Following on from last month’s column on the Miami Showband Massacre, Shane Daly shares more on involvement of the soldier with the ‘educated English accent’, Captain Robert Nairac. “When it awarded him The George Cross, was Buckingham Palace aware that Captain Robert Nairac was named, in an official Ministry of […]
“That bomb was definitely placed there with a view to killing all in that band.”– James O’Neill On July 31, 1975, in County Down, five people were killed, including three members of the popular Miami Showband, in an attack in by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group. Despite the story of […]
On November 25, 1975, Francis Crossan, a 34-year-old father of two children and a Catholic from Belfast with no affiliation to any paramilitary organisations, became the first civilian to have his throat cut by the Shankill Butchers. During the most provocative times of the Troubles, he became the first of […]
The Shankill Bombing came at an extremely precarious time in the peace process in Northern Ireland. This attack and the resulting retaliation attacks that culminated over the following days, very nearly derailed the entire peace process altogether. At this stage of the Troubles, for the very first time, Loyalist paramilitaries […]