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Sean McKenna autobiography, IRA Hunger Strike 1980-81

Sean McKenna – Autobiography – Voice from the Grave – by Vincent McKenna MSc

IRA Hunger Strikes 1980 – 1981

In 2009 a senior Sinn Fein member, Jim Gibney, paid Tribute in The Irish News, to Sean McKenna Jnr and his Father Sean McKenna Snr when he said, “The McKennas are republicans. They believed partition was wrong and actively opposed British occupation. They paid a high price for their political convictions.”

Sean McKenna was on the first Provisional IRA Hunger Strike in Long Kesh which began on the 27th of October 1980, Sean would remain on hunger strike for 53 days, at which time he fell into a coma and Brendan Hughes called off the hunger strike as the British had granted concessions, Sean McKenna was then subject to electric shock treatment and his heart was restarted.

Following Sean’s release from Long Kesh he worked with his cousin Vincent McKenna in Monaghan Mushrooms in Monaghan Town, and during this period Sean McKenna recorded his life story on four-track tape. Sean gave the tapes to his cousin Vincent McKenna and asked Vincent to transcribe and publish the tapes after Sean had died. Now in 2013 Vincent McKenna has transcribed the tapes and publishes them here to coincide with the National Hunger Strike Commemoration in Monaghan Town on the 4th of August 2013.

In the transcribed tapes Sean McKenna accepts that he freely volunteered for the first IRA hunger strike in 1980 and that he again put his name forward for the second hunger strike in 1981, although he was still in hospital recovering from the first hunger strike at the time. Sean McKenna claims that it was the Prison Officers Association’s refusal to implement the ‘concessions’ offered by the British that created the conditions for a second hunger strike in which 10 Irish Republicans would die.

Sean McKenna also controversially claims that during the second hunger strike, the IRA Officer Commanding, Bik McFarland, was forcing hunger strikers to sign affidavits in front of solicitors, and that these documents would ensure that when hunger strikers fell into comas, their families would not be allowed to have them resuscitated, this action says McKenna, was wrong and not republican. McKenna states categorically that the IRA leadership inside and outside Long Kesh, got carried away with the publicity being generated by the hunger strikes and were prepared to allow men to die for political gain.

Other hunger strikers such as Richard O’Rawe would support the McKenna thesis that the IRA leadership were more concerned with electioneering than they were with the lives of Irish republicans in Long Kesh. This thesis is further supported by Official British papers released under the 30 year rule in 2011 which appear to vindicate O’Rawe’s claims that the IRA leadership vetoed a deal put forward by Margaret Thatcher’s government.

The concessions offered by Thatcher and the timing of the offer, suggests that four IRA and two INLA hunger strikers died needlessly in order to facilitate the political ambitions of certain people within the leadership of the Provisional IRA, in particular Gerry Adams TD.

Martin McGuinness MI6 Agent

While it has always been suggested that all communication between MI6 and the IRA leadership (before/during and after the hunger strikes) was passed through a Derry based ‘middleman’ a communication between MI6 Agent Michael Oatley and Martin McGuinness (1993), reproduced here and published publicly for the first time, shows that there was a very direct line of communication between Martin McGuinness and MI6, however, this particular line of communication between McGuinness and MI6 suggests that Martin McGuinness was an MI6 Agent rather than a negotiator on behalf of the Provisional IRA or Sinn Fein. This assertion can be made, as Oatley was not part of the MI5 lead negotiating team that was engaged with the IRA leadership in 1993, Oatley had been replaced by a senior MI5 Officer, John Deverill, both Oatley and John Deverill had at all times been advised by former IRA Commander/MI5 Agent Sean O’Callaghan, hence, Oatley’s use of the Irish language in his communication to McGuinness.

Dealings between the IRA and MI6 go back to the early 1970’s when the intelligence agency operated out of a house in Hollywood, Co Down known as Laneside. In 1974 and 1975 a Foreign Office diplomat, James Allen and a senior MI6 Agent, Michael Oatley regularly met IRA leaders there during what became known as “the Feakle ceasefire”, from this time forward many Senior IRA activists such as McGuinness were groomed by M16.

MI6 Communication to Martin McGuinness

Here is reproduced an exact copy of a communication (1993) sent from MI6 Agent Michael Oatley (The Mountain Climber) to Martin McGuinness Sinn Fein/IRA Leader in 1993. Later in 1994 IRA Chief of Staff Kevin McKenna would give a rare interview to Eamon Malley from Downtown radio in which McKenna would say, “As long as the boys with the balaclavas are at the table I am happy enough”, this was a reference to the IRA members who made up the Sinn Fein delegations meeting with the British Government in 1994. However, while Kevin McKenna was IRA Chief of Staff, no effort was made by the northern leadership to facilitate McKenna at the negotiating table and McKenna had to rely heavily on Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD who acted as a messenger between the northern leadership and McKenna who was on-the-run and living in Smithboro in County Monaghan.

In the communication Oatley refers to the National Chairman (John Major) and the National Executive (the British Cabinet), the Local Chairman refers to Sir Patrick Mayhew (northern Secretary of State at the time). The headline events relate to several IRA bomb attacks in the north of Ireland and also the Warrington bomb that killed two school boys.

When Sir Patrick Mayhew was speaking at a public lecture in Queens University at this time, he was asked by a student if the British were engaged in talks with Sinn Fein/IRA, Sir Patrick denied any talks were taking place at any level. When the same question was put to John Major in the House of Commons, Major said it would make his stomach sick to think that anyone from his Government or Government officials would be talking with terrorists. When the communication below was privately shown to certain trusted journalists, McGuinness tried to counteract its content by going public in a British crafted documentary explaining that all of his contact with MI6 was at the direction of the republican leadership, however, McGuinness has failed to explain the tone and tenor of this communication from Oatley, and why Oately was still communicating with McGuinness in 1993 long after Oatley had been removed from the British negotiations with the IRA.

In the aftermath of the 1994 IRA cease-fire there was a ‘war of words’ or ‘political theatre’ between the northern IRA leadership and the British Government as to whether ‘decommissioning’ had been part of the negotiated process, in a bizarre move Michael Oatley moved to help the McGuinness argument that decommissioning was not part of the immediate process, in so doing, Oatley supplied some of his official documents and notes relating to the IRA talks to a senior academic at Queens University in Belfast  to help resolve the issue, the communication below was accidentally included in Oatley’s documents and those documents were accessed and copied by an IRA intelligence officer.

A Chara

I hope this communication finds you well since our last meeting, needless to say that the National Chairman is unhappy with recent high profile events both here on the mainland and in your locality. The National Chairman is finding it difficult to sell any part of our discussion to the National Executive. Recent headline events are unfortunate to say the least and slow down any forward movement in the immediate future. I don’t need to emphasis the importance of restraining headline events such as those we have witnessed over recent months. While both the National and Local Chairmen understand the need for you to retain your position, further, high profile events will continue to undermine our work.

Martin I hope you don’t mind if I conclude by giving a new meaning to Tiocfaidh ár lá.

Is Mise

Michael Oatley

O’Rawe Claims are disputed

The claims by O’Rawe are disputed by those who made political and monetary gain off the backs of the hunger strikes, people such as Danny Morrison suggest that the Official British papers support the IRA leadership’s decision to push on with the hunger strike as the British had not ‘formulated a final position’. However, O’Rawe and the British papers suggest that a resolution to the hunger strike crisis was available in early July 1981. In 2011 the businessman who had acted as ‘go-between’ for MI6 and the IRA, before, during and after the hunger strike period, Mr Brendan Duddy provided his own private papers on the hunger strike period to Galway University and those papers support the view that a deal was possible in early July 1981 before another six republicans died on hunger strike.

Brendan Duddy who has never shown any political bias in his role, supports the view held by O’Rawe that on the 5th July 1981 the British had went a long way towards meeting the demands of the hunger strikers and the prisoners would have accepted those terms, at least as something to work with going forward. O’Rawe believes that the IRA leadership in some guise or other, wanted to capitalise on the deaths of the hunger strikers and wanted to get Owen Carron and others, if possible, elected.

It is reasonable to suggest that the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein leadership wanted to capitalise on the hunger strikes, this could be seen clearly in Fermanagh/South Tyrone and Cavan/Monaghan, were scarce resources were spent on several election campaigns off the back of the election of Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty, for example, in Monaghan/Cavan Sinn Fein fought two general election campaigns in 1982, at a time when IRA volunteers were struggling to accumulate enough ammunition for gun attacks on British Army bases close to the Monaghan ‘border’. Prisoner’s wives were receiving little benefit from all of the Prisoners Dependence Fund (PDF) money being collected around the country; as such money was being used for election expenses.

It is clear from Duddy’s own records that the British had offered concessions that could have ended the hunger strike, however, it appears that Gerry Adams and other IRA leaders in Belfast wanted to capitalise on the deaths of the hunger strikers, and it is clear that IRA leaders in the south of Ireland were not shown the detail of the British concessions, Ruari O’Bradaigh, told this writer that he had never seen the deal offered by the British.

While Danny Morrison and others, who benefited politically and monetarily from the death of the hunger strikers, try to rubbish many former comrades, the reality is that the IRA leadership trusted Bendan Duddy for over 20 years, and he has no reason to lie about his role. Professor Paul Bew, Ireland’s foremost authority on the northern conflict, suggests that the British papers neither prove nor disprove O’Rawe’s thesis.

Vol. Sean McKenna – Autobiography – 1954 to 2008

I was born in Clara in north Monaghan in 1954, my Mother is Bridget Keogh from Clogher in County Tyrone and my Father was Sean McKenna from Clara in north Monaghan. My Father Sean McKenna was a farm labourer and small farmer. In 1957 my Mother and Father decided to move the family to Ivy Hill College in Newry, where my Father worked on the College farm as a manager and was paid £11 per-week. I was left in Tyrone with my Grandmother at this time, I have no idea why and nobody has ever explained it to me.

I eventually moved to the farm cottage in Newry with the rest of the family, I began my school days in the Mercy Convent in Newry, soon afterwards the nuns decided that the school should be an all-girl school and so I had to move to Abbey Yard Christian Brothers School. I remember a Miss Lennon, very old fashioned, very strict, but alright.

The Christian Brothers taught me well, and one particular Christian Brother from County Kerry taught us about Irish Republicanism, at this time I was also hearing many stories at home about Sinn Fein and the IRA, both my parents were republicans, more so on my Father’s side of the family.

I was being conditioned to republicanism from a young age, my Father could play the accordion, and we had great nights in Newry when my Father’s brothers, Peter, Arthur, Patsy and my cousins would come, songs stirred emotions, great thing to fight for your country and even die for your country if possible. I remember great nights with the Attys (McKennas) from Monaghan and the McGeoughs from Clogher. My Father bought some books for me, they were about the IRA 1957-62 campaign and I got some books myself when I was 11-14 years old.

When I was 7 years old I got a dog in Monaghan, I would go hunting with my dog after school and even mitch school for hunting, school was a lot of nonsense, I thought. When I was 11 years old, I done a lot of hunting between Newry and Poyntzpass, it was a happy childhood.

In 1968 the Civil Rights Campaign started, I had no clue about civil rights, I was about 13 years old, I heard about police brutality, people beaten and killed, I hated the police, I was brought up to hate the police. I went to civil rights marches, at the time I worked in Mick McArdle’s shop.

I told my Mother and Father that I was going to a civil rights march, my Father said that civil rights was no good, that we needed the country free, my Mother asked my Father to explain politics to me, in about 10 minutes he explained nationalist and unionist, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein, all of this was explained to me in 10 minutes, that was it.

When I went to the civil rights march I enjoyed the crack, fighting the police, I went back to work and Mick McArdle told me not to get involved too much, however, I enjoyed the fighting and used the civil rights marches to get at the police.

I then began working at the college farm, my Mother’s brother John was manager on the farm and it was good. I wanted to join the IRA, however, the Offical IRA would not take me until I was 16 years old, I was only 15, then there was talk of a split, my Father set up a Provisional Sinn Fein Cumann in Newry, my Father asked me to join the Sinn Fein Cumann, I told my Father I was only interested in fighting the Brits, my Father said, “join this Cumann and you will get all the fighting you want”.

The Cumann was a boring carry-on, I sold An Phoblacht/Republican News or a version of it at that time, I was with good people, the right people, people I wanted to be with, however, I wanted more. A few nights around the cottage in 1970, boys arrived at the house, I did not know them, I knew there was something big on. Joe Conway stands out he was about six foot tall, 54 years of age, good fighter, bouncer around Newry. I could see boxes going in and out of the shed, I knew there something big on, there were men working in the garage, that night there would be an explosion in the town, buildings destroyed, I knew my Father was in the IRA and so I tortured him to get me in, eventually he agreed and I was sworn in at the Paul Smith Sinn Fein rooms in Newry. It was good to be in the IRA, I was sent away to training camps in the south of Ireland.

I was trained to use weapons, Thompsons, carbines, 38s or 32s that’s all we had, the training was good but I wanted to use them, I was 16. One night at the cottage in Newry older men came back with a bomb and did not plant it, the bomb was primed, I asked an older IRA man to give the bomb to me and I would stick it somewhere. I took the 15lb gelignite bomb that had a 15 minute blue fuse, and I blew up a transformer, I was only hitting ordinary people, but I did not know that nor did the fellow that sent me. It blew the transformer away and I was happy enough. I then meet with Joe Conway and he trained me in making bombs, I liked bombs, I was really interested in landmines.

Joe trained me in landmines, Joe would take me up from Newry and we would walk over the mountains and move to Louth, sometimes we had guns, it was all about watching and learning, I was 16 years, Joe helped me a lot, I am grateful to Joe.

The next thing I done a few more bombs around Newry using gelignite, however, gelignite was scarce, in 1970 people wanted us to do something, the Brits were on the streets, my Father and other men would use 303 Rifles and fire as few shots at the Brits. I had some good times planting bombs and levelling buildings, I enjoyed it. I was still in Sinn Fein going to parades, I went to Fergal O’Hanlon commemoration in Monaghan Town and Daithi O’Connell impressed me when he was speaking at that commemoration.

We were operating in Newry, Down and south Armagh, we were getting tougher and the Brits were getting tougher, our house had been searched in 1970, my birthday was in Feb and I was 17, I was operating and doing the best I could.

There was an operation in Newry and it did not come off, we had ten rifles, my Father and I carried them across fields, it was the 8th of August 1970, we hid the weapons up trees, my Father had pains that night and so he went home and I hid the rest of the weapons and the ammunition. I got home about 3.30am on the 9th of August 1970, the Brits came into the house at 4am and the Brits were in bad temper, I thought the IRA had shot someone, we were taken to the UDR barracks, there were 50 or 60 men in the UDR Barracks, some Provos and some Stickys, many others who had nothing to do with republicanism were also lifted, the sticks were nervous and afraid.

The following morning we were moved to Ballykinlar Army Barracks, it was rough stuff, kicking and punching, some of the older men were not fit for it, I was 17, I was fit for it. They took us into Nissan huts, made us lay on the floor and began exercising us, they worked us all day, we had a stew and bucket of water, we got no break, the exercising and beatings went on to 4am the next morning, press ups, sit ups, the soldiers were changing every few hours and if you did not do it you got beat. The beatings were horrific, men were beaten unconscious.

I was taken in by the RUC Special Branch, they talked to me, gave me a cigarette and so forth and sent me out after 15 minutes, I was crumbling, and they knew it, the older men, hard-men were crumbling, we could not get away.

I did not tell them where the guns or explosives were. I was sent out again and I was exercising again. I had not seen my Father in Ballykinlar, the next morning the helicopters began to arrive, dogs were put on us, and men were kicked and beaten. We were beaten into helicopters by ordinary British Soldiers.

We were taken to the Belfast Dock and I was put on the Maidstone Prison Ship, I was being signed out of army custody into prison custody, they would not believe my age, they gave me a good shake before an RUC man confirmed my age, I got a good shaking for nothing.

We were treated to the normal degrading prison stuff, naked, degrading, I was a country boy being taken in on the Maidstone Prison Ship, there were 120 of us on the Maidstone, the older men had been in jail before, and they were not bothered. There was a Sticky and Provo battle about who would be in control. A Derry man was appointed commander. It was a very warm summer, the heat, the dormitory was deadly hot, we ran about in trousers, all the Newry men were there, and so I talked to everybody, Jimmy Savage looked after me like a son.

My Father was not on the Maidstone, I did not know where he was, Crumlin Road Jail had been mentioned, Jimmy Savage was good to me, we got visits for which we had to walk along a gang-plank to a wee hut, my Mother and sisters would visit once per month, and we were allowed one letter per month. I got used to prison life; Jimmy Savage had been in during the IRA campaign in 1957-62 so I am indebted to Jimmy.

I was then moved to Long Kesh in November, I was in Cage 1 and then Cage 2 opened, they were moving men from Crumlin Road Jail, the first time I seen my Father his hair had went from grey to pure white, he looked bad, I did not know what had happened to him.

I had to shout from Cage 1 to my Father in Cage 2, we made scrumpy (alcohol) in the Cage, it was not great, it would not do much for you, we began making handkerchiefs and handcraft, Jimmy had me building things out of matches.

On the 11th of October 1971, the Brits sent in dinner to Cage 2, the grub was bad, I am not sure if the army was cooking it, or ordinary convicts, it was rough, beef burgers, we lost the head, tempers got out of hand, Frank McGarry lost the head. The screws ran out of the Cage and we burned the canteen, 500/600 Brits started firing gas in to the Cage, they saturated the place with gas, everyone hit the ground, the Brits came in with pick axe handles and other tools, they just beat everyone, 40 men were carried out unconscious, Frank McGlade 71 carried out unconscious, they got the tools from the other Cage that was still being built, it was a rough night.

I was moved to Cage 5, and Cage 3 closed, my Father moved to Cage 5 with me, visits and all continued, we were now official internees, we were allowed 4 letters per week, visit per week, my Father and I took joint visits with my Mother and sisters, my Father was pretty upset.

There was twenty-seven of us in Cage 5 the crack was good, Paddy O’Hagan, and Jimmy Fields from Armagh were great men for the stories. One night I was on the top bunk and my Father was on the bottom bunk, and my Father was crying, I did not know what was wrong with him. I did not know what to say, you don’t see your Father crying. He told me about after the 9th August and how he had been tortured, he had been subject to beatings, dropped from helicopters, strange noises that distorted his balance and senses, he was in a bad way. Jimmy Savage, and others got up, next morning my Father went to hospital. I would see him in the hospital as I went back and forward, I would have a wee talk with him, he could not handle the Cage, he wasn’t coming back to the Cages, it was rough on the men. He had a nervous breakdown, I know that now, but at the time I did not know what was happening.

He went to hospital and I stayed with Jimmy, I got involved in a few escapes, digging tunnels and wire cuttings, one day I was coming back from a visit and I was told that my Father was being released in 1972. I had a lot of friends in Long Kesh, there were a lot of people in, 600 in at that time. Jimmy was moved to another Cage, I was on my own, but I was getting on ok, we marched and had training, trying to be a soldier, or at least that is what I thought. Time moved on 1973-74 I was still in, now there were 1400 men in, I meet a lot of them, then the numbers were down to 300, there were release plans on, a lot of excitement and lists of names would be read out by screws, we would gather and they might call 6 names and six got out.

Gerry Cunningham and Gerry Fitzpatrick from Belfast, good men, started making poteen with me, my Father and Grandfather (Paddy Frank McKenna) had made poteen in Monaghan and Newry, we had many great nights drinking poteen in Long Kesh, we had an old record player on, or someone would sing. This was jail life and it was hard, I was young and I got on well with everyone, I made the poteen out of apples, bananas, plums, Gerry Cunningham made the worm, a rare looking worn, more bends than a dogs hind legs, we even smuggled out a wee bottle to our people outside.

In February 1975 they began releasing more names, it was said that the last of the 9th of August men were to be released, there were only a few of us left, Art McAlinden and so forth, they called out my name, for 3 years and 8 months I had been interned, I was delighted to be out, my good friend began crying when I was getting out, he was young, I just left as quick as I could, Cage 8, I felt bad that he was on his own, but I had to go.

I returned to O’Neil Avenue in Newry there was a great welcome, everyone was behind us, I knew what I was going to do, I had a few drinks, a party, things were brave and good, all my friends had not reported back to the IRA and so I did not want to know them, Eamon Murphy had reported back to the IRA and so I spoke to him.

He said there was only one man to see in Newry, he had been on the run the same as myself Hitchy Hillen, a hard man, tuff man, I went up to Barcroft, he had heard of me, we meet in Mrs Connolly’s house, another famous house around Newry. I told Hitchy that I wanted action and he said no problem, but he had nothing, so I went back and got two guns, two browning high power weapons, 13 rounds, they were Belgium guns, good guns, British army corporals and captains were using them at that time. Hitchy and I went with the guns and we hit a ten man British Army foot patrol in Hill Street, it worked out alright, but Hitchy’s gun jammed, I got one shot into a Brit and he went down, his flack-jacket protected him, I had about 8 rounds left, I started shooting in the air or else the other soldiers would have come out after us. We got to the car and got away, the police were furious, we had frightened the life out of them, we had no hoods on us, we just wanted a bit of agro, we did not care, they did not expect to get hit in that area of town.

I was on the run as everyone knew who done it, I was made OC in Newry and Hitchy was my right hand man and I ran Newry for the next year, the police and the army were going crazy to get us, we knew that they had someone who was setting us up but we kept shooting our way out. We had talked in prison, drinking poteen and so forth, jail is not human, I was not going back and the police and the army knew that.

We caught the boy who had set us up, he got away, and the police were not happy as they had no one to set us up, we could stay in houses in any estate in Newry even the old nationalist party and labour party would let us in when we were in trouble. Those were hairy times around Newry, we had regular shoot outs with the Brits, Hitchy had been in jail in the south and he was not going back either.

We had a few drinks in the Border Bar one evening, I was driving, we came down the Brownish, and we ran into a British checkpoint, I rammed them with the car, I got around the first Saracen, but the car crashed, I gave them a bogus name and I said I needed to go to the toilet. They let me go to the hedge to go to the toilet, I just went through the hedge, the Brits opened fire on me with a browning off the top of the Saracen, Hitchy and the others thought I was dead; the helicopters were up, I ran to the custom clearance post. I stayed in the field, they thought I was heading for the border, but I doubled back to a safe house in Newry. Hitchy and the people who were with him appeared in court charged with attempted murder, membership and so forth, so Hitchy was gone, and I had no-one, from 1975 in Newry Hitchy was the only man in Newry who would do anything, there were plenty in Newry drinking and talking, but they would not do anything, a few would help you out, but they would not get into the heavy agro.

I ended up joining a unit in South Armagh, I was going to give up OC in Newry, Peter Cleary was in my unit in south Armagh he is dead now, I enjoyed working with Peter Cleary and the lads. I had a girlfriend at that time, Marian McNeil, we were engaged, I was too wild to get married, she was a good girl and we were happy, her people were good people and we got on well.

Christmas passed and the sectarian trouble started in south Armagh, 10 Protestants were shot dead on their way home from work, I agreed with it, to bring the thing to a head, it would sort it out, in February the 10 Protestants were shot dead, in March I had nowhere to stay so I went back to my Father’s house in Edentubber , the man who owned the house (Watters) had been killed with three others when the bomb they were preparing went off accidentally, so the people in the area seen me and my Father carrying the line on for the IRA. My Father had died in the house in Edentubber in 1975 as a result of the torture he had been subjected to by the British.

That night I had no gun as I had sent the two guns into Newry that morning, so all I had was the sawn off shotgun beside the bed, I had a loaf of bread and pint of milk, but I had no money. At about 4am the door was kicked in and two fellas who were armed with browning high powered weapons with torches on top were standing over me, they said, where is the gun, I said, I have no gun. It took them two minutes to get in and I would have got them if I had a gun. When we went outside, there was another guy outside the window with a Sterling sub-machine gun with a double magazine. He would have got me if I had moved towards the door, I might have been better if he did kill me, it would have saved a lot of hassle over the next 15 years.

They took me out of the bed and searched me, they were going crazy for the gun, they knew I was crazy about guns, there was stuff in the house, the big guy with blonde hair, he was about 5-11, said, you have two choices come with us without hassle or trouble, or I will shoot you here and your death will be claimed by UVF in retaliation for the 10 Protestants shot in south Armagh. I thought about my Mother and I was getting married, those are the two people who saved me, I did not want to go to Newry, but I done it for them.

I did not want to tell them anything. I said ok I will go with you, we walked down the fields and across the Flurry River, we jumped across the river, they kept the guns on me, the big fella said we will cut you down, any chance I miss you the man with the sterling will cut you down, half-a-mile across the border, he put his arm around my shoulder, he said I know what you are thinking, don’t do it, I don’t want to kill you. When we got to Killeen there were other British Soldiers there, they were in uniform, the three who took me were not in uniform, the three got into uniform and changed their guns, a blue Volkswagen van came up the road, and they took me in the van, I had a smoke in the back of the van, the SAS treated me ok. In Bessbroke soldiers and their wives were all coming in and looking at me, it was embarrassing to see all these people and top brass looking at me. Every two minutes the door would open and a guy with a row of medals would look in.

I was moved to Newry where RUC detectives Bradley and McCann were to interview me, two bastards, they were angry at what I had done around Newry and the border, the beatings started; I did not want to talk. They produced the file with the 1971 stuff, bombs and shootings. I did not care, I was reluctant and cool. At 10 O’Clock that night the Blonde soldier came in and put his arm around my neck and said, Sean I don’t want to kill you, if you don’t talk we will take you out and you will be found on the border, me and this fella will take you out and kill you and the UVF will claim it.

They wanted me for murder, but I was not going to sign for a murder I did not do. I was taken to Newcastle Court in March 1976 and back to Crumlin Road Jail, I meet Hitchy, it was bad in there, IRA bad boys running the show, and they were beating young fellas who had made statements, I did not agree with that, they are bloody animals. I had a name and no fear, and I let them know it, that was the way it was. Hitchy was sentenced to 25 years for the attempted murder on Hill Street, my case came up, I was fighting my case, Judge Babbington, a police judge, a rotten bastard. I heard later that the blonde solider was Captain Niarac, he later shot Peter Cleary dead, Peter was a good man, but he was a tuff man, and he would not have went with them. Niarac also killed John Frances Green in Monaghan.

The case was put back as the SAS could not turn up as they had to come from England. All the SAS were in civilian clothes, I recognised the blonde solider, I don’t know if it was Niarac as I have never seen a picture of Niarac. I have heard all the things that Niarac is supposed to have done, I don’t think Niarac shot Peter Cleary, because when I was on the side of the road the blonde fella put a young solider on me and ‘Niarac’ told him that if I moved a finger he was to shoot me dead. All I know is that ‘Niarac’ for some reason did not want to kill me.

Judge Babbington was the top man, the SAS made fools of themselves, they lied through their teeth, no problem, Babbington, said he was not there to determine where I was lifted, he said I would have to go to European Court for that, State Prosecutor, told the court what I had been doing, that I had been in jail for a long time, and the problem they had getting me.

Judge Babbington asked for an adjournment, he was going to Corfu, he would take the papers with him and come back. When Babbington returned from his holidays, I was in the court on my own, the solicitor never even turned up, he said 25 years, it wrecked me, he looked out over his glasses and sneered, nobody turned up, a lonely minute.

H Blocks Long Kesh

I was moved to the H-Blocks, Ciaran Nugent was on the blanket, April 1977 I was sentenced, I went to H4 first, we were in our civilian clothes, stripped naked, I told the screws I was going on the blanket, we were put naked into a van and they drove us to the H-Block, we walked naked across the yard, they took all our particulars again, usual routine, into a cell.

I was in a cell on my own, big screw, Paddy Joe Kerr, a Catholic Prison officer, he came in and beat me, what’s your prison number, I refused, and there was an air of hostility, Catholic screws worse than Protestants, Paddy Joe Kerr went out of his way to prove they were not afraid of the Provos.

I was there a couple of weeks and then moved to H5 where I became OC as I had a lot of experience in jail. I was disillusioned with the jail experience, I knew I would be on the ultimate end if I stayed OC, I could get on the hunger strike when it came. PO was not too bad, but beatings went on, the doors would open, that was the way it was, sitting at 5 or 6 in the evening, we would shout keys, they would open the door and someone getting the life beaten out of them. I never got a beating as OC and I was OC for 4 years, maybe it was respect. Hard when you hear an 18 year old lad getting beaten naked in the cell, big men beating a young lad, all they could do was go on the ground in  a ball while getting the life beaten out of them.

The PO was from Lurgan, a Christian, but boys under his control, sometimes with drink taken would do beatings. H5 I was OC, one of my closest friends would have been Tom McFeeley, he was on the Staff (Adjacent) both of us had been in before, he was a tough man. I have meet thousands of men but McFeeley was miles out in front of everyone for toughness, the screws were afraid of him, they had respect for McFeeley, they beat him and he beat them, police and everyone.

A year after I joined the blanket, we were still locked in the cell 24 hours per day, never got out except to go to mass on Sunday morning. The boys would just talk at mass, however, some of the lads wanted to hear the mass, so we had to call order. It was hateful, but we had to keep order, when you are with a fellow 24 hours a day, toilet, no tv, radio, cigarettes, conversation runs out after a month, lads would beat each other, and get friendly again, that is the way it was. Another thing that happened on the blanket we would have concerts, I never liked singing but I would sing a song.

In 1978 there was no movement, 3 H-Blocks, 600 men, the Brits were going nowhere, we knew there was marches but we did not know what was going on, so we went on the dirty protest, they hate to see you grow a beard in prison they would beat the hell out of you. We would stop washing, and put the shit on the wall, the embarrassment walking up the landing with a poo in a pot, so we put it on the wall once we went on the dirty protest. The cells were stinking, we were stinking, it was inhuman, but we had no choice. It was a grotesque place, shit on the wall and urine on the floor, beyond description, that men could endure it for years was beyond comprehension.

We had a Visit every month, by 1979-80 we had not washed in 4 years, your Sister or Mother would visit you and you were stinking and yet they would still throw their arms around you, they still loved you, which was hard to believe, that they loved you when you did not love yourself, walking through shit and probably eating it because your hands were that dirty, lots of fighting and beatings, screws beating young lads, kicking young lads on the ground with their big boots.

The hunger strike came as we knew it would, we forced it, we had Cardinals and Bishops in but the Brits were not moving, we were beat out on the blanket, lads getting beating 3 and 4 times per day, the hunger strike was the final way. I did not want to live anymore after 4 years on the blanket, I wanted to die, I was one of the more experienced men there and when the time came to fight I could do that. I wanted to get something for the young lads, Brendan Hughes was OC on all the blocks and he said that, I was not going on the hunger strike

He did not pick my name on first count – I sent word to hold back H3 until he got a letter from me.  I knew why I was not getting picked, I had been scalded when I was a child and had a bad scare and he thought I had been shot, and that I might not last long on hunger strike, but I told him what had happened and the word came back that I was on the hunger strike.

Hunger Strike 1980

We knew the hunger strike would start, we were prepared to die. The 7 names were announced as there were 7 signatories on the 1916 Proclamation; we thought this might capture people’s imagination and stir emotions.

The group consisted of IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeeley, Leo Green, INLA member John Nixon and I.

I was in the cell with Tommy Kelly, Turf Lodge, great fella we got on well he eat his dinner, I walked up and down the cell and my dinner was sitting at the door, it went on, we did not eat at all, after about three weeks we were still in the cell, but they did not move us, we thought they would take us to hospital, governors came in and said we were refusing to eat prison food so we would lose remission, for every month we were on the blanket we were losing a month remission, 3rd week we were taken to H3 hospital wing. Ordinary prisoners looked on us as if we were contaminated, nobody would touch us, Provos that did not go on the blanket/dirty protest respected us, but they simply could not do it.

The first thing we done in the hospital wing was take a shower.

I was on hunger strike for 53 days, Fr Murphy was giving me the last rites, that was the last I remember, I was lying in bed and I felt I was floating out of my body, this guy came in with a white beard, I was given electric shock, the next thing I remember, I was in a bed in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, the hunger strike was over.  I woke up a couple of days later, a nurse sitting beside me, she asked me my name I could not remember my name, she told me John Lennon was dead, I was sad as I liked John Lennon, I was moved back to the blocks within a couple of days I was in a wheel chair, some thought the hunger strike should not have been called off and I agreed, some thought it should have been called off, there was a good deal of talk. We had been told that the NIO had offered concessions and that is why it was called off. Brendan Hughes had called off the hunger strike because he believed there was a deal.

McFeely and I said it should not have been called off, Brendan Hughes had been talking to NIO Officials and he believed they could work from there. I was in hospital; I was there on my own, watching TV and looking at books. My eyes were really bad, I needed a good light and I could read one line at a time, I was getting vitamin injections, they were very sore, every morning I would get the injections. The injections would help sort my eyes out; eventually I was able to get out of the wheelchair.

I was in bed one day and the doctor came in to see me, grey hair, he told me that I had effectively died and they used electric shock to bring my heart back, he said I had a near death experience. I was happy enough, good to be alive, I suppose. Rumours of a second hunger strike began to do the rounds; I told Bobby Sands that if there was to be a second hunger strike I wanted to be on it. Bobby said he did not want me to die, he knew that I would not last long on a second hunger strike, but I would rather have died than send some of the other lads to their death. That evening they sent me back to the H-Blocks because I wanted to go on the second hunger strike, everyone was hunger strike crazy. Brendan Hughes was right; it was not worth one man’s life.

According to Brendan the NIO had passed the British concessions to the Long Kesh Governors and the POA refused to implement the concessions and that is why the second hunger strike began. The POA caused or at least created the conditions for the second hunger strike.

The 7 of us who had been on the first hunger strike wrote and signed a letter and sent it to the IRA’s Belfast Brigade telling them that we did not support a second hunger strike as it was tantamount to suicide, nobody acknowledged our letter, and so we had no choice but to offer our support to the lads going on the second hunger strike.

It was a horrible time, I knew exactly what Bobby was going through, I knew the pains, the aches, the doubts, I wished Brendan Hughes had allowed me to die; I did not want our men going through this horrible death.

We were delighted when Bobby was elected as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, we thought it might save him, history would have told us different. The blocks were bad, death hung in the air, my close friend Raymond McCreesh died, the Irish Commission for Peace and Justice were told that 4.5 demands were on offer from the British, but the leadership ignored this and another 6 men died without good cause, they could have been saved.

Bobby Sands Elected MP

The election of Bobby Sands raised hopes that a settlement could be negotiated, but Margaret Thatcher stood firm in refusing to give concessions to the hunger strikers. She stated “We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political”. The world’s media descended on Belfast, and several intermediaries visited Sands in an attempt to negotiate an end to the hunger strike, including Síle de Valera, Granddaughter of Éamon de Valera, Pope John Paul II’s personal envoy John Magee, and European Commission of Human Rights officials. With Sands close to death, the British Government’s position remained unchanged, with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins stating “If Mr. Sands persisted in his wish to commit suicide that was his choice. The Government would not force medical treatment upon him”. Bobby Sands died on the 5th Day of May 1981 after 66 Days on Hunger Strike.

Hunger Strike Ends

Then the hunger strike was called off, the British had given us nothing, not an inch, it was Father Faul from Dungannon who secured an end to the hunger strike, if he had not ended the hunger strike another 20 men would have died and we would still have got nothing.

I was not happy with a good deal that went on behind the scenes, Bik McFarland on the orders of the Belfast Brigade staff had forced the hunger strikers to sign affidavits in front of solicitors so that when they fell into a coma their parents or families could not take them off the hunger strike, I felt this was wrong, that is not what republicanism is about, it is not what I am about, totally out of order, wrong.

I was in H-Block 4 (H4) the Belfast Brigade leadership and the leadership inside the Kesh had got carried away with the propaganda, they never had propaganda like it. It was called off and we had nothing, we had our own clothes and we shaved, that was it, nothing and ten men dead.

Sean McKenna Autobiography Ends…

Peadar Whelan, who remains within the ranks of Sinn Fein in 2013 reflects the feelings of those men who had lived through the hunger strike period in Long Kesh.

“My resentment…,” writes Peadar Whelan recalling the end of the second hunger strike in ‘Nor Meekly Serve My Tim’’, “was as great as my relief.”

Peadar mirrors the response of many Republican prisoners at that time. “Despite my relief that no one else would die I still felt gutted because ten men had died and we had not won our demands,’” writes Peadar. “My morale was never as low.” Peadar was released on licence from a life sentence in 1992 and would become northern Editor of An Phoblacht.

Loughgall Martyrs, 33rd Anniversary, Loughgall Informer, Jim Lynagh

Loughgall Martyrs 33rd Anniversary Sinn Fein/PIRA

I am constantly asked, if Sinn Fein and The PIRA are separate organisations, and I have to say, No. The PIRA Army Council is the Supreme Ruling authority of Sinn Fein/PIRA, the term Sinn Fein/PIRA is not propaganda, it is shown beyond reasonable doubt in The Green Book (Sinn Fein/PIRA Bible):

“An O.C.’s (Operations Commander) might know how to put a unit on a military footing; an I.O.’s (Intelligence Officer) might know how to create an effective intelligence network; a Cumann Chairman (Sinn Fein) might know how best to mount a campaign on a given issue, e.g. H Blocks etc., and for all members of the movement regardless of which branch we belong to, to enhance our commitment to and participation in the struggle through gaining as comprehensive an understanding as possible of our present society and the proposed Republican alternative through self and group education”.

This explanation of Sinn Fein/PIRA being a singular organisation with The PIRA Army Council providing an over-arching strategy was clearly set-out during the Sinn Fein/PIRA Ard Fheis in 1986 when both Martin McGuinness (MI6 Agent) and Gerry Adams (Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead) said:

“A Sinn Fein activist is the same as a PIRA activist, they are one and the same, there is only one Sinn Fein/PIRA”. This mantra was echoed at Sinn Fein/PIRA functions around the country as Republican Sinn Fein led by Ruairi O’ Bradaigh had just split from Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA.

While you do not have to be a member of The PIRA to become a Sinn Fein/PIRA TD, senior officer holders in Sinn Fein must be sworn members of The PIRA as they are directly answerable to The PIRA Army Council. This has been in place since the foundation of Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA in 1969-70, as Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA believed that The Official IRA from whom they had split, had allowed their hearts to overrule their minds when The Official IRA decided to walk away from a violent campaign in the north. Many members of my extended paternal family were founding members of Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA.

As a child I sat in the company of Provisional Sinn Fein President and Army Council member Ruairi O’ Bradaigh and Provisional Sinn Fein vice-President and Commander in Cumann na mBan (Female PIRA) Maire Drumm. It was clear that to hold these high offices in Sinn Fein one had to be a sworn member of The Provisional IRA, this requirement has not changed.

Loughgall Martyrs 33rd Anniversary and Gerry Adams

Was it correct and proper for The PIRA to be surrendered? Yes, it was correct and proper for The PIRA to be surrendered, but not for the reasons advanced by Gerry Adams nor under the Terms and Conditions agreed between Martin McGuinness and his MI6 Handlers.

From a traditional republican perspective, the reason that it was correct and proper to surrender The PIRA was due to the fact that The PIRA had become/and remain The Black and Tans of the latter 20th Century and now the 21st Century. This does not mean that there were not good men and women who genuinely believed in a cause, however, they were blinkered by that cause and blinded from the treachery, corruption and criminality of their leadership.

In Gort in December 1920, as observed by historian Roy Foster, “a new level was plumbed” when two local boys with no IRA connections were murdered by the Black and Tans for “impudence”. Their bodies were thrown into a ditch “after being dragged behind one of the dreaded lorries until they were unrecognisably mangled”.

This was just one example of what poet WB Yeats referred to in his poem Reprisals as “Half-drunk or whole-mad soldiery”.For those of us who were actually in the trenches, the reality of Sinn Fein/PIRA from the mid-1970s onward was in extreme contrast to their publicly stated claims of being the defenders and liberators of the Catholic/Nationalist community in the north. A good example of how The British Security Services dealt with Sinn Fein/PIRA can be found in the manner in which The CIA and FBI dealt with The Communist Party in America in the 1970s. When The Communist Party collapsed in America, there were more paid up members of The CIA and FBI in its ranks than there were actual Communists.

By the time the Sinn Fein/PIRA Army Convention was held in Donegal in October 1997, the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were infiltrated to the point that Agents, Informers and touts outnumbered actual Sinn Fein/PIRA members. This level of infiltration was fully exposed when Bobby and the lads raided Castlereagh Holding Centre in 2002, however, no action could be taken as several levels of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership would have had to be wiped out.

Those Sinn Fein/PIRA members who had not been compromised sat ideally by while Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists were protected and on many occasions their victims beaten, shot, murdered or exiled. Sinn Fein/PIRA members tied rape victims to lamp-posts and poured paint or tar over them so that other rape victims would not dare to break silence. These were not acts carried out by weak individuals, these were acts directed from the very top of Sinn Fein/PIRA. Dogs on the street knew that Gerry Adams Snr, Ruby Davidson and many others were prolific child rapists, yet they were protected and on the occasions of their deaths afforded full style Sinn Fein/PIRA funerals.

In 1998, this author press released a list of 100 Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists and pedophiles who had been protected by the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, to highlight the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein/PIRA as self-proclaimed liberators/defenders of the nationalist/Catholic community. In response to my press release some good journalists (who had not sold out to the ‘peace-process’ gravy train) began to ask serious questions of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership. The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership panicked and ordered an Internal-Audit of Sinn Fein/PIRA around the country to establish how wide-spread the rape of women and children was within the organisation. This Internal-Audit was to estimate the political damage that could be caused to Sinn Fein/PIRA if someone actually investigated the claims. Seamus and Annie concluded their Internal-Audit and reported back directly to Sinn Fein/PIRA HQ in Belfast. The Internal-Audit found that at least 5,000 women and children had been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA members.

In 2014 Gerry Adams TD would produce a list of 27 Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists that they had Ghosted into The Irish Republic in order to take the political pressure off. This was the 27 origionally included in the initial list of 41 On-The-Runs to recieve ‘Comfort Letters’ from MI6.

Leading members of Sinn Fein/PIRA who had admitted to Sinn Fein/PIRA that they were sex criminals such as Gerry Adams Snr, Liam Adams, Marty Morris, Seamus Marley, Ruby Davidson, Briege Meehan, Michael Marron and hundreds more were and continue to be protected by Sinn Fein/PIRA. Only a handful of Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists have actually appeared before the courts, their victims remain silenced in the Ghettos and the leavey lanes of suburbia by the threat of death, as suffered by Paul Quinn in Monaghan or Kevin McGuigan in Belfast in recent times.

Of the initial list of 41 Sinn Fein/PIRA members drawn up by The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership to receive Comfort Letters from MI6, 27 on that list were Sinn Fein/PIRA sex criminals such as Seamus Marley. Seamus Marley is the son of leading Sinn Fein/PIRA member Laurence Marley who was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries. Seamus Marley had been moved out of Belfast after admitting to the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership that he had engaged in sex crimes.

The Secretary of State for the north was told in 1999 that 27 of the 41 OTRs on the list were sex criminals and not on-the-run for Terrorist activity, however, like many Secretaries of State he was simply an MI6 appointee, following The Oatley and McGuinness script.

Marley was moved to a Sinn Fein/PIRA safe-house in Louth where he raped two young boys, he is now serving 7 years for those rapes but is under investigation for other crimes. In Dundalk in the 1990s Liam Adams was describing himself on the front page of the regional paper, Argos, as a Pedophile Hunter, in fact, he was the pedophile but had been protected by the leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA, he has since died while serving 15 years for raping a 4-year-old-child. The majority of Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists in the north, were and continue to be, Ghosted into The Republic when their victims cannot be silenced. The numbers involved are overwhelming.
This article by Ed Moloney in The Sunday Tribune shook the leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA as people were beginning to break silence.

Sinn Fein/PIRA member Michael Marron pleads guilty to raping a female child after that child’s family had to move out of the area to seek justice. Michael Marron is also the person who continuously ran a smear campaign against Eamon Collins before Eamon was murdered in 1999. Marron had often written on the walls of Barcroft estate that Eamon Collins was a Peadophile.

This article in The Sunday Herald September 1999, highlights how the rape of women and children is being used by Sinn Fein/PIRA as a weapon of torture, The Rape Crisis Centre, Belfast is quoted, “One in every Four clients that we deal with, women and children have been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA members. In some instances Mothers have been warned at gun point to take their raped child to England for an abortion so that the Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists cannot be identified at a latter point by DNA from the baby.

This article that appeared in The Newsletter Sept 2000 explains how a male child was shot by Sinn Fein/PIRA because he told  social worker that he had been sexually abused by a senior member of Sinn Fein/PIRA.

Sinn Fein/PIRA kept very detailed records of the Human Rights abuses they engaged in, they also kept a very clear record of certain loyalist groups that were engaging in similar activity against their own community. I downloaded this database from a Sinn Fein/PIRA computer in Belfast, when I still had a wee key.

Sinn Fein/PIRA mouth-pieces such as Gerry Adams stood at the graveside of PIRA volunteers and lied through their teeth, all of the above and much more is why The PIRA should have been surrendered, The PIRA had become and remain The Black and Tans of the latter 20th Century and now the 21st Century and no number of apologists will remove that stain. Sinn Fein when they break FREE from The PIRA Army Council and their Handlers, will be entitled to engage in normal politics, but until then they must remain in political self-isolation.

The Provisional IRA are proxies for their Handlers, they should disband and decommission their MI6 supplied Glocks. The PIRA Army Council should apologise to the Catholic/Nationalist community in the north for the crimes it has committed against them these past 50 years.

Loughgall Martyrs 33rd Anniversary Background

This article was penned by Liam Clarke in March 1998, it is an interview with Vincent McKenna within days Sinn Fein/PIRA rumors would begin that Vincent McKenna was a child molester.

Kevin McKenna could trace his heritage back to Niall McKenna of 1641, who had massacred over 2,000 Protestants in the Monaghan/Tyrone region while stripping thousands more Protestants of their belongings and driving them from their homes. While Kevin McKenna was happy to kill British military personnel, he derived his greatest pleasure from purely sectarian operations such as Kingsmill (10 Protestants), Enniskillen (12 Protestants), Teebane (8 Protestants) Shankill (10 Protestants dead, 57 Protestants injured). Kevin McKenna never tired of targeting Protestants in his native Aughnacloy, County Tyrone and while he had murdered a number of Protestants in Aughnacloy and Monaghan in the 1970s, McKenna failed to carryout any successful operations in Aughnacloy from 1980 onwards.

When Martin McGuinness left the meeting with Kevin McKenna, McGuinness was arrested by members of An Garda Siochana. Soon after McGuinness was arrested Garda Headquarters received a call from an MI6 Officer known as Michael Oatley CMG, OBE (The Mountain Climber), Oatley requested that McGuinness be released without charge and Oatley’s request was granted without question. The order to release McGuinness was a surprise to even the most seasoned Garda Detectives in Monaghan including Colm Brown and John McCoy. This intervention by MI6 makes a nonsense of the Sinn Fein/PIRA assertion that there was no MI6 contact during this period, or perhaps, the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership did not know about the true nature of the relationship between MI6 Officer Oatley and Martin McGuinness. Below McGuinness hiding like a scared rat as Michael Stone opens fire on mourners.

Loughgall Martyrs Used

“Anyone who does business with The British, The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools because they have all sold out on the Irish People”.

We now know, for reasons that I will explain in a moment, that in 1987 the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were already in bed with all of the above and in particular The British. At Jim Lynagh’s graveside in 1987 many young men and women that were gathered, were inspired by the Gerry Adams oration, many went on to kill and some were themselves killed. We now know that Gerry Adams was speaking out both sides of his mouth, however, I have never found any evidence that Adams was an Agent of any State, his political ambition was enough for the Brits to work with.

Martin McGuinness is a very different kettle of fish; McGuinness had been groomed by MI6 from those early days in the 1970s when the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership meet with British Officials. According to Sean O’Callaghan (a Garda and MI5 Agent) who was in regular phone contact with McGuinness in the 1990s, McGuinness was formerly recruited by MI6 in the mid-1980s. O’Callaghan claimed that he witnessed many meetings between McGuinness and MI6 Officer Oatley during a period that the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership claim there was no contact between the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership and The British. O’Callaghan also claimed that when Oatley used Irish in his communications to McGuinness, it was O’Callaghan who provided the Irish, anyone who knew McGuinness, will know that his IQ was not overwhelming.

In 2017, David Trimble, who had become friendly with McGuinness admitted that he was with Sean O’Callaghan when Sean O’Callaghan received a long and detailed phone call from Martin McGuinness in the 1990s. However, the greatest indictment against McGuinness is the communication below, the provenance of which the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership continue to deny, to accept its provenance as set out here is to accept that McGuinness, ‘the republican hero’, was in fact an MI6 Agent who had a free hand from his Handlers to engage in and direct murder, nothing new there when we look at all the other British Agents/informers/touts who did and continue to sit at the top of Sinn Fein/PIRA.

Catholics Not Included
Between 1992 and The PIRA Convention in October 1997, I was a runner between Kevin McKenna (PIRA Chief of Staff) and Martin McGuinness (Army Council). On 10th October 1997 a Provisional IRA General Army Convention was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, and was attended by Kevin McKenna, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty, Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt Sands and so forth.

Back in the 1980s Google did not exist so records had to be kept in a written form, here is a copy of the records kept for Kevin McKenna in relation to all deaths, weapons seizures and so forth in 1986.

Kevin McKenna was also using another member of Sinn Fein/PIRA as a runner with Northern Command; however, McKenna was concerned that the second runner may have been compromised. As I had a genuine reason for visiting Monaghan each week and a genuine reason for visiting Derry each week, the security forces were less likely to take me under their notice, or so Kevin McKenna believed. I meet with McGuinness at a safe-house on The Culmore Road in Derry on a regular basis.
Interestingly, I only parted company with Martin McGuinness following the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA General Army Convention which was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, On 10th October 1997. I parted company with McGuinness as I was advised by members of my extended paternal family in Dundalk and south Armagh, that Michael McKevitt and others were being allowed, by The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, including Kevin McKenna, Martin McGuinness and Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, to empty PIRA arms dumps as they prepared to set-up The Real IRA.

I travelled from Belfast to Monaghan at the end of 1997 to ask Kevin McKenna (Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy had just been appointed Chief of Staff of the PIRA – Murphy was no less ruthless than Kevin McKenna but he was easily bought as he was promised by MI6 that his criminal empire would remain untouched by the security forces in the north) why the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were allowing McKevitt to take explosives, weapons, ammunition and personnel without sanction. Kevin McKenna said that, “The odd bomb going off here and there would help keep Unionists focused on working with the ‘Doves’”. Normally anyone who misused or misappropriated as much a bullet belonging to The PIRA was court-martialled and punishment administered, two of the disappeared had allegedly mis-used a single gun belonging to the PIRA.

I was devastated by Kevin’s answer as I had put a lot of work into the peace-process and I had convinced a lot of people to give Sinn Fein a chance to move away from violence. Kevin McKenna and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership had decided to use The Real IRA as proxies to do their dirty work, just as they had done with many proxy groups over the years. This tactic would back-fire with the Omagh Bomb, and only then did the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership condemn the so called ‘Dissidents’. Recently Sinn Fein/PIRA MEP, Martina Anderson has been lobbying The Irish Government not to extradite Omagh Bomber, Liam Campbell, yet again exposing the lie of so called ‘Dissidents’.

At this point I changed tactic, in March 1998, I gave an exclusive front-page story to The Sunday Times in which I described my time in Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and the Ethnic Cleansing strategy developed and operationalised by Jim Lynagh and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership in the mid-1980s.

While on the 31st of August 1994 The PIRA Army Council issued a general press statement through P.O’Neil, This press statement did not contain any meat on the bones of the Terms and Conditions of the PIRA cease-fire, the detailed Terms and Conditions which have never been altered to this day were delivered by McGuinness to MI6. There was in fact a twin-track approach, The Good Friday Agreement did not mirror the Terms and Conditions of The PIRA cease-fire. The Good Friday Agreement did not contain any detail about ‘Comfort Letters’, it did not contain any detail about Sinn Fein/PIRA being allowed to continue Human Rights abuses against the Catholic community (including murder and rape) and so forth. The latter is why, The British Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, stated in 1999 that the murder of Charles Bennett by The PIRA was not viewed as a breach of The PIRA cease-fire but was viewed by the British as “Internal-House-keeping”.
British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, offered a false sense of security to those who has suffered at the hands of Sinn Fein/PIRA and Loyalist terrorists for decades when on, Wednesday 20th May 1998, Blair delivered a speech at the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster in which he unveiled a hand-written set of pledges to the people of Ireland in advance of the Referendum on 22nd May 1998.

The text of the pledges was as follows:

“I pledge to the people of Northern Ireland:

1.   No change in the status of Northern Ireland without the express consent of the people of Northern Ireland.

2.  Power to take decisions returned to a Northern Ireland Assembly, with accountable North/South co-operation.

3.  Fairness and equality guaranteed for all.

4.  Those who use or threaten violence excluded from the Government of Northern Ireland.

5.  Prisoners kept in unless violence is given up for good”.

The Provisional IRA Army Council: Wednesday 31st August 1994

The Terms and Conditions of this cease-fire exclude in totality the Catholic community of the occupied 6 counties. We retain the right and capacity to suppress all and any opposition to our stated position from within the Catholic community, without political interference from The British Government, including its armed forces.
The Provisional IRA Army Council: Wednesday 31st August 1994

The Terms and Conditions of this cease-fire excludes in totality the Irish Freestate, its armed forces including members of An Garda Siochana. We retain the right and capacity to bring about the destruction of the Irish Freestate by whatever means at our disposal, without foreign interference.
Comfort Letters for On The Run Terrorists

Letter from Secretary of State, Adam Ingram in May 2000, stating that all OTRs would be arrested if they returned to Northern Ireland. Liar.

Secret Talks between The British Government and Sinn Fein/PIRA

When Sinn Fein/PIRA heard of the document between MI6 Agent Oatley and McGuinness, there was panic, as the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership with the exception of McGuinness did not recognise the described document. The fact was that the document appeared to show that McGuinness was a British Agent rather than a negotiator on behalf of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, although he was also led on the latter.

The leaks led to the breaking of the story on 8th November 1993, by Belfast journalist, Eamon Mallie. Eventually both the British and Sinn Fein/PIRA admitted that there was contact and each side gave their own account of such contact to minimise outrage from various quarters on both sides. Sinn Fein/PIRA persistently denied the document that was produced at that time by this author (see, below), and purported to be a communication between MI6 Agent Michael Oatley and Martin McGuinness, the communication, when subjected to discourse analysis, appeared to show that McGuinness was in fact an MI6 Agent, not a James Bond type Agent, simply a puppet on a string.

The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership continued to state that only Sinn Fein had spoken to the British, however, in 1994, PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna gave a rare interview to Eamon Mallie on Downtown Radio, in which he said, “As long as the boys with the balaclavas are at the table I am happy”, McKenna was referring to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, yet at all times, including in 2020 on their official website, Sinn Fein/PIRA claimed/claim that it was Sinn Fein who was negotiating with The British and the document below was a communication between British ‘Officials’ and the Sinn Fein negotiators, this is a lie, the original handwritten version of the communication had Martin McGuinness written at the top and was signed off with, Is Mise, Michael Oatley. A blind donkey reading this document can see that it was a personal communication between MI6 Officer, Michael Oatley and MI6 Agent, Martin McGuinness and was probably included in disclosed documents by Sir Patrick Mayhew by accident.

In February 1994 I had an article published in The Irish News (this can be checked in their archive) and The Irish Press (no longer in circulation) in which I stated the following, in the hope of encouraging Sinn Fein/PIRA personnel to stand down as they were involved in a phony war:
“And I ask you Irish men and women within the ranks of The PIRA to check the motivation of your leadership before checking the timer on your bomb”.

Martin McGuinness MI6 Agent

“Your unfortunate headline events of April have made acceptance of your offer much more risky for him. You and I may think this should not matter, but the fact is that it does and it is that which is holding things up – if you like, human characteristics rather than anything more sinister”.

When MI6 Agent Oakley says, “Your unfortunate headline events of April…” he is talking about April 24th, 1993, when The PIRA bombed Bishopsgate and devastated the heart of the City of London, one person was killed, 44 were injured and £350 million of damage was caused.

When Oatley says, “much more risky for him”, he is referring to The British Prime Minister, John Major, the same John Major who told Parliament in 1993 that it would make his stomach sick to even think that any British official would be talking to The PIRA.

Shortly before the headline events of April 1993, Tim Parry (aged 12) and three-year-old Johnathan Ball died and 54 others were injured after the Provisional IRA detonated bombs that had been hidden inside high street litter bins in Warrington in England on the eve of Mother’s Day that year. In 1999 loyalist terrorists, Orange Volunteers, were preparing to copy-cat the Warrington attack in Dublin but these attacks were thwarted.

The most significant component of this communication, between McGuinness and what many believe to be his Handler, MI6 Officer Oatley, is when he says;

“You and I may think this should not matter, but the fact is that it does and it is that which is holding things up – if you like, human characteristics rather than anything more sinister”.

Oatley suggests that while he and McGuinness cannot understand why the murder of women and children should delay negotiations, it is the human characteristics of Prime Minister, John Major that is preoccupying him with concern about the murder of women and children.

On the official Sinn Fein/PIRA website in 2020, Sinn Fein/PIRA claim that they received a communication from a British government representative on June 3rd, 1993, and that the said communication was initialed and they have removed the initials for security reasons. However, the communication was not from a British Government official and it was not for the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, but was a personal communication from MI6 Officer Michael Oatley to Martin McGuinness. The PIRA Army Council fear the implications of anyone establishing the ‘true’ provenance of the communication, however, here it is.

The communication had been sent by Oatley to the MI6 Officer (Robert) who had replaced him on the British negotiating team, Robert had Oatley’s handwritten communication typed so that he could remove McGuinness’s name from the top of the communication, and Robert completed the typed version with R. (handwritten), to show that this was a very personal communication, from Oatley to McGuinness. R. is the initial that Sinn Fein/PIRA have removed from the bottom of the document below as it appears on their website. Setting the Record Straight 2015, https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15216.
It is believed that The British included this communication by ‘mistake’ when Sir Patrick Mayhew, on Monday, 29th November, 1993, the British Minister with Chief responsibility for the Six Counties, lodged in the Library and Vote office at Westminster, what he claimed to be all messages ”received and dispatched” in the course of the British government’s protracted contact and dialogue with Sinn Fein/PIRA. His ‘record’ covered the period of 22nd February 1993 – 5th November 1993. He claimed this to be the totality of the period involved.

It is this combination of Martin McGuinness as an MI6 Agent (and an array of British Agents/informers/touts) at leadership level and the political ambitions of Gerry Adams that brings the British Security Services to focus their attentions on undermining the position of PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, who, while loyal to Adams, was a militarist, who would not surrender easily. It is for these reasons that 28 PIRA volunteers were killed by The SAS in East Tyrone between 1987 and 1992, these volunteers under the direct and personal leadership of Kevin McKenna. By 1992 Kevin McKenna was ineffective and that is exactly the way McGuinness and his Handlers wanted him. Intelligent strategists such as Jim Lynagh were replaced by donkeys.

Loughgall Informer

Owen Smyth also has questions to answer in relation to his close association with two sisters from Monaghan Town who were bringing UDR members into Monaghan Town periodically between 1994-1997. These two sisters would be seen drinking with the said UDR members in loyalist pubs in places such as Caledon in County Tyrone. On one occasion the two women and the UDR members were followed from Caledon to Monaghan Town. These UDR members were being brought into Monaghan Town by the two women and the UDR men were using these visits as scouting missions for a UVF death squad who would later target Caoimhghín Ó’Caoláin in a bomb attack. Another UDR man would be found shot dead on the out skirts of Monaghan after the gun he was carrying went of as he was preparing to target a member of The PIRA. All of these questions remain unanswered, and various suggestions have been put forward as to why The PIRA in Monaghan failed to establish the truth in these matters, one theory being that Smyth was being protected by a high-ranking informer on The PIRA Command Staff in Monaghan.

Loughgall Martyrs 33rd Anniversary Ambush 1987

The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the ‘A’ Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious ‘Black and Tans’. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA’s attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.

A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces’ Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead 1989, see, Smithwick Tribunal) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.

To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under-Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. ‘My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had ‘won one’ as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.’

Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland’s second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500 lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives had come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to ‘the final court of justice’. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said, ‘We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it.’ The SAS was the cutting edge.

At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher’s sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA’s mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32).

Loughgall Martyr Jim Lynagh

The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a ‘legitimate target’, the first of more than twenty ‘collaborators’ to be ‘executed’ by the IRA for ‘assisting the British war machine.’ One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.

On the basis of the information passed to the Garda Siochana (Irish Police) and RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at Loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

There was other vital intelligence too from M15′s listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or ‘bugs’ – could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It’s likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human ‘eyes-on’ observation by operators of the army’s top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the ‘Det’) and the RUC’s equivalent covert unit, E4A. ‘E’ is the code for the RUC’s Special Branch.

The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA’s planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC’s specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its ‘recce’. ‘Matt’, a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.

The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a ‘Super-grass’ but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.

Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by ‘Det’ operators on the look-out for the ‘A Team’. One of them was a young women called ‘Anna’ who was driving around the area with her ‘Det’ partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. ‘You suddenly realize it’s the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,’ she said. ‘It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.’ The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.

At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, ‘Matt’ (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! ‘I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought “I’m dead”, simple as that!’ Miraculously ‘Matt’ survived although buried in the rubble ‘inhaling dust and darkness.’ The ‘A’ Team did not. ‘Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,’ his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. ‘The SAS never gave them a chance.’ The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.

‘Matt’ felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. ‘They were there to kill us,’ he said. ‘These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.’ Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight killings and thirty-three shootings.

The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone.  Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA ‘scout’ car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC’s Chief Constable, Sir Jack Herman, described the attack on the two innocent men as ‘an unspeakable tragedy’ and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.

When ‘Anna’, her ‘Det’ colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. ‘There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,’ she said. ‘A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.’ She said of the dead IRA men. ‘They’re all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They’re ‘at war’ as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.’

Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.

There is no question that the relationship between Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and The British Secret Service lead to the SAS executions at Loughgall, the British wanted to undermine PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, McKenna wanted to take the war to the British and their collaborators and he viewed politics as nothing more than a public relations exercise that could provide cover for the real business of The PIRA, which was to drive the British apparatus out of Ireland. Adams and McGuinness had already sold out, and even at the graveside of Jim Lynagh, Adams would spout his lies when he said, “Anyone who does business with The British, The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools for they have all sold out on the Irish people”, Adams said these weasel words while he was already in bed with all of the above.

Sinn Fein/PIRA can get as many illiterates fools as they like to make videos for YouTube stating that Lynagh and Kelly would have supported Sinn Fein/PIRA’s British inspired ‘peace-strategy’, however, anyone one who was on the same intellectual level as Jim Lynagh would know well that Adams, McGuinness and their ‘peace strategy’ is nothing more than a British inspired surrender of Irish Republicanism.
Keywords: Loughgall Martyrs, 33rd Anniversary, Jim Lynagh, Patrick Kelly, Declan Authurs, SAS, Ambush, Gerry Adams

On Tuesday 21st October, 1986, Martin McGuinness arrived in Smithborough in County Monaghan to meet with Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, at that time Kevin McKenna was living with his family on a small holding that was owned by a Sinn Fein/PIRA supporter, Sheila O’Neill. McGuinness had arrived to deliver a message from Sinn Fein/PIRA Headquarters in Belfast, that message was that GHQ had sanctioned a proposed plan to introduce a policy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’. The plan had been developed by Jim Lynagh while he was in Portlaoise Prison, contrary to the nonsense I have often read, Kevin McKenna was enthusiastic about the plan, I should know I spoke to him regularly.

In 1987 Gerry Adams gave the oration at the funeral of Loughgall Martyr, Jim Lynagh, at Latlurcan Cemetery in Monaghan Town, and I quote from that oration:

It is also worth noting that the terms and conditions of the Sinn Fein/PIRA cease-fire (Articles of Surrender) as presented to their MI6 Handlers, specifically excluded Catholics in the six-occupied-counties and also excluded every fibre of the fabric of The Irish Freestate (Republic), including members of An Garda Siochana. The General Election in 2020 showed many members of An Garda Siochana voting for Sinn Fein/PIRA which is the equivalent of a turkey voting for Christmas. The Electoral Act 1960, Section 8A allows for all members of An Garda Siochana and the Irish Defense Forces to be entered on the postal-vote-list and while not all Gardai and Defense Force members may realise it, these votes are opened and counted in the same manner as any other vote.

While many showed surprise when the trial of John Downey collapsed in relation to The Hyde Park Bombing, many who showed surprise were liars as they had been warned about the Comfort Letters in 1999. Over 240 Sinn Fein/PIRA murderers and rapists would receive Comfort Letters and be able to come and go as they pleased.

Following Sir Patrick Mayhew’s speech at Queens University in Belfast in 1993, there was a question and answer session, this author asked Sir Patrick openly in front of the media, academics and students gathered if The British Government was talking to The PIRA, Sir Patrick denied the charge. Shortly after Sir Patrick spoke at Queens, a document that was sent from Michael Oatley MI6 Officer to MI6 Agent Martin McGuinness was shown to certain trusted journalists by this author, so that they may push on with questions about secret talks between The PIRA and The British Government.

There is no contradiction in the claims that Martin McGuinness was an MI6 Agent from the mid-1980s and his direct involvement in directing acts of violence including the mass murder of civilians. A communication from MI6 Agent Michael Oatley on 3rd June, 1993 (see, below) to Martin McGuinness highlights this Moral Quagmire, when Oatley says:

The leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan have serious questions to answer as to why they allowed a fully-fledged RUC Informer back into the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA when he had served only a few months in Long Kesh for PIRA membership when he had admitted his role in two high profile murders. Owen Smyth (AKA Eoin Smyth) from Monaghan Town had been told in 1981 by PIRA Commander Jim Lynagh not to travel into the north, after members of The PIRA who had shot pensioner Norman Strong and his son James at Tynan Abbey were found by Gardai hiding in the basement of The Round House Bar in Monaghan Town which was owned by Owen Smyth’s Uncle Robert Loane but which was run and operated by Owen Smyth. When Owen Smyth was arrested by The RUC Smyth began to talk immediately and named every member of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and anything else that he could tell the RUC about Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan. Owen Smyth would also tell a 17-year-old Vincent McKenna in Crumlin Road Jail that he had turned informer as he did not want to go to jail for the two killings, Owen Smyth also boasted that he and Jim Lynagh had planned the killings of Norman Strong and his son James. Seamus Shannon would be extradited in 1984 based on information provided to The RUC by Owen Smyth. Why did the Command Staff of The PIRA in Monaghan allow Owen Smyth to return to a position within Sinn Fein/PIRA that gave him access to details of PIRA operations including Loughgall? In 1990 Owen Smyth again turned informer when arrested by Gardai in relation to a Human Bomb attack in Fermanagh, again, Smyth had the charges against him mysteriously dropped and he returned to the Sinn Fein/PIRA fold.

Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 31 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.

It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British and Irish intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.

Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 31 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.

Pat Finucane Centre

The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the ‘A’ Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious ‘Black and Tans’. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA’s attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.

A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces’ Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead 1989, see, Smithwick Tribunal) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.

To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under-Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. ‘My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had ‘won one’ as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.’

Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland’s second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500 lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives had come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to ‘the final court of justice’. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said, ‘We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it.’ The SAS was the cutting edge.

At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher’s sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA’s mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32).

It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British and Irish intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.

The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a ‘legitimate target’, the first of more than twenty ‘collaborators’ to be ‘executed’ by the IRA for ‘assisting the British war machine.’ One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.

On the basis of the information passed to the Garda Siochana (Irish Police) and RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at Loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

There was other vital intelligence too from M15′s listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or ‘bugs’ – could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It’s likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human ‘eyes-on’ observation by operators of the army’s top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the ‘Det’) and the RUC’s equivalent covert unit, E4A. ‘E’ is the code for the RUC’s Special Branch.

The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA’s planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC’s specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its ‘recce’. ‘Matt’, a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.

The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a ‘Super-grass’ but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.

Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by ‘Det’ operators on the look-out for the ‘A Team’. One of them was a young women called ‘Anna’ who was driving around the area with her ‘Det’ partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. ‘You suddenly realize it’s the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,’ she said. ‘It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.’ The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.

At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, ‘Matt’ (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! ‘I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought “I’m dead”, simple as that!’ Miraculously ‘Matt’ survived although buried in the rubble ‘inhaling dust and darkness.’ The ‘A’ Team did not. ‘Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,’ his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. ‘The SAS never gave them a chance.’ The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.

‘Matt’ felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. ‘They were there to kill us,’ he said. ‘These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.’ Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight killings and thirty-three shootings.

The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone.  Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA ‘scout’ car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC’s Chief Constable, Sir Jack Herman, described the attack on the two innocent men as ‘an unspeakable tragedy’ and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.

When ‘Anna’, her ‘Det’ colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. ‘There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,’ she said. ‘A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.’ She said of the dead IRA men. ‘They’re all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They’re ‘at war’ as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.’

Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.

There is no question that the relationship between Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and The British Secret Service lead to the SAS executions at Loughgall, the British wanted to undermine PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, McKenna wanted to take the war to the British and their collaborators and he viewed politics as nothing more than a public relations exercise that could provide cover for the real business of The PIRA, which was to drive the British apparatus out of Ireland. Adams and McGuinness had already sold out, and even at the graveside of Jim Lynagh, Adams would spout his lies when he said, “Anyone who does business with The British, The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools for they have all sold out on the Irish people”, Adams said these weasel words while he was already in bed with all of the above.

Sinn Fein/PIRA can get as many illiterates fools as they like to make videos for YouTube stating that Lynagh and Kelly would have supported Sinn Fein/PIRA’s British inspired ‘peace-strategy’, however, anyone one who was on the same intellectual level as Jim Lynagh would know well that Adams, McGuinness and their ‘peace straegy’ is nothing more than a British inspired surrender of Irish Republicanism.

Keywords: Loughgall Martyrs, 31 Anniversary, Jim Lynagh, Patrick Kelly, Declan Authurs, SAS, Ambush, Gerry Adams

The Irish Observer

The Irish Observer is a qualified Criminologist and published author. Two eBooks written by The Irish Observer can be read free of charge by clicking the links on the right hand side of this page. The Irish Observer also writes daily blogs on current affairs.