INLA's Bloody Feud
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep; a drunken soldier Can leave the mother, murdered at her door To crawl in her own blood, and go scol_ freei The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world undir a rule, Who are but weasets fighting ,n hloJ\"",_ A rnother, murdered at her door, to crawl in her own blood, during the struggles to set up the independent Irish state... A mother, Mary McGlinchey, shot dead in Dundalk Agnes O' at the funeral on 31 January as she bathed her nine year old son, who vainly shouted at the killers, "Leave Mummy alone,'. Mary McGlinchey,s death was the mosr INLA's bloody feud horrifying incident during the recent feud Paddy Dollard looks between two sections of the so-called Irish at some lessons National Liberation Army, in which 13 gangsterism, Kirkpatrick was promised _ ed the fire people died and 20 were injured. as INLA tore itself apart. and will surely get an early release. In The Provos Mary McClinchey was the wile of jailed return - who have sometim he helped put 30 others behind commented adversely- one-time INLA chief of staff Dominic bars. on INLA's wildt McGlinchey, and most counterproductive activitir and she is said to have been At that point McGlinchey, a dismissed killed revenge and denounced 'Me Fein, gangsterism in for her husband's sum- Provo, came out of jail. By mid 1982 he mary 'execution' of an INLA declared that the best contiibution INL activist. had made himself 'chief of staff', under could make Herself an activist, Mary McGlinchey may to the Republican strugp 'Direct Military Rule'. Probably was to provo have been involved in that killing. disband. With arbitration. 'direct military rule' was a means to con- truce exhaustion Under her husband,s rule as of was finallv fixed u Chief of tain warlords and try to create a strong There Staff, a system was in operation in is no sign thar the groupings ha INLA centre able to direct the organisation to disbanded. - Direct Military Rule it was called the job it supposedly existed for under which he had the - gangsterism probably right to shoot anv fighting the British. Bur McGlinchev - _- _But is the least r member was INLA's faultsl he lelt he had u ,.ason lo, captured in the 26 Counries, and has been INLA has a rvell_deservt shooting. He apparently used that right. in various iails since mid-1984. reputation lor Catholic sectarianism ar Dominic for the sectarian quasi-sectarian McGlinchey's less than iwo In August 1984 John O'Reilly was or killir year reign of Protestants, in INLA was only one of the released on bail, and the train of events many of whom have nr more bizarre ,Republican even had a notional episodes in the that led directly to the feud was ser in mo- link with the Britis Socialist' state. organisation,s history. tion. O'Reilly set out to be 'chief of staff, INLA came out of a bloody split by getting control of the organisation's In November 1983 INLA people callin themselves in the Official Republican Movement in arms supply and arsenal. In April 1985 the Cathoiic Retaliation Forc he protestar 1974-5. The Olficials have since evolved beat information out of long-time entered a small Pentecostal socialist cJrulch into the quasi-Stalinist, reformist activist Seamus Ruddy, who had been at Darkley in predominantl Catholic 'Workers' Party'. The INLA and its organising INLA's supply weapons Armagh and spriyed the wor of shippers political wing, the Irish Republican from a base in Paris, and then murdered with machine-gun bullets. killin Socialist Party (IRSP), were led by him. With control of rhe \\eaponry. three and rrounding \e\en. Domini McGlinchey Seamus Costello, a veteran ol the 1950s O'Reilly set about eliminating his rivals. _publicly admitted giving IRA. They proclaimed an anti-Stalinist gun to the killers. sort of socialism, and also the need to 'Me Fein' _ The INLA's political front, the Irisl continue the 'armed struggle' which the Republican Socialist party (IRSp), mad Jailed former Belfast operations ,,totally Officials had abandoned in mid-1972. officer a statement saying it was op Gerard Steenson had been implicated in posed" gut In 1977 Costello was murdered bv the to sectarian killings. thit wi 'Me Fein' robberies by his lormer deputy either hypocrisy Official IRA (which even todav a or an expression of thr has Kirkpatrick, and O'Reilly expelled him. inability shadowy existence). and the cenr;e ol lhe of those in or around the IRSI O'Reilly's opponents would make the who INLA/IRSP began ro disintegrate, really felt like that to aflect events same allegation of 'Me Feinism' against Maybe it was both. In such groups though it was still a force in Noithern O'Reilly tht Ireland. Three and his friends. They moved to men wirh rhe guns aluays rule. The ;Armr of its members died organise what became the 'Irish people,s together with seven Provos Council' is lar more imporranr than thi during the Liberation Organisarion' (IpLO). fheV hunger strikes 1981. executive of the political party. of INLA became an demanded that INLA disband. 'alternative IRA' for Provos The striking paradox here is rhat thc dismissed for Then, in December 1986, the indiscipline and supergrass INLA and IRSP say that rhey are lefr_ other offences. Local system suddenly collapsed when 'warlordism' emerged the 30 wing socialists and Marxists, more aligned within the loosely jailed on Kirkpatrick's evidence won structured organisation. their to the working class than other nation-alist appeals. Once they were out on the groups like the Court cases in the mid-'80s established Provisionals. Manv of its streets, it was inevitable and immediate militant_s that the organisation was heavily infested sincerely believe this. How. then, war. has such an with spies, provocateurs and informers. organisation become what i In In January 1987, O'Reilly have 1982 the INLA's deputy and an described above? operations of_ associate went to a hotel expecting ficer in Belfast, Harry Kirkpatrick, to The Provisionals and the Olficials are was parley with the Steensonites, and were organisations with arrested and turned 'supergrass'. He was a solid tradition and ambushed and killed. After that it was tit with the organisational the Jirst of a string ol 'grasses' . Admitting bone, sinews and for tat until Steenson was killed on 15 muscle six killings and invoivement in much selfl to enforce it. They are the March. The police made no attempt to in- mainstream. Anything to the left while serving ('Me Fein', or me myself) tervene, provocateurs and probably stok- still 'Republican' has not only to build an INLA organisation and gain credibility, but also militarism of the left-wing Otticials in the groups, fighting to work out where (and for what) it stands. the British and Northern early '70s left Saor Eire high and drv. In Ireland state, and The problems INLA/IRSP laced when November organising robberies, 1971 one of its memberr, p.t.i with sizeable proportions it split from the Officials 1975 of the proceeds in had Graham, was found dead in a Dublin flai. 'going private'. already been encountered, ruinously, by He had been bound and gagged and The INLA's aspiration to be to the lelt the lirst attempt since the p.".r.ni shot through the neck. Troubles e..or?li"g to tt. of traditional Republicanism became, began to form a new left-wing police he had been tortured. paradoxically, a lactor in its degeneration. Republican group. It was a movement Aged 26, Peter Graham was a Trot_ Traditional Republicanism is a movement calling itself 'Saor Eire (Free Ireland) Ac_ skyisL In theory tion he was highly critical of with a strong and honourable tradition. Croup'. the 'Guevarist' current tt,.n piorninent was in For example, the idea that Protestant and . It formed, or rather given shape international Trorskyi:m, piecemeal, and rejecred rhe Catholic are equally Irish still has a real in the late '60s by dissident idea thal socialism in Ireland Republicans (premature provos, could .ome grip, despite often Catholic-nationalist really) through 'permanent revolution, _ nul practice. who resisted the drift of the Ofiiciai tionalist ,growing Like anarchism, of which it is in struggle over, into some respects Republican movement away lrom the ,guerilla' an aberrant strain, Irish socialism, He began his careei Republicanism traditional militarism and towards has been a highly moral by believing was a goodthing ro L.i* movement. Stalinism a drift that made the official aDout guns rn"ir - the Ireland ol 1969. But The left Republicans (and partly movement incapable of defendins the then he got drawn into ,action,. this is Belfast prot6stant the true of the new leadership of the provos Catholics during the The alleged pogroms leaders of Saor Eire issued a around Gerry Adams, too) relate of August i969 and led to the slalemenl lrom jail to this denouncing rhe re\r ot tradition in a contradictory way. The Provo,/Official split a few months later. lhe organi5ation old as a-political-gangsters. morality is dissolved by the supposedly Guevarism IRSP/INLA started bigger, with a real higher principles of socialism and an standing in the Republican milieus and a eclectic Marxism but, since the way dissident Republicans joined to .These up place in the Republican spectrum as the socialism is seen -as proceeding through with one or two people who called 'good' left-wingers resisting the nationalism themselves apostasy first, the effect is not io Trotskyists, but who, like of the Offlicials.