Northern Ireland: The Troubles by Kenneth Lesley-Dixon

Author:Kenneth Lesley-Dixon [Lesley-Dixon, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Political Science, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781526729187
Google: hjdjDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-05-30T22:26:26+00:00

Glenanne Gang

A motley gang of loyalist murderers operating largely in the so-called ‘murder triangle’ that was counties Armagh and Tyrone. Murder Inc. could just as well describe the forty operators from the three organizations who made up the gang: British soldiers from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). ‘Glenanne’ comes from the farm at Glenanne, near Markethill, County Armagh, used as the gang’s arms dump and bomb-making site. For such a small band of insurgents, the death toll racked up in their murder spree was prodigious: various incarnations of the gang are said to be responsible for killing about 120 people—almost all Catholic civilians with no proven links to Irish republican paramilitaries. The Cassel Report looked into seventy-six killings attributed to the group and found evidence that British soldiers and RUC officers were involved in all but two of those. The report also found that some senior RUC and UDR officers knew of the crimes but did nothing “to prevent, investigate or punish”. Allegedly, key members acted as double agents working for British military intelligence and RUC Special Branch. Following is a smattering of their killings:

October 4, 1972: Catholic civilian Patrick Connolly was killed and his mother and brother were injured when a grenade was thrown through the window of their house in Portadown. The family were Catholics living in a mixed area of the town. According to the Cassell Report, “the grenade was of a type manufactured in the United Kingdom for use by the British Armed Forces”. January 17, 1974: Gun attack on Boyle’s Bar in Cappagh, County Tyrone. Two gunmen entered the pub and opened fire indiscriminately. Catholic civilian Daniel Hughes was killed and three others wounded. May 7, 1974: Catholic civilians James and Gertrude Devlin were shot dead near Dungannon, County Tyrone. They were driving home with their seventeen-year-old daughter. As they neared their house, a man in a military uniform stopped the car and opened fire. James and Gertrude were killed outright and their daughter, Patricia, in the back seat, was wounded. UDR soldier William Thomas Leonard was convicted of the killings. His membership in the UDR was withheld from the courts by the police. April 1, 1975: Killing of Catholic civilian Dorothy Trainor. She and her husband were shot by at least two gunmen as they walked through a park near Garvaghy Road, Portadown. Two of her sons were later killed by loyalists. April 3, 1975: Killing of Catholic civilian Martin McVeigh. He was shot dead near his home at Ballyoran Park, off the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, as he cycled home from work. Robin Jackson, a known gang member, was later arrested in possession of the murder weapon, but the RUC did not question or charge him with the murder. April 21, 1975: Killing of Catholic civilians Marion Bowen who was eight months pregnant, and her brothers, Seamus and Michael McKenna, by a booby-trap bomb left in Bowen’s house at Killyliss, near Granville, County Tyrone.

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