1980-1989 | Backing terror operations | Northern Ireland

The UK’s refusal to proscribe the UDA terror organisation ridiculed

19 December 1980 On 19 December 1980, an article appeared in the New York Daily News, based on a telephone conversation with Sam Duddy, the press relations officer of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the largest Loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The journalist, Michael Daly, expressed his astonishment that it was possible to find the…

1980-1989 | Censorship | Northern Ireland

Members of Sinn Fein banned from broadcasting

19 October 1988 Today in 1988, Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, issued a banning order preventing Gerry Adams and other members of Sinn Fein from broadcasting their opinions on the airwaves. Although technically the ban included eleven loyalist and Republican organisations, its prime goal was to silence Sinn Fein, the largest political party campaigning against…

1970-1979 | Detention without trial | Northern Ireland

PM advised to be ‘economical with the truth’ over detention of Catholics

18 October 1972 Today in 1972, Prime Minister Edward Heath was briefed to be ‘economical with the truth’ when he met the Irish Taoiseach, Jack Lynch. The advice was to inform him only that ‘the police (in Northern Ireland) draw no distinction between Catholics and Protestants in the investigation of security offences and the prosecution…

1970-1979 | Northern Ireland | Torture

Routine use of torture in Ulster exposed

17 October 1971 On 17 October 1971, the Sunday Times published a front page article entitled ‘How Ulster Internees are Made to Talk,’ in which former detainee Pat Shivers recounted how, over a period of several days, he was hooded and forced into agonizing stress positions and fell unconscious repeatedly.  The Ministry of Defence immediately held a…

1970-1979 | Detention without trial | Northern Ireland | Torture

Army arrests hundreds of catholics under ‘internment without trial’ powers

9 August 1971 On 9 August 1971, hundreds of British soldiers were deployed across Northern Ireland to arrest 342 Catholics and two protestants with suspected Republican sympathies under new powers of ‘internment without trial.’1 They kicked down doors and dragged men of all ages from their beds. Only Catholic areas were targeted. The British government saw…

1970-1979 | Civilians slaughtered | Northern Ireland

Six, including priest, shot dead by British troops in West Belfast

9 August 1971 On 9 August 1971, six civilians ranging in age from 19 to 50 years, including Hugh Mullan, a Catholic priest, and Joan Connolly, a 45 year old grandmother, were shot dead in West Belfast by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment during a mass round up of Catholic men on the Ballymurphy estate….

1970-1979 | Civilians slaughtered | Massacres | Northern Ireland

Army snipers kill five in West Belfast including three children and a priest

9 July 1972 On 9 July 1972, soldiers of the British parachute regiment had taken up position behind sandbags in a lumbar yard on the Springhill Estate in West Belfast. They claimed to have been fired upon first, but civilian witnesses testified that it was the soldiers who opened fire on two cars which had…

2010-2019 | Media propaganda | Northern Ireland

The Law should protect our crimes but not their’s

6 July 2018 On 6 July 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May slammed down Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson’s suggestion to give members of the IRA the same legal protection from prosecution that he proposed for members of the armed forces implicated in terror killings, intimidation, torture or other offences. Williamson had written secretly to the prime…

1980-1989 | Backing terror operations | Northern Ireland

The UK refuses to proscribe the UDA after finding a large cache of weapons

26 May 1981 Today in 1981, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) raided the headquarters of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in Belfast, discovering a large cache of lethal weapons, including a Thompson sub-machine gun, six Sten guns, a revolver and 550 rounds of ammunition.  This came just a week after its supreme commander,…

1970-1979 | Northern Ireland

Ulster Defence Regiment gunmen murder a Catholic couple

7 May 1974 On 7 May 1974, a Catholic couple, James Desmond Delvin, a bar manager aged fourty five, and his wife Gertrude, a librarian aged fourty four, were driving to their home in Dungannon in County Tyrone, with their seventeen year old daughter Patricia. Suddenly, a man dressed in what appeared to be a…