UDR'S ROTTEN APPLES.
Five members of the 'Ulster Defence Regiment' , formerly based at Drummad Barracks in Armagh , have been charged with murder , and the recent visits to this barracks by both the Duke of Edinburgh and Mrs Thatcher caused an uproar in the North .
But how exceptional are the 'Drummad Five' ? Just how many 'rotten apples' are there in the 'Ulster Defence Regiment' , which is now the principal back-up force to the RUC in the North of Ireland ?
From 'The Phoenix' magazine , 30 March 1984 .
We have chronicled herewith almost one hundred cases where members of the 'Ulster Defence Regiment' (UDR) have been charged with serious offences , mostly involving firearms or explosives . It is a directory of Dishonourable Discharge that is unmatched in the 'security forces' of any country in Europe and probably not even in South America . And even this list does not claim to be exhaustive .
It is standard practice for any UDR member charged with a serious offence to be required to resign from the Regiment before appearing in court . He (or , in a very tiny number of cases , she ) is therefore described in court as a "...former.. " UDR member . Or the fact of UDR membership is not mentioned at all . For example , although Roderick Shane McDowell and Thomas Crozier , convicted in October 1976 of the Miami Showband massacre , were members of the UDR and operating in UDR uniforms at the time of the murders , this was not mentioned at their initial court appearance .
And it was not until after the conviction of the 'Shankill Butchers' in February 1979 that the UDR membership of one of their number , Edward McIlwaine , was made public , and then only after SDLP spokesperson Michael Canavan put a question publicly to Northern Secretary Roy Mason .
It is also worth noting that the UDA , in the October 1976 issue of its magazine 'Combat' , published a list of 57 UDA members serving time in Long Kesh who had been members of the 'security forces' as well : 17 of them were UDR . An accompanying article claimed - " This list by no means exhausts the numbers of ex-security forces now convicted of politically-motivated offences , and at least three times this number could be added if I were to include Magilligan Prison , Crumlin Road and the men in the other Loyalist paramilitary groups . "
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ELECTION INTERVENTIONS.......
Despite the fact that SINN FEIN has been contesting local elections in the 26 counties for more than two decades , much comment has been passed and incorrectly interpreted about Republican involvement in elections - north and south of the British-imposed border - in the past several months .
Here we review Republican interventions in the electoral process for the past century and more .
From 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
The Fenian James Fintan Lalor stated , re the land question - " Let the occupiers of the soil refuse all further payment of rent to the present usurping proprietors , until the people , the true proprietors ....have in national congress....decided what rents they are to pay and to whom . " Devoy further believed that the British government's certain refusal of the full Irish demand for land reform ('peasant' proprietory was seen as more radical and far reaching a settlement that Isaac Butt's policy of the three 'F' 's *) would create the condition for a withdrawal from the British parliament . (* Fair rent , Fixity of tenure and Freedom to sell the tenant right .)
In this belief (that the demands of land agitation could not be met by the British Government ) at no time was Devoy advocating that the demand for Irish independence be suppressed in favour of agrarian agitation ; on the contrary , he argued that the land question had to be expanded to give it a nationalist character . In fact he accepted the risk of Britain undercutting the agitation by conceding compromise demands ('1169...' Comment - ...as Westminster did in 1998 with the Stormont Treaty) as a justifiable risk because " ...good work will have been done , sound principles will have been inculcated and the country aroused and agitated .. " - in other words , in the event of a failure to win complete victory , John Devoy felt that at least a step forward would have been taken in the building up of nationalist forces .
Devoy called on the Fenians to enter political life to fight , in particular on the platform of land reform , and by doing so to strengthen their organisation and 'end their isolation' . The full political programme of the 'New Departure' was never agreed upon let alone implemented ; the IRB Supreme Council rejected it at a meeting in Paris in January 1879 although individual members were left free to take part in open political activity , though not to enter parliament . Furthermore , the economic crisis of Irish agriculture in 1879 plus the commencement of the agrarian agitation in Mayo reduced to some extent the relevance of these plans .......
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23 DAYS IN HELL : THE STORY OF THE O'GRADY KIDNAPPING .......
The Gardai had in their possession a clue which could have led them to the O'Grady kidnappers and their captive some ten days earlier .
A card found in a rucksack after the Midleton shoot-out led them directly to the gang once they checked it out - but this was ten days later , by which time John O 'Grady had lost two of his fingers .
First published in 'MAGILL' Magazine , May 1988 .
By Michael O'Higgins .
Detective Superintendent John Murphy , from Harcourt Square , Dublin , told Superintendent McGroarty to get the package to Portlaoise Garda Station where he had already made arrangements for someone to take it to Dublin : McGroarty handed the package to Detective Frank Duggan , emphasising that he get O'Grady's severed fingers to Portlaoise as quickly as possible . The package reached Detective Superintendent Murphy at 2.00 AM ; only then , three hours after they came into the possession of the gardai , were the fingers put on ice , before being rushed to Jervis Street Hospital , Dublin .
16. PAINKILLERS AND BEER .
Wednesday , November 4, 1987 , was the gloomiest of the twenty-three days of the kidnap for the gardai , the O'Grady family and John O'Grady himself ; he had awoke around 8.30AM - after breakfast , he took more painkillers , removed the dressings and washed his fingers in a basin of lukewarm water . There was a large clot on what remained of the little finger on his right hand , which he snipped with a scissors . Eddie Hogan helped apply a second tourniquet to the finger stump on that hand . In the afternoon he noticed the clot on the finger had worsened and decided he would have to remove this clot to stop the flow of blood . Immediately there was a spurt of arterial blood , which he managed to stop by using pressure with a linen dressing in his left hand .
He realised that the finger would have to be cauterised again , otherwise he might bleed to death . Dessie O'Hare was not in the house , so he called for Eddie Hogan and told him what had to be done . They went into the kitchen . On this occasion John O'Grady and gang members worked in tandem - there was no need to tie his legs together . He was put sitting in a chair and gagged ; one of the gang held his right arm which was put on the table , another man held his left arm . O'Grady wrapped his feet around the chair . Eddie Hogan cauterised the wound five or six times with a red-hot knife : the flow from the artery was checked and blood loss reduced to a trickle . O'Grady was retured to the alcove under the stairs , and Hogan gave him more painkillers and two bottles of beer to wash them down with . O'Grady then fell asleep .......
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