Fortnight Publications Ltd.

DiaryAuthor(s): Sheila HamiltonSource: Fortnight, No. 249 (Mar., 1987), p. 21Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25551114 .

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Fortnight March 21

DIARY TUESDAY 6 JANUARY

The RUC applied for extradition of Maze

escaper and parole-breaker Patrick Mclntyre, who failed to return after Christmas.

The Housing Executive revealed it had dealt with 1,118 cases of families being intim idated out of their homes in the last year

?

arising mainly from Protestant paramilitary threats to Catholics and RUC personnel.

WEDNESDAY 7 JANUARY The Northern Ireland Office rejected appeals for an increase in the rate of release of life

prisoners in the north's jails. DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said he

was opposed to electoral contests at the next Westminster poll between the Official Union

ists and the DUP.

THURSDAY 8 JANUARY Former DUP Assembly member and Craigavon councillor David Calvert was shot and wounded by an INLA gunman as he left his

shop at Craigavon's shopping centre. The government launched its anti-AIDS leaf

let, 'Don't die of ignorance', at a press conference in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a letter to Alliance Party leader John Cush

nahan, said she was disappointed that leading SDLP members had not supported Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Barry in his call for Catholics to join the RUC.

Loyalists were warned against another day of action by Official Unionist leader James

Molyneaux, who said such a course merely played into the hands of Mrs Thatcher.

FRIDAY 9 JANUARY Res Const Ivan Crawford (49) became the first terrorist victim of 1987 when a litter-bin

bomb exploded as he passed by in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.

MONDAY 12 JANUARY More than 1(X) gardai, backed up by troops, were on duty around Dublin's Special Criminal Court for the first day of the trial of DUP

deputy leader Peter Robinson, who faced 11

charges arising out of last year's invasion of Clontibret, Co Monaghan.

Speaking for the first time since he was shot, DUP councillor David Calvert called on the security forces to take retaliatory action

against the INLA.

TUESDAY 13 JANUARY The trial of DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson on charges of assault, unlawful assembly and malicious damage arising from the loyalist incursion into Clontibret, Co Monaghan, on

August 7 last year, began in Dublin's Special Criminal Court.

WEDNESDAY 14 JANUARY Peter Robinson pleaded not guilty to 11

charges arising from the Clontibret incursion. A Donegal court ordered that Patrick Mac

Intyre of Letterkenny be extradited to Northern Ireland on charges including attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm to a police officer during the mass repub lican breakout from the Maze prison in

September 1983. Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich issued a statement

saying he was "appalled" by remarks made the

previous day by Lord Brookeborough in the House of Lords, in which he described the Cardinal as an "evil prelate" and claimed that he encourage Catholics not to join the RUC and justified the actions of the IRA.

The Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Cahal Daly, and the East Belfast

Presbytery expressed concern about unionist

plans to canvass homes for signatures to the

petition asking for a referendum on the Anglo Irish agreement.

Forty families in Ballycolman estate, Strabane, were evacuated when the RUC found two loaded mortar tubes.

THURSDAY 15 JANUARY In the Special Criminal Court, DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson pleaded guilty to a

charge of unlawful assembly and was remanded in custody. The seasonally adjusted figures for jobless

claimants (as distinct from the unemployed) issued by the NIO showed a drop of 400 to

128,000 or 19 per cent of the employable population (as distinct from the workforce).

Industry Minister Peter Viggers described this as "encouraging", but the Belfast Centre for the Unemployed said figures in the Coopers and Lybrand review suggested the real unem

ployment rate was about 26.5 per cent. The European Commission office in Belfast

announced grants of ?15.1 million for two

regional development programmes in North ern Ireland.

The Alliance Party's contempt case against Belfast City Council was adjourned until after the next council meeting.

FRIDAY 16 JANUARY DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson was freed

by the Special Criminal Court after paying ?17,500 in fines and compensation.

SUNDAY 18 JANUARY Fianna Fail leader Charles Haughey said in an RTE interview that Fianna Fail would not make Northern Ireland or the Anglo-Irish agreement election issues: "it's far too serious".

MONDAY 19 JANUARY The Republic's Minister for Communications, Mr Jim Mitchell, renewed for a further year the Order forbidding RTE from broadcasting interviews with Sinn Fein, the Provisional IRA, INLA, UFF and UVF, and extended the

order to Republic Sinn Fein. Minister of State Nicholas Scott said it was

"inconceivable" that Article one of the Anglo Irish agreement might be open to reneg

otiation, as Charles Haughey suggested in a weekend interview. SDLP deputy leader Seam us Mallon also said that, being a totality, the agreement could not be renegotiated.

TUESDAY 20 JANUARY The Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, dissolved the 24th Dail after the withdrawal of four

Labour minsters from the Coalition. John Gerard O'Reilly and Thomas Power,

both leading members of the INLA, were shot dead in the bar of a Drogheda hotel in an internal feud. Both men were among those convicted on the word of INLA supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick, but freed in December after the Court of Appeal quashed their sentences. Two building society offices and the Ulster

Bank in Gortin, Co Tyrone, were damaged in a co-ordinated bombing attack believed to have been carried out by the IRA.

Unionist MEP John Taylor left the European Democratic Group in the European Parliament and joined the

group of the European Right

led by French National Front leader Jean Marie le Pen.

WEDNESDAY 21 JANUARY A statement purporting to come from the INLA said the organisation would disband in its present form.

THURSDAY 22 JANUARY DUP press officer Sammy Wilson condemned OUP councillors who were breaking with the DUP on the council boycott, saying that those who returned to normal council business

should be disciplined by their party and the electorate.

Secretary of State Tom King, in a Radio Ulster interview, suggested that the general election in the Republic would effectively

suspend the work of the Anglo-Irish secret

ariat. The Foreign Office said that this statement was made without official consult ation and did not reflect a change in policy.

The Republic's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Peter Barry, said there was "no found ation" for Mr King's remarks.

FRIDAY 23 JANUARY Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it would be "very, very unwise" for a new gov ernment in the Republic to abrogate the

Anglo-Irish agreement, and that there would be no reconsideration of the agreement in the

light of unionist pressure. A statement claiming to come from the

INLA in Belfast denied reports that the organ isation was being disbanded, saying this was the propaganda of the "dissidents" linked to the Irish People's Liberation Organisation.

SATURDAY 24 JANUARY On a flying visit to security bases along the

border, Labour leader Neil Kinnock defended his party's policy of meeting Sinn Fein but said it would not be "productive" for him to

meet SF representatives in person.

SUNDAY 25 JANUARY Three thousand people gathered in Deny to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the

Bloody Sunday shootings. A part-time UDR officer was shot in the

shoulder when two gunmen fired on his car in the Dungannon area.

MONDAY 26 JANUARY Mr George Shaw, a part-time UDR officer, was shot dead by the IRA outside his home in Dun

gannon, Co Tyrone. Deputy OUP leader Harold McCusker was

jailed for a week for failure to pay a fine for

non-payment of motor tax.

TUESDAY 27 JANUARY Gardai seized bomb-making equipment, 200 rounds of ammunition and two home-made

mortars ? all believed to be destined for the IRA ? in raids near Trim, Co Meath. The case of 31 women, 30 of whom lost

their jobs seven years ago after the

disbanding of the RUC full-time reserve and run-down of the women's part-time section, opened at an industrial tribunal in Belfast.

THURSDAY 29 JANUARY The Ulster Political Research Group, an off shoot of the UDA, put forward proposals for a constitutional conference, leading to the establishment of a devolved assembly and formation of a coalition government based on

party strengths. The proposals were wel comed by the NIO, the SDLP, the Alliance

Party and the British Labour Party, but both the OUP and the DUP said that while the

Anglo-Irish agreement existed the proposals were "irrelevant".

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY IRA bombs went off in Belfast and Lisbum.

Three of them ? at Mackie's west Belfast

factory, at the Ambassador Hotel on the Antrim Road, and in Lisburn town ? were

small, causing some structural damage but no

injuries. The fourth, in Upper Queen Street, was the first city centre bomb for some time. Ten people were injured and buildings were

seriously damaged. Harold McCusker was released from Crumlin

Road jail in Belfast. West Belfast joyriders claimed to have

organised into a group threatening retaliation for IRA punishment shootings.

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