Murder at Lordship (eBook)

1

POLICING BANDIT COUNTRY

With over 300 open crossings leading into a different jurisdiction, and an ambivalent attitude towards law enforcement passed down through generations, the border area has been one of the most difficult and dangerous areas of Ireland to police over the last 50 years. This wasn’t always the case, and for the first two-thirds of the 20th century towns like Dundalk in County Louth were policed like any other large provincial town in the country. The border, established in 1921 and dividing Ireland into two separate states, meant that there were higher rates of smuggling of illegal contraband, but the region was no more violent than any other garda district.

That all changed in the 1960s with the outbreak of the Troubles, the violent Northern Ireland conflict that spread south of the border and raged for 30 years. What started as a civil rights campaign over the treatment of Catholics in the North escalated into warfare, with the deployment of British troops to the region and the emergence of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Known as the Provos, the terror group was formed in late 1969 following a split with the original IRA movement, and it adopted an approach of physical force republicanism, initially focused on defending Catholic communities but escalating to a guerrilla warfare campaign against the security forces by the 1970s.

A unique unit within the movement was the South Armagh Brigade, which became known for its militancy and independence, retaining a battalion structure throughout the conflict, and was the most active Provisional IRA unit during the Troubles. A senior figure within the brigade was Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, who resided on a farm straddling both sides of the border in Armagh and Louth. During the conflict, he would also allegedly be elected a member of the IRA’s Army Council, linked to a bombing campaign in Britain and accused of stockpiling weapons imported from Libya.

The main base for the South Armagh Brigade was Crossmaglen, a small village with a predominantly nationalist community located three kilometres from the southern border. Despite a population of just 1,257 at the time, its proximity to the border, the rough terrain of the surrounding landscape, and a sense of rebellion stretching back centuries made the lawless enclave a stronghold for the Provisional IRA. The village became synonymous with much of the violence during the Troubles, and in August 1970 two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were killed by a booby-trapped bomb planted under a car near Crossmaglen. They were the first RUC officers killed by republicans during the conflict, and the incident set the tone for the area’s links to the ensuing bloodshed over the next decades. The Provos’ campaign in Crossmaglen escalated in 1971 after Harry Thornton, a 28-year-old sewage worker, was shot and killed by the British Army. The fatal incident led to heightened tensions in the village, with locals outraged at the killing of a civilian, providing new recruits to the republican movement and creating an even more hostile environment for security forces in the area.

From then until 1997, the South Armagh Brigade is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of over 120 British soldiers and more than 40 members of the RUC, with many of the killings happening in Crossmaglen. In the same period, the RUC recorded more than 1,200 bombings and 1,550 shootings in a ten-mile radius of South Armagh. The region was branded ‘bandit country’ in 1974 by then Northern Ireland Secretary Mervyn Rees and became the most dangerous posting for members of the British Army. At one stage, soldiers stationed in and around the village outnumbered the local population, while elite paratroopers from the Special Air Service (SAS) were also deployed to try and combat the violence in the region. To add to the bloodshed, another dangerous dissident organisation was formed in 1974, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), which began targeting security forces in the North while also carrying out attacks on gardaí.

With the conflict escalating, the Irish government re-established the Special Criminal Court, first introduced under the Offences Against the State Act 1939 to prevent the IRA from subverting Irish neutrality during the Second World War. The court, composed of three judges and sitting without a jury, was reintroduced to prevent jurors being intimidated or swayed by the dissident campaign during the Troubles, and it remains in place to this day.

Just 18 kilometres south of Crossmaglen across the border is Dundalk, a large town that also became a hotbed of dissident activity. Gardaí in the division, which at the time also policed areas including Omeath, Carlingford, Drogheda and Ardee, became all too familiar with the violence of the Troubles in 1972. On the night of 21 September, the garda barracks was attacked by a mob of around 200 people armed with firebombs and other missiles. The group also tried to force entry into the station and only retreated after a detective discharged several shots from a machine gun over their heads. Patrol cars and the private vehicles of gardaí were firebombed, and the army was called in to disperse the mob. It was one of the first major incidents linked to the Troubles involving Dundalk gardaí, but it wouldn’t be the last.

The area was also vulnerable to attacks from loyalist paramilitaries, highlighted by a no-warning bomb blast in 1975. Six days before Christmas, a car bomb was detonated at Kay’s Tavern on Crowe Street, resulting in the deaths of two civilians. In a coordinated attack hours later, a bar in the village of Silverbridge, close to Crossmaglen, was targeted and three men, including a 14-year-old boy, were shot dead. The atrocity was carried out by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist terror organisation operating during the Troubles.

Two years later Dundalk gardaí were involved in investigating the abduction and murder of a British Army intelligence officer, Captain Robert Nairac, who was forcefully removed from a pub in South Armagh by the Provisional IRA during an undercover operation. He was brought from the bar in Dromintee across the border to Ravensdale and subjected to a violent interrogation during which he was beaten with weapons before being shot dead. Although several people have been convicted in relation to the incident, his body has never been recovered.

Gardaí in Dundalk were also involved in the investigation into the 1979 Narrow Water Ambush, across the waters of Carlingford Lough in the County Down village of Warrenpoint. The guerrilla attack by the Provos killed 18 British soldiers and injured 6 others. During the atrocity the soldiers, believing they were under attack from the southern side, opened fire. A civilian, William Hudson, had gone to the Omeath shoreline to see what was happening when he was hit by a bullet and died. Three days later there was large-scale sectarian violence in the town during a European Cup game between Belfast team Linfield and Dundalk at Oriel Park, during which the away fans rioted, resulting in some 100 civilians and gardaí being injured.

Members of the public and gardaí were at constant risk of serious injury or death as the sectarian conflict raged on both sides of the border. Several members of An Garda Síochána would be killed in bombings and shot dead in bank robberies, the latter being carried out under the veil of fundraising for the republican movement. In 1985, Sergeant Patrick Morrissey became the first garda member to be murdered in the Dundalk district during the conflict in a killing carried out by dissident republicans. On the afternoon of 27 June, 49-year-old Sergeant Morrissey was on duty when he was notified of an armed robbery at the local employment exchange in Ardee. He and two colleagues set up a checkpoint in the village of Tallanstown to intercept the raiders. They came across two men on a motorbike and gave chase, with the bike crashing into a car at Rathbrist Cross. The raiders, Michael McHugh from Crossmaglen and Noel Callan from Castleblayney in County Monaghan, were both connected to the INLA. They fled the scene on foot and were pursued by Sergeant Morrissey. As the officer caught up with the men, he was initially shot and wounded by McHugh, who then stood over Sergeant Morrissey, a married father of four, and shot him in the head.

The raiders were later arrested during a major search operation involving the army and tried before the Special Criminal Court in Dublin. They were charged with capital murder, a special provision relating to the murder of a garda or prison officer acting in the course of their duty, for which the punishment on conviction was death. Both men were found guilty and McHugh, then aged 23, shouted at the judges after the verdict: ‘Victory to the INLA. You are pro-British.’ He was initially sentenced to death for the murder, but this was commuted to 40 years’ penal servitude by then President Patrick Hillery, seven days before the execution was due to take place. For his courage and heroism, Sergeant Morrissey was posthumously awarded the Scott Gold Medal, the highest honour in An Garda Síochána. The death penalty was abolished under the Criminal Justice Act 1990 and replaced with a life sentence, with a minimum period of 40 years’ imprisonment. The legislation, which also has special provisions for politically motivated murders of the head of a foreign state or member of government, remains the most serious offence on the statute books. McHugh and Callan would be the last people convicted of capital murder in the 20th century.

The Provisional IRA announced its ceasefire...