You are being held hostage by the Irish Republican Enemy. You’ve got one of our members under interrogation in Castlereagh. The Crying Game 1997 starring Stephen Rea & Miranda Richardson & Forest Whitaker & Jaye Davidson & Adrian Dunbar & Tony Slattery & Jim Broadbent & Birdy Sweeney & Ralph Brown et al, director Neil Jordan
He’s a good soldier. ibid. Whitaker
‘Canary Wharf sent the message that peace and war are both options, and neither one is a given.’ The Docklands Bomb: Executing Peace, BBC 2016
Between 1990 and 1993, the IRA targeted London’s financial heart with a series of massive bombs, which killed several people and caused more than £1 billion of damage. ibid. caption
In August 1994, after 25 years of conflict and 3,500 deaths, the IRA declared a ceasefire. ibid.
On the eve of President Clinton’s visit to Northern Island, the British and Irish governments appointed former US senator George Mitchell to work out how to get the terrorists to disarm while getting peace negotiations underway between the parties. ibid.
The IRA reinstated its ceasefire in July 1997 allowing Sinn Fein to join the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. ibid.
The feeling here today is one of outrage over this unprecedented terrorist attack on the Royal Family. Patriot Games 1991 starring Harrison Ford & Anne Archer & Patrick Bergin & Sean Bean & Thora Birch & James Fox & Samuel L Jackson & Polly Walker & J E Freeman & James Earl Jones & Richard Harris et al, director Phillip Noyce, TV news
That is where we must strike – at the royals and the ruling class. ibid.
We will not have any contact with the British government until they renounce the use of talks. Spitting Image s18e6, ITV 1996
At the heart of the politics in Northern Ireland is the twilight world of the Intelligence war, the deadly battle between the security forces and the IRA … in what both sides call the Long War. Panorama: The IRA: The Long War, BBC 1988
The Long War started 20 years ago with stones being thrown in Londonderry. ibid.
On 22nd October a French Customs aircraft spotted a boat off the west tip of Spain … on board was 150 tons of arms from Libya to the IRA. ibid.
‘Isn’t the long war unwinable?’ ibid. question to Gerry Adams
Last month the Attorney General Sir Patrick Mayhew announced that there would be no prosecution of RAC officers in the interests of national security. ibid.
In the Northern Ireland conflict spying was a very dangerous game. The IRA’s chief interrogator explains how he extracted confessions from informers before they were shot. Except that for years the interrogator was himself one of Britain’s most important spies. Codenamed Stakeknife he was uncovered in 2003: real name Freddie Scappaticci. Now Stakeknife and his spy masters are the subject of a major criminal inquiry – were fellow spies sacrificed so that he could continue to spy? Our Panorama investigation suggests they were. Panorama: The Spy in the IRA, BBC 2017
Scappaticci became head of the Nutting Squad during the 1980s. ibid.
‘There’s more to life than killing.’ ibid. Scappaticci to Cook Report investigators
1981 Belfast Northern Ireland: The conflict in Northern Ireland seems to be just on and on in a relentless cycles of violence, and then suddenly in 1981 it took the strangest, darkest, most dramatic twist when Bobby Sands and 9 of his young comrades insisting they be recognised as political prisoners went on hunger strike. Bobby Sands: 66 Days, BBC 2017
‘The march in West Belfast was the first test of public support for this second republican hunger strike.’ ibid. television news
‘There was no-one to save us but the boys … At 18 and a half I joined the Provos.’ ibid. Sands
In 1920 Irish Republican Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, began a hunger strike against his imprisonment without trial by the British government. ibid.
After four years in the Long Kesh Internment Camp Bobby Sands was released in 1976. ibid.
By 1976 over 1,500 lives had been lost in the conflict. ibid.
When Bobby Sands returned to prison in 1976 special category status had been abolished. ibid.
‘The blanket protest was born.’ ibid.
‘There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed. ibid. Sands
Their Hunger Their Pain Our Struggle. ibid. wall art protest mural
‘The body fights back sure enough.’ ibid.
These are new terrorists training in Northern Ireland: a new generation of extremists. Violent Republicans have not gone away. And an old friend on the run still wants to help them: Colonel Gaddafi still wants to help them in their fight. Having supported the IRA for decades, his weapons turn them into a major fighting force. Exposure s1e1: Gaddafi & The IRA, ITV 2011
Over the course of 30 years the Libyan dictator has supported the IRA: he donated money, arms and Semtex explosive to help fuel a war in Ireland and Britain. ibid.
As the conflict intensified the need for more explosives grew. ibid.
Britain [Harold Wilson] offered £14 million to Gaddafi as part of a trade package on condition he renounce the IRA; Gaddafi had wanted £52 million so he rejected the offer. ibid.
Gaddafi appealed to the United Nations to intervene against what he saw as Britain’s inhumane conduct. ibid.
To the IRA it was like winning the lottery. ibid.
They [French customs] unloaded 2 tons of Semtex; 2,000 electric detonators; 1,000 AK-47 assault rifles; 120 RPG-7 rocket propelled grenades; 20 SAM-7 surface to air missiles; 10 DHK heavy machine guns; 600 grenades; 1,000 mortars; 4,700 fuses; 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition. ibid.
The King has offered the rebel Irish a treaty. Some of the Fenians want to accept it. The IRA do not. Peaky Blinders s2e3, Campbell, BBC 2014
In 2010 Dolours Price, a former member of the IRA, gave a series of interviews to journalist Ed Moloney. I, Dolours, caption, Netflix 2018
My father spent seven years altogether interned in different prisons but he never was charged. ibid. Dolours
In 1921, after a bloody IRA campaign, most of Ireland won independence from Britain. But in the north of Ireland, six counties stayed loyal to the Crown, its largely Protestant population determined to stay British. Within the borders of the new Northern Ireland, a resentful Catholic minority was kept in place by violence and discrimination. A much smaller number of Catholics gave support to the IRA. ibid. captions
We were a very angry people … When they signed away the six counties, they actually signed us away. ibid. Dolours
By the late 1960s the world was changing. A new generation of Catholics began to demand change. They took to the streets to demand voting rights, jobs and houses. Dolours and her sister Marian became active in ‘The People’s Democracy’. ibid. captions
The northern state was rotten. ibid. Dolours
By 1969 Northern Ireland was descending into chaos. In Belfast, loyalist gangs attacked and burned out Catholic homes. ibid. captions
Within months of arriving, British troops were ordered to raid Catholic areas in search of IRA weapons. ibid.
In 1973 after a two-month trial Dolours Price and her sister Marian were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Dolours, Marian and two other members of the bombing team began a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. ibid.
‘No warning, nothing said, no screams, nothing, just the shots.’ This Week: Death on the Rock, witness, Thames TV 1988
‘From a distance of about four feet and that the firing was continuous.’ ibid.
The killing by the SAS of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar has provoked intense debate. ibid.
Did the SAS men have the law on their side? ibid.
Were they operating what’s become known as a Shoot to Kill policy? ibid.
40 years ago Lord Mountbatten, the great uncle of Prince Charles, was blown up at sea by the IRA at Mullaghmore, off Northern Island. 3 others were killed on the boat including 2 teenage boys. The Day Mountbatten Died, BBC 2019
As viceroy he was the last colonial ruler of India; he was also Admiral of the Fleet, second cousin of the Queen, and mentor to the Prince of Wales. ibid.
Each summer the Mountbattens would take up residence at Classiebawn Castle. ibid.
County Sligo had deep roots in the Republican movement. ibid.
By 1979 the British army had been in Northern Ireland for ten years. Around 30,000 troops were lined up against an estimated 500 IRA volunteers. Yet 324 soldiers had already been killed. ibid.
The IRA planted a remote-controlled fifty-pound bomb on Lord Mountbatten’s boat Shadow V, sitting unguarded in the harbour. ibid.