Notes

1. ARCHIVES

  1. Quoted in Peter Berresford Ellis, Hell or Connaught!, The Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652–1660, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1988, p. 9.

  2. The originals were destroyed in 1922 in the opening moments of the Irish Civil War when Free State forces opened fire on republican positions in Dublin’s Four Courts, which then contained the Public Records Office.

  3. Transcribed from the original manuscripts and contained in R. Dunlop, Ireland Under the Commonwealth, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1913, p. 357.

  4. Dunlop, ibid., p. 765.

2. DEFENDERS

  1. Letters of 11 May 1615 from Derry. George Canning, as quoted in An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster by Rev George Hill, M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, Belfast, 1877, p. 36.

  2. The main RUC interrogation centre in Northern Ireland where republican suspects were held and interrogated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

  3. Michael Stone was a notorious Loyalist gunman who attacked three thousand republican mourners at a Belfast funeral. See Chapter 3.

  4. Letter of 16 May 1615, from Derry. George Canning as quoted in Hill, ibid., p. 40.

3. BROTHERS

  1. Legal Defence in Northern Ireland, report of an International Delegation of Lawyers, National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1989. Report on the Assassination of Patrick Finucane, Michael J. Graham, Hartford, Connecticut, 1989. Human Rights and Legal Defense in Northern Ireland: The Intimidation of Defense Lawyers, The Murder of Patrick Finucane, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, New York, 1993.

  2. The B-Specials were a part-time police reserve force that were viewed by the Catholic community as a state-licensed Protestant militia. The B-Specials were disbanded in 1970.

  3. On 15 October 1974 the IRA prisoners burned down their huts as part of a protest over prison conditions.

  4. Belfast Graves, National Graves Association, Dublin, 1985, p. 184.

  5. See Chapter 3, p. 195.

  6. Roy Mason was the Labour Government’s Northern Ireland Secretary of State from 1976 to 1979. He took a hardline pro-military stance against the IRA. Evidence later emerged that IRA suspects were being systematically beaten in police custody.

  7. The blanket protest was a campaign by IRA prisoners to resist being classified as common criminals and being forced to do prison work and wear prison clothes. It started in 1976 and finally ended with the 1981 Hunger Strike.

  8. A republican version of the boy scouts.

  9. In April 1977 the RUC took the unprecedented step of issuing ‘Wanted’ posters on three notorious IRA Volunteers in a bid to capture them.

10. Ned Kelly was a famous nineteenth-century Australian outlaw who wore an iron chest-plate as a primitive form of body armour.

11. Dr Mengele was the chief camp doctor at Auschwitz extermination camp. Heydrich was the SS head of the Nazi puppet state of Bohemia and Moravia.

12. Protesting IRA prisoners were denied the normal fifty per cent remission of sentence then accorded to all prisoners in the Northern Ireland prison service.

13. From court documents of the trial of the escapees.

14. In October 1987 a 150-ton Libyan arms shipment to the IRA aboard the Eksund trawler was intercepted off the coast of northern France.

15. Quoted in Eileen Fairweather et al, Only the Rivers Run Free, Pluto, London, 1984, p. 224.

16. Quoted in Ian Jack, ‘Gibraltar’, Granta, No. 25, London, 1988, p. 34.

17. Quoted in Human Rights and Legal Defense in Northern Ireland, p. 50.

18. John Stalker, Stalker, Harrap, London, 1988, p. 49.

19. The Baltic Exchange bomb in the City of London in April 1992 killed three passers-by and caused widespread destruction in the heart of London’s financial district.

4. INFORMERS

  1. Raymond Murray, The SAS in Ireland, Mercier Press, Dublin, 1990, pp. 330–31. British Army soldiers cannot be compelled to attend Northern Ireland inquests and are only identified by a letter, as in Soldier ‘A’, in the written statements they supply to the coroner via the RUC.

  2. Republican News, 4 August 1990.

  3. Republican News, 4 August 1990.

  4. Republican News, 4 August 1990.

  5. Laird committed suicide in September 1992.

  6. Derry Journal, 8 September 1988.

  7. Irish News, 9 May 1992.

  8. Irish News, 1 June 1990.

  9. IRA statement, 25 May 1986.

10. Irish News, 25 February 1985.

11. Statement by Elizabeth Flood issued by the Northern Ireland pressure group, Families Against Intimidation and Terror, in August 1991.

12. Interviews with republican sources in Derry.

13. Derry Journal, 7 June 1991.

5. VOLUNTEERS

  1. Patrick Quinlivan and Paul Rose, The Fenians in England, John Calder, London, 1982, p. 95.

6. CHIEFTAINS

  1. Derry Journal, 8 September 1988.

7. MARTYRS

  1. Piaras F. MacLochlainn, Last Words, Stationery Office, Dublin, 1990, p. 19.

  2. Ibid., p. 22.

8. REBEL HEARTS

  1. Two decades later I found out that it was based on Bury St Edmunds murderer William Corder, who was hanged in 1829 for killing his mistress.