On 24 October 1990 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) developed the tactic by introducing the so-called “human proxy bomb”. Three men deemed by the IRA to be “collaborators” (i.e. helping the security forces in some way) were strapped into three vehicles and forced to drive to three British military targets.
However, unlike the earlier proxy bombings, they were not given the chance to escape. The three synchronised attacks took place at Coshquin (near Derry), Cloghoge (near Newry), and Omagh in the early morning of 24 October 1990.
The Coshquin attack was the deadliest, killing the human proxy and six soldiers. One soldier was killed at Cloghoge, but the proxy survived. At Omagh there were no fatalities due to a faulty detonator.
Memorial stone
The Innocent Victims
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24 October 1990 Stephen Burrows, (30) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry.
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24 October 1990 Stephen Beacham, (20) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry.
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24 October 1990
Paul Worrall, (23) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry.
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24 October 1990 Vincent Scott, (21) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry.
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24 October 1990 David Sweeney, (19) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry.
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24 October 1990
Patrick Gillespie, (42) Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in van bomb attack on permanent British Army (BA) Vehicle Check Point (VCP), Buncrana Road, Coshquinn, near Derry. A civilian employed by British Army (BA), he was forced to drive the van bomb to the Vehicle Check Point (VCP).
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Proxy Bomb
The proxy bomb (also known as a human bomb) was a tactic used mainly by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland during the conflict known as “the Troubles“. It involved forcing people (including civilians, off-duty members of the British security forces, or people working for the security forces) to drive car bombs to British military targets, after placing them or their families under some kind of threat. The tactic was later adopted by FARC in Colombia and by rebels in the Syrian civil war.
The tactic has been compared to a suicide bomb, although each bomber in these cases is coerced rather than being a volunteer.
Early proxy bombs
The first proxy bombs took place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. By 1973, increased searches and surveillance by the British security forces was making it harder for IRA members to plant their bombs and escape. In response, the IRA introduced the ‘proxy bomb’ tactic in March of that year.
In these early proxy bombings, the driver and nearby civilians would usually be given enough time to flee the area before the bomb detonated. One of the proxy bomb attacks carried out by the IRA during this period took place in 1975, when an employee of Northern Ireland‘s Forensics Laboratory in Newtownbreda was forced to drive a car laden with explosives to the building. The explosion caused moderate damage, and operations resumed quickly. The Laboratory would be the subject of one of the largest IRA bombings in 1992, when a 1,700 kg van bomb abandoned in the laboratory parking lot demolished the facilities and caused widespread damage inside a radius of 1 km.
The proxy bomb was also used by Northern Irish loyalists, on at least one occasion. On 11 September 1974, masked gunmen in British Army uniform hijacked a car in Northern Ireland, placed a time bomb inside and forced the owner to drive it into the village of Blacklion in the Republic of Ireland. They claimed to be from the Ulster Volunteer Force and threatened to attack his family if he did not comply. The village was evacuated and the Irish Army carried out a controlled explosion on the car. They estimated that the bomb would have destroyed most of the village.
On 24 October 1990 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) developed the tactic by introducing the so-called “human proxy bomb”. Three men deemed by the IRA to be “collaborators” (i.e. helping the security forces in some way)were strapped into three vehicles and forced to drive to three British military targets. However, unlike the earlier proxy bombings, they were not given the chance to escape.
The three synchronised attacks took place at Coshquin (near Derry), Cloghoge (near Newry), and Omagh in the early morning of 24 October 1990. The Coshquin attack was the deadliest, killing the human proxy and six soldiers. One soldier was killed at Cloghoge, but the proxy survived. At Omagh there were no fatalities due to a faulty detonator.
Coshquin
The Coshquin operation involved 11 members of the IRA’s Derry City Brigade. RUCSpecial Branch had received some intelligence about the operation, but it was said to be only a “vague outline” of an “impending assault against a base” in the area.
A Catholic, Patrick Gillespie (aged 42), who lived in the Shantallow area of Derry and worked as a cook at the Fort George British Army base in the city, had been warned to stop working at the base or risk reprisal. On one occasion, the IRA had forced him to drive a bomb into the base, giving him just enough time to escape. However, that bomb had failed to detonate.
On 24 October 1990, members of the IRA’s Derry City Brigade took over Gillespie’s house. While his family was held at gunpoint, he was forced to drive his car to a rural spot on the other side of the border in County Donegal. Gillespie was then put in a van loaded with 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of explosives and told to drive to the Coshquin permanent border checkpoint on Buncrana Road.
An armed IRA team followed him by car to ensure he obeyed their commands. Four minutes from the checkpoint, the IRA team armed the bomb remotely. When Gillespie reached the checkpoint, at 3:55 AM, he tried to get out and warn the soldiers, but the bomb detonated when he attempted to open the door.
IRA bomb makers had installed a detonation device linked to the van’s courtesy light, which came on whenever the van door opened. As a safeguard, the bombers also used a timing device to ensure the bomb detonated at the right moment. Gillespie and six soldiers were killed, including Ranger Cyril J. Smith, from B. Coy. 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Rangers, was posthumously awarded the QGM as he tried to warn his comrades about the bomb rather than running for cover.
Smith was a Roman Catholic and native of Northern Ireland.
Witnesses reported hearing “shouting, screaming and then shots” right before the explosion. The bomb devastated the base, destroying the operations room and a number of armoured vehicles. It was claimed that the death toll would have been much higher had the soldiers not been sleeping in a recently built mortar-proof bunker. The blast damaged 25 nearby houses.[10]
At Gillespie’s funeral, Bishop Edward Daly said the IRA and its supporters were
“…the complete contradiction of Christianity. They may say they are followers of Christ. Some of them may even still engage in the hypocrisy of coming to church, but their lives and their works proclaim clearly that they follow Satan.”
Cloghoge
In tandem with the Coshquin operation, members of the IRA’s South Down Brigade took over the house of a Catholic man, James McAvoy (aged 65) in Newry. He was allegedly targeted because he served RUC officers at his filling station, which was beside the house.
He was driven away in a Toyota HiAce van while his family was held at gunpoint. At Flagstaff Hill, near the border with the Republic, members of the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade loaded the van with one ton of explosives. McAvoy was strapped into the driver’s seat and told to drive the van to the accommodation block at Cloghoge permanent vehicle checkpoint. Before he drove off, a senior IRA member seemed:
“to have a pang of conscience” and whispered in McAvoy’s ear, “don’t open the door; go out through the window”.
An IRA team followed the van in a car and turned into a side-road shortly before it reached the checkpoint. When McAvoy stopped the van and climbed out the window, a soldier came over and began shouting at him to move the vehicle. Moments later, a timer detonated the bomb. The soldier was killed outright and 13 other soldiers were injured. McAvoy survived but suffered a broken leg.
Omagh
At about the same time, there was a third attempted proxy bombing in County Tyrone. A third man was strapped into a car and forced to drive it to Lisanelly British Army base in Omagh while his family was held at gunpoint.
This third bomb weighed 1,500 pounds (680 kg) but, due to a faulty detonator, the main explosive charge failed to explode.
Later proxy bombs
Several more ‘human proxy bombings’ were planned, but the operations were called-off, partly because of the outrage it drew from all sections of the community.
Nevertheless, there were a few more ‘traditional’ proxy bombings in the following months.
At 9:30 am on 22 November 1990, the IRA took over a man’s house in Newtownbutler, County Fermanagh. While his parents were held at gunpoint, he was forced to drive a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck to Annaghmartin military checkpoint.
He was told that the truck carried a bomb on a five-minute timer. When he reached the checkpoint he shouted a warning and a small explosion was heard, but the main bomb failed to detonate. The vehicle was found to contain 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg) of homemade explosives; the biggest IRA bomb up to that point.
The same checkpoint was the subject of a heavy machine gun attack on 26 December.
In early February 1991, another proxy bomb wrecked an Ulster Defence Regiment base in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, but there were no fatalities.
The proxy bomb tactic caused outrage in both the unionist and Irish nationalist communities. The final IRA use of proxy bombs came on 24 April 1993, when they forced two London taxi drivers to drive bombs towards Downing Street and New Scotland Yard. There were no casualties, however, as the drivers managed to shout warnings and to abandon their cars in time. A conventionally delivered bomb was detonated by the IRA on the same day in the financial centre of Bishopsgate in central London.
In the early 2000s, FARC rebels began to use proxy car bombs in Colombia. This has been attributed to training given to FARC by members of the Provisional IRA. In the Colombian province of Arauca in February 2003, three brothers were forced to drive car bombs into military checkpoints, each told that the other brothers would be killed if they did not comply.
In December 2013 Óglaigh na hÉireann, a Real IRA splinter group, claimed responsibility for an attempted bomb attack on Belfast City centre in which a car was hijacked and its driver forced to deliver the bomb to its intended target. The bomb only partially detonated leaving no casualties.
Effect of the tactic
The ‘human proxy bombings’ of October 1990 caused widespread outrage even among some IRA supporters, who claimed it irreparably damaged the republican movement.
“as an operation calculated to undermine the IRA’s armed struggle, alienate even its most loyal supporters and damage Sinn Féin politically, it had no equal.”
Moloney has suggested that the tactic may have been calculated to weaken the position of alleged “hawks” in republicanism—those who favoured armed action over electoral politics. At the same time Moloney argues that the widespread public revulsion would have strengthened the position of those in the IRA such as Gerry Adams who were considering how republicanism could abandon violence and focus on electoral politics.
Peter Taylor wrote of the proxy bombs that, by such actions and the revulsion they caused in the community, IRA hardliners inadvertently strengthened the hand of those within the republican movement who argued that an alternative to armed struggle had to be found.
This is simply the story of a boy trying to grow up, survive, thrive, have fun & discover himself against a backdrop of events that might best be described as ‘explosive’, captivating & shocking the world for thirty long years.
Hi folks, Just a shortish blog post to wish you all a wonderful evening and a fantastic Xmas day. Some of you guys have followed me and my story for years now and during recent tragic soul destroying lows to a few joy filled epic highs you have been there to support , comfort and … Continue reading Merry Christmas to all my friends out there X→
Last chance to order before Xmas delivery cut-off period nxt Wednesday . A personally signed copy of my No.1 Best Selling book : A Belfast Child , which may be worth a few quid if my story is made into a movie – watch this space ! UK Orders Free postage for UK orders only … Continue reading A singed copy of my book for Xmas ?→
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Donald McCullin, CBEHon FRPS (9 October 1935) is an internationally known Britishphotojournalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and the impoverished.
During McCullin’s period of National Service in the RAF he was posted to the Canal Zone during the 1956 Suez Crisis, where he worked as a photographer’s assistant. He failed to pass the written theory paper necessary to become a photographer in the RAF, and so spent his service in the darkroom.
During this period McCullin bought his first camera, a Rolleicord. On return to Britain shortage of funds led to him pawning the camera. His mother used her own money to redeem the pledge.
In 1959, a photograph he took of a local London gang was published in The Observer. Between 1966 and 1984, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine, recording ecological and man-made catastrophes such as war-zones, amongst them Biafra, in 1968, and victims of the African AIDS epidemic.
In 1968, his Nikon camera stopped a bullet intended for him.
In 1982 the British Government refused to grant McCullin a press pass to cover the Falklands War,claiming the boat was full.At the time he believed it was because the Thatcher government felt his images might be too disturbing politically.
He is the author of a number of books, including The Palestinians (with Jonathan Dimbleby, 1980), Beirut: A City in Crisis (1983), and Don McCullin in Africa (2005).
His book, Shaped by War (2010), was published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, Salford, England in 2010 and then at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath and the Imperial War Museum, London. His most recent publication is Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire, a poetic and contemplative study of selected Roman and pre-Roman ruins in North Africa and the Middle East.
In 2012, a documentary film of his life titled McCullin and directed by David Morris and Jacqui Morris was released. The film was nominated for two BAFTA awards.
In later years, McCullin has turned to landscape and still-life works and taking commissioned portraits.
Family life
Currently living in Somerset, he is married and has five children from his current and earlier marriages
In a new propaganda video British IS hostage John Cantlie looks frail and thin as his living nightmare continues as the last and longest held Western IS hostage. If anything positive can be taken from this latest offering at least we know John is/was in or near Mosul and alive and well (under the circumstance) . Praying that John’s release comes soon and be returned safe and well to his family in the UK.
Update July 2016
British hostage John Cantlie is shown in new Isis propaganda video
Kidnapped journalist talks about bombing of Mosul University in first video featuring him to appear since March
John Cantlie, the British journalist who has been held hostage by jihadis since 2012, is shown in a new video made by Islamic State.
Cantlie looks noticeably thinner in the video, the first to feature him since one that emerged on 19 March.
Once again, his skills as a journalist have been exploited by Isis in an attempt to lend credibility to propaganda films. On this occasion he discusses the bombing of Mosul University and is filmed by a camera that appears at a later stage to be attached to a drone as it flies over a city landscape strewn with rubble.
Wearing a long shirt and black trousers, he introduces himself before telling viewers that he is standing in front of the remains of the university. “You have to ask yourself: why did the coalition decide to destroy the university?” he says, adding: “Normal, social everyday life has been destroyed and if you are going to destroy a university, why bother?”
New footage of IS hostage John Cantlie has been release by Islamic State and although unverified – if and when this is confirmed to be genuine will give new hope to John’s family and millions of sympathisers across the world.
Cantlie, who was kidnapped in November 2012, is shown berating the US-led coalition for bombing a media building in the ISIS-held city of Mosul. in Iraq.
It has been over a year since Cantlie appeared in a propaganda video showing life inside the Syrian province of Aleppo.
ISIS propaganda Video shows English hostage John Cantlie
John Henry Cantlie
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ISIS New Propaganda Video – John Cantlie Report From Mosul Iraq
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What has happened to ISIS captive John Cantlie
The regular release of ISIS propaganda magazine Dabiq this week came with one noticeable omission — a message from John Cantlie.
Cantlie, a British freelance photojournalist, is the last western hostage ISIS is known to be holding captive in Syria. In the year since the militant group began murdering captive British and American journalists and aid workers, Cantlie has been put forward as a sort of correspondent in ISIS’ propaganda targeting foreigners.
But in the issue of Dabiq that appeared online July 13, titled The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men there was no Western government-damning rant attributed to Cantlie.
As noted on Twitter by Rita Katz, the executive director of jihadist monitoring network SITE Intelligence Group, it’s the first time Cantlie was absent from the publication since he began appearing in its pages last October.
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John Henry Cantlie (born 1970) is a British war photographer and correspondent who was kidnapped in Syria with James Foley in November 2012 and remains a hostage He had previously been kidnapped in Syria in July 2012 but was rescued a week later
Family history
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Heartbreaking:
John Cantlie’s father makes appeal for son’s release
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John Cantlie
John Cantlie is the great grandson of Sir James Cantlie, a doctor who co-founded the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887 (later the University of Hong Kong). In 1896, he was instrumental in the protection of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who might otherwise have been executed by the Qing dynasty secret service. His grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972.
Cantlie’s father Paul died on 16 October 2014, having released a video pleading for his son’s release on his deathbed.
First abduction
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Al Jazeera interviews journalist John Cantlie
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He was reportedly kidnapped by fighters while crossing illegally into Syria from Turkey on 19 July 2012, near Bab al-Hawa.Along with Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans, Cantlie was shot whilst trying to escape their captors. In an interview with The Sun newspaper on 26 August 2012, Cantlie said it was:
“every Englishman’s duty to try and escape if captured.”
Both photographers claimed they were about to be handed over to a jihad unit affiliated with al-Qaeda for ransom when they were rescued by the Free Syrian Army. Cantlie’s kidnapping is the first recorded case of a British journalist being held, shot and then rescued from fellow Britons during the revolutions of the Arab Spring.
In an account in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2012, Cantlie described his experience.
Oerlemans was shot in the left leg and Cantlie in the left arm during their escape attempt, Cantlie suffering ulnar nerve entrapment (loss of feeling and use to the hand) as a result.
In an account of the shooting, Cantlie said some of the British Muslims in the group repeatedly shouted, “die, kafir!” Oerlemans then stated that “the British guys were the most vindictive of them all”.They were taken back to the camp where a fighter who claimed to be an NHS doctor stabilized them and treated their wounds.The pair said the doctor gave them information and extra food. Cantlie later wrote in the October 2012 edition of FHM magazine that this was Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage befriends one or more of their captors. The pair were threatened with execution. Oerlemans stated that it was unclear who held them, but the group of militants were of multiple ethnicities.
Rescue
On 26 July 2012, one week after being kidnapped, they were rescued by four members of the Free Syrian Army. The rebels came into the camp shooting their weapons and held at least one jihad fighter at gunpoint while Cantlie and Oerlemans were helped into a waiting vehicle. Both photographers had to be assisted as their feet had been seriously injured when they tried to escape and neither could walk. They had lost all their camera equipment, passports and clothes in the incident, and were smuggled back across the border at a crossing used primarily by Syrian refugees. They were initially treated by a medic for The New York Times in Antakya before being debriefed by Turkish and then British intelligence.
On 9 October 2012 an individual suspected of being involved in the kidnap was arrested at Heathrow airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt.
This was Cantlie’s second visit to Syria. In March 2012, he became the first Western photographer to witness first-hand an incursion by government ground troops into a city when T72 heavy tanks rolled into the city of Saraquib in Idlib province and started shelling indiscriminately. In a feature in the Sunday Telegraph published 31 March, Cantlie wrote: “Then the tanks opened fire. Fist-sized pieces of shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one rebel immediately. His rifle clattered to the ground as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire.” To illustrate what the Syrian rebels were up against, Cantlie took a photograph looking down the barrel of an advancing T72.
Second abduction
Cantlie had not appeared in print or on social media since late 2012, and the trial of one of his alleged captors collapsed in 2013, when he could not be summoned as a witness because, in November 2012,Cantlie was abducted a second time, along with American journalist James Foley. Their taxi driver and Foley’s translator were not taken, however.They had reportedly been working together on a film about Cantlie’s first abduction.
Foley was beheaded in August 2014.
ISIL propaganda
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Brainwashing 101 with John Cantlie
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New ISIS video of hostage John Cantlie
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After disappearing for more than a year following his second abduction in late 2012, Cantlie resurfaced on 18 September 2014 in a video[30] posted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the first episode of a multi-part series entitled Lend Me Your Ears. As of February 2015, ISIL has released a total of six videos in the Lend Me Your Ears series, all of which feature Cantlie speaking while sitting at a wooden table and wearing orange prison garb against a black backdrop.
In the videos, Cantlie adopts a critical position toward Western foreign policy, including military actions, political statements, and media coverage. Cantlie is particularly critical of US and British hostage policy, comparing it unfavorably to the policy of other European countries that negotiate and pay for the release of hostages.
ISIL has released three additional videos apart from the Lend Me Your Ears series. These videos are noteworthy for depicting Cantlie as a Western journalist rather than a Western hostage. In both videos, Cantlie attempts to characterize the facts on the ground in Kobani, Mosul and rebel-controlled Aleppo as far more favorable to ISIL than is portrayed in the Western media.
Since Cantlie is a prisoner of ISIL and therefore is necessarily speaking under duress, it is unclear whether and to what degree he actually holds these views. His sister, Jessica Cantlie, has claimed that John Cantlie “believes two-thirds” of what he says in the videos.
Lend Me Your Ears series
ISIL has thus far released 7 videos (counting the Introduction) in the Lend Me Your Ears series.
Video
Release date
Length
Comments
1
18 September 2014
3:21
Introduction
2
18 September 2014
5:56
“Episode 1” (which is actually the 2nd video released)
3
30 September 2014
5:35
“Episode 2”
4
12 October 2014
6:54
“Episode 3”
5
16 October 2014
7:49
“Episode 4”
6
12 November 2014
6:31
“Episode 5”
7
24 November 2014
8:53
“Episode 6”
8
TBA
TBA
“Episode 7”
9
TBA
TBA
“Episode 8” (Last In Series)
“Inside” videos
“Inside ‘Ayn al Islam (Kobani)” (5:37 minutes), published 28 October 2014 (released to YouTube on February 3, 2015) The piece appears to have been filmed during a brief period when Kobani was occupied by ISIS.
“Inside Mosul” (8:15 minutes), published 3 January 2015 (Released to YouTube by Italian broadcaster Canal 25)
“Inside Aleppo” (12:00 minutes), published 9 February 2015 (Released to YouTube on February 17, 2015). Cantlie states in the video it will be the last film in the “Inside” series.
From late 2010, Kim Jong-un was viewed as heir apparent to the leadership of the nation, and following his father’s death, he was announced as the “Great Successor” by North Korean state television.[8] At Kim Jong-il’s memorial service, North Korean Chairman of the Supreme People’s AssemblyKim Yong-nam declared that “Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage”.[9] On 30 December 2011, the Politburo of the Workers’ Party of Korea formally appointed Kim as the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army.[1] In April 2012, the 4th Party Conference elected him to the newly created post of First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
He was promoted to the rank of marshal of the DPRK in the Korean People’s Army on 18 July 2012, consolidating his position as the supreme commander of the armed forces[10] and is often referred to as Marshal Kim Jong-un or “the Marshal” by state media.[11][12] He obtained two degrees, one in physics at Kim Il-sung University and another as an Army officer at the Kim Il-sung Military University.[13][14] On 9 March 2014 Kim Jong-un was elected unopposed to the Supreme People’s Assembly. At 32 years of age, he is the first North Korean leader born after the country’s founding and the world’s youngest head of state.
Kim was formerly known as Kim Jong-woon or Kim Jung-woon.[16] His name was first reported as 김정운 (Hanja: 金正雲; lit. righteous cloud), possibly as a result of an error in transliteration; the Japanese language does not distinguish between 운 (/un/) and 은 (/ɯn/).[citation needed] The initial source of his name was Kim Jong-il’s former personal chef, known by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, who was among the few who had access to information about Kim’s household from inside the government. Chinese media had named him as 김정은 (Hanja: 金正恩; lit. righteous grace).[3]
In December 2014, South Korea’s KBS TV revealed that they had obtained an official “administrative order” originally circulated by Kim Jong-il in January 2011 mandating that anyone sharing Kim Jong-un’s name needed to formally change their name. Similar edicts were issued regarding the names of the regime’s previous leaders when they were coming to power. The 2011 document states, “All party organs and public security authorities should make a list of residents named Kim Jong-un … and train them to voluntarily change their names.”[17]
Early life and education
The Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school in Köniz, Switzerland, which Kim Jong-un is reported to have attended.
No official comprehensive biography on Kim Jong-un has yet been released. Therefore, the only known information on his early life comes from defectors and people who have claimed to witness him abroad, such as during his school attendance in Switzerland. Some of the information has been conflicting and contradictory, perhaps conflating him with his brother Kim Jong-chul, who was also attending school in Switzerland around the same period. Nevertheless, there has been some consensus on information about his early life. North Korean authorities have stated that his birthdate is 8 January 1982, but South Korean intelligence officials believe the actual date is a year later. Dennis Rodman said that the birthdate is 8 January 1983 after meeting Kim in September 2013.[2] Kim Jong-Un was the second of three children Ko Yong-hui bore to Kim Jong-il; his elder brother Kim Jong-chul was born in 1981, while his younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, is believed to have been born in 1987.[18][19]
According to reports first published in Japanese newspapers, he went to school in Switzerland near Bern. First reports claimed he attended the private English-language International School in Gümligen near Bern under the name “Chol-pak” or “Pak-chol” from 1993 until 1998.[20][21][22] He was described as shy, a good student who got along well with his classmates and was a basketball fan.[23] He was chaperoned by an older student, who was thought to be his bodyguard.[24]
Later, it was reported that Kim Jong-un attended the Liebefeld Steinhölzli school in Köniz near Bern under the name “Pak-un” or “Un-pak” from 1998 until 2000 as the son of an employee of the Embassy of North Korea. Authorities of Köniz confirmed that a student from North Korea, registered as the son of a member of the Embassy, attended the school from August 1998 until the autumn of 2000, but were unable to give details about his identity. Pak-un first attended a special class for foreign-language children and later attended the regular classes of the 6th, 7th, 8th, and part of the final 9th year, leaving the school abruptly in the autumn of 2000. He was described as a well-integrated and ambitious student who liked to play basketball.[25] However, his grades and attendance rating are reported to have been poor.[26][27] The ambassador of North Korea in Switzerland, Ri Tcheul, had a close relationship with him and acted as a mentor.[28] One of Pak-un’s classmates told reporters that he had told him that he was the son of the leader of North Korea.[29][30] According to some reports, Jong-un was described by classmates as a shy child who was awkward with girls and indifferent to political issues but who distinguished himself in sports, and had a fascination with the American National Basketball Association and Michael Jordan. One friend claimed that he had been shown pictures of Pak-un with Kobe Bryant and Toni Kukoč.[31]
In April 2012, new documents came to light indicating that Kim Jong-un had lived in Switzerland since 1991 or 1992, earlier than previously thought.[32]
The Laboratory of Anatomic Anthropology at the University of Lyon, France, after comparing the picture of the boy Pak-un taken at the Liebefeld Steinhölzli school in 1999 with a picture of Kim Jong-un from 2012 came to the conclusion that the two faces show a conformity of 95%. The head of the institute, Raoul Perrot, a forensic anthropologist, considers it most likely that the two pictures show the same person.[33][34]
It is believed that the student at the Gümligen International School was not Kim Jong-un but his elder brother Kim Jong-chol. It is not known whether the student known as Pak-un in Liebefeld Steinhölzli lived in Switzerland prior to 1998.[35] All the children of Kim Jong-il are said to have lived in Switzerland, as well as the mother of the two youngest sons, who lived in Geneva for some time. The Kim clan is also said to organize family meetings in Switzerland at Lake Geneva and Interlaken.[28]
Most analysts agree that Kim Jong-un attended Kim Il-sung University, a leading officer-training school in Pyongyang, from 2002 to 2007.[36]
For many years, only one confirmed photograph of him was known outside North Korea, apparently taken in the mid-1990s, when he was eleven.[37] Occasional other supposed images of him surfaced but were often disputed.[38][39][40] It was only in June 2010, shortly before he was given official posts and publicly introduced to the North Korean people, that more pictures were released of Kim, taken when he was attending school in Switzerland.[41][42] The first official image of him as an adult was a group photograph released on 30 September 2010, at the end of the party conference that effectively anointed him, in which he is seated in the front row, two places from his father. This was followed by newsreel footage of him attending the conference.[43]
In 2013, Kim Jong-un was awarded an honorary doctorate in Economics by HELP University, a private Malaysian university.[44]
Succession
Pre-2010 Party Conference speculation
His eldest half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, had been the favorite to succeed, but reportedly fell out of favor after 2001, when he was caught attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.[45]
Kim Jong-il’s former personal chef, Kenji Fujimoto, revealed details regarding Kim Jong-un, with whom he had a good relationship,[46] stating that he was favored to be his father’s successor. Fujimoto also claimed that Jong-un was favored by his father over his elder brother, Kim Jong-chul, reasoning that Jong-chul is too feminine in character, while Jong-un is “exactly like his father”.[47] Furthermore, Fujimoto stated that “If power is to be handed over then Jong-un is the best for it. He has superb physical gifts, is a big drinker and never admits defeat.” Also, according to Fujimoto, Jong-un smokes Yves Saint Laurent cigarettes, loves Johnnie Walker whisky and has a Mercedes-Benz 600 Sedan.[48] When Jong-un was 18, Fujimoto described an episode where Jong-un once questioned his lavish lifestyle and asked, “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what of the lives of the average people?”[47] On 15 January 2009 the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that Kim Jong-il had appointed Kim Jong-un to be his successor.[45][49]
On 8 March 2009, the BBC reported rumors that Kim Jong-un was on the ballot for elections to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the rubber stamp parliament of North Korea.[50] Subsequent reports indicate that his name did not appear on the list of lawmakers,[51] but he was later elevated to a mid-level position in the National Defense Commission, which is a branch of the North Korean military.[52] Reports have also suggested that he is a diabetic and suffers from hypertension.[16][53]
From 2009, it was understood by foreign diplomatic services that Kim was to succeed his father Kim Jong-il as the head of the Korean Workers’ Party and de facto leader of North Korea.[54] He has been named “Yŏngmyŏng-han Tongji” (영명한 동지), which loosely translates to “Brilliant Comrade”.[55] His father had also asked embassy staff abroad to pledge loyalty to his son.[53] There have also been reports that citizens in North Korea were encouraged to sing a newly composed “song of praise” to Kim Jong-un, in a similar fashion to that of praise songs relating to Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung.[56] Later, in June, Kim was reported to have visited China secretly to “present himself” to the Chinese leadership, who later warned against North Korea conducting another nuclear test.[57] The Chinese Foreign Ministry has strongly denied that this visit occurred.[58][59]
North Korea was later reported to have backed the succession plan, after Kim Jong-il suspended a propaganda campaign to promote his youngest son.[60] His birthday has since become a national holiday, celebrated on 8 January, according to a report by a South Korean website.[61] He was expected to be named on 28 September 2010 as successor to his father as leader of North Korea.[62][63][64]
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter visited China in early September 2010, and discussed the issue of the North Korean leadership succession with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. According to Carter, Kim Jong-il had said to Wen that Kim Jong-un’s prospective promotion to paramount leader of North Korea was “a false rumor from the West”.[65]
Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission
Kim Jong-un was made a daejang, the equivalent of general in the United States,[66] on 27 September 2010, a day ahead of a rare Workers’ Party of Korea conference in Pyongyang, the first time North Korean media had mentioned him by name and despite his having no previous military experience.[67][68][69] Despite the promotion, no further details, including verifiable portraits of Kim, were released.[70] On 28 September 2010, he was named vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and appointed to the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party, in an apparent nod to become the successor to Kim Jong-il.[71]
On 10 October 2010, alongside his father, Kim Jong-un attended the ruling Workers’ Party’s 65th anniversary celebration. This was seen as fully confirming his position as the next leader of the Workers’ Party. Unprecedented international press access was granted to the event, further indicating the importance of Kim Jong-un’s presence.[72] In January 2011, the regime began purging around 200 protégés of both Jong-un’s uncle-in-law Jang Sung-taek and O Kuk-ryol, the vice chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, by either detention or execution to further prevent either man from rivaling Jong-un.[73] In the following months, Kim Jong-un was given more and more prominence as he accompanied Kim Jong-il during several “guidance tours” and received gifts from foreign delegations and personages, an honor traditionally awarded only to the living supreme leader.
Ruler of North Korea
On 17 December 2011, Kim Jong-il died. Despite the elder Kim’s plans, it was not immediately clear after his death whether Jong-un would in fact take full power, and what his exact role in a new government would be.[74] Some analysts had predicted that when Kim Jong-il died, Jang Sung-taek would act as regent, as Jong-un was too inexperienced to immediately lead the country.[75] On 25 December 2011, North Korean television showed Jang Sung-taek in the uniform of a general in a sign of his growing sway after the death of Kim Jong-il. A Seoul official familiar with North Korea affairs said it was the first time Jang has been shown on state television in a military uniform. His appearance suggested that Jang had secured a key role in the North’s powerful military, which pledged its allegiance to Kim Jong-un.[76]
North Korea’s cult of personality around Kim Jong-un was stepped up following his father’s death. He was hailed as the “great successor to the revolutionary cause of Juche“, “outstanding leader of the party, army and people”[77] and “respected comrade who is identical to Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il”,[78] and was made chairman of the Kim Jong-il funeral committee. The Korean Central News Agency described Kim Jong-un as “a great person born of heaven”, a propaganda term only his father and grandfather had enjoyed,[79] while the ruling Workers’ Party said in an editorial: “We vow with bleeding tears to call Kim Jong-un our supreme commander, our leader.”[80]
He was publicly declared Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army on 24 December 2011[81] and formally appointed to the position on 30 December when the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party “courteously proclaimed that the dear respected Kim Jong Un, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the WPK, assumed the supreme commandership of the Korean People’s Army”.[1]
On 26 December 2011, the leading North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun announced that Kim Jong-un had been acting as chairman of the Central Military Commission,[82] and supreme leader of the country, following his father’s demise.[83]
On 27 March 2012, Kim was elected to the Fourth Conference of the Workers’ Party of Korea, that elected him first secretary, a newly made position, on 11 April. This position replaced the post of general secretary, which was awarded “eternally” to Kim Jong-il. At the conference, Kim Jong-un also took his father’s seats as Politburo Presidium member and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.[85] In a speech made prior to the Conference, Kim Jong-un declared that “Imbuing the whole society with Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism is the highest programme of our Party”. On 13 April 2012, the 5th Session of the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly appointed Kim Jong-un Chairman of the National Defence Commission.
On 15 April 2012, during a military parade to commemorate Kim Il-sung’s centenary, Kim Jong-un made his first public speech.[86] That speech became the basis of “Onwards Toward the Final Victory“, a repeatedly aired propaganda hymn dedicated to him.[87]
During a 26 July 2012 performance marking the 59th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War, security around Kim reportedly increased dramatically because Kim “is extremely nervous about the possibility of an emergency developing inside North Korea” caused by “mounting opposition to his efforts to rein in the military”.[89]
In November 2012, satellite photos revealed a half-kilometer-long propaganda message carved into a hillside in Ryanggang Province, reading, “Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!”. The message, located next to an artificial lake built in 2007 to serve a hydroelectric station, is made of Korean syllable blocks measuring 15 by 20 meters, and is located approximately 9 kilometers south of Hyesan near the border with China.[90]
Kim Jong-il’s personal chef Kenji Fujimoto stated, “Stores in Pyongyang were brimming with products and people in the streets looked cheerful. North Korea has changed a lot since Kim Jong-un assumed power. All of this is because of leader Kim Jong-un.”[91]
Model of a Unha-9 rocket on display at a floral exhibition in Pyongyang, 30 August 2013
Officially, Kim Jong-un is part of a triumvirate heading the executive branch of the North Korean government along with Premier Pak Pong-ju and parliament chairman Kim Yong-nam (no relation). Each nominally holds powers equivalent to a third of a president’s powers in most other presidential systems. Kim Jong-un commands the armed forces, Pak Pong-ju heads the government, and Kim Yong-nam handles foreign relations. Nevertheless, it is generally understood that Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather before him, exercises absolute control over the government and the country.
In 2013, Kim re-established his grandfather’s style when he made his first New Year’s address, a break from the approach of his father. Kim Jong-il never made televised addresses during his 17 years in power.[93] In lieu of delivering a speech, Kim Jong-il contributed to and approved a New Year’s Day editorial, jointly published by Rodong Sinmun (the daily newspaper of the Korean Workers’ Party), Joson Inmingun (the newspaper of the Korean People’s Army), and Chongnyon Jonwi (the newspaper of the Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League).[94] At the extraordinary meeting with his top defense and security officials on 26 January 2013, Kim issued orders on preparations for a new nuclear test and introduced martial law in North Korea effective from 29 January.[95][96]
In May 2014, following the collapse of an apartment building in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un was said to be very upset at the loss of life that resulted. A statement issued by the country’s official news agency the Korean Central News Agency used the rare expression “profound consolation and apology”. An unnamed government official was quoted by the BBC as saying Kim Jong-un had “sat up all night, feeling painful”.[97] While the height of the building and the number of casualties was not released, media reports described it is a 23-story building and indicated hundreds of people may have died in the collapse.
On 9 March 2014, Kim Jong-un was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly. He was unopposed, but voters had the choice of voting yes or no. There was a record turnout of voters, and according to government officials, all voted yes. The Supreme People’s Assembly subsequently elected him chairman of the National Defense Commission.
Economic policies
In August 2012, Kim Jong-un announced economics reforms similar to China.[98] Kim began to be mentioned by the North Korean state media as “supreme leader” (chego ryongdoja) at this time.
A set of comprehensive economic measures, the “Socialist Corporate Responsible Management System”, were introduced in 2013.[99] The measures increase the autonomy of enterprises by granting them “certain rights to engage in business activities autonomously and elevate the will to labor through appropriately implementing the socialist distribution system”. Another priority of economic policies that year was agriculture, where the pojon (vegetable garden) responsibility system was implemented. The system reportedly achieved a major increase in output in some collective farms.[99]
North Korean media were describing the economy as a “flexible collectivist system” where enterprises were applying “active and evolutionary actions” to achieve economic development.[100] These reports reflect Kim’s general economic policy of reforming management, increasing the autonomy and incentives for economic actors. This set of reforms known as the “May 30th measures” reaffirms both socialist ownership and “objective economic laws in guidance and management” to improve living standards. Other objectives of the measures are to increase the availability of domestically manufactured goods on markets, introduction of defence innovations into the civilian sector and boost international trade.[100]
Nuclear threats
On 7 March 2013, North Korea threatened the United States with a “pre-emptive nuclear attack”,[101] and Kim Jong-un issued a detailed threat to “wipe out” Baengnyeong Island, the scene of previous naval clashes.[102] North Korea has revealed its plans for conducting nuclear strikes on U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.[103]
At a plenary meeting of the WPK Central Committee held on 31 March 2013 in the wake of war threats with South Korea, Kim Jong-un announced that North Korea will adopt “a new strategic line on carrying out economic construction and building nuclear armed forces simultaneously”.[104]
Purges
Ri Yong-ho, Kim Yong-chun, U Tong-chuk and Kim Jong-gak were handpicked to groom the young leader and were close confidants of Kim Jong-il. They have either been demoted or disappeared. One South Korean government official said Kim Jong-un is trying to “erase all traces of his father’s rule” eleven months after stepping into power and “replacing top brass with officers who are loyal to him alone”.[105] By the end of 2013, three defense ministers and four chiefs of the army’s general staff had been replaced and five of the seven men who had escorted his father’s hearse two years earlier had been purged,[106] with his uncle Jang Sung-taek one of the most prominent.[107] Jang Sung-taek is believed to have been executed by machine gun.
Jang Sung-taek
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Kim Jong Uns Uncle Jang Song Thaek gets publicly arrested
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Execution scene of Jang Sung-taek, North Korea
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Hyon Yong-Chol
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North Korea Defence Chief Hyon Yong-chol ‘executed’
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It has been claimed that Kim Jong-un has also put to death members of Jang’s family. According to multiple sources, Kim is attempting to completely destroy all traces of Jang’s existence through “extensive executions” of his family, including the children and grandchildren of all close relatives. Those reportedly killed in Kim’s purge include Jang’s sister Jang Kye-sun, her husband and ambassador to Cuba, Jon Yong-jin, and Jang’s nephew and ambassador to Malaysia, Jang Yong-chol. The nephew’s two sons were also said to have been killed.[108] At the time of Jang’s removal, it was announced that “the discovery and purge of the Jang group… made our party and revolutionary ranks purer…”[109] and after his execution on 12 December 2013 state media warned that the army “will never pardon all those who disobey the order of the Supreme Commander.”[110]
Personality
Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef who used to work as Kim Jong-il’s personal cook, described Kim Jong-un as “a chip off the old block, a spitting image of his father in terms of face, body shape, and personality”.[111]
The Washington Post reported in 2009 that Kim Jong-un’s school friends recalled he “spent hours doing meticulous pencil drawings of Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan.”[112] He was obsessed with basketball and computer games.[113][114] On 26 February 2013, Kim Jong-un met ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman,[115] leading many reporters to speculate that Rodman was the first American that Kim had met.[116] Rodman described his trip to Kim Jong-un’s private island, “It’s like Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.”[117] Kim Jong-un is reportedly a fan of Eric Clapton.[118]
In July 2012, Kim Jong-un showed a change in cultural policy from his father by attending a Moranbong concert. The concert contained several elements of pop culture from the West, particularly the United States. Kim used this event to debut his wife to the public, an unprecedented move in North Korea.[119]
In a 2012 news story, Business Insider reported, “Signs of a rise in luxury goods have been creeping out of North Korea since Kim Jong-un took over as last year. Just recently, Kim’s wife Ri Sol-ju was photographed holding what appeared to be an expensive Dior handbag, worth almost $1,594 — an average year’s salary in North Korea.”[120] According to diplomatic sources, “Kim Jong-un likes to drink and party all night like his father and ordered the [imported sauna] equipment to help him beat hangovers and fatigue.”[121]
During Dennis Rodman’s 26 February 2013 trip to North Korea, Vice Media correspondent Ryan Duffy observed that “the leader was ‘socially awkward’ and didn’t make eye contact when shaking hands”.[122]
According to Cheong Seong-chang of Sejong Institute, Kim Jong-un has greater visible interest in the welfare of his people and engages in greater interaction with them than his father did.[123]
Health
Kim Jong-un did not appear in public for six weeks in September and October 2014. State media reported that he was suffering from an “uncomfortable physical condition”. Previously he had been seen limping.[124][125][126][127][128][129] When he reappeared he was using a walking stick.[130][131]
Human rights violations under the leadership of Kim Jong-il were condemned by the UN General Assembly.[132] Press reports indicate that they are continuing under Kim Jong-un.[133][134][135][136] It is believed by some that Kim Jong-un was involved in the Cheonan sinking[137] and the bombardment of Yeonpyeong[138] to strengthen his military credentials and facilitate a successful transition of power from his father.[139]
The 2013 report on the situation of human rights in North Korea[140] by United Nations Special RapporteurMarzuki Darusman proposed a United Nations commission of inquiry[141] to document the accountability of Kim Jong-un and other individuals in the North Korean government for alleged crimes against humanity.[142] The report of the commission of inquiry[143] was published in February 2014 and recommends to make him accountable for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.[144]
One report by the Japanese Asia Press agency in January 2013 claimed that in North and South Hwanghae provinces more than 10,000 people had died of famine. Other international news agencies have begun circulating stories of cannibalism. One informant, based in South Hwanghae, said: “In my village in May, a man who killed his own two children and tried to eat them was executed by a firing squad.”[145]
Family
Portraits of Kim Jong-un’s father and grandfather (Arirang Festival mass games in Pyongyang)
On 25 July 2012 North Korean state media reported for the first time that Kim Jong-un is married to Ri Sol-ju (리설주).[146][147] Ri, who appears to be in her early 20s, had been accompanying Kim Jong-un to public appearances for several weeks prior to the announcement.[147] The BBC, quoting an analyst who spoke to The Korea Times of South Korea, reported that Kim Jong-il had hastily arranged his son’s marriage after suffering a stroke in 2008. According to some sources, the two married in 2009 and Ri gave birth to a daughter in 2010.[148][149]
Kim Jong-un has one half-brother, one half-sister and an older full-brother (see below). He also has a younger full-sister, Kim Yo-jong, who was believed to be about 23 in 2012. She sometimes accompanies him.[19][150]
Fatherhood
In March 2013, former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman visited Kim Jong-un in North Korea and on his return reported that Ri had given birth to a daughter named Ju-ae in 2012.[151][151][152][153][154]
Key Events & Deaths on this day in Northern Ireland Troubles
Friday 21 August 1970SDLP Formed
The Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) was established. The first leader of the party was Gerry Fitt and the deputy leader John Hume. Other prominent members included, Paddy Devlin, Austin Currie, Ivan Cooper, Paddy O’Hanlon and Paddy Wilson. [The party effectively took over from most of the various Nationalist and Labour party groupings and became the main political voice of Nationalists in Northern Ireland until Sinn Fein began to contest elections in the early 1980s.]
Saturday 21 August 1976
Approximately 20,000 people, mainly women from Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast, attended a Peace People’s rally at Ormeau Park, Belfast.
Wednesday 21 August 1991
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) exploded a large bomb, estimated at 500 pounds, near an Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station in Kilrea, County Derry. The explosion causes damage to nearby homes and churches.
Gerry Adams, then President of Sinn Féin (SF), wrote a letter, seeking ‘open-ended discussions’, to the British and Irish governments and to political and Church leaders in Northern Ireland.
Friday 21 August 1992
Hugh McKibben (21), then a member of the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO), was shot dead at the Lámh Dhearg Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) social club on the outskirts of Belfast. His was killed by the Belfast Brigade of the IPLO during an internal IPLO feud. Two other men were wounded in the attack.
Saturday 21 August 1999
The remains of Tom Williams were exhumed from Crumlin Road Prison and handed over to his surviving family members. Williams had been a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and was hanged in 1942 for the killing of Patrick Murphy a Constable in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
Monday 21 August 2000Loyalist Paramilitary Feud
Two men, Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood, were killed as the Loyalist paramilitary feud erupted into further violence. Coulter, who had Ulster Defence Association (UDA) connections and was an associate of Johnny Adair, died immediately at the scene. Mahood, who had been seriously wounded, died later in hospital.
Loyalist sources said that Mahood had Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) connections but he opposed the Belfast Agreement and the policies of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The killings were carried out by the UVF and were part of a feud between the UDA and the UVF.
U.V.F Logo
In addition to the shootings there were also attacks on offices used by the two Loyalist parties closely associated with the UDA and the UVF. Troops were deployed on the streets of Belfast to try to control the situation.
[Seven people were killed during the feud which officially ended on 15 December 2000.]
Tuesday 21 August 2001
Two pipe-bombs were thrown at two separate houses at Inchcolme Avenue, Ballymena, County Antrim, at about 12.30am (0030BST). The front door of one house was damaged and a window broken in the other house. There were no injuries in the two attacks.
[The RUC have not established a motive for the attacks.]
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) announced that it required more time to respond to the ‘Patten Report – Updated Implementation Plan 2001’ (issued on 17 August 2001). James Cooper, then Chairman of the UUP, said that:
“While we are not opposed in principle to nominations to the police board, we still have a number of concerns.”
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) also missed the British government’s deadline of midday in which to respond to the policing proposals.
[The DUP were critical of the new implementation plan and were expected to make a detailed response at a later date.]
John Reid, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, said that he believed that the new Police Board would be operational at the end of September 2001. Nigel Baylor (Rev), then Church of Ireland rector, criticised as “insulting” the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) parade and ‘show of strength’ on the Shankill Road in Belfast on Saturday 19 August 2001.
Baylor had led the service at the funeral of Gavin Brett (18), who had been shot dead by Loyalist paramilitaries on 29 July 2001.
[Although the Red Hand Defenders (RHD) had claimed responsibility for the killing most people blamed the UDA.]
The Guardian (a British newspaper) carried a report on the results of an opinion poll on the future of Northern Ireland carried out by ICM in Britain. Of those questioned, 41 per cent stated that they thought there should be a united Ireland. Only 26 per cent felt that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom (UK). The report stated: “For unionists, many of whom consider themselves British and refer to Britain as ‘the mainland’, today’s findings amount to a cold shoulder from their fellow citizens. Only one in four wants the province to stay part of the country.”
[This survey maked a significant shift in public opinion in Britain from the 1980s and 1990s when there was a majority in favour of Northern Ireland remaining within the UK.]
William Esson, then a reserve judge with the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, announced that he was resigning from the inquiry for reasons of ill health.
Remembering all innocent victims of the Troubles
Today is the anniversary of the follow people killed as a results of the conflict in Northern Ireland
To the innocent on the list – Your memory will live forever
– To the Paramilitaries –
“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, but nothing worth killing for.
6 people lost their lives on the 21st August between 1975 – 2000
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21 August 1975
John Finlay, (30)
Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: non-specific Loyalist group (LOY)
Shot while walking to work along Brougham Street, Belfast.
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21 August 1975 David Davidson, (30)
Protestant Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: non-specific Republican group (REP)
Shot at his workplace, scrapyard / garage, Antrim Road, Ballyvessy, near Glengormley, County Antrim.
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21 August 1978
Patrick Fee, (64)
Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Shot by sniper while travelling to work in his firm’s van, Scribbagh, near Garrison, County Fermanagh. The van driver, an off duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) member, the intended target.
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21 August 1992
Isobel Leyland, (40)
Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Shot during sniper attack on nearby Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) mobile patrol, while walking at the junction of Ardoyne Avenue and Flax Street, Ardoyne, Belfast
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21 August 2000
Jackie Coulter, (46)
Protestant Status: Ulster Defence Association (UDA),
Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Shot while sitting in stationary jeep, Crumlin Road, Belfast. Ulster Defence Association (UDA) / Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) feud.
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21 August 2000
Bobby Mahood, (48)
Protestant Status: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF),
Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Shot while sitting with UDA member Jackie Coulter, in stationary jeep, Crumlin Road, Belfast. Ulster Defence Association (UDA) / Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) feud.
The views and opinions expressed in this page and documentaries are soley intended to educate and provide background information to those interested in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.
They in no way reflect my own opinions and I take no responsibility for any inaccuracies or factual errors.
Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, Former UDA & UFF Loyalist Commander Talks About His Life.
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U.V.F Logo
Although the UDA and UVF have frequently co-operated and generally co-existed, the two groups have clashed. Two particular feuds stood out for their bloody nature.
1974-1975
UDA Logo
A feud in the winter of 1974-75 broke out between the UDA and the UVF, the two main loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland. The bad blood originated from an incident in the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of May 1974 when the two groups were co-operating in support of the Ulster Workers’ Council.
That support the UDA & UVF members were giving involved shutting down their own social clubs & pubs due to complaints from loyalist wives of the striking men, the reason for this was with the men not working & funds being tight the wives saw what little money they did have being spent at the pubs & social clubs controlled by UDA/UVF, therefore the wives put pressure on the leaders of both groups to shut them down for the duration of the strike & after consultation they agreed.
All shut down except for a lone UVF affiliated pub on the shankill road. On a November night in 1974, a UVF man named Joe Shaw visited the pub for a drink. While there, he was “ribbed by the regulars about having allowed his local to be closed”.[2] A few pints later Shaw and some friends returned to their local, on North Queen St., and open it up. UDA men patrolling the area had seen the pubs lights on and ordered Shaw and his friends to close the place down & go home. Shaw refused, and the UDA men left, but they returned a short while later with a shotgun, determined to close the pub down.
Stephen Goatley
In the brawl that developed Shaw was fatally shot. A joint statement described it as a tragic accident although a subsequent UVF inquiry put the blame on Stephen Goatley and John Fulton, both UDA men. With antagonism grown another man was killed in a drunken brawl on 21 February 1975, this time the UDA’s Robert Thompson. This was followed by another pub fight in North Belfast in March and this time the UVF members returned armed and shot and killed both Goatley and Fulton, who had been involved in the earlier fight.
The following month UDA Colonel Hugh McVeigh and his aide David Douglas were the next to die, kidnapped by the UVF on the Shankill Road and taken to Carrickfergus where they were beaten before being killed near Islandmagee.
The UDA retaliated in East Belfast by attempting to kill UVF leader Ken Gibson who in turn ordered the UDA’s headquarters in the east of the city to be blown up, although this attack also failed. The feud rumbled on for several months in 1976 with a number of people, mostly UDA members, being killed before eventually the two groups came to an uneasy truce.
2000
Although the two organisations had worked together under the umbrella of the Combined Loyalist Military Command, the body crumbled in 1997 and tensions simmered between West Belfast UDA Brigadier Johnny Adair, who had grown weary of the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement, and the UVF leadership. Adair by this time had forged close links with the dissident LVF, a group which the UVF had been on poor terms with since its foundation.
Amidst an atmosphere of increasing tension in the area, Adair decided to host a “Loyalist Day of Culture” on the Shankill on Saturday 19 August 2000, which saw thousands of UDA members from across Northern Ireland descend on his Lower Shankill stronghold, where a series of newly commissioned murals were officially unveiled on a day which also featured a huge UDA/UFF parade and armed UDA/UFF show of strength.
Unknown to the UVF leadership, who had sought and been given assurances that no LVF regalia would be displayed on the Shankill on the day of the procession, as well as the rest of the UDA outside of Adair’s “C Company”, Adair had an LVF flag delivered to the Lower Shankill on the morning of the celebrations, which he planned to have unfurled as the procession passed the Rex Bar, a UVF haunt, in order to antagonise the UVF and try and drag it into conflict with as much of the UDA as possible.
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The Rex Bar – Shankill
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Adair waited until the bulk of the parade of UDA men had made its way up into the heart of the Shankill before initiating the provocative gesture. When it happened skirmishes broke out between UVF men who had been standing outside the Rex watching the procession and the group involved in unfurling the contentious flag, which had been discreetly concealed near the tail end of the parade. Prior to this the atmosphere at the Rex had been jovial, with the UVF spectators even joining in to sing UDA songs along to the tunes of the UDA-aligned flute bands which accompanied the approximately ten thousand UDA men on their parade up the Shankill Road.
But vicious fighting ensued, with a roughly three hundred-strong C Company (the name given to the Lower Shankill unit of the UDA’s West Belfast Brigade, which contained Adair’s most loyal men) mob attacking the patrons of the Rex, initially with hand weapons such as bats and iron bars, before they shot up the bar as its patrons barricaded themselves inside.
Also shot up was the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) headquarters which faced the pub. C Company then went on the rampage in the Lower Shankill, attacking the houses of known UVF members and their families, including the home of veteran UVF leader Gusty Spence, and evicting the inhabitants at gunpoint as they wrecked and stole property and set fire to homes. By the end of the day nearly all those with UVF associations had been driven from the Lower Shankill.
Later that night C Company gunmen shot up the Rex again, this time from a passing car. While most of the UDA guests at Adair’s carnival had duly left for home when it became apparent that he was using it to engineer violent conflict with the UVF, festivities nonetheless continued late into the night on the Lower Shankill, where Adair hosted an open air rave party and fireworks display.
The UVF struck back on Monday morning, shooting dead two Adair associates, Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood, as they sat in a Range Rover on the Crumlin Road. The UVF also shot up the Ulster Democratic Party headquarters on the Middle Shankill. An hour later Adair’s unit burned down the PUP’s offices close to Agnes Street, the de facto border between the UVF-dominated Middle and Upper Shankill and the UDA-dominated Lower Shankill. The UVF responded by blowing up the UDP headquarters on the Middle Shankill. Adair was returned to prison by the Secretary of State on 14 September, although the feud continued with four more killed before the end of the year.
Violence also spread to North Belfast, where members of the UVF’s Mount Vernon unit shot and killed a UDA member, David Greer, in the Tiger’s Bay area, sparking a series of killings in that part of the city. In another incident the County Londonderry town of Coleraine saw tumult in the form of an attempted expulsion of UVF members by UDA members, which was successfully resisted by the UVF.
But aside from these exceptions Adair’s attempt to ignite a full-scale war between the two organisations failed, as both the UVF and UDA leaderships moved decisively to contain the trouble within the Shankill area, where hundreds of families had been displaced, and focused on dealing with its source as well as its containment. To Adair’s indignation even the “A” and “B” Companies of his West Belfast Brigade of the UDA declined to get involved in C Company’s war with the UVF.
Eventually a ceasefire was reluctantly agreed upon by the majority of those involved in the feuding after new procedures were established with the aim of preventing the escalation of any future problems between the two organisations, and after consideration was paid to the advice of Gary McMichael and David Ervine, the then leaders of the two political wings of loyalism.
UVF-LVF feuds
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Loyalist Feud in Portadown, March 2000
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The nature of the LVF, which was founded by Billy Wright when he, along with the Portadown unit of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade, was stood down by the UVF leadership on 2 August 1996 for breaking the ceasefire has led to frequent battles between the two movements. This had come about when Wright’s unit killed a Catholic taxi-driver during the Drumcree standoff.
Although Wright had been expelled from the UVF, threatened with execution and an order to leave Northern Ireland, which he defied, the feud was largely contained during his life and the two major eruptions came after his death.
1999-2001
Simmering tensions boiled over in a December 1999 incident involving LVF members and UVF Mid-Ulster brigadier Richard Jameson and his men at the Portadown F.C. social club in which the LVF supporters were severely beaten. The LVF members swore revenge and on 10 January 2000 they took it by shooting Jameson dead on the outskirts of Portadown.[14] The UVF retaliated by killing two Protestant teenagers suspected of LVF membership and involvement in Jameson’s death. As it turned out, the victims, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, were not part of any loyalist paramilitary organisation.
The UDA’s Johnny Adair supported the LVF and used the feud to stoke up the troubles that eventually flared in his feud with the UVF later that year. Meanwhile the UVF attempted to kill the hitman responsible for Jameson, unsuccessfully, before the LVF struck again on 26 May, killing PUP man Martin Taylor in Ballysillan. The LVF then linked up with Johnny Adair’s C Company for a time as their feud with the UVF took centre stage.
However the UVF saw fit to continue the battle in 2001, using its satellite group the Red Hand Commando to kill two of the LVF’s leading figures, Adrian Porter and Stephen Warnock. Adair however convinced the LVF that the latter killing was the work of one of his rivals in the UDA, Jim Gray, who the LVF then unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate.
In July 2005 the feud came to a conclusion as the UVF made a final move against its rival organisation. The resulting activity led to the deaths of at least four people, all associated with the LVF. As a result of these attacks on 30 October 2005 the LVF announced that its units had been ordered to cease their activity and that it was disbanding. In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that this feud had come to an end.
UDA internal feuds
The UDA, the largest of the loyalist paramilitary groups, has seen a number of internal struggles within its history.
Gangsters At War – Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland
1972-1974
From its beginnings the UDA was wracked by internal problems and in 1972, the movement’s first full year of existence, three members, Ingram Beckett, John Brown and Ernest Elliott were killed by other UDA members. The main problems were between East Belfast chief Tommy Herron and Charles Harding Smith, his rival in the west of the city, over who controlled the movement. Although they had agreed to make compromise candidate Andy Tyrie the leader, each man considered himself the true leader. Herron was killed in September 1973 in an attack that remains unsolved.
Andy Tyrie
However with confirmed in overall control of the UDA Harding Smith initially remained silent until in 1974 he declared that the West Belfast brigade of the movement was splitting from the mainstream UDA on the pretext of a visit to Libya organised by Tyrie in a failed attempt to procure arms from Colonel Qadaffi. The trip had been roundly criticised by the Unionist establishment and raised cries that the UDA was adopting socialism, and so Harding Smith used it re-ignite his attempts to take charge.
Harding Smith survived two separate shootings but crucially lost the support of other leading Shankill Road UDA figures and eventually left Belfast after being visited by North Belfast Brigadier Davy Payne, who warned him that he would not survive a third attack.
1987-1989
South Belfast Brigadier John McMichael was killed by the Provisional IRA in December 1987 but it was later admitted that UDA member James Pratt Craig, a rival of McMichael’s within the movement, had played a role in planning the murder. A new generation of leaders emerged at this time and decided that the woes facing the UDA, including a lack of arms and perceived poor leadership by ageing brigadiers, were being caused by the continuing leadership of Andy Tyrie.
Tyrie was forced to resign in March 1988 and the new men, most of whom had been trained up by McMichael, turned on some of the veterans whom Tyrie had protected. Craig was killed, Tommy Lyttle was declared persona non grata and various brigadiers were removed from office, with the likes of Jackie McDonald, Joe English and Jim Gray taking their places.
2002-2003
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JOHN GREGG UDA- LEADERS FUNERAL
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A second internal feud arose in 2002 when Johnny Adair and former politician John White were expelled from the UDA. Many members of the 2nd Battalion Shankill Road West Belfast Brigade, commonly known as ‘C’ Company, stood by Adair and White, while the rest of the organisation were involved with attacks on these groups and vice versa. There were four murders; the first victim being a nephew of a leading loyalist opposed to Adair, Jonathon Stewart, killed at a party on 26 December 2002.
Roy Green was killed in retaliation. The last victims were John ‘Grug’ Gregg (noted for a failed attempt on the life of Gerry Adams) and Robert Carson, another Loyalist. Adair’s time as leader came to an end on 6 February 2003 when south Belfast brigadier Jackie McDonald led a force of around 100 men onto the Shankill to oust Adair, who promptly fled to England. Adair’s former ally Mo Courtney, who had returned to the mainstream UDA immediately before the attack, was appointed the new West Belfast brigadier, ending the feud.
UVF internal feuds
The feud between the UVF and the LVF began as an internal feud but quickly changed when Billy Wright established the LVF as a separate organisation. Beyond this the UVF has largely avoided violent internal strife, with only two killings that can be described as being part of an internal feud taking place on Belfast’s Shankill Road in late November 1975, with Archibald Waller and Noel Shaw being the two men killed. Several months prior to these killings, Mid-Ulster BrigadierBilly Hanna was shot dead outside his Lurgan home on 27 July 1975, allegedly by his successor, Robin Jackson. This killing, however, was not part of a feud but instead carried out as a form of internal discipline from within the Mid-Ulster Brigade.
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Prince Louis of Battenberg and their four children Princess Alice, Princess Louise, Prince George and Prince Louis.
His paternal grandparents were Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine (1823–1888) and Princess Julia of Battenberg. His paternal grandparents’ marriage was morganatic because his grandmother was not of royal lineage; as a result, he and his father were styled “Serene Highness” rather than “Grand Ducal Highness”, were not eligible to be titled Princes of Hesse and were given the less exalted Battenberg title.
Young Mountbatten’s nickname among family and friends was “Dickie”, although “Richard” was not among his given names. This was because his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, had suggested the nickname of “Nicky”, but to avoid confusion with the many Nickys of the Russian Imperial Family (“Nicky” was particularly used to refer to Nicholas II, the last Tsar), “Nicky” was changed to “Dickie”.
In childhood he visited the Imperial Court of Russia at St Petersburg and became intimate with the doomed Russian Imperial Family, harbouring romantic feelings towards Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, whose photograph he kept at his bedside for the rest of his life.
Lord Mountbatten interview – Today Thames Television 1969
In June 1917, when the Royal Family stopped using their German names and titles and adopted the more British-sounding “Windsor”: Prince Louis of Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten, and was created Marquess of Milford Haven. His second son acquired the courtesy titleLord Louis Mountbatten and was known as Lord Louis until he was created a peer in 1946.
After his war service, and having been promoted sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1919, Mountbatten attended Christ’s College, Cambridge for two terms where he studied engineering in a programme that was specially designed for ex-servicemen.
He was posted to the battlecruiser HMS Renown in March 1920 and accompanied Edward, Prince of Wales, on a royal tour of Australia in her. Promoted lieutenant on 15 April 1920, he transferred to the battlecruiser HMS Repulse in March 1921 and accompanied Edward on a Royal tour of India and Japan. Edward and Mountbatten formed a close friendship during the trip. He was posted to the battleship HMS Revenge in the Mediterranean Fleet in January 1923.
Pursuing his interests in technological development and gadgetry, Mountbatten joined the Portsmouth Signals School in August 1924 and then went on briefly to study electronics at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Mountbatten became a Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), now the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), which annually awards the Mountbatten Medal for an outstanding contribution, or contributions over a period, to the promotion of electronics or information technology and their application.
He was posted to the battleship HMS Centurion in the Reserve Fleet in 1926 and became Assistant Fleet Wireless and Signals Officer of the Mediterranean Fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes in January 1927. Promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 April 1928, he returned to the Signals School in July 1929 as Senior Wireless Instructor. He was appointed Fleet Wireless Officer to the Mediterranean Fleet in August 1931, and having been promoted commander on 31 December 1932, was posted to the battleship HMS Resolution.
In 1934, Mountbatten was appointed to his first command – the destroyer HMS Daring. His ship was a new destroyer which he was to sail to Singapore and exchange for an older ship, HMS Wishart. He successfully brought Wishart back to port in Malta and then attended the funeral of King George V in January 1936. Mountbatten was appointed a Personal Naval Aide-de-Camp to King Edward VIII on 23 June 1936, and, having joined the Naval Air Division of the Admiralty in July 1936, he attended the coronation of King George VI in May 1937. He was promoted Captain on 30 June 1937 and was then given command of the destroyer HMS Kelly in June 1939.
In July 1939 Mountbatten was granted a patent (UK Number 508,956) for a system for maintaining a warship in a fixed position relative to another ship.[17]
When war broke out in September 1939, Mountbatten became commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla aboard his ship Kelly, which became famous for its exploits. In late 1939 he brought the Duke of Windsor back from exile in France and in early May 1940, Mountbatten led a British convoy in through the fog to evacuate the Allied forces participating in the Namsos Campaign during the Norwegian Campaign.
On the night 9 May/10 May 1940, Kelly was torpedoed amidships by a German E-boatS 31 off the Dutch coast, and Mountbatten thereafter commanded the 5th Destroyer Flotilla from the destroyer HMS Javelin. He rejoined Kelly in December 1940, by which time the torpedo damage had been repaired.
Kelly was sunk by German dive bombers on 23 May 1941 during the Battle of Crete; the incident serving as the basis for Noël Coward‘s film In Which We Serve. Coward was a personal friend of Mountbatten, and copied some of his speeches into the film.
Mountbatten, General Walter Short, Admiral Husband Kimmel in Hawaii 1941
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sir Winston Churchill, Baron Hastings Ismay, Mountbatten: January 1943 in Casablanca.
In August 1941, Mountbatten was appointed captain of the aircraft carrierHMS Illustrious which lay in Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs following action at Malta in the Mediterranean in January. During this period of relative inactivity he paid a flying visit to Pearl Harbor, where he was not impressed with the state of readiness of that U.S. base.
Mountbatten was a favourite of Winston Churchill (although Churchill was furious at Mountbatten’s later role in the partition and independence of India and Pakistan, he later invited him to dinner and “forgave” him in September 1952). On 27 October 1941 Mountbatten replaced Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations and promoted commodore.
Another project that Mountbatten proposed to Churchill was Project Habakkuk. It was to be a massive and impregnable 600-metre aircraft carrier made from reinforced ice (“Pykrete“): Habakkuk was never carried out due to its enormous cost.
In his role with Combined Operations, Mountbatten also planned commando raids across the English Channel. As acting vice-admiral in March 1942, he was in large part responsible for the planning and organisation of The Raid at St. Nazaire in mid-1942, an operation which put out of action one of the most heavily defended docks in Nazi-occupied France until well after war’s end, the ramifications of which contributed to allied supremacy in the Battle of the Atlantic.
He personally pushed through the disastrous Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942, (which some among the Allied forces, notably Field Marshal Montgomery, later claimed was ill-conceived from the start). The raid on Dieppe was a disaster, with casualties (including those wounded or taken prisoner) numbering in the thousands, the great majority of them Canadians.
Historian Brian Loring Villa concluded that Mountbatten conducted the raid without authority, but that his intention to do so was known to several of his superiors, who took no action to stop him. As a result of the Dieppe raid, Mountbatten became a controversial figure in Canada, with the Royal Canadian Legion distancing itself from him during his visits there during his later career; his relations with Canadian veterans “remained frosty”.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, seen during his tour of the Arakan Front in February 1944.
Mountbatten claimed that the lessons learned from the Dieppe Raid were necessary for planning the Normandy invasion on D-Day nearly two years later. However, military historians such as former Royal Marine Julian Thompson have written that these lessons should not have needed a debacle such as Dieppe to be recognised.
Nevertheless, as a direct result of the failings of the Dieppe raid, the British made several innovations – most notably Hobart’s Funnies – specialized armoured vehicles which, in the course of the Normandy Landings, undoubtedly saved many lives on those three beachheads upon which Commonwealth soldiers were landing (Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Sword Beach).
Mountbatten making an address on the steps of Municipal Building in Singapore, 1945.
In August 1943, Churchill appointed Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command (SEAC) with promotion to acting full admiral. His less practical ideas were sidelined by an experienced planning staff led by Lt-Col. James Allason, though some, such as a proposal to launch an amphibious assault near Rangoon, got as far as Churchill before being quashed.
British interpreter Hugh Lunghi recounted an embarrassing episode which occurred during the Potsdam Conference, when Mountbatten, desiring to receive an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, repeatedly attempted to impress Stalin with his former connections to the Russian imperial family. The attempt fell predictably flat, with Stalin dryly inquiring whether “it was some time ago that he had been there.” Says Lunghi,
“The meeting was embarrassing because Stalin was so unimpressed. He offered no invitation. Mountbatten left with his tail between his legs.”
During his time as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Theatre, his command oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese by General William Slim.[30] A personal high point was the reception of the Japanese surrender in Singapore when British troops returned to the island to receive the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the region led by General Itagaki Seishiro on 12 September 1945, codenamed Operation Tiderace.
South East Asia Command was disbanded in May 1946 and Mountbatten returned home with the substantive rank of rear-admiral.
Last viceroy and first Governor-General
His experience in the region and in particular his perceived Labour sympathies at that time led to Clement Attlee appointing him Viceroy of India on 20 February 1947 charged with overseeing the transition of British India to independence no later than 1948. Mountbatten’s instructions emphasised a united India as a result of the transference of power but authorised him to adapt to a changing situation in order to get Britain out promptly with minimal reputational damage. Soon after he arrived, Mountbatten concluded that the situation was too volatile for even that short a wait.
Although his advisers favoured a gradual transfer of independence, Mountbatten decided the only way forward was a quick and orderly transfer of independence before 1947 was out. In his view, any longer would mean civil war. The Viceroy also hurried so he could return to his senior technical Navy courses.
Lord and Lady Mountbatten at Mussoorie with Congress leader Sardar Patel, his daughter Manibehn Patel and Nehru in the background.
Mountbatten was fond of Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru and his liberal outlook for the country. He felt differently about the Muslim leader Muhammed Ali Jinnah, but was aware of his power, stating:
“If it could be said that any single man held the future of India in the palm of his hand in 1947, that man was Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”
During his meeting with Jinnah on 5 April 1947, Mountbatten tried to persuade Jinnah of a united India, citing the difficult task of dividing the mixed states of Punjab and Bengal, but the Muslim leader was unyielding in his goal of establishing a separate Muslim state called Pakistan.
Lord and Lady Mountbatten with Mahatma Gandhi, 1947
Given the British government’s recommendations to grant independence quickly, Mountbatten concluded that a united India was an unachievable goal and resigned himself to a plan for partition, creating the independent nations of India and Pakistan.
Mountbatten set a date for the transfer of power from the British to the Indians, arguing that a fixed timeline would convince Indians of his and the British government’s sincerity in working towards a swift and efficient independence, excluding all possibilities of stalling the process.
Among the Indian leaders, Mahatma Gandhi emphatically insisted on maintaining a united India and for a while successfully rallied people to this goal. During his meeting with Mountbatten, Gandhi asked Mountbatten to invite Jinnah to form a new Central government, but Mountbatten never uttered a word of Gandhi’s ideas to Jinnah. And when Mountbatten’s timeline offered the prospect of attaining independence soon, sentiments took a different turn. Given Mountbatten’s determination, Nehru and Patel’s inability to deal with the Muslim League and lastly Jinnah’s obstinacy, all Indian party leaders (except Gandhi) acquiesced to Jinnah’s plan to divide India, which in turn eased Mountbatten’s task.
Mountbatten also developed a strong relationship with the Indian princes, who ruled those portions of India not directly under British rule. His intervention was decisive in persuading the vast majority of them to see advantages in opting to join the Indian Union. On one hand, the integration of the princely states can be viewed as one of the positive aspects of his legacy. But on the other, the refusal of Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Junagadh to join one of the dominions led to future tension between Pakistan and India
Mountbatten brought forward the date of the partition from August 1948 to 15 August 1947 . The uncertainty of the borders caused Muslims and Hindus to move into the direction where they felt they would get the majority. Hindus and Muslims were thoroughly terrified, and the Muslim movements from the East was balanced by the similar movement of Hindus from the West.
Lord Mountbatten with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the first Prime Minister of sovereign India in Government House, Lady Mountbatten standing to their left.
When India and Pakistan attained independence at midnight on the night of 14–15 August 1947, Mountbatten remained in New Delhi for 10 months, serving as India’s first governor general until June 1948.
Lord and Lady Mountbatten with Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Notwithstanding the self-promotion of his own part in Indian independence — notably in the television series The Life and Times of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma, produced by his son-in-law Lord Brabourne, and Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins (of which he was the main quoted source) — his record is seen as very mixed; one common view is that he hastened the independence process unduly and recklessly, foreseeing vast disruption and loss of life and not wanting this to occur on the British watch, but thereby actually helping it to occur, especially in Punjab and Bengal.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the Canadian-American Harvard University economist, who advised governments of India during the 1950s, an intimate of Nehru who served as the American ambassador from 1961 to 1963, was a particularly harsh critic of Mountbatten in this regard.
Career after India and Pakistan
Mountbatten arrives on board HMS Glasgow at Malta to assume command of the Mediterranean Fleet, 16 May 1952
After India, Mountbatten served as commander of the 1st cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet and, having been granted the substantive rank of vice admiral on 22 June 1949, he became Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet in April 1950.
Mountbatten served his final posting at the Admiralty as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from April 1955 to July 1959, the position which his father had held some forty years prior. This was the first time in Royal Naval history that a father and son had both attained such high rank.
While serving as First Sea Lord, his primary concerns dealt with devising plans on how the Royal Navy would keep shipping lanes open if Britain fell victim to a nuclear attack. Today, this seems of minor importance but at the time few people comprehended the potentially limitless destruction nuclear weapons possess and the ongoing dangers posed by the fallout. Military commanders did not understand the physics involved in a nuclear explosion.
This became evident when Mountbatten had to be reassured that the fission reactions from the Bikini Atoll tests would not spread through the oceans and blow up the planet.[57] As Mountbatten became more familiar with this new form of weaponry, he increasingly grew opposed to its use in combat yet at the same time he realised the potential nuclear energy had, especially with regards to submarines. Mountbatten expressed his feelings towards the use of nuclear weapons in combat in his article “A Military Commander Surveys The Nuclear Arms Race,” which was published shortly after his death in International Security in the winter of 1979–80.
After leaving the Admiralty, Lord Mountbatten took the position of Chief of the Defence Staff. He served in this post for six years during which he was able to consolidate the three service departments of the military branch into a single Ministry of Defence.
In 1969, Mountbatten tried unsuccessfully to persuade his cousin, the Spanish pretender Don Juan, to ease the eventual accession of his son, Juan Carlos, to the Spanish throne by signing a declaration of abdication while in exile.
The next year Mountbatten attended an official White House dinner during which he took the opportunity to have a 20-minute conversation with Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William P. Rogers, about which he later wrote,
“I was able to talk to the President a bit about both Tino and Juanito to try and put over their respective points of view about Greece and Spain, and how I felt the US could help them.”
In January 1971, Nixon hosted Juan Carlos and his wife Sofia (ex-King Constantine’s sister) during a visit to Washington and later that year the Washington Post published an article alleging that Nixon’s administration was seeking to get Franco to retire in favour of the young Bourbon prince.
From 1967 until 1978, Mountbatten was president of the United World Colleges Organisation, then represented by a single college: that of Atlantic College in South Wales. Mountbatten supported the United World Colleges and encouraged heads of state, politicians and personalities throughout the world to share his interest. Under Mountbatten’s presidency and personal involvement, the United World College of South East Asia was established in Singapore in 1971, followed by the United World College of the Pacific (now known as the Lester B Pearson United World College of the Pacific) in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1974.
In 1978, Mountbatten passed the presidency of the college to his great-nephew, the Prince of Wales.
Alleged plots against Harold Wilson
Peter Wright, in his book Spycatcher, claimed that in 1967 Mountbatten attended a private meeting with press baron and MI5 agent Cecil King, and the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman. King and Peter Wright were members of a group of 30 MI5 officers who wanted to stage a coup against the then crisis-stricken Labour Government of Harold Wilson, and King allegedly used the meeting to urge Mountbatten to become the leader of a government of national salvation. Solly Zuckerman pointed out that it was treason, and the idea came to nothing because of Mountbatten’s reluctance to act.
In 2006, the BBC documentary The Plot Against Harold Wilson alleged that there had been another plot involving Mountbatten to oust Wilson during his second term in office (1974–76). The period was characterised by high inflation, increasing unemployment and widespread industrial unrest. The alleged plot revolved around right-wing former military figures who were supposedly building private armies to counter the perceived threat from trade unions and the Soviet Union.
They believed that the Labour Party, which is partly funded by affiliated trade unions, was unable and unwilling to counter these developments and that Wilson was either a Soviet agent or at the very least a Communist sympathiser – claims Wilson strongly denied. The documentary alleged that a coup was planned to overthrow Wilson and replace him with Mountbatten using the private armies and sympathisers in the military and MI5.
The first official history of MI5, The Defence of the Realm published in 2009, tacitly confirmed that there was a plot against Wilson and that MI5 did have a file on him. Yet it also made clear that the plot was in no way official and that any activity centred on a small group of discontented officers. This much had already been confirmed by former cabinet secretaryLord Hunt, who concluded in a secret inquiry conducted in 1996 that:
“there is absolutely no doubt at all that a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5…a lot of them like Peter Wright who were rightwing, malicious and had serious personal grudges – gave vent to these and spread damaging malicious stories about that Labour government.”
There followed a glamorous honeymoon tour of European courts and America which included a visit to Niagara Falls (because “all honeymooners went there”).
Mountbatten admitted:
“Edwina and I spent all our married lives getting into other people’s beds.”
He maintained an affair for several years with Frenchwoman Yola Letellier, and a sexual interest in men has also been alleged.
Edwina and Jawaharlal Nehru became intimate friends after Indian Independence. During the summers, she would frequent the prime minister’s house so she could lounge about on his veranda during the hot Delhi days. Personal correspondence between the two reveals a satisfying yet frustrating relationship. Edwina states in one of her letters:
“Nothing that we did or felt would ever be allowed to come between you and your work or me and mine – because that would spoil everything.”
Since Mountbatten had no sons, when he was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, of Romsey in the County of Southampton on 27 August 1946 and then Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Baron Romsey, in the County of Southampton on 28 October 1947, the Letters Patent were drafted such that in the event he left no sons or issue in the male line, the titles could pass to his daughters, in order of seniority of birth, and to their heirs respectively.
Leisure interests
Like many members of the royal family, Mountbatten was an aficionado of polo. He received U.S. patent 1,993,334 in 1931 for a polo stick. Mountbatten introduced the sport to the Royal Navy in the 1920s, and wrote a book on the subject. He also served as Commodore of Emsworth Sailing Club in Hampshire from 1931.
Mountbatten was a strong influence in the upbringing of his grand-nephew, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, and later as a mentor—”Honorary Grandfather” and “Honorary Grandson”, they fondly called each other according to the Jonathan Dimbleby biography of the Prince—though according to both the Ziegler biography of Mountbatten and the Dimbleby biography of the Prince, the results may have been mixed.
He from time to time strongly upbraided the Prince for showing tendencies towards the idle pleasure-seeking dilettantism of his predecessor as Prince of Wales, King Edward VIII, whom Mountbatten had known well in their youth. Yet he also encouraged the Prince to enjoy the bachelor life while he could and then to marry a young and inexperienced girl so as to ensure a stable married life.
Mountbatten’s qualification for offering advice to this particular heir to the throne was unique; it was he who had arranged the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Dartmouth Royal Naval College on 22 July 1939, taking care to include the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in the invitation, but assigning his nephew, Cadet Prince Philip of Greece, to keep them amused while their parents toured the facility. This was the first recorded meeting of Charles’s future parents.
But a few months later, Mountbatten’s efforts nearly came to naught when he received a letter from his sister Alice in Athens informing him that Philip was visiting her and had agreed to permanently repatriate to Greece. Within days, Philip received a command from his cousin and sovereign, King Geórgios II of the Hellenes, to resume his naval career in Britain which, though given without explanation, the young prince obeyed.
In 1974, Mountbatten began corresponding with Charles about a potential marriage to his granddaughter, Hon. Amanda Knatchbull. It was about this time he also recommended that the 25-year-old prince get on with “sowing some wild oats”. Charles dutifully wrote to Amanda’s mother (who was also his godmother), Lady Brabourne, about his interest. Her answer was supportive, but advised him that she thought her daughter still rather young to be courted.
In February 1975, Charles visited New Delhi to play polo and was shown around the Presidential Palace by Mountbatten.
Four years later Mountbatten secured an invitation for himself and Amanda to accompany Charles on his planned 1980 tour of India. Their fathers promptly objected. Prince Philip thought that the Indian public’s reception would more likely reflect response to the uncle than to the nephew. Lord Brabourne counselled that the intense scrutiny of the press would be more likely to drive Mountbatten’s godson and granddaughter apart than together.
Charles was re-scheduled to tour India alone, but Mountbatten did not live to the planned date of departure. When Charles finally did propose marriage to Amanda later in 1979, the circumstances were changed, and she refused him.
Television appearances
In 1969 Earl Mountbatten participated in a 12-part autobiographical television series Lord Mountbatten: A Man for the Century, also known as The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, produced by Associated-Rediffusion and scripted by historian John Terraine. The episodes were:
1. The King’s Ships Were at Sea (1900–1917)
2. The Kings Depart (1917–1922)
3. Azure Main (1922–1936)
4. The Stormy Winds (1936–1941)
5. United We Conquer (1941–1943)
6. The Imperial Enemy
7. The March to Victory
8. The Meaning of Victory (1945–1947)
9. The Last Viceroy
10. Fresh Fields (1947–1955)
11. Full Circle (1955–1965)
12. A Man of This Century (1900–1968)
On 27 April 1977, shortly before his 77th birthday, Mountbatten became the first member of the Royal Family to appear on the TV guest show This Is Your Life.
Mountbatten usually holidayed at his summer home, Classiebawn Castle, in Mullaghmore, a small seaside village in County Sligo, Ireland. The village was only 12 miles (19 km) from the border with Northern Ireland and near an area known to be used as a cross-border refuge by IRA members. In 1978, the IRA had allegedly attempted to shoot Mountbatten as he was aboard his boat, but “choppy seas had prevented the sniper lining up his target”.
Despite security advice and warnings from the Garda Síochána, on 27 August 1979, Mountbatten went lobster-potting and tuna fishing in his 30-foot (9.1 m) wooden boat, the Shadow V, which had been moored in the harbour at Mullaghmore. IRA member Thomas McMahon had slipped onto the unguarded boat that night and attached a radio-controlled bomb weighing 50 pounds (23 kg). When Mountbatten was aboard, just a few hundred yards from the shore, the bomb was detonated. The boat was destroyed by the force of the blast, and Mountbatten’s legs were almost blown off. Mountbatten, then aged 79, was pulled alive from the water by nearby fishermen, but died from his injuries before being brought to the shore.
Also aboard the boat were his eldest daughter Patricia (Lady Brabourne), her husband John (Lord Brabourne), their twin sons Nicholas and Timothy Knatchbull, John’s mother Doreen (Baroness Brabourne), and Paul Maxwell, a young crew member from County Fermanagh. Nicholas (aged 14) and Paul (aged 15) were killed by the blast and the others were seriously injured. Baroness Brabourne (aged 83) died from her injuries the following day.
The IRA issued a statement afterward, saying:
The IRA claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Louis Mountbatten. This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country. […] The death of Mountbatten and the tributes paid to him will be seen in sharp contrast to the apathy of the British government and the English people to the deaths of over three hundred British soldiers, and the deaths of Irish men, women and children at the hands of their forces.
Six weeks later, Sinn Féin vice-president Gerry Adams said of Mountbatten’s death:
The IRA gave clear reasons for the execution. I think it is unfortunate that anyone has to be killed, but the furor created by Mountbatten’s death showed up the hypocritical attitude of the media establishment. As a member of the House of Lords, Mountbatten was an emotional figure in both British and Irish politics. What the IRA did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people; and with his war record I don’t think he could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war situation. He knew the danger involved in coming to this country. In my opinion, the IRA achieved its objective: people started paying attention to what was happening in Ireland.
On the day of the bombing, the IRA also ambushed and killed eighteen British soldiers in Northern Ireland, sixteen of them from the Parachute Regiment, in what became known as the Warrenpoint ambush. It was the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles.
Thomas McMahon, who had been arrested two hours before the bomb detonated at a Garda checkpoint between Longford and Granard on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle, was tried for the assassinations in the Republic of Ireland, and convicted by forensic evidence supplied by James O’Donovan that showed flecks of paint from the boat and traces of nitroglycerine on his clothes.
Funeral
Mountbatten’s tomb at Romsey Abbey
Lord Mountbatten’s Ceremonial Funeral
On 5 September 1979 Lord Mountbatten received a ceremonial funeral at Westminster Abbey, which was attended by the Queen, the Royal Family and members of the European royal houses. Watched by thousands of people, the funeral procession, which started at Wellington Barracks, included representatives of all three British Armed Services, and military contingents from Burma, India, the United States, France and Canada. His coffin was drawn on a gun carriage by 118 Royal Navy ratings. During the televised service, the Prince of Wales read the lesson from Psalm 107. In an address, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, highlighted his various achievements and his “lifelong devotion to the Royal Navy”. After the public ceremonies, which he had planned himself, Mountbatten was buried in Romsey Abbey. As part of the funeral arrangements, his body had been embalmed by Desmond Henley.
Aftermath
On 23 November 1979 Thomas McMahon was convicted of murder based on forensic evidence collected by James O’Donovan, for his part in the bombing. He was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
On hearing of Mountbatten’s death the then Master of the Queen’s Music, Malcolm Williamson, was moved to write the Lament in Memory of Lord Mountbatten of Burma for violin and string orchestra. The 11-minute work was given its first performance on 5 May 1980 by the Scottish Baroque Ensemble, conducted by Leonard Friedman.
Legacy
Mountbatten took pride in enhancing intercultural understanding and in 1984, with his elder daughter as the patron, the Mountbatten Institute was developed to allow young adults the opportunity to enhance their intercultural appreciation and experience by spending time abroad.
The city of Ottawa, Ontario, erected Mountbatten Avenue in his memory. The avenue runs from Blossom Drive to Fairbanks Avenue.
The arms of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma consist of:
Crest
Crests of Hesse modified and Battenberg.
Helm
Helms of Hesse modified and Battenberg.
Escutcheon
Within the Garter, Quarterly, 1st and 4th, Hesse with a bordure compony argent and gules; 2nd and 3rd, Battenberg; charged at the honour point with an inescutcheon of the British Royal arms with a label of three points argent, the centre point charged with a rose gules and each of the others with an ermine spot sable (Princess Alice, his grandmother).[123]
Supporters
Two Lions queue fourchée and crowned all or.
Motto
In honour bound
Orders
The Order of the Garter ribbon. Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame be to him who thinks evil of it)
Disclaimer – The views and opinions expressed in these documentary are soley intended to educate and provide background information to those interested in the Troubles of Northern Ireland. They … Continue reading The Shankill Bomb→
This is simply the story of a boy trying to grow up, survive, thrive, have fun & discover himself against a backdro… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…— Belfast Child (@bfchild66) July 23, 2020
My niece was married at Narrow Castle a few years ago and it touched my heart and soul to stand at the exact spot where this horrendous, unforgivable , cowardly act took place. I could feel the ghosts of those poor soldiers all around me and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.Surely one of the darkest deeds ever to take place during the thirty years of hell that wa the troubles
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27 August 1979
David Blair, (40) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Thomas Vance (23) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Ian Rogers, (31) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Roberts England, (23) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Jeffrey Jones, (18) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Gary Barnes, (18) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Anthony Wood, (19) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
John Giles, (22) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Victor MacLeod, (24) nfNI Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Leonard Jones, (26) nfNI Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Robert Jones, (18) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Donald Blair, (23) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Nicholas Andrew, (24) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Raymond Dunn, (20) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Michael Woods, (18) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Peter Fursman, (35) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Christopher Ireland, (25) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
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27 August 1979
Walter Beard, (33) nfNI
Status: British Army (BA)
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in two remote controlled bomb attacks at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, County Down. The first bomb was left in parked lorry and detonated when British Army (BA) lorry passed. The second bomb was left in a nearby Gate Lodge and detonated when British Army (BA) reinforcements arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
The first bomb targeted a British Army convoy and the second targeted the reinforcements sent to deal with the incident. IRA volunteers hidden in nearby woodland also allegedly fired on the troops. The castle is on the banks of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Eighteen British soldiers were killed and six were seriously injured, making it the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles. An English civilian was also killed and another injured when British soldiers fired across the border after the first blast. The attack happened on the same day that the IRA assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten.
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The day Mountbatten died and Warrenpoint bombs
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Lest We Forget !
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Warrenpoint
Never Forgotten
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First explosion
At 16:40, a British Army convoy consisting of one Land Rover and two four-ton lorries was driving past Narrow Water Castle on the A2 road. As it passed, a 500-pound (227 kg) fertiliser bomb, hidden in a lorry loaded with strawbales and parked near the castle, was detonated by remote control. The explosion caught the last lorry in the convoy, hurling it on its side and instantly killing six members of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, whose bodies were scattered across the road.
There were only two survivors amongst the soldiers travelling in the lorry; they both received serious injuries. Anthony Wood (19), the lorry’s driver, was one of those killed. All that remained of Wood’s body was his pelvis, which had been welded to the seat by the fierce heat of the blast.
Immediately after the blast, the soldiers said they were targeted by sniper fire, coming from woods on the other side of the border. The soldiers began firing back across the water. An uninvolved civilian, Michael Hudson (an Englishman who was a coachman at Buckingham Palace), was killed by the soldiers’ gunfire and his cousin Barry Hudson wounded. They had been birdwatching on an island opposite the castle.
However, according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers may have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire. Two IRA members arrested by the Gardaí and suspected of being behind the ambush, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, had traces of gunsmoke residue on their hands and the motorbike they were riding on.
On hearing the first explosion a Royal Marine unit alerted the British Army and reinforcements from other units of the Parachute Regiment were dispatched to the scene by road. A rapid reaction unit, consisting of medical staff and senior commander Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair (the commanding officer of the Queen’s Own Highlanders), together with his signaller Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, were sent by Gazelle helicopter; another helicopter, a Wessex, landed to pick up the wounded. Colonel Blair assumed command once at the site.
Second explosion
The IRA had been studying how the British Army behaved after a bombing and correctly predicted that they would set up an incident command point (ICP) in the gatehouse on the opposite side of the road. At 17:12, thirty-two minutes after the first explosion, an 800-pound (363 kg) bomb hidden in milk pails exploded against the gatehouse, destroying it and hurling lumps of granite through the air. It detonated as the Wessex helicopter was taking off carrying wounded soldiers. The helicopter was damaged by the blast but did not crash.
Narrow Water Castle
The second explosion killed twelve soldiers: ten from the Parachute Regiment and the two from the Queen’s Own Highlanders. Mike Jackson, then a major in the Parachute Regiment, was at the scene soon after the second explosion and later described seeing body parts scattered over the road, in the water and hanging from the trees. He was asked to identify the face of his friend, Major Peter Fursman, still recognisable after it had been completely ripped from his head by the explosion and recovered from the water by divers from the Royal Engineers. Only one of Colonel Blair’s epaulettes remained to identify him as his body had been vaporised in the blast.
The epaulette was taken from the scene by Brigadier David Thorne to a security briefing with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to “illustrate the human factor” of the attack.
Press photographer Peter Molloy, who arrived at the scene after the first explosion, came close to being shot by an angry paratrooper who saw him taking photographs of the dead and dying, instead of offering to help the wounded. The soldier was tackled by his comrades. Molloy said,
“I was shouted at and called all sorts of things but I understood why. I had trespassed on the worst day of these fellas’ lives and taken pictures of it.”
Aftermath
The Warrenpoint ambush was a propaganda victory for the IRA. It was the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles and the Parachute Regiment’s biggest loss since World War II. The 2nd battalion of the British Paratrooper regiment sustained sixteen casualties. The first battalion of the British Paratrooper regiment was responsible for Bloody Sunday on the 30, January 1972 where 14 unarmed protesters were shot dead.
The IRA made clear it was targeting British paratroopers because of Bloody Sunday. General Sir James Glover, Commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, said it was
“arguably the most successful and certainly one of the best planned IRA attacks of the whole campaign”.
Shortly after the Warrenpoint ambush, IRA members Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan were arrested by Gardaí (the Irish police). They were stopped while riding a motorbike on a road opposite Narrow Water Castle. However, they were later released on bail due to lack of evidence.
Immediately after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) retaliated by shooting dead a Catholic man, John Patrick Hardy (43), at his home in Belfast’s New Lodge estate. Hardy was targeted in the mistaken belief that he was an IRA member.
According to Toby Harnden, the attack “drove a wedge” between the Army and the RUC. Lieutenant-General Sir Timothy Creasey, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland, suggested to Margaret Thatcher that internment should be brought back and that liaison with the Gardaí should be left in the hands of the military.Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, claimed instead that the British Army practice, already in place since 1975, of supplying their garrisons in South County Armagh by helicopter, gave too much freedom of movement to the IRA. One tangible security outcome was the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield to a new position of Co-ordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland. His role was to co-ordinate intelligence between the military, MI5 and the RUC. The other was the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members.
Lieutenant-Colonel Blair is remembered on a memorial at Radley School.
IRA member Brendan Burns was killed in 1988 when a bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely.
IRA member Joe Brennan was jailed in 1982 for carrying out an armed bank raid to raise funds for the organisation. He left the IRA in 1986 and went on to become a successful property developer and novelist.
Disclaimer – The views and opinions expressed in these documentary are soley intended to educate and provide background information to those interested in the Troubles of Northern Ireland. They … Continue reading The Shankill Bomb→
This is simply the story of a boy trying to grow up, survive, thrive, have fun & discover himself against a backdro… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…— Belfast Child (@bfchild66) July 23, 2020
[The Command Paper set out the Northern Ireland Government’s reponse to criticism that it had failed to meet its commitments under the ‘Downing Street Declaration‘ of 19 August 1969.]
A man died nine days after being mortally wounded in Belfast.
Thursday 20 August 1981
Michael Devine
Tenth Hunger Striker Died Michael Devine (27) died after 60 days on hunger strike. Devine had been a member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). The family of Patrick McGeown, who had been on hunger strike for 42 days, agreed to medical intervention to save his life. A by-election was held in Fermanagh / South Tyrone to elect a Member of Parliament (MP) to Westminster to the seat that became vacant on the death of Bobby Sands. Owen Carron, who had been Sands’ campaign manager, was proposed by Sinn Féin (SF). Carron won the by-election with an increased number of votes over the total achieved by Sands. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) had again decided not to contest the election.
Tuesday 20 August 1985
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) shot and killed Seamus McAvoy (46) at his home in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. McAvoy had sold portable buildings to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and was the first person to be killed for providing goods or services to the security forces in Northern Ireland.
[This killing marked the beginning of a campaign against what the IRA termed ‘legitimate targets’.]
Saturday 20 August
See bottom of page for more details on Ballygawley Bus Bombing
1988Ballygawley Bombing
Eight British Army soldiers were killed when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) exploded a bomb at Ballygawley, County Tyrone. A further 28 soldiers were injured.
Loyalists carried out a bomb attack on a Catholic public house in the Markets area of Belfast. Republicans held a ‘Time for Peace – Time to Go’ rally in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. There was an estimated crowd of 10,000 people at the rally.
Tuesday 20 August 1996
John Alderdice, then leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), was awarded a life peerage to the House of Lords. His name had been sponsored by the British Liberal Democrats.
Wednesday 20 August 1997
Up to 30 men who claimed to be members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) badly damaged a public house, The Golden Hind, in Portadown, County Armagh. The pub was allegedly a frequent meeting place for members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
Friday 20 August 1999
There were disturbances between Nationalists and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers in the Seacourt Estate in Larne, County Antrim. During the trouble a shotgun was fired and stones thrown.
Nine men, including Gerard Rice, then spokesman for the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, were charged with obstruction following the protest on 14 August 1999. There was a meeting between the Bogside Residents’ Group and the Apprentice Boys of Derry to discuss the Lundy’s Day parade planned for December.
Monday 20 August 2001SDLP Support Policing Plan
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) held a meeting to decide on whether or not to accept the ‘Patten Report – Updated Implementation Plan 2001’ that was issued on 17 August 2001. Following the meeting the party announced that it would nominate representatives to the proposed 19 member Policing Board which would oversee the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). John Hume, then leader of the SDLP, said:
“We will respond positively to an invitation to join the Policing Board and we will be encouraging people from all sections of the community to join the new police service.”
The SDLP issued a document outlining its reasons for the change in policy.
[The decision represented a historic shift in SDLP policy given that the party had withheld support from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) since 1970. The decision was welcomed by the Irish government, the British government, the Catholic Church, and the Department of Sate in the United States of America (USA).]
There was a gun attack on a house at Mounthill Drive, Cloughmills, County Antrim, at approximately 10.30pm (2230BST). Two shots were fired at a bedroom window of the dwelling but none of the family of five in the house at the time were injured. The estate where the shooting happened was mixed and the house was owned by a Protestant family.
[The RUC have not established a motive for the attack.]
A ‘paint-bomb’ was thrown at the home of a Protestant man in Hesketh Park, north Belfast. The bottle of paint broke a window and caused paint damage to fittings and furnishings. The man had taken part in a Loyalist stand-off in Ardoyne in June which prevented primary school-children from going to the Catholic Holy Cross Girls’ Primary School. Nelson McCausland, then Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) councillor, accused Republicans of being responsible for the attack.
There were two security alerts in west Belfast. One suspect device was thrown at a house in Tullymore Gardens in Andersonstown, while the other device was discovered on the Hannahstown Road. Sinn Féin accused the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) of being responsible for the attacks.
The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland published an annual report on the religions composition of the workforce in the region: A Profile of the Workforce in Northern Ireland, Summary of 2000 Monitoring Returns. The report showed that the overall composition of the monitored workforce was 60.4 per cent Protestant and 39.6 per cent Catholic. Other surveys showed that the economically active population is 58 per cent Protestant and 42 per cent Catholic. The imbalance between Catholic and Protestant employment rates has narrowed over the past 10 years. However the last year saw the smallest improvement at 0.1 per cent.
Remembering all innocent victims of the Troubles
Today is the anniversary of the follow people killed as a results of the conflict in Northern Ireland
To the innocent on the list – Your memory will live forever
– To the Paramilitaries –
“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, but nothing worth killing for.
13 people lost their lives on the 20th August between 1971 – 1988
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20 August 1971 John McKerr, (49)
Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: not known (nk)
Died nine days after being shot while standing outside Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Ballymurphy, Belfast.
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20 August 1972 James Lindsay, (45)
Protestant Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Found shot, Glencairn Road, Glencairn, Belfast.
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20 August 1973
Charles O’Donnell, (61)
Catholic Status: Civilian (Civ),
Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Killed by bomb thrown into his home, Grampian Avenue, Strandtown, Belfast.
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20 August 1981
Mickey Devine, (27)
Catholic Status: Irish National Liberation Army (INLA),
Killed by: not known (nk)
Died on the 60th day of hunger strike, Long Kesh / Maze Prison, County Down.
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Shot at his home, Eglinton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin. Contractor to British Army (BA) / Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) .
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20 August 1988
Jayson Burfitt, (19) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone
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20 August 1988 Richard Greener, (21) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988
Mark Norsworthy, (18) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988
Stephen Wilkinson, (18) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988
Jason Winter, (19) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988
Blair Bishop, (19) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988 Alexander Lewis, (18) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
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20 August 1988
Peter Bullock, (21) nfNI Status: British Army (BA),
Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in land mine attack on British Army (BA) coach, Curr, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
On a sunny day in 1970 my osteomyelitis was finally given the all clear and I was on my way home from the hospital, for a couple of years at least. I was so heartbroken to leave Nurse Brown, that on the day of my discharge I hid in a broom cupboard, in the childish belief if they couldn’t find me they would let me stay in the children’s ward with Nurse Brown.
The day before dad had explained to me that we had a new home and that‘s where I would be going to live when I left hospital. He explained that we had moved to Glencairn to be near his family, so that our grandmother could help look after us. We all loved my grandmother dearly and although I was grief stricken at the thought of leaving Nurse Brown, I was also excited at the thought of living in a new home and being surrounded by my grandparents and cousins. When I had first gone into hospital we had lived in a mixed area of the city and spent as much time with our Catholic family on mum’s side, as we had with dad’s family. When mum and dad had first parted dad forbade any of mum’s family from visiting me in hospital and as a result when they parted for good we were never to meet any of our Catholic relatives again.
The division in my family reflected the religious segregation that was ripping Northern Ireland apart. At four years old my political and religious destination was decided, as I left the children’s ward and headed home to my new life without mum in Glencairn.
Glencairn was a violent, ultra loyalist estate in the West of the city built in the sixties and was controlled by the UDA, the largest protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. The estate is cut into the mountains and is surrounded by glens and forest and from the top you can look down over Belfast City, with the giant cranes Samson and Goliath dominating the horizon of the east of the city. On my first day home I fell in love with Glencairn and I knew immediately that I would like living there. Previously we had lived in a built up area of Belfast and now I was surrounded by vast open spaces and fields and mountains as far as the eye could see. There was only one road into Glencairn and due to this isolation it became a dumping ground for loyalist murder squads
St. Andrews
Our new house was on the Forthriver Road, half way up the estate and two minutes walk from the local and only shopping complex in Glencairn, which was made up of a VG , a Chinese takeaway , paper shop , a wine lodge and a UDA drinking club called Grouchos, which dad worked in. Home for us was a ground floor house in a two story maisonette, with two bedrooms between five of us. It was a bit cramped and when I first came out of hospital I got to sleep with dad in his double bed and the others shared the other room. But we were all happy and I was excited about all the sudden changes in my young life. Just facing our house was St. Andrews church, which was to play a huge role in my future life,
Granny and Granddad lived just around the corner from our place and Granny practically lived in our house as she helped dad look after us. About 10 minutes away from our place, at the top of the estate dad’s two younger brothers and their wives and children lived. Like a lot of deprived area’s of Belfast, Glencairn was a tribal community and the Protestant people of the estate stuck together through thick and thin with their hatred of their Catholic counter parts throughout Belfast and Northern Ireland with a passion.
But the best thing for me was dad’s dog Shep, a temperamental Alsatian, who terrorised the area. We quickly became inseparable and before long we were the best of friend’s. After unpacking my things and settling me in, Dad and Granny called me into the front room and asked me to sit down. They explained that mum had gone away and that I would never see her again. If anyone were to ever ask where she was, I was simply to say she had died and leave it at that. Also from then on I was to call Gerard David and Mary Margaret. Due to the ultra Loyalist nature of Glencairn and the people we now lived amongst, all traces of our Catholic heritage and mum had to be eradicated from our past and we were told never to mention mum or her family again. This was done also for our own safety, because had the truth been known we would have been ostracised and picked on.
Within a short space of time I had really settled in and for the first time in my short life I was spending a lot of time with dad’s side of the family and I was getting to know my brother and sisters properly. Due to my leg, I got to sleep with dad in his huge double bed and every night he would carry me upstairs because, due to my caliper’s I was still unable to get up them by myself. Whist I had been in hospital I was surrounded by other children in wheelchairs, plaster and caliper’s and I had thought nothing of it. But now back at home with all those trees and never ending fields I began to feel self conscious about my caliper and the way I walked. When I had to visit the physiotherapist I pushed myself as hard as possible in my efforts to strengthen my leg muscles, so I could climb trees and run with the other kids. But I was getting stronger everyday and within a year of leaving hospital I could walk and run unaided, although I was to have a limp for the rest of my life and suffer multiple fractures due to the weak bones in my bad leg.
Dad and me
As the weakling of the family I got special attention from Dad and my Grandparents and during my first few months at home dad took a lot of time off work as a gardener to look after me and help me settle into my new life. Dad had always been a special person in my tiny world , but now that I was home and spending so much time with him , he soon became the centre of my universe and I must have been a right nuisance as I followed him around like a love sick puppy getting under his feet all the time. Within a few weeks after coming home I was enrolled in the local school, Fernhill which was just behind our home on the perimeters of the park and glens. I was lucky in that aspect that my sisters and brother and all my cousin’s attended the same school and from my first day there I loved every minute I spent there.
After school we would all head off to the vast Glencairn park and when we got bored with playing on the swings or climbing trees we would go down the glen to the river and play for hours following the river as far as we could and catching rainbow trout with pieces of string attached to branches and our bare hands. It was an idyllic place to grow up and had it not been for the absence of mum and the madness going on around us, it could have been the perfect childhood.
Before moving to Glencairn I had not been aware that Dad, along with his brother was a member of the UDA. This was nothing out of the ordinary, as most of the adult men and many of the women in Glencairn and the surrounding areas were members of one of the many loyalist paramilitary groups. The UDA played a very active role within the community and if someone had a problem that needed solving or were short of cash and needed a loan they would turn to the UDA. Like a lot of the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, the UDA were looked upon as protectors of the people they governed. Although he was a member of the UDA, like many others dad did not get involved with the military actions of the active units and was a pacifist who hated violence. He had been a practising Christian for most of his teenage years.
Dad played a very active role within the UDA and apart from running the local UDA club, Grouchos, he was responsible for setting up and running the Glencairn Accordion band. From my point of view this was excellent. My sisters and cousins were all members of the band, the younger ones played the triangle or symbols and then like my sisters Margaret and Jean, working their way up the ranks until they were taught how to play the accordion. The band was the pride of Glencairn and won many competitions throughout Northern Ireland. They practiced on Thursday nights and I use to go with dad up to the practice hall at the top of the estate and sit mesmerised in the corner, surrounded by 40 females of various ages. There was one girl who played the accordion and I feel in love with her the first time I set eyes on her. Of course she never knew as the girls went through the rehearsals, playing various loyalist tunes and anthems, I would sing along and pretend to be the leader of the band and march up and down the hall. The girls’ found this absolutely hilarious and in order to gain some control back, dad would tell me off and I would have to sit quietly in the corner again, until a personal favourite of mine was played and I would be off again. During the protestant marching season and the build up to the 12th, the most important day in the loyalist calendar, the band was hired to march with various orange lodges throughout Northern Ireland. On the day of the march our house would be in complete chaos as my sisters and dad got themselves dressed in the uniforms for the march. Granny would come round to help and gradually all our cousins would arrive with various instruments and get in some last minute practice. All the members of the band would meet outside the shops and a large crowd always gathered to see them off. I would almost be bursting with pride as they all fell in together and led by dad would start marching down the Glencairn Road towards the meeting point on the Shankill Road.
Dad and Margaret
David and I would follow the band down to the bottom of the road and wave them off before heading home for a snack and then out to play until tea time. The band would normally arrive back in the estate between six and seven and we would wait eagerly near the Road until we could hear the distant sound of them approaching and rush to greet them. When we finally got home granny would prepare dinner and after eating we would all sit down and watch telly, exhausted by the day’s events.
At this stage of my life I was as happy and normal as an eight –year old boy could be in my circumstances and was blissfully unaware that my life was so different from others. Life with dad and the others was a happy life and I now had a routine to my life that was missing when I was in hospital. I still occasionally thought of Nurse Brown and missed her, but I was to see her again in the not too distant future. On Tuesday David and I went to the BB and Sunday school on Sunday’s. Although I really believed that god had created the earth and sacrificed his only son for the good of mankind, my god had become a Protestant god and I did not love my Catholic counterparts. Reverend Lewis, our vicar, was a patient and tolerant man but he occasionally became exasperated at our hardcore Protestant approach to religion and tried hard to teach us the concept of love, not hate.
Although dad did go to church himself it was expected of us kids to attend and religion played a very important role in my early life and teenage years. Also I think dad liked to get us all out of the house for a while, so he could have some peace and quiet time to himself and a rest from looking after us. Sometime’s dad would be on sentry duty outside the UDA club and David and I would go and visit him on the way home. In these early years I used to think of mum only occasionally and once when I asked granny about her she made it clear that mum was gone forever and I was not to mention her again and forget all about her. So I did exactly that and pushed mum to the back of my mind and got on with my new exciting life in Glencairn.
One day after weeks of anticipation Margaret’s cat Smoky give birth to a little of five kittens. We were all allowed into Margaret’s bedroom to watch the birth, including dad’s dog; my best friend Shep, who was told off a few times by Smoky for getting a little too close to the action.
After letting David, Shep and I have a supervised look at the five kittens Margaret banished us from the labour ward, as she needed to spend time alone with her five new charges. I was very thoughtful and to be honest jealous of Margaret having five brand new kittens to her name and I wanted some for myself. There was obviously no quick way for me to find five brand new kittens for myself, so I decided there and then that Shep would have to give birth to five puppies for me before the day was out. The major problem there was that Shep was a he! This bit of fundamental biological necessity wasn’t going to put me off.
After a quick strategy plan with David we headed to our secret den in the park, with an unexpected Shep in tow. My plan was a simple one, I needed a miracle and I was going to ask God to help. Reverend Lewis had instilled in us a firm believe that if you wanted and needed something bad enough god would answer your prayers. Surely god and baby Jesus in their wisdom would recognize the importance of me having five puppies for myself before the end of the day. When we got to the den Shep was more than happy to lay down on the grass and rub his belly and wait for the miracle that god was about to perform. I had little knowledge of how kittens were born and how miracles worked, but I was not to be put off. After a chat with David and stroking Shep’s belly with what I felt was a miracle stroke, I lead David behind a nearby bush, sank to my knees and began a marathon prayer to god and Jesus, outlining the desperate importance of Shep giving birth and me having my puppies. Needless to say nothing happened and after about an hour David and Shep were beginning to give me strange looks and were obviously bored and becoming alarmed at my enthusiasm for the lord’s intervention and after a while I too got bored and disillusioned and decided to throw the towel in… for now at least. It was obvious to me that god in his wisdom had decided not to grant me a miracle today but this did not diminish my faith and I would continue to seek gods help in all matters big and small.
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