprayed the church with bullets, wounding seven people.[3]
A telephone caller claimed responsibility on behalf of the "Catholic Reaction Force". He said it was
...in retaliation for the murderous sectarian campaign carried out by the Protestant Action Force … by this token retaliation we could easily have taken the lives of at least 20 more innocent Protestants. We serve notice on the PAF to call an immediate halt to their vicious indiscriminate campaign against innocent Catholics, or we will make the Darkley killings look like a picnic.
The caller named nine Catholics who had been attacked or killed recently.[4]
A week after, Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) leader Dominic McGlinchey gave an interview. He admitted that one of the gunmen had been an INLA member and admitted supplying him with the gun.[5] McGlinchey explained that the INLA member asked him for a gun to shoot a known loyalist, who'd been involved in sectarian killings.[5] However, "clearly deranged by the death of his brother" at the hands of loyalists, he "used it instead to attack the Darkley Gospel Hall".[6] McGlinchey said: "this INLA member was a brother of someone who had been killed…and he must have been unbalanced or something to have gone and organised this killing. We are conducting an enquiry into the whole affair".[5]
The CRF declared a ceasefire on 28 October 1994.[7]
On the 20th of August 2001 the group was believed to have been responsible for shooting into a house in Cloughmills, Armagh. On the same night a pipe-bomb was thrown at a Protestant home in Ballymena[8] In August 2002, a death threat was sent in the name of the CRF. It warned that CRF would kill three unnamed Protestants who worked at hospitals in Belfast and who had links to the security forces. Soon after, loyalists threatened to kill Catholics working at two Belfast hospitals. Gerry Kelly and Sue Ramsey of Sinn Féin said they believed the CRF threat was sent by loyalists to raise sectarian tension. Kelly added: "The Catholic Reaction Force is a non-existent organisation".[9][10]