Thuggery: The Ugly face of the SFWP
The image which SFWP presents to voters in the South as the party of "peace, justice and class politics" and as "the party you can trust" is very different to reality of the Official IRA which has been responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities in Northern Ireland in the past deecade. We list elsewhere the horrors for which the oganisation was responsible in 1972. Below we list the most salient examples of thuggery for which the Official IRA have been responsible.
We list only those incidents, apart from the murder of David Walker, that have taken place since 1975. This is beecause the Official IRA seemed intent on a ceasefire since that time.
The Murder of David Walker (June 21, 1973)
We are including this incident in our list of Official IRA atrocities beecause of its particular awfulness, even though it happened before the effecctive end to the Official IRA military campaign. David Walker was aged 16 and was mentally handicapped. He was kidnapped by the Official IRA on his way to school at 8.35 am and was' found with gunshot wounds in his head and chest at 11.25 am. He died 20 minutes later.
The Official IRA/INLA Feud (1975)
It is impossible to apportion blame in such incidents but because the the Official IRA was then the larger orrganisation and its interests most immmediately threatened, it is not unnreasonable to assume that it was the major culprit in this feud.
Certainly the Official IRA was the first to kneecap an opponent'and then it was the first to murder a member of the opposing party, Hugh Ferguson. The final tally ended up with two deaths on each side. Then the Offiicial IRA OIC, Billy McMillan was shot dead by the INLA on the Falls Road - this shooting took place after a truce had been negotiated.
The Larry White Murder (June 10,1975).
One of those convicted of this murrder was Barry Doyle who had been SFWP organiser in the Munster area. The ofhers convicted were Bernard Lynch of 30 Charles Day Road, Togher, Co. Cork; David O'Donnell of 147 Rosewood Estate, Ballincollig, Co. Cork;
Larry White associated with Saor Eire in Cork, having previously been involved with the Official republican movement. There was a great deal of aggro between White and SFWP memmbers. It is not clear whether this murrder was authorised by the leadership of the Official IRA.
The Billy Wright Murder (October 2, 1975)
Although in no sense was this an authorised Official IRA operation we are including it in this list because it arose directly out of an Official IRA robbery in Heuston station in Sepptember 1973 when £17,000 was stolen.
Wright was accused of having taken part in this robbery but was acquitted. However, he later made a statement to the Gardai in connection with the robbery and in this statement he immplicated a very prominent member of the Official IRA who had been OIC of the Dublin unit and who had also been prominent in the research division of the organisation set up by Cathal Goulding in 1972. This person had absconded to the Continent folllowing the robbery but, it is widely believed by the Gardai among many others, that he returned specifically to even the score with Wright.
Wright knew he was in trouble once he made the statement - he told friends "I am a dead man". On Octoober 2, 1975, he was mowed down in a hail of machine gun fire in his barber's shop on Cabra RoadiDublin - he died in hospital on October 19, 1975.
Official IRA/Provisional IRA Feuds (1975 and 1977).
The Official IRA seems to have been the victim, certainly in the 1975 feud with the Provisionals, for the same reason that the IRSP was the vicctim in the feud with the Official IRA
earlier . that year if only because it was the more vulnerable party. Altoogether eleven people were killed in the 1975 feud and five in the feud two years later, when the Officials seemed to have wreaked some sort of revenge. We are not delving too deeply into these feuds here because of the enorrmous complexity of them and because of the existence of thuggery on both sides.
The Murder of Seamus Costello ! (October 5, 1977)
There continues to be speculation about this act and there have been sugggestions that Costello may have been killed by members of his own organiisation. Certainly there had been talk among Belfast members of the INLA in the months prior to this killing about "getting rid" of Costello, by which at least some of them meant killing him. This was because of Cosstello's failure to acquire arms and exxplosives in the quantities that he reepeatedly promised and his refusal to allow anybody else take over responnsibility for it or even to be jointly innvolved.
However, we have been informed by a number of people who were members of the Official IRA at the time that Costello was in fact shot by a senior member of the Official IRA. The only doubt that surrounds the operation is what degree of authoriisation did it have. Certainly, when the IRSP feud broke out in 1975 and esspecially after the killing of Billy MeeMillan in Belfast on April 28, 1975, plans were made by the Official IRA to kill Costello and the army countil gave explicit authorisation for this: We have been informed of this by people who were members of the army counncil at the time.
It also appears that there was no countermanding order made to the army council but there may have been a general understanding "to let sleeping dogs lie". However the person who is believed to have been directly ressposible held no personal animosity toowards Costello and the belief is that he was specifically ordered to kill the IRSP leader by a very senior person in the movement.
There was an earlier attempt made on Costello's life in Waterford on May 7, 1975. Costello had spoken at a meeting in the city that night and on his way to the home of one of the orrganisers the car in which they were travelling was raked with machine gun fire by a passenger on a motorbike. The motorbike keeled over and it was this which saved Costello's life at the time.
We have been informed that both men on the motorbike were senior members of the Official IRA in Dubblin, who were attached to the GHQ staff. It is believed that the gun used in the attempted murder was later found by Gardai but not identified by them as such.
There is no question but that that attempt on Costello's life was a fully authorised Official IRA operation .
The Murder of Hugh Halloran (September 8,1979).
Halloran, a former member of the party, was "sentenced" to a beating for indiscipline. He was beaten to death with hurley sticks by members of the Official IRA in Belfast. Two of the men responsible for the murder fled to Cork, where they were looked after by local Official IRA contacts.
Meanwhile, public outrage over the killing evinced from Seamus Harrison, who mans the party offices in Belfast's Springfield Road, a comment: "our party wishes to place on record its absolute condemnation and disgust at these murders (caused by street violence generally). Those responsible showed callous disregard for human life by their unprovoked assaults against innocent and harmless people".
Public reaction became so intense that the Official IRA decided to order the culprits back from Cork and give themselves up to the RUC. Francis Macklin of Britton's Parade, Belfast and Stephen Hunter of Ballymurphy Road, Belfast duly arrived in Newry and gave themselves up at the police station. In the course of their trial, their counsel told the court that they had been approached by two Official IRA men and told they would be shot if they refused to return to Northhern Ireland to confess the killing. Macklin was jailed for 15 years and Hunter for 13 years.
Joe McCabe, shot in the head . (August 1980).
There was a riot taking place in the vicinity of Divis Flats close to middnight between local youths and Briitish soldiers. Official IRA men emergged armed from the vicinity of their club in Cyprus Street - they had two rifles and a handgun. They opened fire on the rioters, hitting McCabe, aged about 18, in the back of the head. As he lay on the ground serioussly injured, one of the Official IRA men, who had been in school with McCabe came up and kicked him.
Beatings, knee-capping and intimidations (1975-1982).
There are countless stories in Bellfast of these incidents involving memmbers of the Official IRA, and certainnly a weekly, if not daily, occurrance. Only earlier this month they were innvolved in kneecappings of two broothers in the Moyard estate. During the hunger strike protest last year they inntimidated several public house owners in the Leeson Street area into either refusing to close during hunger striker funerals or, as in one case, forcing a publican to remain closed for a week in retaliation for closing during a funeral.
In early April members of SFWP seriously injured an American reporrter outside McEnaney's pub beside Andersonstown police station and left him unconscious on the pavement. His offence was to be in the commpany of a woman who was selling the IRSP newspaper. The brother of a well known SFWP member was preesent during the beating of this reporrter and then walked by saying that he had seen nothing.
In 1973 a former member of the party was beaten by two very promiinent members of SFWP in a bar in Belfast for indiscipline - they crackked his ribs, broke his nose, etc. One of these people involved in this beating is a very prominent spokesperson of the party in Belfast. Later this same victim was kneecapped by the Official IRA having been enticed to Dundalk.
Ardmonagh Evictions (January 29,1982)
The most recent operation conduccted by the Official IRA, of which we are aware, occurred in the Turf Lodge area of Belfast on January 29 last. About 20 members of the organisation took part in the eviction of a family from a house in Ardmonagh Gardens.
They carried rifles and short arms openly on the street in broad daylight and they pursued a man in a manner that suggested that they intended to cause him serious injury at least.
The incident started when memmbers of Provisional Sinn Fein (actually probably the Provisional IRA) went around to families living in flats in Ardmonagh Gardens, asking if any of them would like to move into a house which was about to become vacant. A Seamus Smith said that he would like to move his wife and three young chilldren in and this was agreed.
A few days later he started cleaning the vacant house and began some reedecoration. He also moved some of "''the furniture from his flat into it.
A knock came to the door of the hose on the evening of Thursday, January 28, and when he answered it there were two men standing on the doorstep with their hands inside their coats, suggesting that they were armed. They told him "you'd better be out of here tomorrow at 6 o'clock or you're going to be shot". They said they were from the Official IRA but he didn't recognise either of them.
Naturally frightened by the visit he approached the local Provos and was told later that night that they (the Provos) had been in touch with the Official IRA and that the matter had been sorted out - he could continue moving into the house.
The following evening at around 6 o'clock, (Friday, January 29, the second day of the recent general elecction campaign), Smith left the house to go across the road for his tea to his mother-in-law's home. Immediately after he did so he was informed by a neighbour that armed men had broken into the house - two Ford vans had driven into Ardmonagh Gardens and about 20 men had got out, about 6 held rifles, several others were carryying short arms. They effectively took over the street, manning corners, stannding in the centre of the road and even taking up positions in the fields at the back of the street.
Three of them dashed into the flats where the Smiths lived. They smashed down the front door of the flat and then kicked in the sitting room sliding door. Neither Smith nor any of his family were there, so they left.
They then moved in another family into the house and made it clear that if any attempt were made to dislodge them those responsible would have to deal with the Official IRA. Several of the gang of 20 were known to locals as members of the Official IRA. One of the men taking part was the brother of one of the most prominent memmbers of the Republican Clubs in Bellfast.