Anorak

IRA

Posts Tagged ‘IRA’

Sinn Féin Leader Gerry Adams And The 1972 Murder of ‘IRA Informer’ Jean McConville

Undated file photo of Jean McConville (left) with three of her children before she vanished in 1972 as Jean McConville's IRA killers tried to silence her son days after she vanished, it has been revealed. Michael McConville, who was 11 when his mother was snatched from her west Belfast home in 1972, was abducted, beaten and threatened at gunpoint by young republicans intent on keeping her disappearance quiet.  Issue date: Sunday November 3, 2013.

Undated file photo of Jean McConville (left) with three of her children before she vanished in 1972 as Jean McConville’s IRA killers tried to silence her son days after she vanished, it has been revealed. Michael McConville, who was 11 when his mother was snatched from her west Belfast home in 1972, was abducted, beaten and threatened at gunpoint by young republicans intent on keeping her disappearance quiet. Issue date: Sunday November 3, 2013.

 

RIGHT now Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams is answering police questions. Or, maybe, he’s getting an actor to do it for him?

Addams has been questioned by Northern Ireland police in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConvill.

The BBC:

Mrs McConville, a 37-year-old widow and mother of 10, was abducted from her flat in the Divis area of west Belfast and shot by the IRA.  Her body was recovered from a beach in County Louth in 2003.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 30th, April 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment


‘Our Nelson Mandelas’ – The IRA’s Balcombe Street Gang

The four Provisional IRA terrorists known as the Balcombe Street Terror Gang, from left: Hugh Doherty, Martin O'Connel, Edward Butler and Harry Duggan, in a line up in London. PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images

Photo: The four Provisional IRA terrorists known as the Balcombe Street Terror Gang, from left: Hugh Doherty, Martin O’Connel, Edward Butler and Harry Duggan, in a line up in London. 

ON May 10 1998, four men made a dramatic appearance on the platform at a special Sinn Fein conference in Dublin. There was ‘stamping of feet, wild applause and triumphant cheering’ during a 10 minute ovation while the men known as the Balcombe Street gang stood grinning with clenched fists in the air. At the same conference, and to great applause, Gerry Adams described the four men as ‘our Nelson Mandelas!’

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 10th, December 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Politicians | Comment


On This Day In Photos: The IRA Murder Ross McWhirter

ON This Day In Photo: November 27, 1975: Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records and presenter of the associated BBC show alongside his twin brother Norris, is murdered by the IRA.

McWhirter, a one-time Conservative parliamentary candidate, had offered £50,000 to anyone who could provide information leading to the arrest of IRA bombers who had been prolific in England.

Two gunman had been hiding in the garden of McWhirter’s home on Enfield, North London. Inside, the victim was getting ready for a trip to the theatre.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 27th, November 2011 | In: Flashback | Comments (2)


After The Manchester Bomb Exploded This Video Was Taken

ON June 15, 1996, an IRA bomb went off in Manchester. It went off outside Marks and Spencer on Corporation Street. Hundreds were injured. No-one died. Whoever did got away. Retired police officer Ian Mack, 60, filmed the devastation from a police van.

What makes this video authentic is the lack of commentary and music:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 1st, February 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment


In Pictures Then And Now: The Real IRA, Sinn Fein And Dublin Remember The Easter Rising

THE Real IRA were at the Republican Easter commemoration ceremony at Creggan cemetery in Londonderry. They came to mark the Sinn Fein ‘Easter Rising’ of 1916 against British rule. The short-lived rebellion claimed the lives of 794 civilians and 521 police and soldiers. Republican prisoners have barricaded themselves into a dining hall at Northern Ireland’s top security jail. Twenty-eight inmates have blocked the doors of the room at Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim. Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams addresses a rally in Milltown Cemetery. Taoiseach Brian Cowen greeted President Mary McAleese at the GPO on O’Connell Street in Dublin. There was no trouble. There were no bombs. Diplomacy rules…

8611724

Image 4 of 29

Masked members of the Real IRA at a Republican Easter commemoration ceremony at Creggan cemetery in Londonderry.

Posted: 5th, April 2010 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)


National Archives Releases Evidence Of IRA’s Balcombe Street Gang: In Pictures

walton-street1THE IRA is no longer the pariah of the British Isles. Factions of armed Irish Nationalists still exist. But the fear factor has been mush diminished. The National Archives has released documents showing an IRA list of potential targets recovered by police in a raid on a north London flat in the 1970s.

What was planned at 16 Milton Grove, London N16 looks very much like mass murder.

The targets were many and fanciful:

Barking Power Station
Somerset House
Post Office Tower
Tate Gallery
Madame Tussauds
New Scotland Yard
British Museum
The stock Exchange
Post Office Research Centre Of Neasden
Wormwood Scrubs
The King George Memorial Park, Stanmore

But what is evidence and what is circumstantial becomes further confused when we note that among the items retrieved from the premises was “Egon Ronays comments on Waltons of Walton Street” [sic].

On 18 November 1975, the IRA tossed a bomb into Walton’s restaurant in Walton Street in Chelsea. Two diners were killed.

The four Provisional IRA terrorists known as the Balcombe Street Terror Gang, were Hugh Doherty, Martin O’Connel, Edward Butler and Harry Duggan.

Those documents and pictures of the guilty and the crimes:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 28th, October 2009 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)


30 Years Since The IRA Murdered Mountbatten And Paul Maxwell, In Pictures

11183162THIRTY years ago today, Queen’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was murdered by the IRA.

Also killed were one of the earl’s twin grandsons, Nicholas, 14.

Later in the day, the IRA murdered 18 British soldiers by bombs.

In a statement at the time the IRA said the killing of Lord Mountbatten was “one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country.”

A sick joke:

Also killed on Mountbatten’s boat was Paul Maxwell, 15, a local employed as a boat boy.

Says Paul MaxWell’s father John, of his sion’s killer, one Thomas McMahon:

“I would like some kind of explanation from him in relation to his actions.” Furthermore, he revealed that his son’s killer has snubbed two requests for a meeting.

“I’ve made two approaches to McMahon, the first through a priest, who warned me in advance that he thought there wouldn’t be any positive response. And there wasn’t. I have some reservations about meeting him, obviously – it might work out in such a way that I would regret having made the contact. On the other hand, if we met and I could even begin to understand his motivation. If we could meet on some kind of a human level, a man to man level, it could help me come to terms with it. But that might be very optimistic. McMahon knows the door is open at this end.

“There is one question above all others that he would like to ask McMahon: ‘I think I would put a question to him directly, along the lines of…’If I had killed his son, for whatever reason, how would he feel about it? Would he be capable of putting himself in my shoes, to look at it from my angle?’ I’d be interested to know how he would reply to that.’”

In Pictures:

Posted: 27th, August 2009 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)


IRA Fight Taliban In London

THE IRA take on the Taliban in London – and win? Deadliest Warrior:

Posted: 9th, July 2009 | In: Reviews | Comment