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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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,…
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…
