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A View North Provos cashing in peace dividend

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Jack Holland

Nowadays, business is the only thing that is booming in West Belfast.

Driving down the road from Twinbrook toward the Andersonstown Road recently my companion pointed out a new building that was going up. It was a block of flats, and in front of it was a gas station.

"You know who owns that?" he asked. I told him I had no idea.

"Fitzy," he told me. Ah — that name rang a bell.

"You mean Harry F . . . ?" I replied. "He’s doing well for himself."

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My companion nodded in the affirmative.

"Fitzy" was a former Provisional IRA gunman who made his name back in the bad old days of the early 1980s when he was involved in some nasty incidents. Now, my companion explained, he was building an apartment block and running a gas station.

"You know where the money is coming from?" my cryptic companion asked with a smile. Of course, it didn’t take much to figure that out. He went on to quote a few more examples of former Provisional IRA war heroes who are now enterprising businessmen in West Belfast and beyond.

The Provisional IRA is more than just a guerrilla organization. Not long ago, it was (according to police estimates) generating an income of around $12 million per year. Though many of its money-making enterprises were disrupted in the early 1990s, and its main financial officer and "accountant" forced to flee south of the border, the last few years have doubtless allowed the group to recuperate economically.

It is well known that for some time now the Provisionals run West Belfast. It started in the 1970s, when the Provisionals and the Official IRA used to compete for the control of drinking clubs and later construction work. Now the Provisionals have a complex of economic enterprises that include building sites, bars, clubs, taxi companies, gas stations, stores, etc., all under the indirect control of or run with the permission of the IRA. There is a veritable army of ex-prisoners who need to be taken care of once they are released from jail. The IRA has set many of them up with little businesses. The pressure to find jobs for the boys is certain to build as the peace settlement leads to the release of hundreds more prisoners over the coming months.

An INLA retrospective

Among those who are sure to be looking for gainful employment are the members of the Irish National Liberation Army, which for the first time in its history declared a cease-fire three weeks ago. The INLA decided that in the wake of the Omagh atrocity there wasn’t much of a future for the "armed struggle". There had been previous efforts to get the group to call a halt — notably in 1995, when its ex-chief of staff, Hugh "Cueball" Torney, had a statement read out in court (where he was facing arms-smuggling charges) that INLA was now on cease-fire. This was later denied by the organization.

INLA leaders tended not to come to a happy end. Its very first, Seamus Costello, who founded the organization in late 1974, was assassinated in October 1977. The Official IRA were to blame. In February 1994, republican gunmen assassinated Dominic "Mad Dog" McGlinchey, who had been chief of staff from 1982-84. Two years later, Gino Gallagher, who became chief of staff after Torney’s imprisonment, fell victim to internal machinations — which Torney inspired, eager to get his old job back — and was gunned down in the dole office on the Falls Road. Subsequently, Torney himself was shot dead in September 1996.

Occasionally, when not feuding with itself, the INLA did find time to take on "the enemy." The first serving member of the security forces it killed was an RUC man, Noel Davis, in May 1975, in South Derry. The last was a British army recruiting sergeant, Michael Newman, who was shot dead in Derby, England, in April 1992. The most fatalities for which INLA was responsible in any one incident was 17, 11 of them soldiers, all killed in a bomb attack on the Droppin’ Well Inn in Ballykelly, Co. Derry, in December 1982 — one of the worst incidents in the history of the Troubles.

INLA is the only organization in the conflict to have stooped low enough to murder people while they were at worship. In November 1983, it opened fire on worshippers in Darkley Pentecostal Church in South Armagh, killing three of them.

However, when the aging veterans — the few of them that are left — get around the table to talk about the good old days, they will probably prefer to remember other incidents in the history of their organization. In May 1976, nine INLA members succeeded escaping from Long Kesh — at the time it was the most successful breakout in the history of the prison. In March 1979, the INLA made its name known beyond Ireland when it assassinated Airey Neave, Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man, who was tipped to become the secretary of state for Northern Ireland in her government. It proved to be one of the most successful assassinations ever to take place during the Ulster conflict. The assassins, using an under-car booby-trap bomb, which exploded as Neave’s car left the House of Commons car park, got clean away, and remain at large to this day.

The INLA chose another unlikely place for an assassination 18 years later, by which time most people had written it off as an effective terrorist group. In December 1997, INLA shot dead loyalist killer Billy Wright, better known as "King Rat," in the confines of The Maze Prison, hailed as the most secure prison in Europe.

The last person to die at the hands of the INLA was a retired reserve policeman, who was shot dead in March 1998 as he loaded his wife’s shopping bags into their car in Lurgan, Co. Armagh.

Perhaps, in the end, the INLA will be remembered more for the nicknames of its activists than for anything they ever did. After all, it produced "Sparky," "Basher," "Bap," "Cruncher," "The Ghost," "Mad Dog," "Dunter," "Dr. Death", and, last but not least, "Cueball." Names with which to conjure. We will never see their like again! (At least, I hope not.)

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