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5 Historic Locations From the Troubles in Northern Ireland
With its six counties located in the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland is one of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Today, 25 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 put an end to the bloodshed, social and political stability has strengthened. Nonetheless, the scars left by this 30-year-long conflict are still visible across Northern Ireland — or Ulster, as the Protestant community prefers to call it. Here are a few places across Northern Ireland where you can go to get a sense of the Troubles, and the parties involved.
1. The Massacre Site on the A1 in County Down
Map of the six counties of Northern Ireland showing the route of the A1, Source: Mapping Resources
If you want to drive from Belfast to Lisburn you have to take the A1. If you want to reach Newry from Lisburn you also have to take the A1. Past the border, the A1 continues down to Dublin, connecting the capital of the Republic of Ireland to the capital of Northern Ireland. This makes it one of the island’s most important routes.
On the night of July 31, 1995, a Volkswagen minibus was travelling on the A1, headed toward Dublin. Aboard the minibus were five of the six members of the Dublin-based band The Miami Showband: lead singer Fran O’Toole, guitarist Tony Geraghty, trumpeter Brian McCoy, bassist Stephen Travers, and saxophone player Des McAlea. They were travelling back home to Dublin after a gig at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down. At around 2:30 AM they were stopped at a checkpoint near the junction with Bushkill Road, seven miles north of Newry.
The site of the Miami Showband Massacre on the A1 near Bushkill, Source: Tortoise Media
But it was a bogus checkpoint. The armed men dressed in British Army uniforms were loyalist paramilitary members of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade. What followed was a massacre.
The band members were told to get out of the minibus and line up, hands on their heads, facing the ditch at the back of the bus. While some of the gunmen checked their documents, others jumped aboard the van and placed a briefcase containing a ten lb time bomb under the driver’s seat. It was meant to explode once the minibus had crossed the border with the Republic of Ireland. It didn’t. It went off prematurely, killing and decapitating two of the UVF men immediately. The blast threw the band members into the field below the road level, where three of them, Fran O’Toole, Brian McCoy, and Tony Geraghty, were machine-gunned by the surviving UVF men as they tried to escape.
The Dublin-based Miami Showband, Source: The Irish Times
The only survivors of the massacre were Travers and McAlea. Travers, lying beside McCoy’s body, pretended he was dead. So did McAlea. He had been hit by the minibus’ door blown off in the explosion, but he kept silent and waited for the gunmen to leave, lying down in the undergrowth, amid the debris, the burning tires, the spent cartridges, and the severed body parts of the UVF men who had died in the blast.
Ironically, the Miami Showband was popular among both the Protestants and the Catholics. Brian McCoy, the band’s trumpeter, was a Protestant from Northern Ireland, and his brother-in-law was a former member of the B Specials. Drummer Ray Millar was a Protestant too, from Antrim. Saxophonist Des McAlea, Catholic, was born in Belfast.
The Miami Showband memorial in Dublin, Source: CAIN (Conflict Archive of the Internet)
The massacre had the immediate effect of further isolating Northern Ireland from the rest of Europe and the world. It also generated more violence, as often happens in war zones; four Protestant civilians were killed less than two weeks later in the loyalist Bayardo Bar in Belfast’s Shankill Road by the IRA in retaliation.
Today the massacre is remembered by two memorials honoring the band: one on the site where three of its members lost their lives and one in Dublin, where the band formed in 1962. The monument in Dublin was unveiled in 2007 at Parnell Square North, one of the city’s most important and beloved squares. The plaque is situated beside the Hugh Lane Gallery, on the north side of the street, outside the former National Ballroom, where the band often played. What does it read? Simply, “Let’s Dance.”
2. La Mon House, Site of the Fireball in the Peacock Room
The devastation of an IRA bomb in a cinema, picture by Alain le Garsmeur, 1972, Source: Panos Pictures
La Mon House is a small hotel and restaurant on the outskirts of east Belfast. On February 17, 1978, the hotel was crowded with around 450 people of all ages. Dozens of them were attending the annual dinner dance of the Irish Collie Club in the Peacock Room, while others were packed in the Gransha Room for an event sponsored by the Northern Ireland Junior Motor Cycle Club. Most of them were Protestants.
The IRA has always been known for giving bomb warnings, usually in the form of phone calls to the nearest public phone booth, although the true nature of such bomb warnings has largely been contested and debated. This time their warning didn’t work out.
It’s been reported that the first public phone the IRA men attempted to use to send the warning had been vandalized. As they were trying to get to another phone, they were delayed by a unionist checkpoint — La Mon House was located in the predominantly Protestant unionist constituency of North Down. By the time the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), the state police in Northern Ireland, received the last call, it was too late.
The bomb, weighing 45 pounds, had been placed on a windowsill facing the Peacock Room, attached to four petrol canisters containing a napalm-like substance made of petrol and sugar. The moment it went off it created a devastating fireball of blazing petrol, a miniature type of firestorm, which sent fire rushing through the room. Twelve people were killed, including three married couples. Seven of them were women.
La Mon House burning, Source: The Belfast News Letter
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, first responders had to hose down some of the corpses to prevent the body bags they were to be wrapped in from catching fire. More than thirty people suffered terrible and permanent injuries and most of the victims could only be identified by their hair and teeth, four of them solely by matching blood groups. All the persons at La Mon House that night were unquestionably innocent.
It’s easy to understand why the La Mon House bombing was immediately perceived as a watershed moment in the history of the Troubles. In the following days, the RUC distributed leaflets displaying the photograph of one of the victims’ burned remains.
Sinn Féin’s leader Gerry Adams helped Republicans transition from their so-called “armed resistance” towards a more democratic republicanism, Source: The Irish News
Eventually, in September 1981, more than two years after the blast, one Belfast man, Robert Murphy, was arrested and given twelve life sentences. For the IRA, the backlash was disastrous, both at home and internationally. Many on both sides, including the president of the Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, denounced the group’s reckless disregard for the value of human lives and, most importantly, their disregard for the risk of innocent casualties. As the La Mon House bombing was deemed as “sheer terrorism,” the IRA came out of the attack demoralized and weakened. It had to admit responsibility for the brutal slaughtering of twelve innocent people.
3. The Maze: Northern Ireland’s Infamous Prison
An aerial view of the Maze/Long Kesh prison, Source: Prisons Memory Archive
1978 had been one of the worst years for the Republican cause. However, the 1981 hunger strikes caused the IRA to regain much of the local and international support lost after the bombing of La Mon House.
Know as “the Maze” or “H-Blocks” because of the shape of the newly built cell blocks where paramilitary prisoners were held in the late 1970s and 1980s, the prison the strikes took place in was situated on the outskirts of Lisburn, County Down, about nine miles southwest of Belfast, at the former Royal Air Force station. It closed in 2000 and six years later, in October 2006, demolition work started in preparation for the construction of a multi-purpose stadium. The plan was soon abandoned. Debates surrounding the fate of the former Long Kesh prison continue today.
In 1972 British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw granted republican and loyalist prisoners the so-called “special category status,” which Republicans soon renamed “political status.” The status recognized, in fact, that they were political prisoners, and thus deserved special treatment. As such, they were not forced to carry out prison work, were allowed additional visits, and, most importantly, they could wear their own clothes instead of the prison uniform, which republican prisoners considered a badge of criminality.
This all changed on March 1, 1976, when the “special category status” was revoked. Republican prisoners in the H-Block soon embarked on the so-called “blanket protest,” which later escalated into the “dirty-protest.” Their actions received worldwide coverage. They were even paid a visit by the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, who publicly compared their situations in the H-blocks to that of the slums of Calcutta.
The 1980/81 hunger strikes attracted worldwide attention, 1980, Source: The Irish Times
Nonetheless, support for the prisoners remained limited to the Catholic community. Everything changed in March 1981, when the name of Long Kesh became forever linked to that of Bobby Sands (1954-1981). Born into a Catholic family, Sands had grown up in the Protestant neighborhood of Rathcoole. As a child, he had experienced the systematic campaign of loyalist intimidation that had forced his family to move house several times.
At the age of 27, he became Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA in the Maze Prison. On March 1, he refused food. Two weeks later he was joined by another prisoner, Francis Hughes, and after another two weeks, by Raymond McCreesh. The first H-block hunger strike in the prison had been called off only two months in, in December 1980, but this time it was thought that the strike could potentially last forever.
Bobby Sands during a march organized by the Belfast Sinn Féin to protest the withdrawal of political status, August 8, 1976, Source: The Bobby Sands Trust
It was planned, in fact, as a phased exercise meant to put ever-increasing pressure on the government and force Thatcher to yield. During the strikes, Sands was elected as a Westminster MP in a by-election, and this ensured him and the Republican cause massive international recognition. Some held hope this would save his life but it didn’t. He died on May 5, at 1:17 AM, on the 66th day of his hunger strike.
Outside Long Kesh, people took to the streets. World attention was on both Belfast and London. As hunger strikers died one after the other, various mediators stepped in, from the Catholic Church to the Red Cross, from the Vatican to a European Human Rights Commission delegation, but to no avail. The seven-month-long hunger strikes of 1981 left ten men dead. Seven of them belonged to the IRA, and three to the INLA.
Protests in Dunville Park in support of the hunger strikers in December 1980, Source: Belfast Media
Months into the strike, the prisoners’ families had understood by now that both sides were moved by an equally unyielding attitude. They began to take action. Once their loved ones had gone blind or lapsed into the coma which shortly precedes death, they asked the medical staff to intervene.
In October, the strike was called off. After a few days prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes, but no alteration in their legal status was conceded. “This Government,” Thatcher declared the day after Sands’ death, “will never grant political status no matter how much hunger strike there may be. We are on the side of protecting law-abiding and innocent citizens, and we shall continue in our efforts to stamp out terrorism. Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to any of their victims.”
Bobby Sands, the leader of the second hunger strike in 1981, Source: The New York Times
It was the strike leader Bobby Sands, with his determination, his long hair, and his eloquent writing who caught the public’s imagination the most. An estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral in Belfast. McKittrick & McVea, authors of Making Sense of the Troubles, perfectly capture this feeling when they write that “the fact that he looked more like a drummer in a rock band than a ruthless terrorist was important in the propaganda battle that raged all around the world.” Most importantly, he had “been jailed for having a gun rather than for murder, and the photograph of him which appeared thousands of times in newspapers and on television projected a good-looking young man with long hair, sporting a fetching grin.”
To some, Sands is still a selfless hero, enveloped in an aura of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. To others, he is nothing but a ruthless terrorist, a “convicted criminal,” to put it with Thatcher. What he certainly was, regardless of political affiliations, was a man of his time, shaped by the sectarian conflict he was born into and by the violence he experienced firsthand while growing up on the streets of West Belfast.
4. Enniskillen: The Poppy Day Blast
Civilians fleeing the site of the blast in Enniskillen, Source: The Times
Enniskillen is surrounded by water, nestled in a gorgeous spot, right between the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. People often call it “the island town.” The largest town in County Fermanagh, it’s just a twenty-minute drive from the border with the Republic of Ireland and one and a half hours’ drive from Belfast.
Ever since October 2022, a black square plaque has adorned one of the walls of the Clinton Centre, a multi-purpose center opened in 2002 by United States President Bill Clinton in an effort to promote “peace and prosperity in Ireland and around the world.” The plaque remembers the eleven victims, aged from 20 to 74, of the so-called Poppy Day Bombing, and the more than sixty people injured in the blast. On Remembrance Day, people in the United Kingdom, as well as in some of the countries of the Commonwealth, remember the service of all the soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women who lost their lives in wars or acts of terrorism since World War I.
On November 8, 1987, the Protestant community of Enniskillen gathered by the town’s war memorial, waiting for the ceremony to begin. Unbeknownst to them, the IRA had hidden a 40 lb (18kg) bomb in the nearby Reading Rooms. When it went off at 10:43 AM, the blast demolished one of the community hall’s walls, burying dozens of people under the rubble of tons of masonry.
As reported in McVea’s and McKittrick’s Making Sense of The Troubles, a man living not far from the Cenotaph recalled that “the explosion itself seemed to last about fifteen seconds. Then there was a dead silence for ten seconds. Then there was sobbing and crying.” All the victims were Protestants. Five of them were women, including 20-year-old student nurse Marie Wilson. Two of the victims were RUC officers and one of them had just left the force. This time the IRA had given no warning.
Soldier on patrol in Belfast, picture by Gilles Peress,1994, Source: The VII Foundation
Overall, sixty-three people were injured, aged from two to 75, some of them permanently. One of them was Gordon Wilson, the father of Marie. He held her hand as she lay dying under the rubble until she lost consciousness. She was transported to the hospital, where she died later that day. Born in County Leitrim in the Irish Free State in 1927, following the tragic events of the Enniskillen bombing Gordon Wilson became one of Northern Ireland’s most important and inspiring peace campaigners, and the face of what came to be called the Spirit of Enniskillen.
Interviewed by the BBC the evening of the blast, he called for peace and forgiveness, and pleaded with loyalists not to commit any more massacres in retaliation. While running the family drapery shop in High Street, and until his death in 1995, on various occasions he met with members of Sinn Féin, as well as with loyalist paramilitaries and members of the IRA, ceaselessly trying to persuade them to give up violence. Like the La Mon House massacre in 1978, the Enniskillen bombing was a hammer shock to the republican cause and to the IRA’s support.
5. Omagh: Healing at the Notorious Bomb Site
Students on the streets of Omagh, County Tyrone, Source: The New York Times
While Enniskillen is surrounded by water, Omagh stands at the mouth of two rivers, the Drumragh and Camowen. It’s a lovely town, about 60 miles (less than 100 km) west of Belfast. It has none of the murals covering the walls in Belfast’s and Derry’s unionist and nationalist neighbourhoods. At first glance, it could almost seem like this little town surrounded by rivers was left untouched by the violence of the Troubles. Sadly, this is not the case. The years leading up to the Peace Agreement were marked by violence, backlashes, and painstaking negotiations between the British and Irish governments. Peace was close, and yet so far away. Magnum photographer Gilles Peress perfectly captured this state of anticipation and uncertainty in the pictures he took here between 1994 and 1997. Interestingly, these were the first pictures of his 20-year-long Northern Ireland cycle he decided to shoot in color.
On April 10, 1998, the Good Friday Agreement put an end to the bloodshed of the Troubles. In addition to creating a new 108-member Belfast assembly with a unionist Prime Minister and a nationalist Deputy First Minister, it also ensured the decommissioning of all paramilitary groups within two years. Many were against the agreement.
Four months later, on August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, on Mark Street. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the street was packed with shoppers. The blast was so strong that it burst water pipes, sending a stream of water down the street. The water quickly turned red, as body parts carried by the stream piled up on the street corner where the gully was. 29 people died. Eight of them passed away on the way to or in hospital. One of the victims, Avril Monaghan, was pregnant with twins.
Two Spanish survivors of the Omagh bombing, standing right next to the Vauxhall Cavalier. The bomb inside the car went off moments later, killing the photographer, photo by Rocio Abad Ramos, Source: The Irish Independent
The Omagh bombing was the single deadliest attack of the Troubles. Coming as it did only four months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, many feared it was going to be the end of the peace process. On the contrary, it reinforced the determination of both sides to renounce violence once and for all. In a way, it galvanized the peace process.
Shortly after the explosion, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American President Bill Clinton traveled to Omagh and met with 700 of the injured, along with their relatives, and with the relatives of the dead. The bombing also had the effect of driving the most unyielding paramilitary groups underground. The Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), an IRA splinter group opposed to the ceasefire and responsible for the Omagh attack, apologized and laid down its arms.
Children cheering outside Belfast’s City Hall, picture by Gilles Peress, 1996, Source: The VII Foundation
The healing process in Omagh continues, slowly but steadily. This is possible thanks to the hard and unrelenting work of the Families Moving On victim support network and the Omagh Support & Self Help Group (OSSHG), as they help the survivors of the Troubles and their families to heal. Today, Omagh is the symbol of the deadly violence of the Troubles as well as of Northern Ireland’s commitment to peace, reconciliation, and rebirth. It is also the perfect town from which anyone unfamiliar with Irish history can set off on a journey to discover the beauty of Ireland, to try and understand Northern Ireland’s darkest years, and to experience firsthand the kindness and openness of its people.
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