Northern Ireland by Ken Wharton

Author:Ken Wharton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Modern / General
ISBN: 9781911096801
Publisher: Helion and Company
Published: 2015-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

Retaliation was both swift and bloody and over the course of the next nine days, three more Catholic families would be grieving the loss of their loved ones. The murder gangs of the UVF pulled the triggers, but the PIRA murder gang who shot the two men at Finaghy community centre, metaphorically loaded the guns! The very next day, indeed, in the very early hours of the next day, on his way to his home in Madrid Street, in the Nationalist Short Strand, Thomas McNulty (18) was shot dead by the UVF. Two UVF members on a stolen motorbike were driving around the nationalist area when they saw a lone man. The young man saw them and tried to escape; attempting to enter the house of a relative, but it was locked. They shot and wounded him in an initial burst of gunfire, but he ran into another street, before collapsing; the gunmen followed and shot him several times in the head as he lay helpless in the street. This is precisely what the Provisionals expected and indeed, needed in order to continue to intimidate both the Catholics and the Protestants.

Also on the 14th, Stephen Murphy was shot by a UVF murder gang, while answering a knock at the front door of his home late in the evening. He had been living in England and had only returned home to Belfast several weeks earlier. He was rushed to hospital, but died 10 days later.

On the 16th, there was a Loyalist ‘Third Force’ rally in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. Which was addressed by Ian Paisley; in his provocative speech, he threatened that Unionists would make Northern Ireland ‘ungovernable.’ A series of rallies were held in Protestant areas of Northern Ireland and a number of businesses closed. The DUP and the UUP held separate rallies at Belfast City Hall. The ‘Third Force’ held a rally in Newtownards, County Down, which was attended by an estimated 15,000 men. On the same day, three DUP MPs were suspended from the House of Commons when they protested about the British Government’s policy on security in Northern Ireland.

The next day, the UVF shot two Catholic men who were chatting in a car close to Lurgan, Co Armagh. Another car drew alongside where Peadar Fagan (20) and his friend were chatting and two men inside opened fire killing Mr Fagan and badly wounding his friend. The gang then drove off, leaving one man dying and the other, wounded and distraught at the shock of seeing his friend cut down. The UVF leader Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright was arrested for the murder but the case against him collapsed when the main witness withdrew his evidence. Wright was later killed inside the Maze, when INLA gunmen shot him in 1997 as he made his way to the visiting area.

On the same day, RUCR officer Silas Lyttle (59) died from the injuries which he had received, after being shot by the Provisionals.6 Before the 17th was over, another UDR soldier was dead as the IRA’s Fermanagh Brigade targeted an off-duty NCO.

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