Adams rewrites my sister's story to whitewash IRA's brutal past

If republicans believe their cause is just, why paint over the reality of what it involved, as they do with my late sibling?

Eilis O’Hanlon, Sunday Independent, August 17th, 2025

The Sinn Féin bookshop is not the sort of place where I can normally be found lurking, but I wanted a copy of Gerry Adams's new book, Siobhán O'Hanlon: A Sound Woman, which gathers memories of the late IRA volunteer and Sinn Féin activist who died of breast cancer in 2006 at the age of 44.

Siobhán was my sister. I was naturally curious what the book had to say.

The book offers an affectionate portrait of a woman who was hugely admired and liked by her republican comrades. She was part of the Sinn Féin team that negotiated the Belfast Agreement. A framed picture of her standing outside Downing Street used to hang in my late mother's house.

Siobhán and I eventually ended up disagreeing about most things politically, and my memories of her will inevitably differ from those of the people close to her who shared her thinking. That's fine. "Recollections may vary,” as the famous phrase has it.

I am always slightly baffled by people who find the fact that Siobhán and I did not see eye to eye when it came to the IRA in any way remarkable.

Families having political differences? Imagine that. In the divisive cauldron of the Troubles, as during the Civil War, it happened routinely. Just because our family was well known in Belfast (our maternal uncle was IRA chief-of-staff Joe Cahill) does not make it more noteworthy. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't everything either. These things happen.

What struck me was how the book describes some aspects of Siobhán's life that I knew very well, because I was there. I lived through them, too.

Oddly Coy

The very first page acknowledges that she was an IRA volunteer, but when it comes to describing her activities it becomes oddly coy. It says: "In 1982 she was arrested and charged on the word of a paid perjurer and imprisoned in Armagh Women's Prison.”

That is certainly one way to put it.

Another would be to state that Siobhán was arrested in a two-car convoy carrying a bomb. The man in the vehicle behind — the car carrying the bomb — did implicate her. I shall take Adams's word that the man was paid. He may even have perjured himself on some matters. I wouldn't know.

What I do know is that he was not lying when he said Siobhán was part of the IRA team that day. She was. It was one of many operations in which she took part at the time. I remember it well. She was never at home. We all knew what she was doing.

I find this refusal to give a thing its real name perplexing. I do not believe that anyone should have been carting bombs around Belfast in 1982. There were other, peaceful, ways to protest against British rule. Those who chose a different path can have had no complaint if they were arrested and jailed.

Republicans do not agree with this analysis. They believe that "armed struggle”, to use their favourite euphemism, was not only a legitimate response to the "situation” (another euphemism), but was inevitable and a noble cause. That being the case, why be so coy about what the IRA did?

If you're not ashamed of it, why not just say she was transporting a bomb instead of tiptoeing around it like a Victorian lady novelist too delicate to describe someone's bare ankles?

Siobhán was released on bail for that offence just before Christmas 1982, and duly picked up where she left off. Just over six months later, she was back in prison again as "one of a group of women who were arrested at a house” and, the book says, "charged with possession of explosives”.

The reason that Siobhán was charged with possession of explosives is because she was in possession of explosives. The house was what was commonly known as a "bomb factory”.

Again, one can disagree as to the validity of such actions, but let's not beat about the bush. The bombs were being assembled to kill people — members of the security services, republicans would say, but if there is one thing that history has taught us, it is that bombs are by their nature indiscriminate. They blow up anyone in the vicinity, not just those designated as legitimate targets. If such acts were justified by the circumstances of the time, then own it. Why present it in such passive, detached terms?

Siobhán was sentenced to seven years for that offence, of which she did three and a half behind bars.

Gibraltar

On release, she recommenced her IRA career, and is said in this book to have been "shocked” by events in Gibraltar in 1987, when three unarmed volunteers on active duty were shot dead by the SAS while heading to the border after a scouting mission.

The book leaves out one salient detail, which is that Siobhán was the fourth member of the Gibraltar cell.

She was named as such a year later by The Sunday Times, under the headline, 'Revealed: IRA girl who survived Gibraltar'. It was a sloppy piece of journalism in many ways. Numerous details were dangerously wrong. The description given of Siobhán bore no resemblance to her. The closest match to it was me and another sister, and I was the only one living in the family home at the time. If anyone had decided to come to the door with evil intent, they would probably have assumed that I was her. I was genuinely terrified for my life.

Those errors aside, the report was right in its central detail, which is that Siobhán was part of the IRA operation to bomb Gibraltar. That is on public record. Surveillance photos have been published showing her on reconnaissance in the British-run enclave.

So, the same question — was plotting to plant a bomb in the packed tourist streets of Gibraltar for the changing of the guard a defensible act? I would argue, strongly, that it was not. Those who contributed to this new book about Siobhán presumably disagree. That is for them to defend. But if they really don't believe there is any shame in risking so many lives, why not say what she was doing there without equivocation or apology?

Siobhán herself was certainly proud of her time in the IRA. It defined her. In a way, it almost feels disrespectful to skirt around the details of her activities while purporting to offer a true portrait of her for posterity.

Then again, the book is written by Gerry Adams (together with Sinn Féin press officer Richard McAuley). Reticence has ever been his watchword when it comes to facing up to the atrocities that the IRA committed during the darkest years.

This evasiveness is baked into the culture of the republican movement.

During one of the fruitless phone calls that we occasionally had after I started writing critically about republicanism, Siobhán insisted that she was simply trying to make Northern Ireland (not that she would have called it that) a "better place”. My reply was that this was a bit rich when it was people like her and her comrades who had only helped to make it worse.

I can't recall her response to that, but it was unlikely to have been congenial. We were both of a feisty nature, not inclined to back down in the face of confrontation. I wasn't asking her to change her mind. I simply expected her to respect mine. ​

After Gibraltar, Siobhán was too well known to be a safe bet for the organisation. She would have presented a risk to other IRA members sent on any operation with her. She switched instead to working in Sinn Féin, where she seems to have tirelessly organised the heck out of anything that needed organising, before cancer sadly struck.

Those who knew Siobhán best during those years can write and talk about her in any way they choose. We must all tell stories in our own way.

What makes this book about her politically problematic is that it comes as part of a relentless ideological drive to minimise what the Provos did during those decades of conflict.

Weaponising false memories

Putting the face of IRA terrorist Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane on a giant screen on the final day of Féile an Phobail last weekend was another example. Do those behind these stagings really think we don't know what they're doing? They are weaponising false memories.

Adams's book about Siobhán is typical of that republican mindset, which wallows in victimhood, wildly sentimentalising the past, while simultaneously celebrating but also downplaying the Provo campaign.

The former Sinn Féin president writes with almost toxic nostalgia of being part of a "community under military occupation”, and its "culture of resistance against… oppression”, as if the Belfast Agreement never happened. That agreement explicitly binds its signatories to respecting the legitimacy of the decision of a majority in the North to remain part of the United Kingdom if that is their choice.

To still throw around slogans such as "occupation” and "resistance” 27 years on, ignoring all historical and demographic complexities, is childish stuff. These people's thinking hasn't progressed or acquired any levels of nuance or moral depth in decades.

Adams writes in this book about Catholic families being put out of their homes by loyalists during those years. My own was among them. It was an awful time. No one who went through it will ever forget what it was like. Innocent people were being attacked and killed, as Adams says.

What the book conveniently leaves out is that the same thing was also happening to people on the other side of the divide, and the IRA played a shameful role in it, terrorising the Protestant/unionist community and wrecking any hope of reconciliation.

This book about my sister is just another front in an ongoing attempt to whitewash the past to make it seem as if violence was both inevitable and noble.

We all grew up in the same conditions, but it should never be forgotten that the overwhelming majority of people in the North never killed or hurt a single other person. These are the people who are being erased in favour of a cartoonish fake history.

Adams is right about one thing. Siobhán's life was far too short.

So, too, were those of legions of innocent victims, sent to their graves by a republican movement that had the shameful conceit to choose who lived or died. The IRA never had that right. It must not be given it retrospectively.

A little bit of sensitivity would go a very long way

Ivan Little, Sunday Life, August 17th, 2025

I call it the tit-for-tat two-step of triumphalism.

It seems that the more shocking the terrorist atrocity from the past, the more joyous the celebrations of today.

To hell, it would appear, with the grief they force victims of the outrages to revisit.

The last few weeks have seen both sides of the fence glorifying 'heroes' who took innocent lives 50 years ago.

The Bayardo bar on Belfast's Shankill Road was shot up and bombed by the IRA on August 13, 1975, with five people killed, though initially the Provos denied any involvement.

Teenager Linda Boyle died from her injuries not long after the attack.

Last week, her family said they were disgusted by a 'tribute' paid to Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane, one of the IRA men behind the outrage, at Feile an Phobail event in a thronged Falls Park.

Folk band Shebeen performed a song written by McFarlane in memory of Bobby Sands.

During their rendition, a picture of McFarlane, a former leader of the IRA who helped plan the escape from the Maze jail in which a prison officer was killed, was projected onto a big screen.

Coming just days before the anniversary of the bombing, the timing of the move appalled the Boyle family.

“Why do some within this society continue to stoke the fires? Why do they want to continue to hurt the innocent?” they asked, quite properly.

Loyalists, meanwhile, were on the streets earlier this month for a 50th anniversary band parade in honour of Harris Boyle, one of the UVF men killed by their own bomb in the Miami Showband massacre, a fortnight before the Bayardo slayings.

A similar parade for Wesley Somerville, another of the UVF gang, was held in Moygashel.

Des Lee, one of the surviving members of the band, told a commemoration for his three murdered colleagues he had “no problem” with the marches.

But not everyone feels the same, and it can't be a coincidence that the most despicable acts attract the most euphoric commemorations.

Victims

We have murals on walls exalting people such as Shankill bomber Thomas Begley and loyalists Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder, widely believed to have been behind the Sean Graham bookies massacre on Belfast's Ormeau Road.

At the unveiling of the Begley plaque, his father acknowledged the victims of the bombing.

Another plaque to Begley later erected in Milltown Cemetery paid tribute to him as “proudly remembered by his comrades and friends”.

The memorial for Bratty and Elder was apparently later removed.

I don't believe any terrorists should be revered as heroes, but it's even more distasteful when the perpetrators of outrages that paramilitary groups distanced themselves from are lauded in death as 'having made the ultimate sacrifice' or some such crass comments.

Republicans and loyalists insist they have every right to remember their dead, but a little sensitivity wouldn't go amiss.

I was on the scene of the bookies massacre and the Shankill bomb within minutes. There was nothing heroic about what the terrorists had done.

I'll always remember the awful scenes on the streets and the victims more than the hateful killers who sent so many people to early graves.

I also reported on Greysteel, Enniskillen, La Mon and a raft of other atrocities, and the thought that anyone could use any of the bombings or shootings to gloat in the faces of bereaved families leaves me cold.

The same goes for the now annual spectacle of loyalists and republicans trying to outdo each other in the offensiveness stakes as they turn bonfires into platforms for mocking or threatening rivals.

Even the DUP managed to upset families of La Mon attack victims by singing “Arlene's on fire” at the hotel, somehow forgetting where they were and what the IRA did there. Ms Foster later apologised to the families.

MLA fears historical items were burnt at controversial Derry bonfires

Garrett Hargan, Sunday Life, August 17th, 2025

Historical items are likely to have been destroyed after bonfires were set ablaze in Londonderry on Friday night, an MLA has said.

Gary Middleton hit out after pyres were lit in the Bogside and Creggan areas. Poppy wreaths, Israel flags and Union flags were also placed on the pyres.

A historic crimson flag taken from the roof of St Columb's Cathedral remains missing and is feared to have been burnt.

The replica was flown to mark the Shutting of the Gates and the Relief Celebrations for hundreds of years gone by.

A US flag flown in Derry on the day President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and taken from nearby Foyle College is also feared lost.

Earlier, the first minister led condemnation of the bonfires. Michelle O'Neill said there was no place for the burning of flags or emblems.

Bonfires are traditionally lit in some nationalist areas of Derry in August, historically associated with the anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial during the Troubles.

​At the Meenan Square bonfire in the Bogside, organisers placed a Parachute Regiment flag, as well as flags with the images of the King and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the structure before it was set alight at 11pm.

Earlier, the Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown joined calls for the return of a centuries-old Apprentice Boys flag to the local cathedral.

The loyal order also made an appeal, with Governor William Walker and General Secretary David Hoey, saying: “It was hard to believe that anyone would enter the grounds of a church to steal anything.”

DUP MLA Gary Middleton said history had been destroyed, and condemned the torching of poppy wreaths and flags.

“These items cannot simply be replaced. They have been erased. The hurt to bereaved families will cause further trauma,” he said.

Independent republican councillor Gary Donnelly also made a last-ditch appeal for the return of the Apprentice Boys flag.

He said: “While it is an understatement that I have very little in common with British loyal orders, the flag in question, although a replica, is centuries old. It is a historical article and should be returned to the place of worship.”

The Bogside bonfire has been at the centre of criticism in recent years due to offensive items placed on it, including the names of murdered police officers. Dissident republicans have been linked to the bonfire, with New IRA and INLA figures spotted at the site.

Shots were also fired by the New IRA in the vicinity in recent times.

A different bonfire in the Creggan area of the city was also widely criticised.

A placard bearing the name of a 15-year-old boy, Kyle Bonnes, who drowned in the River Faughan, appeared on it, as did the name of former PSNI detective John Caldwell, who narrowly survived a New IRA murder bid.

The placard was taken away following intervention from the local community.

The past remains the present

Two angry accounts of atrocities in the North and the continuing search to discover the truth about collusion

Mark Hennessy, Irish Times, Book Review, August 17th, 2025

In his introduction to Des Lee’s book, which tells the story of the 1975 Miami Showband massacre and his quest since for justice, Fr Brian D’Arcy says that few under 50 will recognise the picture of the island of Ireland it paints.

The same could be said of Eugene Reavey’s book recounting the brutal killings of his three brothers six months later and the horror of living in a place where death stalked the land.

The books, both co-authored by journalist Ken Murray, are filled with anger at the obstacles put in their way by the British authorities as they have fought to discover the truth of what happened half a century ago.

In his book, Reavey tells the story of a short drive with Jon Boutcher, now chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), along the Kingsmill Road in south Armagh shortly after the Englishman was appointed in 2016 to lead a new investigation into old Troubles killings.

Reavey drove Boutcher, whose escort followed behind. In just two miles, there were memorials to 17 people – including his brothers and the 11 Protestants killed in the Kingsmill massacre 24 hours later.

From there, the two drove just two miles to the Mitchell farmhouse in Glenanne, from where a loyalist death-squad operated, one that included members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Boutcher shocked

Boutcher was “amazed” that so many blatantly sectarian killings had taken place so close together. “What really shocked him was the failure of the RUC to properly investigate them,” writes Reavey. Rightly so.

Given the false charges of IRA membership laid at the door of his dead brothers, and the late Rev Ian Paisley’s equally false allegation that Eugene had been involved in the Kingsmill massacre, his anger is hardly surprising.

In Reavey’s narrative, SAS soldier Robert Nairac was everywhere – the instigator of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, the Miami Showband massacre, the Reavey killings, the O’Dowd murders 15 minutes later near Lurgan, and others.

The charges against Nairac, later killed by the IRA, are not, however, proven by Lee, even if the collusion involving RUC officers, the UDR and the regular British army in the murders of Catholics in the 1970s went high up the ranks.

Equally, his insistence that he has found proof that the killings of his brothers and the Kingsmill massacre were orchestrated by the British military to provoke an outright civil war is questionable.

His book lays great stress on a report written by a British army major with 3rd Infantry Brigade the day after the Reavey brothers were shot.

The report was unearthed in the British National Archives in Kew.

Still hoping for answers

“With the acute alarm that has been caused by the KINGSMILLS murders of 5 Jan ’76, the chances of wholesale indiscriminate slaughter of Catholics must re-emerge,” the note declares.

“When I read the note,” writes Reavey, “I was shocked.” The document clearly states, he goes on, that the targeting of Catholics must be closely controlled and directed by UVF leaders to provoke a civil war.

However, a fuller reading of the report, whether it be right or wrong, makes clear that it is an assessment of the UVF’s actions, rather than an outline of a strategy the British were directing, using the UVF as its tool. Again, it may be true, but it is not proven.

The tenor of Lee’s book contains anger, too, but it is more controlled. Few of those who heard early morning radio headlines on Thursday, July 31st, 1975, will forget the horror felt when word broke of the attack on the showband.

For both, the past is not the past, it remains the present: “For many people, 1975 is a long time ago, but every other day, the horrors of that night come back to haunt me and remind me repeatedly of how lucky I am to have made it this far.”

In April this year, hundreds marched in Moygashel, Co Tyrone to honour Wesley Somerville, one of two UVF men killed when a bomb they were putting under a seat in the van exploded prematurely.

The plan had been that the bomb would explode later, fuelling charges that the showband and the many others crossing the Border regularly were involved in transporting weaponry for the IRA.

Neither author expects that the full story will ever be released, though both believe that the collusion unearthed already between the UVF and the British military barely scratches the surface. For their sakes, one must hope they will get the answers they seek.

UDA gangsters draw up immigrant hit-list

EXCLUSIVE: Sunday Life Reporter, August 17th, 2025

PETROL BOMBERS LED BY COKE-SNORTING THUG PLANNING TO FORCE FAMILIES FROM ESTATE

A UDA gang is warning that it plans to force every immigrant out of the Rathcoole estate in Newtownabbey.

Loyalist thugs who burnt two cars belonging to a foreign-born family and spray-painted threatening graffiti on their home have drawn up a 'hit-list' of others to be targeted.

Some of those involved in the attacks took part in recent protests outside the Chimney Corner Hotel, also in Newtownabbey, which had been housing asylum seekers. The demonstrations drew crowds of around 250 people.

The South East Antrim UDA, which is involved in transitioning talks with mediators, has not sanctioned the recent hate attacks in Rathcoole.

However, the crime gang is fully aware that its members are involved and have turned a blind eye to their behaviour.

“As far as the (UDA) bosses are concerned, it's no claim, no blame, and if the police charge anyone, they can't go on the (loyalist) wing at Maghaberry jail,” said a UDA source, who also provided Sunday Life with the names of those involved in the arson attacks.

The loyalist who ordered the petrol bombings is a former 'commander' in the Rathcoole estate who was 'stood down' several years for bullying and stealing drugs cash.

Earlier this year, he was accused of forcing young women to sleep with him in return for cancelling cocaine debts, and was caught on camera snorting the drug during flute band practice for children.

Our source added: “He's identifying the houses of immigrants and sending kids out to throw petrol bombs at their cars. The UDA leadership knows full well what he's at but are turning a blind eye to it because they support it.”

Frightened

Last weekend, UDA members set fire to two cars on East Way belonging to an immigrant family and spray-painted “move out or be burnt” on the front of the house.

Locals said the occupants of the property have three young children and have been doing their best to integrate since moving to Rathcoole.

In June, a similar arson attack forced the Adeegway family to flee the estate after their two cars were set on fire outside their former home.

Kennedy Adeegway and his partner, who both work in the health service, said they were too frightened to return.

He told UTV: “I think I was targeted because I'm black, my partner is white. I can't change the fact I'm black. They burned her car and my car. That's two cars in just one night.

“That's traumatic, dangerous, I don't know the words to use. My life will never be the same.”

UDA arsonists have also been blamed for torching several vehicles at a used car sales business on the Ballyclare Road in Newtownabbey at the beginning of August.

Damaged

Police said three men were seen in the forecourt of the premises shortly after midnight and three cars were set alight with a further three damaged.

Appealing for information about the East Way race hate arson attack, the PSNI said: “Thankfully, no serious injuries have been reported by the family who were inside the house at the time — a man, a woman and three young children — although they have been left shaken by the ordeal.

“Our enquiries are ongoing, and at this time, we are treating this as arson with a racially motivated hate element.

“We are appealing to anyone who might have any information which may assist us to get in touch.”