by Proinsias Mac Fhearghusa
Sunday, Aug 14 2005, 12:40pm
Tara neglected whilst sites such as the Céide Fields and Brú na Boinne have flourished
Click thumbnail to view pic and read article
‘That the scene of the final battle of Na Fianna, and the burial site of Cú Chulainn’s remains is being dug up to facilitate a reroutable motorway is something which reflects badly on our respect for our origins.’
14/08/2005 - 20:07:15
The last refuge of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising should be converted into an interpretative centre before it becomes a ruin, it was claimed tonight.
National heritage watchdog An Taisce today set up a working group to save the future of dilapidated Number 16 Moore Street in Dublin where wounded rebel leaders wrote the surrender note which ended the rebellion against British rule.
An Taisce’s Antiquities and National Monuments Committee today called for urgent action on the issue at an emergency meeting in central Dublin to discuss the issue.
Committee spokesman Dominic Dunne said: “Half the slates on the building’s roof are missing and the elements are getting in.
“We believe that the site should be converted into an interpretative centre to honour it’s historical and cultural significance.”
The house is owned by the Carlton Development Group, which had planned to develop a large site around Moore Street into a retail centre.
However, the scheme is now the subject of a legal dispute.
Supporting An Taisce’s campaign, the National Graves Association similarly called for the building to be developed into a tourist attraction.
Mr Dunne added: “Next year is the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising and it would be a shame if we don’t have this resolved by then.”
Many of those who sheltered in the building in the dying hours of the Rising - including James Connolly, Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Joseph Plunkett - were later executed by the British for their role in the rebellion.
Dublin City Council has said that, although the building is not listed for its architecture, it is listed to be preserved because of its historical significance.
Fianna Fáil MEP Eoin Ryan, whose grandfather gave medical aid to Connolly at the house during the rising, has said he is outraged that the historic building should be allowed to fall into disrepair.
**Prayers needed please
14/08/2005 - 20:13:19
A teenage girl injured in a fall on Croagh Patrick was tonight airlifted to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar.
The accident occurred close to the summit of the 2,500-foot mountain near Louisburg around 6pm.
The teenager is believed to have sustained serious injuries.
Earlier it emerged that a nine-year-old boy from Waterford City drowned following a swimming accident in Tramore.
The boy was removed from waters off Tramore beach yesterday evening.
He was pronounced dead a short time later at Waterford Regional Hospital.
My blogging comrade Sharon over at 1169 and counting… wrote to show me a link to a post by United Irelander about some competition results concerning the ‘prolific-ness’ of blogs. Seems I came in 3rd and wasn’t even aware of it. But as United Irelander so aptly states, I am ’simply copying and pasting news reports’ here. United Irelander also thinks I am a man although I am not, but that’s all right I guess. I was going to make a comment over at UI, but I decided to say it once again over here, so that the next time this issue comes up, I can give a link back to this post. I’ll mostly say what I wrote back to Sharon:
I don’t pay a lot of attention to blog stuff because as you know, I am not original in any way so I don’t really try to compete. I always feel guilty about putting other people’s work up, but I feel that the news from this period is important, and I never want for it to be inaccessible to researchers or even casual readers. When you are a net junkie, you take for granted your ability to surf the net’s resources and find what you need, but so many people don’t even know what Google is. Then there are the sites which require extra time registering and signing in and those that charge or otherwise put their articles in a pay-per-view archive after a certain amount of time. This doesn’t even take into account the sites that disappear entirely along with their stories and photos (have you seen what happened to the Bobby Sands Trust again?) With stories about republican history, there are the stock articles and prominent research articles already published. Some people, I know, think it is okay to take these articles and change the wording around and then stick their name on them and act like they own them. I find that to be reprehensible. In the site devoted to Bobby Sands, I have as many articles and photos about Bobby as I can possible find on the net. I feel that there needs to be more personal recollections published about this man as well. This is history that needs to be told and told again. Never does it need to be forgotten. I don’t own any of this, however, and never claim to.
My main purpose in starting this was to educate myself as well as others who may not get it thrown in their faces constantly, such as the Americans, and I figure that those who live it surely don’t need some smart ass comment from me because they have their own opinions just as I do. I figure that my choice of what I post pretty much sums up how I feel about things. I try to find photos to go with the stories so that people who are not familiar with the subject can get some feel for what is being written about. In most cases, I always try to give credit for whatever sources I have used. There are some sources I will only give an intro and a link to out of courtesy. I do enjoy reading other people’s comments in their blogs, but from past experience, I have no desire to get involved in flame wars. I put up a comment on abortion figuring to hear lots back, but there was nothing, which leads me to believe that the people who come to me want to get a dose of nationalist or republican news and then go on their way (except the Shapelle Corby fans who leave letters, etc). I even urge people to use the LJ (SAOIRSE32 has 3 locations) site because it has no ads and loads the fastest and has easily searched archive listings. It will never win an award for esthetics, and LJ is considered a rather pedestrian blogging system in some circles, but the downloadable Semagic application makes it perfect for blogging, editing and searching. Three years ago when I started, I was lucky to have 25 visitors a day (with a lot of those being ME!) I myself am amazed at the increase, which just confirms what I feel–that people want to read news about the North and the Republic but don’t exactly have time or familiarity to get it themselves. Even at school, I will ask people if they are familiar with RSS readers, and they will go, ‘Huh?’
So, yes, United Irelander is absolutely correct. I am nothing but a cut and paste hack. I’m certainly not in it for the money (none) or the fame (not very pleasant being called a copy and paste MAN…or being refused a listing on some blog aggregators). Sometimes it’s a chore; mostly it’s addicting. Mainly, I view it as a responsibility and a great pleasure. It gives me some satisfaction to think that a few people might become more familiar with the issues or gain a desire to do further research because of something they have read or some link I have given. I have received letters from people who have been complimentary or who have needed help finding things. It makes me feel good to be able to do something, as Bobby said to do.
That’s my story–and I’m sticking to it! 
By Tom McGurk
14 August 2005
What on earth have members of the Irish judiciary and legal profession been making of ‘acting’ Minister for Justice Mary Harney’s performance on the Colombia Three? Acting is the operative word, I might add.
Of course, the three men, Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley, were about as welcome home to the post-IRA peace process as a kneecapping, but that said, there is finally major business to be done here.
Who needs these diversions?
Diplomatically, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern moved quickly to handle the black hole that was opening up. He rushed back from holiday, was briefed by Rory Brady, the Attorney General, and then initiated a quiet round of diplomacy with the US and Britain to explain the potential publicity fiasco and legal quagmire that was opening up.
(Presumably, at these meetings when the participants are discussing matters of international justice, nobody mentions Guantanamo.)
If, from the off, the Taoiseach understood that whatever the three were up to in Colombia, they were not in breach of Irish law, how come the acting Minister for Justice didn’t?
They were not ‘wanted’ here, and whatever they had been up to in Colombia was evidentially unsupportable here. Furthermore, there is no extradition treaty between Ireland and Colombia.
(This is not surprising, given the international reputation of this infamous Latin American judicial regime - though I’m sure the US embassy might know more about ‘judicial and extrajudicial arrangements’ down Bogota way than any of us.)
In fact, there aren’t even any extradition treaties between Colombia and its closest neighbours. Wonder why?
Worse, the case against the three stank. They had first been found not guilty of directing terrorism, with the judge accusing the government witnesses of perjury.
Subsequently, they were convicted by dint of a Colombian appeal process that was held in secret, without either them or their legal team being present.
I have no doubt that the Attorney General might have gently pointed out to the Taoiseach that as kangaroo courts go, here was one whose conclusions would surely be consigned to the dustbin by any subsequent European Court of Justice hearing.
However, even before all of that could happen, what about the small matter of the three’s legal protections under Bunreacht na hÉireann and a Supreme Court that is long used to sorting the wheat from the chaff - and famously used to separating political requirements from judicial absolutes.
In other words, the Colombia Three were a right pain in the arse, but given the standards of jurisprudence and human rights that make us different from, for example, Colombia, we would just have to put up with the silly season headlines and not be diverted from the principal business following the IRA announcement.
Ending wars is a difficult and complex process, and for those who want to make political mischief, there’s always some detritus lying about with which to do it.
There were also wider political considerations. Given the crisis the men had already caused for the peace process, the notion of Ireland or its government attempting to extradite three of its citizens to a Latin American state that is by a byword for lawlessness and human rights abuses would have had incalculable national and international political consequences, not least with the peace process and international judicial opinion.
In this context, the early demand by John Minihan of the Progressive Democrats that the three be extradited at once - echoing Peter Robinson of the DUP - was simply disgraceful.
This man serves in Dáil Éireann, and is therefore charged with upholding the constitution and the rights of all its citizens under it.
Had nobody told Harney, the acting justice minister, the judicial facts?
Maybe it was the novelty of it all, but she seemed determined to go on a solo run.
It was not a decision, I suspect, that got her a round of applause from the patients on trolleys in hospital corridors, or indeed the thousands awaiting the medical card fiasco to end.
Over three days, Harney cooked up a storm with press releases and media interviews. Given the silly season and the fact that most frontline broadcasters were on holidays, she had a free run.
Had nobody in the Department of Foreign Affairs shared the diplomatic briefing with the Department of Justice?
Spotting the Transfer of Execution of Sentencing Bill (an essentially compassionate measure to facilitate the transfer of prisoners across international boundaries, lying undisturbed around the Oireachtas for two years), Harney told the press that “the Colombia Three could be required to serve their sentences in Ireland’‘.
The fact that the bill was unsigned and would require the Colombian justice regime to sign it, having satisfied strict Irish and European judicial standards - can you imagine that? - was neither here nor there.
Even more remarkably, as our courts have recently ruled, legislation such as this cannot be used retrospectively. In short, any Transfer of Execution of Sentencing Bill case was high nonsense, yet Harney persisted with it.
Why?
Next, she dragged the Garda Siochána into it, and suggested that people should help them to find the three men.
(I’ll bet that amused the Special Branch, who of course know exactly where they are.)
She could not explain why they were being sought by the Gardai, nor could she elucidate what Irish law they might have broken, apart from being a bloody nuisance. Her mutterings about false passports is also baloney, since Irish citizens do not require a passport to reenter Ireland, and anyway we have had a common travel area with Britain since the foundation of the state.
Of course, what Harney didn’t say last week was the most significant of all: that if she were really serious about requiring the three behind bars, the Offences Against the State Act for IRA membership was only a chief superintendent’s opinion away.
Sadly, the facts of this Colombia Three mess are simply unattainable.
Nobody, apart from them and their paramilitary associates, knows what they were up to in Farc-land. Once they were arrested the possibility of clarifying the facts disappeared in a wider propaganda war stretching from the unionists to the Colombian government and its death squads to the keepers of Guantanamo Bay in Washington. Press coverage descended into spooks’ briefing time across all datelines.
In the end, this was not an international judicial battle at all, but rather a dirty war of disinformation and propaganda initiated by idiots on their ‘revolutionary’ holidays.
What an extraordinary political calculation by one of our major Irish political players, that this week - and at this sensitive time - we needed more of it.
Twenty nine people died in the Real IRA attack
The seventh anniversary of the Omagh bomb has been commemorated in the town’s Remembrance Garden.
Families of the victims together with Lord Rooker and Irish Education Minister Mary Hanafin took part in the service.
Twenty-nine men, women and children died and hundreds were injured in the car bomb attack in the County Tyrone town on 15 August 1998.
It was the single worst atrocity in 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.
Some relatives criticised what they described as the low level of compensation received for the loss of their loved ones.
Godfrey Wilson, who’s 15-year-old daughter Lorraine died in the bombing, said the £7,500 he received was “a disgrace”.
“To be honest we shouldn’t have taken it. We would have been better accepting nothing - the pittance they gave us was an insult to Lorraine,” he said.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden also died, said a five figure sum he received after a lengthy legal battle was “not even the price of a good quality new car”.
“They say they don’t put a price on human life but they do, and it’s very low.”
He said money could not bring back those who died, but it did relieve the stress for bereaved families.
Michael McKevitt, 54, from Blackrock, County Louth, is serving a 20-year sentence in Portlaoise for running the Real IRA, the organisation which carried out the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people and unborn twins.
He and four other people in the Republic of Ireland - Seamus Daly, Seamus McKenna, Liam Campbell and Colm Murphy - are being sued by some of the Omagh relatives.
A man whose house in Derry was attacked with petrol bombs has said his family could have been killed.
Thirty petrol bombs were thrown in the city during overnight trouble. Three people arrested in connection with the incidents have since been released.
The man, who does not want to be named, lives in the mainly Protestant Fountain estate.
He said his house would have burned down had the fire not been put out by his brother-in-law who lives next door.
“The first attack was just after 0200 BST when two petrol bombs were thrown over, causing damage to the first window,” he said.
“Then at 0500 BST more petrol bombs rained down causing even more damage.
“The back of the house is a complete mess. The window frames caught fire and the flames went in through the air vent.
“If it wasn’t for my brother-in-law with his fire extinguisher that whole house would have been gutted.”
Meanwhile, a device thrown at a bar in the Gobnascale area of the city turned out to be hoax pipe bomb.
It was thrown at the bar on the Old Strabane Road at about 0215 BST on Sunday.
The police said they want to speak to a taxi driver who was in the area at the time.
By Stephen Breen
14 August 2005
THE Lord Chief Justice is set to make a ruling on the case of a former Ulster soldier branded the “forgotten man” of the Republic’s justice system.
The family of Michael McAleavey - who has served 22 years in jail for the murder of three of his Irish army comrades in Lebanon - urged Sir Brian Kerr to set a jail tariff for the west Belfastman to serve the remainder of his sentence in Maghaberry, in March.
Sunday Life now understands the case is currently with the Lord Chief Justice’s office, and a decision is expected over the coming weeks.
His sister, Lorna, is hopeful that a decision will be reached soon.
She said: “We don’t want Michael to die in prison.
“He is genuinely remorseful for what happened - we can’t understand why they are holding on to him.”
McAleavey (44), originally from west Belfast, was serving as a peacekeeper with the Irish army in the war-torn region, when he killed his colleagues with a machine-gun.
Although he initially claimed his unit had been attacked by Lebanese Pro-Israeli Christian militia, he later admitted that he had “cracked” under pressure and heat exhaustion.
The wife of one of his victims, Corporal Gary Morrow from Lurgan, gave birth while McAleavey was being court-martialled.
He was found guilty in 1983, and sentenced to life.
Since then, he has been detained in Portlaoise, Limerick, Wheatfield and Dublin jails.
McAleavey - one of the longest-serving prisoners in the Republic’s penal history - applied to be repatriated to Maghaberry jail in 1999 without success.
His family accused authorities in the Republic of “abandoning” the ex-squaddie.
His bid to be repatriated is supported by the Republic’s Prison Review Committee (PRC), but has been objected to by relatives of his three victims, and a number of Irish soldiers’ associations.
He has also been backed by SDLP man, Alex Attwood.
Belfast solicitor Joe Rice, who acts on behalf of the family, confirmed that progress was being made on the case.
Said Mr Rice: “We received a letter at the end of last month from the Life Sentence unit of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, indicating that progress was being made in relation to the tariff for my client.
“The case is currently under consideration by the LCJ, and I expect to hear substantive progress on the case in the near future.
“After 22 years in prison, he has paid his debt to society, but he has become the ‘forgotten man’.
“If ever a case required legal attention, then it’s this one.”
A spokesman for Sir Brian’s office said: “We are currently considering papers supplied on this case by the Prison Service.
“The Lord Chief Justice will give a provisional, non-binding, minimum-term recommendation in order that the prisoner and the transferring state can make an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the transfer application.”
Why IRA triple killer wasn’t on Shinners on-the-run wish-list
By Joe Oliver
14 August 2005
HE was one of the IRA’s most ruthless killers, and responsible for the cold-blooded murders of three RUC officers.
But Sean Meehan - a brother of veteran republican Martin Meehan - does not feature on Sinn Fein’s ‘wish-list’ of men and women the organisation wants to see granted an amnesty.
The question of ‘On-The-Runs’ - including Charlie Caufield, the man responsible for the 1987 Enniskillen bombing, which claimed 12 lives - has been a key priority in the peace process for Sinn Fein.
The Government has promised to act on the issue when the IRA moves to decommissioning.
But the list of around 56 fugitive terrorists handed to the British and Irish governments does not bear Meehan’s name - because, as well as being a schooled Provo killer, he was also one of the Garda’s top informers.
Meehan (54) lives in the US, and works in a haulage company under an assumed name.
He is considered ‘untouchable’ and, in spite of his blood-soaked past, he has no fear of extradition or Ulster cops’ new historical inquiries branch - established earlier this year to look into unsolved murders.
The savage double-murder of two RUC officers at an off-licence close to Oldpark police station in north Belfast, in November 1971, is one of those unsolved cases.
Former police officers are in no doubt that Meehan and an accomplice gunned down Sergeant Dermot Hurley (50) and Constable Walter Moore (37) during a robbery.
The two officers had called into the Oldpark Wine and Spirit Store in Lower Lodge Terrace, where they were well-known to the owner, Ann Gray.
But, at that point, a car drew up outside and two men, both armed, walked into the off-licence and held the three inside at gunpoint.
Within minutes, the gunmen opened fire and both officers were fatally hit. A priest gave Sergeant Hurley, a native of Wicklow and a father-of-five, the last rites.
Constable Moore, a bachelor, had 17 years service with the force.
Less than two months later, in January 1972, Meehan led a four-man IRA gang who murdered a rookie cop in north Belfast.
Constable Raymond Carroll (22) was riddled with bullets, at a petrol station on the Oldpark Road.
Belfast City Commission was later told that the man who fired nine bullets into Constable Carroll was Meehan, then 23.
At the time of the trial of one his accomplices, Meehan was behind bars in the Republic for robbery.
A Crown lawyer revealed that Brendan Mailey (17), William Bates (23), and Joseph Lynch (33) drove with Meehan to the service station in a hijacked car, after Bates had spotted the young policemen there.
They plotted the murder at a house at Northwich Drive, and Bates was later to admit that Meehan, armed with an M1 carbine, laughed after the killing saying: “I got the bastard”.
Bates and Lynch were later jailed for life for their part in Constable Carroll’s murder, while Mailey was detained at the Secretary of State’s pleasure, because he was under age at the time of the killing.
One republican source in Belfast said yesterday: “Seanie Meehan’s name is dirt.
“He became intelligence officer in the Dublin Brigade when he went over the border, but was turned by the Garda Special Branch.
“It was one hell of a shock at the time, and the damage he did to the organisation was enormous.
“The cops got him out just as he was rumbled, and he was lucky. No one here wants to see or hear of him again.”
And a former RUC officer told Sunday Life: “There was, if I remember right, an attempt in the 1970s to have Sean Meehan extradited for the murder of Constable Carroll.
“But in those days, few, if any, such warrants were successful. By the time we learned of his involvement in the murders of Dermot Hurley and Walter Moore, Meehan was untouchable.
“Our hands were tied and we were told at the highest level to lay off.” The Special Branch in Dublin got him out to the States and MI5 was also involved.
“He was a psychopath, but he got away with murdering three good men.”
A police spokeswoman said yesterday in relation to Constable Carroll’s murder: “This is one of the cases the PSNI has agreed to review under the recently-established historical inquiries team.”
slnews@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
By Jodie Ginsberg
14 August 2005
click to view photo and caption - Reuters Photo
CROSSMAGLEN (Reuters) - With its hanging baskets full of glossy pink flowers, squares of green lawn and old-fashioned pubs, the centre of Crossmaglen looks the picture of a traditional British village.
But the outskirts of this Northern Irish border town tell a different story.
An iron-clad fortress — the local, army-protected police base — squats on the main road into Crossmaglen, bristling with cameras and antennae. On the other side of town, wooden boards painted with images of masked gunmen glare down from lampposts.
A military helicopter clatters into the air, shattering the silence of a sunny summer day.
This is the Irish nationalist heartland of south County Armagh, an area of Northern Ireland dubbed “bandit country” that borders the Irish Republic and where armed supporters of the campaign for a united Ireland fought some of their fiercest battles with British police and soldiers.
Between the start of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland in 1969 and its cease-fire in 1997, around 60 police officers and more than 100 soldiers were killed in southern Armagh, many in Crossmaglen.
Snipers killed at least nine members of the British security forces here in the 1990s and it was in this area that the explosives for at least three major IRA bombs were prepared.
The police station — protected by a regiment of the army paratroopers in maroon berets who still patrol Crossmaglen’s streets — was showered with IRA mortars and bullets.
SLOW CHANGE
Despite the cease-fire, Britain maintained its heavy military presence in Northern Ireland. But two weeks ago, following a formal end to the IRA’s armed struggle, the British military started dismantling watchtowers dotted along the Irish border as a precursor to slashing its troop numbers by more than half.
But locals expect change to be slowest in Crossmaglen, where most houses fly the green, white and orange flag of Ireland or the white and orange colours of Armagh.
“The army were out patrolling the streets yesterday and the day before,” said Lisa Ahern, a waitress at fast-food restaurant Superbites in the village square. “Nothing has changed.”
She remembered a time when soldiers offered sweets to local children, encouraging them over to their positions as protection against snipers.
The snipers have gone, but deep-seated fear and mistrust of the police and army remain.
“It would be generations before we could ever think there would be trust of the police,” said Colman Burns, a local councillor for Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA.
Burns recalled regularly being stopped and searched by soldiers as a young man on his way to dances in the 1980s, when violence was at its height.
But he was hopeful that once the visual proofs of conflict — like the green watchtowers that loom over Crossmaglen’s playing fields and pro-IRA signs nailed to telegraph polls — are dismantled, the area can enjoy a new lease of life.
“When these things are removed, I can see tourism — after farming — being a healthy second income,” he told Reuters.
He envisages a time when tourists will come to fish in the region’s rivers and lakes, and when Armagh will be able to market itself as a destination for cyclists, walkers and riders, like neighbouring County Monaghan in the Irish Republic.
Visitors interested in history would start to look beyond “the troubles” and further back into the past by visiting the nearby graveyard at Creggan where three 18th century Irish Gaelic poets are buried.
“Things will change,” Burns said.
14/08/2005 - 11:56:01
Hundreds of motorbike enthusiasts are to gather in Dublin city centre today to raise funds for sick children.
The 5th annual Motor Cycle Rideout is in aid of the Bubble Gum Club which organises trips and events for children with life threatening illnesses.
Since it was set up in 1994 the group has looked after over five thousand children.
Event organiser Jacqueline Rafter says the groups’ trips are life-changing for the children.
“Hospital consultants have basically said that it can add actually years onto these children’s lives,” she said.
“They get to mingle with other children with the same illnesses as well, it doesn’t make them feel alien,” said Miss Rafter.
“It’s a positive thing for everybody all-round,” she added.
A teenager has been tied to a lamppost and covered in paint in south Belfast.
The attack was carried out at Broadway, just off the Donegall Road, by three men believed to be wearing balaclavas at about 1345 BST.
The 15-year-old boy has been taken to Belfast City Hospital.
Police have appealed for anyone with information concerning the incident to contact them.
Twenty nine people died in the Real IRA attack
The seventh anniversary of the Omagh bomb will be commemorated in the town’s Remembrance Garden later.
Families of the victims together with Lord Rooker and Irish Education Minister Mary Hanafin will take part in the service.
Twenty-nine men, women and children died and hundreds were injured in the car bomb attack in the County Tyrone town on 15 August 1998.
It was the single worst atrocity in 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.
Michael McKevitt, 54, from Blackrock, County Louth, is serving a 20-year sentence in Portlaoise for running the Real IRA, the organisation which carried out the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people and unborn twins.
He and four other people in the Republic of Ireland - Seamus Daly, Seamus McKenna, Liam Campbell and Colm Murphy - are being sued by some of the Omagh relatives.
Two men and a male juvenile arrested in connection with the murder of 15-year-old Thomas Devlin have been released without charge.
One of the men has been rearrested on an unrelated charge following a search which was carried out in connection with the murder on Wednesday night.
Thomas was stabbed in the back five times as he and two friends walked home on Somerton Road after buying sweets.
Police investigating his murder have made a fresh appeal for information.
Detectives want to speak to two youths who were in the area at the time.
They would also like to hear from the person who treated Thomas after the attack and went with him to the Mater Hospital.
They said the investigation was ongoing and urged anyone who was in the area of the Fortwilliam service station and Somerton Park and who has information to contact them.
Thomas’ 18-year-old friend was injured in the attack, but not seriously. A 16-year-old boy managed to escape.
Thomas, a student at Belfast Royal Academy, was a talented musician who played the horn at school.
14 August 1969
The British Government has sent troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a “limited operation” to restore law and order.
It follows three days and two nights of violence in the mainly-Catholic Bogside area of Londonderry. Trouble has also erupted in Belfast and other towns across Northern Ireland.
It also comes after a speech by the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, Jack Lynch, regarded by many as “outrageous interference” in which he called for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be sent to the province.
He also called for Anglo-Irish talks on the future of Northern Ireland.
Exhausted police
The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Major James Chichester-Clark, responded by saying neighbourly relations with the Republic were at an end and that British troops were being called in.
The British Home Secretary James Callaghan was in a plane on his way to talks with Prime Minister Harold Wilson in Cornwall when he received a radio-telephone call asking for troops to be deployed.
Shortly after 1700 hours local time, 300 troops from the 1st Battalion, Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire, occupied the centre of Londonderry, replacing the exhausted police officers who had been patrolling the cordons around the Bogside.
The troops have been on standby for the past couple of days at MYS Sea Eagle, the Royal Navy base on the outskirts of the city.
The arrival of the British troops was greeted with cheering and singing from behind the barricades in the Roman Catholic area of Londonderry.
They were chanting: “We’ve won, we’ve won. We’ve brought down the government.”
The trouble began three days ago during the annual Apprentice Boys march, which marks the 13 boy supporters of William of Orange who defended Londonderry against the forces of the Catholic King James II in 1688.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary were forced to use tear gas - for the first time in their history - to try to bring the rioting under control.
But tensions mounted with the mobilisation of the B Specials. The special constables, who are armed and mostly part-time, were supposed to help the RUC restore order - but they are regarded with deep suspicion by the Roman Catholics.
On the streets of Belfast, the appearance of the B Specials led to an escalation in the violence while the special constables reportedly stood by and watched.
In Context
The army’s warm welcome was short-lived, as was the British Government’s intention to pull out the troops within days.
It soon became clear the violence was not going to end.
As more British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland, fresh questions were raised about the role of Westminster.
Although the army in Northern Ireland came under the control of the Secretary of State for Defence in London many Catholics saw it as a tool of the Unionist Government in Stormont.
The violence increased, internment was introduced in August 1971 and on 24 March 1972 the British Prime Minister Edward Heath suspended Stormont and direct rule was reimposed.
It was not until the Downing Street Declaration of 1993 that there appeared to be any real prospect of peace.
After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 terms were reached to reduce the number of troops in Northern Ireland.
In November 2004 there were 11,000 British soldiers in Northern Ireland - down from a peak figure of about 30,000 in the mid 1970s.
It is planned to reduce the force by a further 6,000 by the summer of 2006.
Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome | Theme designs available here
