Shining a light on a country at war with itself

Star of the Sea Documentary to be screened on TG4 tomorrow night

'I've never met Bobby Sands the hunger striker': The Belfast football team that put politics to one side

Raymond McCord recalls a Belfast childhood playing football with Star of the Sea, and the fight for justice that has defined his life.

THERE WERE NO lofty ideals at play when the Northern Ireland Housing Trust started construction on the Rathcoole estate in north Belfast, says this superb documentary on the impact the Troubles had on teenagers growing up on a mixed Belfast housing estate by James Wynn.

Part of a post-war building boom, the 366 acres on the slopes of Carnmoney Hill would serve as modern housing for those stuck in deprivation in the inner city areas, allowing the city to be spruced up.

If there was an ambition for the area to be cross-community, nobody was shouting about it, but around one-third of the families moving into Rathcoole were Catholic, populating the local Stella Maris schools.

Liam Conlon, a local doctor and community youth worker founded Star of the Sea, (the history of which still lives on in Super League basketball club Belfast Star) when he gathered an underage team of whoever wished to play soccer. The rule was there was to be no talk of politics and religion.

Invincible

They played together, they won together. Recollections from those who coached them testify that across five years, they weren’t beaten once on their way to winning multiple competitions.

Players were invited to cross-channel trials. Almost half of them played at some level for Northern Ireland at youth level.

The story inspired much media coverage and featured as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, November 18th, 2026) it is brought to life once again in a new TG4 documentary by director James Wynne: ‘Réalt na Mara – An Pheil, Na Trioblóidí agus An Iarmhairt’ (Star of the Sea – The Football, The Troubles and the Aftermath).

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1970s

As the ‘70s hovered into view, things changed. Catholic families were being burned out of their Rathcoole homes. Their places were being taken by Protestants, some of whom had sectarian tendencies.

Within a few years, players had gone to the extreme edges.

Star of the Sea’s left-back, Bobby Sands, helped plant and detonate an IRA bomb that took out the Balmoral Furniture showroom.

Their right-back, Michael Acheson, joined the Ulster Volunteer Force. So too did midfielder Terry Nicholl.

Denis Sweeney narrowly avoided being in a pub bombing, which influenced his decision to become a doctor. Tommy O’Neill was displaced by pogroms and died a young man, severely affected by the surrounding environment.

Sands would achieve worldwide renown, scorn, admiration and pity as the first of 10 Republican prisoners to die on hunger strike in 1981 in Long Kesh prison.

During his fast, he was elected as an MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone but British PM Margaret Thatcher not concede political status to republican prisoners.

In the early hours of 5 May 1981, Sands lost his life, the first of ten hunger strikers to die.

McCord

The pick of that Star of the Sea team was Raymond McCord.

The son of Hector, an Orange man, and mother Kathleen from the Shankill, Raymond and older sister Jean moved out from York Street to Rathcoole just before he started primary school.

The street he lived in was mixed, and as he said, ‘the happiest’ street in all the estate. His neighbours were Monaghans, Fitzsimmons, Binghams and Reillys.

McCord lived a couple of doors down from Geraldine Noade, who would later marry Sands.

He started playing for Star of the Sea and soon found he loved everything about the team and the culture of the club, with Conlon their coach and youth leader.

His father never tried to talk him into the Orange Order, but he remembers some of the elders trying. The closest he came was being a ‘string boy’, holding the ends of strings flying off a banner on the Twelfth. His suit was bought ‘on tick’ and his shoes were too big for him and cut his feet to ribbons.

The bonfires at that time were harmless affairs; a few bushes cut down and set alight. No pallets, no tyres, certainly no tricolours or effigies of mosques or immigrants on small boats. Two families – one Catholic, one Protestant – would collect a few shillings off the families on the row that would pay for the children’s lemonade and sweets.

Still, McCord could find nothing about it that really appealed to him.

George Best

“I played football like everybody,” he recalls now. “I went to school, I played football and I had a girlfriend…. Why would I want to join something that’s going to take you away from that?”

He was more than good. Manchester United came calling and he went over for two months. His coach was Paddy Crerand. The manager was Frank O’Farrell. George Best was still there, training on an adjoining pitch at The Cliff.

And then, just like Best, he decided he was homesick and went home.

Unlike Best, he didn’t go back.

His boyhood club Crusaders wanted him. He went along and had a look. But again, not for him.

“I was happier at home: my girlfriend, my family there, my friends, at The Star,” he says.

Attitudes were hardening. He was asked what he was doing playing for Star of the Sea, a ‘Fenian’ crowd.

And when the football was over, he would be asked in the pubs about Man United, always couched in terms that surely it was the greatest mistake of his life?

“I said, wait a minute. If I had stayed, I’d have ended up probably married to an English girl. Chances are I wouldn’t have had three great sons.

One of his sons was Raymond Jr. His picture in Royal Air Force uniform hangs on the wall, directly in Raymond’s line of view.

The Shipyard and the UVF

The elder McCord had no truck with loyalist paramilitaries. When he was a teenager, he was asked to join some of the local ‘Tartan Gangs’, a recruiting ground for the Ulster Defence Association and the UVF. He refused.

When a Catholic friend of his was beaten up he exacted revenge.

“I wasn’t being John Wayne. That’s what friends do,” he says.

“You didn’t know until you’re fighting them if they could fight.

“In my experience of them, they were easy to beat, because they couldn’t fight. They were thugs.”

He worked as a welder in Harland and Wolff.

He liked the work and played football for the company team, but he wasn’t crazy about the overall atmosphere.

Over the years he had a few arguments in the yard with paramilitaries.

“To me, I didn’t see them as paramilitary”, he said. “I see them as an individual who could try and cause me a problem.”

Occasionally, he would find himself in fights with them. He had absolutely no fear.

One night, someone followed him into the toilets of a bar and launched a headbutt at him, breaking his nose. McCord hit back severely.

He went back to his company in the pub and carried on his night. The barman told him to slip outside the side door and get home. He wouldn’t. Half an hour later, car tyres squealed outside and a group of men emerged in the pub with iron bars and baseball bats.

Once they had him down, they went to work, breaking his arms and legs. Nobody could help. They were told not to even call for an ambulance as he was left for dead.

But paramilitaries offer some status and money. Not everyone was immune from their appeal and gradually, Raymond Jr found himself drawn into that world during his periods of leave from the RAF.

Raised in Dail

In 1997, a drug deal went wrong and Raymond Jr’s leaders suspected he might have informed in police interviews. He was lured to the disused Ballyduff quarry where he was beaten to death with concrete blocks on 9 November 1997. When Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte raised Raymond Jr’s case in Dáil Éireann in 2005, using his parliamentary privilege, he said that Raymond Jr had been murdered on the orders of Mark Haddock, the head of the UVF’s Mount Vernon branch.

Raymond Sr was made swear to his family that he would not seek physical retribution.

Instead, he put faith in the police investigation. But it went nowhere for years, and he wasn’t being updated. He made some enquiries himself and spoke to leading figures in loyalist gangs and began forming suspicions.

He took them to the office of Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan. In January 2007, O’Loan’s report confirmed that Haddock – identified in the report as Informant #1 – had indeed been a protected species and safe from arrest; he was a British state agent, a paid informer.

Raymond Sr is a tough man, but how he and his family were treated comes out in torrents.

No clerical support

“No church minister condemned Raymond’s murder. No church minister came near my wife’s house. Not one brought even a sympathy card.

“Not one even came to speak to us or say a prayer. This is no joke, not one to this day, not one has ever come here.

“I’m not going to ask the stupid question why? Is it because of fear of paramilitaries? I know there was nothing in it for them.

“Our own so-called Unionist politicians, (Ian) Paisley, David Trimble and them, not one came near the house. Not one attended the funeral.

“I would have no love for those people. Those church men that are supposed to help families whether they like them or don’t like them, supposed to come and give them some type of support.”

He adds, “What they should have done is taken their dog collars off and thrown them in the bin. They’re only Christians when it suits them.”

Jim Shannon and DUP

Only one unionist politician, the Democratic Unionist Party’s Jim Shannon, has raised the case in parliament, and retains contact with McCord.

McCord himself has asked DUP leader Gavin Robinson to back his calls for a public enquiry into Raymond junior’s murder.

“He said the DUP don’t support inquiries.

“He talks about the soldiers, the veterans, giving them special protection. All I want is him to support an enquiry for my son. All I want is for him to ask in parliament.”

What frustrates McCord gravely is how Protestant paramilitaries are still operating in racketeering, fraud, drug dealing, prostitution and many other areas.

And the response from American and British governments is to continue to pump millions into the attempt to ‘transition’ when nothing has changed.

“These people still have a jackboot on top of their own community’s head, still raking money in for drugs and extortion, but our ministers stay silent, right?” says McCord.

“They shouldn’t be entitled to it. Since they went on ceasefire in 1994, the UVF has murdered 32 Protestants since their ceasefire.”

It’s coming up to 29 years since Raymond McCord Jr was murdered. Nobody from the ministries nor unionism has been to see him or the family. If politicians approach the door of his two other sons, they are immediately dismissed.

The death threats to Raymond Sr continue. Raymond Jr’s headstone has been smashed three times.

Star of the Sea team mates

His mood flips when he reminisces about Star of the Sea. Next week there will be a screening of the documentary at the Odeon Theatres in Belfast. He is compiling a list of old friends who have asked to have tickets reserved.

Across the way, two sets of Polish neighbours have asked him about it and have booked their tickets. He and some others are trying to track down the remaining members of the team who didn’t take part in the documentary.

“Dessie (Black) in goals… Geordie Hussey could have played in English league football. And I mean that, Geordie was good, fast and strong, and a good lad.

“Tommy O’Neill, forward, had nice skill. Terry Nicholl, Terry was one of the underrated ones. Terry had some skill. Terry should have been at least, a real, one of the top players in Irish league football.”

Instead, Terry went to jail. When he got out, he wanted to explore more of his Mormon faith and join family in Salt Lake City, Utah, but his conviction meant there was no chance.

“Big Paddy (Davidson). What a full-back. Fastest footballer I’ve ever seen in my life. Paddy didn’t get the credit…

Bobby Sands?

He takes a moment.

“To be honest, I remember doing an interview and people said, ‘What about Bobby Sands? The hunger striker?’

“I said, I don’t know. I’ve never met Bobby Sands the hunger striker in my life. Because when he left for Twinbrook, I have never seen him again.

“His wife lived about eight doors from me. We walked together on the same street.

“He wasn’t skilful, but Sandsy played for the shirt. He wasn’t one of the tough guys on the team but let people know he was there. Just because he was going in hard didn’t make him some sort of street fighter or, you know, hard man.”

He continues on.

“Denis Sweeney, fantastic player too. Willie Caldwell: the scouts were after Willie, Willie was the George Best of the team. He was running the ball.

“Terry Nicholl, Michael Acheson…”

He comes back to Sands.

“Willie says he (Sands) had the courage of his convictions. Willie is a Protestant guy.

“But I would disagree. I believe Sandsy was used because I said the Bobby Sands I knew, the Terry Nicholl I knew, and the Michael Acheson I knew…

“People say he made his own choice, I think he got to this stage it was too late to change because he was going to die.

Making choices

“But he made a choice the same way I made a choice when my son was murdered: I’m not stopping, I’ll get the people, get justice for my son.

“I believe that the only time a man’s gonna die, it’s for his family, to stop people killing his family, get in the way of it, defend them.

“Because nobody wants to die. Unfortunately, people take their own lives, mental illness and things like that, depression. This is completely different.”

He continues. “Do I regret that he died? Certainly, certainly regret he died there.

“I knew his wife. Grew up in the same street as me. A good girl. Good woman from a good family. When he was put in jail, I ran into Geraldine and I said, ‘How’s Sandsy?’

“And he got out after that. People can turn around and criticise and speak of him who don’t know him, and they say because he’s only out of jail and he goes back in again, that he didn’t learn his lesson.

“I’m not going to judge him at all because I don’t know what was in his head.

“What I can say is the Bobby Sands that died on hunger strike, Bobby Sands who joined the IRA, wasn’t the Bobby Sands that I knew at football, right?”

No professors

“We weren’t professors. We weren’t human rights activists. We were 16-year-old footballers.”

Naturally, he becomes a central focus of the documentary, but he feels the greatest contributions came from Denis Sweeney, Geordie Hussey and others.

Sweeney said it took him years before he realised that the team was made of different religions.

“Geordie says playing for Star helped to make him into the person he is today,” adds McCord.

“A young lad, with strong Unionist convictions. He’s not afraid to tell the truth.

“That’s important to me.”

Réalt na Mara – An Pheil, Na Trioblóidí agus An Iarmhairt (Star of the Sea – The Football, The Troubles and the Aftermath) will screen on Tuesday 20 October at 9.30pm on TG4).

London shouldn't give Stormont any more money — it only makes things worse

SAM McBRIDE, Northern Ireland Editor, Belfast Telegraph, October 17th, 2026

THE EXECUTIVE IS AN EMPEROR WITH NO CLOTHES: IT'S STRUTTING AROUND BUCK NAKED AND FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO KNOW THIS ARE MASSAGING THE MINISTERS' EGOS

With the Stormont Executive effectively insolvent, this week Finance Minister John O'Dowd addressed a room full of public sector finance professionals.

The Sinn Féin minister's speech to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy gave the sense that the Executive's financial woes are the fault of miserly British Governments not giving it even more cash.

I was then asked to speak about Stormont's finances and what follows is a condensed version of what I said.

I am not an economist. But you don't need to have any training in economics to see what's going on with Stormont's finances. It's blindingly obvious.

Stormont is very lucky that more people in senior positions in London aren't paying close attention to its behaviour.

We're now more than halfway through the financial year and there is no budget, yet there's not the slightest sense of panic: All is calm, all is well; we've been here before and we'll be here again.

Stormont has become the land of no consequences for those who preside over debacle after debacle.

This is not a government in the sense that a political scientist would understand. To be a government is to govern. It's to take decisions.

The most basic of those decisions is to decide how much money should be raised, and how much should be spent. This Executive is refusing to make that most basic choice.

Sinn Féin then has the audacity to criticise Westminster for considering doing the job Stormont has refused to do.

As Stormont's biggest party, and having chosen the two key economic portfolios, its stance here is more significant than that of any other party.

Last week, Mr O'Dowd said it “would be a huge misstep by the British Government” to set the budget and would involve “huge interference in devolved institutions of the Good Friday Agreement”.

If we'd had a bit more “huge interference” that might mean a government which could do the basics of governing.

There is a particular absurdity to criticising Westminster for potentially setting a budget that would contain hundreds of millions of pounds more than in the budget proposed by Mr O'Dowd at the start of this year. How could it be fine for him to suggest that budget, but outrageous for Westminster to pass a far more generous one?

Mr O'Dowd might say: If we'd taken your advice and not held out for more money, we'd be £1.5bn short of where we are now. This is true, and it exemplifies how the Treasury talks tough while acting weak.

However, while that is a criticism of the Treasury, it doesn't vindicate Stormont. This is about trading a short-term win — yet more cash — for credible government.

The Executive already has vast sums. The best government in the world isn't the richest; it's the one that uses its resources most effectively.

The fact that health gets more money here than in England, but is performing far worse, exposes the simplistic idea that lots of spending equates to better outcomes. How public servants work and what they deliver is far more important.

Health Report

When Rafael Bengoa delivered his seminal report on health reform a decade ago this month, 226,000 people were waiting for outpatient treatment; that figure has more than doubled to 527,000. Back then, about 100,000 people were waiting for diagnostic tests; that figure has also more than doubled.

Shamefully, many of these people are waiting in agony. When referred for urgent cancer treatment, 95pc of patients should begin treatment within two months. A decade ago, 67pc did so; now just 28pc do. The refusal to reform health has contributed to the financial crisis as more and more cash squeezed out of London is used to prop up a system which everyone from Michelle O'Neill to Arlene Foster accepted 10 years ago was unsustainable.

Perversely, the extra Treasury money is prolonging a system that is hurting people.

Take another area: In the civil service, there are 1,627 more staff than in 2019; agency workers have more than doubled to almost 5,000. There have been huge pay hikes for civil service boss Jayne Brady without any appraisal of whether her performance merited more money — and just 32 civil servants were last year told their work was unsatisfactory.

It ought to be an embarrassment to our Executive that it has failed so spectacularly in managing its finances. But the Finance Minister doesn't seem awkward when he talks about this.

Let me say that John O'Dowd is by far the most capable Sinn Féin minister. He's a highly skilled politician. He's exceptionally experienced. He takes his role seriously.

He's also one of a diminishing band of MLAs who can stand up and articulately argue his case for hours without notes. We need more politicians who can think for themselves.

This is a problem which is systemic. It doesn't begin or end with the current Finance Minister. He is merely the incumbent who happens to be holding the unfortunate parcel when the music has stopped. Others have been there before him, and others will likely be here again. He is implementing what is essentially agreed Executive policy.

But it's clear that this policy is absurd. The emperor has no clothes. The Stormont Executive is strutting around buck naked and far too many people who not only ought to know this — but who do know this — are massaging ministers' egos rather than starkly stating the obvious.

Where are the ministerial directions over the financial crisis? Where are the senior civil servants saying: “Sorry, minister, I will not do this unless you order me to do so, and take the consequences”? It's October and there hasn't been a single ministerial direction this year.

Buying votes

Yet despite Stormont's desperate attempts to buy the love of voters, the public holds it in contempt.

That's a constant vulnerability — not just politically, as we're seeing now around Drumcree — but in having any certainty as to the money available for each public service.

When I criticise Stormont's fiscal approach, the Executive parties respond with two arguments.

The first is simple: The Brits won't send us enough cash. In Stormont's world, there is almost no problem that cannot be blamed on London — and that involves unionists as well as nationalists.

Last year, Stormont got through £32bn — which is more in real terms than at any point in history other than amid the Covid pandemic.

The Department for Infrastructure, which Sinn Féin says is a victim of “British austerity”, has seen its budget soar from £791m to £1.4bn in this period.

Independent analysis shows we are funded by Westminster to our level of need. And if we want to raise more money, we can do so.

But that would conflict with the second argument advanced by ministers: We will not tax hard-pressed families.

Fine. Don't tax hard-pressed families. How about millionaires? How about people who live in multi-million-pound houses and drive flash cars? Or how about cutting wasteful spending?

Stormont had barely returned when it ruled out serious revenue-raising. Mr O'Dowd said family budgets were at “breaking point”.

Many people are demonstrably nowhere near “breaking point”. Does no one in Stormont ever go to the Merchant Hotel? Or to golf courses? Or look at the expensive wine lists? Or see the luxury holidays being bought? Or look at the cars around them on the roads?

There is a perfectly reasonable right-wing argument to say the rich or the middle classes shouldn't pay more tax. I'm not advocating that they should pay more. But there is no argument whatsoever to claim that these people don't exist. It is a political choice taken in Stormont not to raise more money from these people — that's not the fault of anyone in London.

Indefensible system

The Executive has consciously chosen to retain the indefensible system whereby the poorest homeowners subsidise the rates bills of the wealthiest. A supposedly left-wing finance minister has decided it is right that those struggling to heat their homes should help pay the rates bills of those literally living in castles.

That's a legitimate policy choice, but it's not forced on us by anyone in London.

At the heart of this is a moral hazard which is getting worse: In simple terms, breaking the rules seems to work for Stormont. From the perspective of the Executive, why should they set a budget next year when, rather than be punished, they would likely be rewarded? Why should they do so the following year, or the year after that?

The key culprit in this regard is the Treasury. In February, it gave Stormont £400m from the national reserve after the Executive overspent on last year's budget.

According to Treasury doctrine, the reserve is only for “genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures”. No one believes Stormont's situation was in any way either unforeseen or unavoidable.

When devolution was restored in 2024, the Treasury agreed a £3.3bn “financial package”, effectively rewarding failure.

We know that some of those now defending the Executive's financial choices once said something very different.

WhatsApp messages published by the Covid Inquiry show that, in Jan 2020, Emma Little-Pengelly said sarcastically of Sinn Féin's stance: “Well, why not — let English taxpayers subsidise our free prescriptions, lower rates, no water charges, lower tuition fees and free prescriptions… but hey, how dare you guys starve us of funding?”

I believe the reason the Executive parties haven't pushed for new taxes — which could be raised through the rates system or water charges or through new laws to tax almost anything other than income — is not only because that would be unpopular, but because they know it would invite scrutiny of how much money Stormont is getting, and how little is being delivered for that huge investment.

The state of our sewage infrastructure is now critical. It is far worse than most people realise. There is a moment of real collapse on its way and ministers know this, but they are refusing to either introduce water charges for those who could pay, or find the money from some other source.

You are not politicians. As officials, you might wonder about the relevance of this to you. You can't decide on many of these questions. But many of you have a role in what ultimately becomes advice to ministers — poring over the numbers, finding areas where they don't add up, and giving early warning of what you can see coming towards us.

Rather than starting from scratch each year to decide whether its spending is necessary, most of our public sector operates on the basis that if something was in the budget this year, then it's automatically marked down to be spent next year. This leads to perverse outcomes where once certain spending is in the system it is assumed to be essential.

A responsible Executive would be undertaking a drastic review of public spending which could involve zero-based budgeting where they start with a blank sheet and every significant expenditure has to be justified.

If it can't be justified, it isn't spent and the money goes somewhere where it can do more public good. Doing so periodically would help weed out wastefulness, yet there's no appetite for this.

We need a societal shift in how we think about Stormont spending. Indefensible financial behaviour has become accepted and acceptable.

Politics is too important to simply be left to the politicians. If we believe that we all have a role in society, then each of us in our different positions has a responsibility to recognise that this isn't working; it's not making the lives of the public better.

Lough Neagh is a sickening scandal. People are needlessly dying because our health system cannot treat them as it should. Our universities are laying off staff. Our roads are as cratered as the surface of the moon.

We are already facing the early consequences of Stormont's fiscal chaos. At some point, however far off, those consequences will become gargantuan and will harm ever more people. That's why this matters.

Senior RUC investigator never told of Irish Army’s Omagh warning

KURTIS REID, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

FORMER PSNI MAN QUESTIONS WHETHER FURTHER INTELLIGENCE COULD YET EMERGE

The former senior detective who led the investigation into the Omagh bombing has said he was unaware of a potentially significant warning received by the Irish army hours before the atrocity, questioning whether other information has yet to be disclosed.

Former PSNI Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who led the investigation into the 1998 bombing between 2002 and 2008, said the emergence of an anonymous telephone call to Finner Camp in Co Donegal had come as a surprise.

The call, received less than 18 hours before the Real IRA detonated a bomb in Omagh town centre, reportedly included repeated references to the town and instructions for Garda patrols to check back roads near the border.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Baxter said he had never previously been made aware of the information, which emerged during evidence to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry earlier this week. “It came as a surprise to me, and I was totally unaware of it,” he said.

Asked about the significance of the caller repeating the name Omagh three times, he said: “At the time [it] would have been quite significant. But I don't know the further details about it.”

Mr Baxter also expressed surprise that the information had not previously been disclosed, raising questions about whether further material relating to the bombing could emerge.

“I think it was a very significant thing. And I'm surprised that it wasn't disclosed at the time,” he said. “It raises the issue, is there other undisclosed material?”

The former detective confirmed that the first time he had heard of the military report was during evidence given by investigative journalist John Ware to the inquiry.

He declined to speculate on whether the warning could have prevented the bombing or whether the Irish army should have immediately contacted the RUC.

It is understood Mr Baxter will give evidence to the inquiry when it resumes next month.

Ombudsman

His comments come after the inquiry heard that former Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O'Loan had also been unaware of the telephone call during her investigation into the circumstances surrounding the atrocity. The handwritten military report, headed 'Report on Anonymous Phone Call to BGS, Finner Camp 14 Aug 98', records that an unidentified male contacted Finner Camp at approximately 10.30pm on August 14, 1998, the day before the bombing.

The caller reportedly urged personnel to contact gardaí and have patrols check back roads around Kinlough in Co Leitrim.

He also referred to Enniskillen, Irvinestown and Clogher before repeatedly mentioning Omagh.

The document does not explicitly mention a bomb or identify the caller, and the inquiry has not established whether the information was connected to the attack the following afternoon.

However, its emergence has prompted questions about what happened to the warning and whether the information was ever passed to police in Northern Ireland.

During evidence on Thursday, barrister Karl McGuckin questioned Baroness O'Loan about the call, which had been raised earlier in the week during evidence from Mr Ware.

Referring to the warning, Mr McGuckin said the caller had asked for Garda patrols to check back roads before finishing with the words: “Omagh, Omagh, Omagh”.

Asked whether anyone on either side of the border had informed her of the call in 2001, or at any time since, Baroness O'Loan replied: “No.”

Mr McGuckin told the inquiry that the call had been received by the Irish army and, as he understood it, the Garda was informed the day after the bombing.

“There's nothing so far to show that that information ever reached the RUC,” he said.

Intelligence sharing

He raised the issue in the context of intelligence sharing between authorities on both sides of the border and the difficulties of examining events involving more than one jurisdiction.

Baroness O'Loan's investigation, published in 2001, identified serious shortcomings in the RUC's handling of intelligence and its investigation into the bombing. Her report prompted significant controversy, including disagreements with senior police officers over its findings and the handling of information before and after the attack.

Mr Baxter subsequently took charge of the police investigation in 2002 and oversaw efforts to identify and bring those responsible to justice.

He has previously raised concerns about intelligence which was not made available to detectives investigating the bombing, including information relating to earlier dissident republican attacks.

The Omagh bombing took place on August 15, 1998, when a car bomb exploded in the Co Tyrone town centre on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, were killed, while hundreds of others were injured. The victims included children, teenagers, adults and visitors from outside Northern Ireland.

The attack, carried out just months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, became the deadliest single atrocity of the Troubles.

The ongoing public inquiry was established to examine whether the bombing could have been prevented by UK state authorities, including through the handling and sharing of intelligence.

It is considering material relating to intelligence held before the attack, the activities of dissident republican organisations and the response of the security services and police.

The inquiry is also examining questions about cooperation and information sharing between authorities in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Troubles Bull decision ‘could affect victims and families for generations’

KURTIS REID, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

Northern Ireland's Victims' Commissioner has urged MPs to ensure new legislation dealing with the legacy of the Troubles delivers independent and impartial processes that victims and survivors can have confidence in.

Joe McVey will travel to Westminster today alongside members of the Victims and Survivors Forum as MPs consider amendments to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill.

The commissioner has called for greater focus on ensuring the legislation meets the needs of those affected by the Troubles, warning that decisions taken at Westminster could have consequences for victims and their families for generations.

The Bill, which is progressing through Parliament, aims to reform how unresolved Troubles-related cases are dealt with, including investigations and the recovery of information for bereaved families. The legislation comes against a backdrop of longstanding disagreements over how Northern Ireland should address its past, with victims and survivors holding differing views on the mechanisms needed to deliver truth, justice and accountability.

Mr McVey said it was essential that the new arrangements were independent and impartial, while recognising that victims and survivors have different experiences and expectations.

“Victims and survivors have waited a long time for meaningful progress in addressing the past,” he said.

“Independence and impartiality are essential to building confidence in the processes being established, and people need to know that their different experiences and needs will be recognised.

“Behind every investigation, inquest or information recovery process are people and families whose lives have been changed by the Troubles/conflict. Their voices and experiences must remain central to the decisions being made.”

Members of the Victims and Survivors Forum attending Westminster represent a range of backgrounds and experiences, including people who lost loved ones during the Troubles and those who continue to live with serious injuries or trauma.

Lost years

Some families have spent years seeking answers about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of relatives, while others are dealing with the continuing physical and psychological consequences of the conflict.

The commissioner said it was important that parliamentarians heard directly from those affected before making decisions on the legislation.

“These decisions are about people, not just processes. What Parliament decides will have a real impact on victims and survivors and their families, potentially for generations to come,” he said.

“That is why we are at Westminster today. We want parliamentarians to hear directly from victims and survivors, understand their different experiences and consider what the legislation will mean for them.”

Mr McVey also stressed that the Bill still had some way to go, providing further opportunities for MPs and peers to consider its implications.

“The Bill still has further parliamentary stages ahead, and if the provisions within it are to help victims and their families, we need to ensure that it delivers for those seeking answers, acknowledgement, accountability or information,” he said.

'My father was murdered by the IRA and the Irish State let him down badly'

CATHERINE FEGAN, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

AUSTIN STACK SAYS HE KNOWS WHO KILLED HIS DAD, PRISON OFFICER BRIAN STACK, FOUR DECADES AGO. AS THE FAMILY RECEIVES AN APOLOGY FOR FAILURE TO BRING THE KILLERS TO JUSTICE, HE TELLS HOW HIS PERSONAL MISSION TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED HAS TAKEN HIM INTO THE DARK AND MURKY WORLD OF THE PARAMILITARIES. BY CATHERINE FEGAN

The world outside the heavily tinted windows disappeared the moment the thick sliding door slammed shut.

Austin Stack and his brother Oliver were sealed inside, sitting knee to knee with the then Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in a stripped-out van with Northern Ireland-registered plates.

No one spoke as the van drove close to the border, leaving the silence between them heavy with everything left unsaid.

Whatever lay ahead, they were off the grid, hurtling towards a destination the Stack brothers were not permitted to know.

It was Monday, July 29, 2013, the day Adams took them to an undisclosed location to meet with a former IRA commander.

After the Irish justice system failed them, the Stack brothers were on a personal mission to find out who had murdered their father 30 years before, taking them into the dark and murky world of the Irish Republican Army.

“There were one or two people who knew we were gone that day and who we were with,” Austin Stack told the Irish Independent this week.

“If anything ever happened to us… I knew Gerry Adams couldn't take that chance. The van we got into was kitted out for this type of operation. Made-to-measure plywood was screwed in to the windows of the van, screwed into the part dividing the front cab from the back of the van.

“We were driving for about seven or eight minutes to a bungalow. We could hear a patio door being opened and the door of the van being opened. The guy who was driving the van drove it within inches of the patio sliding doors, and we literally stepped into the house from the van. This was a precision operation. They had done this many times before.”

Today, more than a decade after that extraordinary meeting, Austin Stack knows exactly who murdered his father. He knows where they are living — the man who allegedly pulled the trigger is in Ireland and the man who allegedly organised the attack and drove the motorbike used is in the US.

Knew what he would say

Austin knows exactly what he would say to them if he ever got the chance.

“I would explain to them the life consequences that something like this has on a family,” he said.

“I remember, as a 14- or 15-year-old, my mother asked me to set the table, and I set five places at the table instead of four without thinking. That's the sort of stuff I'd like to be able to say to these people.

“And then the intergenerational effects — the effects that it had on my kids... The guy that did the shooting, as far as I'm aware, he had a business up in the north-east, and he got on with his life.

“He probably has grandchildren. My Dad had eight grandchildren he never met. These people were just able to walk away from this.” Austin Stack was 14 when his father was gunned down by the Provisional IRA in Dublin in March 1983.

Brian Stack was chief prison officer of Portlaoise prison at the time, the high-security prison in Co Laois that housed some of the Republic's most dangerous inmates, including Republican paramilitary prisoners.

“Portlaoise was the maximum security prison in the State, if not Europe,” said Austin.

“The IRA prisoners were kept in the D wing of Mountjoy initially but after the 1973 helicopter escape in Mountjoy, a lot of them were housed in Portlaoise. My father was made chief officer, and he tightened up the security in the prison. During his tenure there were no escape attempts — there had been two or three before that. He was single-minded about security and doing his job.”

Brian was a dedicated prison officer who loved traditional music, boxing and Gaelic football; but the centre of his life was his wife Sheila and their three sons, Austin, Kieran and Oliver.

Austin and his brother Oliver were meant to be with their father on the night that he was shot outside Dublin's National Boxing Stadium, to which he had travelled for the amateur boxing finals, but someone else was driving that day and there was no room in the car for the Stack boys.

“I remember going to bed that night feeling very uneasy,” said Austin.

Something not right

“I just had this sixth sense that something was not right. That night I lay awake in bed and I could see car headlights coming down the driveway and stuff. I knew there was something not right. I went down to the kitchen and my granny was there with my mum.

“My uncle was on the phone. I was told, 'look, your dad has been in an accident. A motorbike has hit him, go back to bed, everything is OK.' I just knew there was more to this. I sat up all night.

“The radio stations used to shut off at midnight and I waited up until the news came on RTÉ One the following morning. I heard it on the news. They named my dad, and they said he had been shot and that he was in a critical condition.”

He went in to his sleeping brothers and told them what had happened.

Their father had gone into cardiac arrest as a result of being shot in the spine at the base of the neck.

Doctors who had been at the stadium for the boxing finals performed an emergency tracheotomy at the scene, saving his life, then got him to hospital.

He was put into a coma, suffering paraplegia and brain damage, and did not wake for months. When he regained consciousness in late September, he was a different man to the one his family had known.

“He knew he had been shot because he was told, but he had no memory of it,” said Austin.

“When he came home from hospital, he was a different person. He was very childlike. He would go through a whole range of emotions in the space of five minutes. As a 14-year-old, you have to watch your father cry. Those things will remain with us for a long, long time.”

Brian lapsed back into a coma a few months later, eventually dying in September the following year, a full 18 months after he was shot. He was 48.

Denials

The IRA and other terrorist groupings at the time issued statements denying responsibility for the attack.

The family left the investigation to gardaí, believing that the gunmen, when found, could be charged with murder; but no one was ever found.

There was no grief counselling in those days. They were “essentially left to get on with things in our own way”.

Austin had been “a quiet person in school and probably bordered on being shy”. He subsequently became more rebellious and his school work suffered. He went to London for a while, before returning to Portlaoise, where he worked as a chef and in a clothes shop, before following his father into the prison service.

In all those years, the only information that the family received about the investigation into Brian's murder was a note from the guards in 1990 to say the case was still open.

It was not until 2006, when Austin was approached by journalist Barry Cummins, then with RTÉ, who was writing a book on unsolved murders in Ireland, that things began to move. By this point, Austin was aware that his father had been concerned by security at the prison in the months before his shooting.

“Number one, Barry got about 15 to 20 minutes with the file, and it was obvious the thing was shut down after about two months,” said Austin

“Then there was a lot of actual physical evidence — there was a helmet from where the bike was dumped the in canal. There was a helmet thrown on the factory roof beside where the bike was found.

“There was an IRA spotter outside the stadium. He had been reading a newspaper. They got that newspaper. The guy that was driving the motorbike had been leaning up against a car and there were fingerprints on that.

“After the guys dumped the bike, they were taken away in a car. That car had a crash, and they got out and ran away. There were fingerprints found on that car. There was all that evidence and we knew nothing about it. Barry got this from the file in 2007. That was the first time we thought, what is going on here?”

Cold case review

Following a Cold Case review in 2009, the Serious Crime Review Team sent a report to the then Garda Commissioner detailing 198 inadequacies that they found with the original investigation. The Stack family have never seen that report.

Then, in 2012, the gardaí told the family that they did not believe the IRA were responsible for the attack.

“The rest of my family and I really felt badly let down by this declaration,” said Austin. “It put us in a position where we had to find answers elsewhere.”

This culminated in Austin and Oliver being brought in a blacked-out van up the mountains on the Louth/Armagh border to meet with an IRA representative in 2013.

The brothers were given a statement at that meeting. The statement acknowledged that the IRA was responsible for their father's death, that it regretted it took so long to clarify this for them, that the shooting of Brian Stack was not authorised by the IRA leadership, and that the person who gave the instruction was disciplined.

Then, in December 2016, the story was thrust back into the spotlight.

Confrontation

During a Sinn Féin press conference held by Gerry Adams at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin, Austin appeared unannounced.

Stack confronted Adams over the party's handling of information and names related to the IRA shooting and subsequent death of his father.

Adams had stated that Austin gave him a list of four names of republicans who might have been involved. Austin publicly and strongly denied providing any names to Adams.

Addressing him directly in front of national and international media, Austin said Adams had information crucial to the murder of his father.

He referred to the trip in the blacked-out van to see an IRA figure Adams said he trusted. He accused Adams of lies and untruths and told him to go the guards with the information he had.

“I had (to go to the press conference) to try and address some of the untruths that had been spoken.

“I had to get the focus back on Gerry Adams and the man he took us to see in 2013.”

Gardaí continue to investigate the murder and the Garda Commissioner issued an apology to the family in 2019 for the failings of the current and previous investigations.

“I don't actually think there will be a conviction at this stage,” said Austin.

“Solving murders normally happens in the first couple of weeks. So much time has passed, so much evidence has gone missing.

“I don't actually think it will ever happen unless someone comes and gives a good testimony to gardaí about the matter.”

Fighting for answers

The Stack family have been fighting for answers for over 40 years. Austin, through his own relentless efforts, now feels he has most of them.

The path to truth has been unorthodox — from the meeting at the border at an unknown address to dead of the night phone calls with dissidents — but he knows who is responsible.

“The monkey is off my back,” he said.

“I have put it on them. They can take it. I'm the one that's going around a monkey on my back for all these years, not sleeping and all the rest. I take the monkey off my back and give it to them. I say, 'There you go. This is yours. You're responsible for what happened. I'm giving you back responsibility for this'.”

While justice in its traditional form may never be seen, a recent letter from the Taoiseach has brought some sense of closure.

The letter, received in September, was a formal apology from the State in relation to the investigation into Brian Stack's murder.

The apology is due to be read into the Dáil record in the coming days. The Stack family, including 82-year-old Sheila Stack, plan to be in the visitor's gallery when that happens.

“It's going to be emotional,” said Austin.

“I do think it will bring some sense of peace. My dad was murdered by the IRA and the State he was defending let him down badly. This apology is a recognition of this.

“My mother would always say, 'But why? Why did this happen? Why did the evidence not get followed up on? Why did they not interview certain people?'.

“And I say, 'well, we'll never get to find that out'. But we obviously know the why. It was that there was a bigger picture, that the State was fighting an intelligence war, that there were the informants involved.

“I do feel that Mary Lou McDonald, as leader of Sinn Féin, needs to firmly stand up from her perspective and say there are people within her organisation who have a part to play in this.

“And, like the State taking responsibility, I'd like them to take responsibility for what people within their organisation did.

“And I think if we get all that, it's as good as I'm going to get.”

West Belfast has highest anti-social behaviour rate, reveals HE survey

OLIVIA MCATEER, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

West Belfast has had the highest recorded rate of anti-social behaviour of any Housing Executive area within Northern Ireland every year since 2021, figures from a NI Housing Executive survey have shown.

Statistics revealed that anti-social behaviour rates in west Belfast peaked this year, with a total of 222 recorded incidents.

This is an almost 13pc increase from the previous year. Closely following with the second highest annual record was Causeway Coast and Glens, with 176 recorded cases across 2025 to 2026.

Local community worker and head of the Lagmore Youth Project, Colm Fanning, said he believes the issue stems from a “reliance on short term funding”.

“We spend years developing skilled, experienced youth workers who build genuine relationships within communities, only to lose them when funding comes to an end,” he said.

Mr Fanning said that while he understands that anti-social behaviour has “a real impact” on local residents, they cannot “simply police [their] way out of these issues or move people from one area to another and expect things to improve.”

The Lagmore Youth leader added: “If we are serious about making a difference, we need proper long-term investment in youth services, a return to detached youth work and the ability to retain experienced staff. We can't keep cutting back on preventative services and then wonder why we're facing challenges further down the line.”

Serious impact

Independent West Belfast councillor and founder of the Foodstock charity, Paul Doherty, said he sees anti-social behaviour “causing real harm and having a serious impact” across west Belfast as a whole, and insisted it “needs to end”.

Mr Doherty echoed Mr Fanning's belief that the issue stemmed from lack of funding for local youth services, alongside support services such as addiction and mental health initiatives.

“We need proper investment in young people, early intervention, addiction services and mental health support,” Mr Doherty said.

“Cuts to youth services have taken away safe spaces, trusted adults and opportunities that help young people build confidence and a better future. Too many are being left without the support, activities or chances they need, and that lack of opportunity can have serious consequences.”

The former SDLP councillor added that those involved in anti-social behaviour are not sufficiently held to account, which he says exacerbates the issue.

“At the minute, too many people do not believe that reporting criminal behaviour will lead to action or prosecution. That is not good enough.

“If people are expected to keep coming forward, they need to see reports followed up, evidence acted on and those responsible held to account,” Mr Doherty said.

“Ultimately, we need to rebuild a stronger culture of respect for the place we call home and for the people who live here.” Whilst anti-social behaviour is not exclusive to young people, many of the instances within west Belfast over recent months involved large groups of masked youths.

Local MLA Danny Baker previously called on parents to take responsibility over the whereabouts and “mindless behaviour” of their children.

Writing on Facebook, Sinn Féin's Mr Baker said he did not want young people “ruining their futures over this mindless behaviour.”

Drumcree negotiators would have achieved nothing in GFA talks

JONATHAN MCCAMBRIDGE, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2028

If the approach to the failed talks to resolve Drumcree had been followed by those who negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, “nothing” would have been agreed, the Taoiseach has said.

In a speech at the annual Fianna Fáil Wolfe Tone commemoration in Co Kildare, Micheál Martin also said partition had “made both parts of our island less diverse and less successful” and described it as a “disaster”.

Mr Martin said the recent dispute over the Drumcree parade in Portadown had “damaged everyone”.

Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant intervened to ban the march following a request from PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher to review a determination from the Parades Commission permitting the parade for the first time for almost 30 years.

Crowds of protesters had turned out on the road in opposition to the parade, leading to a stand-off which lasted almost two weeks.

Mr Martin said: “As I said clearly at the time, there was no logic behind reopening an issue which everyone felt had been dealt with.

“It is absolutely right to say that there can be no going back to the days of escalating conflict around parades.

“The problem for everyone is that there are those who genuinely don't seem to understand that how they behave means that as well as no going back, there is no going forward either.

A reckoning or dialogue

“When confronted with a situation like this, people who are interested in uniting communities don't call for a reckoning, they call for a dialogue. When you look back at how the Good Friday Agreement was reached and eventually implemented, nothing could have been achieved if this approach had been followed. There would be no agreement if the approach of angry denunciations and constant public comments had been followed by those who led the negotiations.”

Mr Martin said there needed to be a “much greater understanding of the issues which are relevant to deciding on constitutional changes”.

He criticised those who claim “all we need is a White Paper and a citizens' assembly and everything will work itself out” over Irish unity.

Sinn Féin has previously attempted to bring forward legislation for a citizens' assembly on unity.

Mr Martin said: “This is exactly the type of approach which is unlikely to secure the change of public opinion required to make a vote likely or winnable.

“Partition was a disaster. It made both parts of our island less diverse and less successful.”

Public criticise Altnagelvin ED 'war zone' amid upgrade blow

GARRETT HARGAN, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

Members of the public have shared “horrendous” experiences of long waits at Altnagelvin's Emergency Department (ED), as it emerged upgrades will not be carried out while there is no agreement on an Executive budget.

The ED was built to serve 40,000 patients a year but is currently seeing around 80,000 annually.

In correspondence to a Foyle MLA, Health Minister Robbie Butler recognised “concerns expressed regarding increasing attendances, lengthy waiting times and overcrowding”.

He accepted the need for “modern, fit-for-purpose” emergency care facilities. But, he spoke of a constrained capital budget and said funding for such projects is “dependent on the capital allocation secured through the Executive budget process”.

Mr Butler said he “deeply regrets” that an Executive budget has not been agreed, saying there was “no timeline” for the project and the Western Trust would be invited to submit a new Outline Business Case “for consideration”.

Among criticisms shared with this newspaper is a view that the waiting area is “always packed”, with sick patients routinely forced to stand or sit on the floor. Locals speak of one toilet between everyone.

A woman said her husband had to attend recently as he developed a serious infection following major abdominal surgery for cancer. “He was extremely unwell,” she said. “On entering the department I was shocked. There was no space to find a seat and the place was dirty.

“People entered with fish suppers and threw the remains on the floor. There were people shouting everywhere. The place resembled a war zone.

“My husband spent 16 hours on a hard plastic chair. He was extremely exhausted and unwell.

“Eventually he got a chair in the inner part and remained in that chair for two days. It was a horrendous experience.”

John O'Connor said a family member attended the department on a Monday night back in June and finally got a bed that Friday night. At the same time, he said, a lady in her thirties lay across hard plastic chairs opposite him.

She was in pain, suffering a bout of gastritis, and had great difficulty finding a position of ease, as she vomited into a plastic bag, or “when unavoidable, on the floor”. By Thursday, after spending two nights on the chairs, she had given up, unable to bear the wait any longer.

Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson said: “As chair of the All Party Group on Cancer I find this to be an appalling state of affairs given recent experiences of cancer patients who have had to attend A&E, enough is enough 10 years on from Bengoa.”

The Western Trust previously said that over the past number of years it has invested approximately £2.5m in improvement and expansion works across the ED.

They have aimed to improve patient flow, upgrade clinical accommodation, enhance infection prevention measures and create a more comfortable environment for patients and families.

Further works are also progressing, including the provision of additional toilets.

The Western Trust was contacted.

‘The Yank’ memoir suggests IRA wanted seat at table more than Republic

DAVID GRAHAM, Belfast Telegraph, October 19th, 2026

The unionist MP Alex Easton recently raised John Crawley's alleged “confession” to shooting a police officer with both the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery and the Secretary of State.

It prompted me to look more closely at Crawley's memoir, The Yank. Autobiographical accounts inevitably require caution. They are personal recollections, shaped by memory, perspective and the desire to explain or justify decisions made decades earlier.

The New York native served in the US Marine Corps before becoming involved with the Provisional IRA, bringing military experience that he believed could be used to fulfil its bloody aims.

That background gives his observations particular value when considering the mythology surrounding the IRA as a sophisticated guerrilla organisation.

There is no question the IRA demonstrated considerable organisational resilience. It maintained a clandestine structure for decades, developed intelligence networks and repeatedly penetrated the security arrangements of the British state.

However, resilience is not the same as military victory. Crawley describes frustration with aspects of training, organisation and operational planning. His account suggests that the IRA's ability to sustain its campaign owed as much to adaptability, local knowledge, intelligence and the political environment in which it operated as it did to sophisticated military capability.

That distinction matters because the IRA never actually achieved its stated military objective.

The “long war” was based on the hope that sustained violence would eventually make British involvement in Northern Ireland untenable. Yet the UK Government never seriously accepted that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland could be determined by an armed organisation.

Indeed, the eventual political settlement demonstrated something rather different. The Belfast Agreement established consent as the fundamental principle governing Northern Ireland's constitutional future. It would remain part of the UK unless and until a majority of its people decided otherwise.

For a unionist, that is an important historical fact that should not be obscured by the language of republican “victory”. The Provos lost their “war”.

The IRA set out to end the Union through force. It ultimately entered a political process in which the Union could only be ended through consent.

Crawley's account is also revealing because of the practical reality behind the ideology. One of the most significant episodes concerns attempts to acquire weapons from the US.

The Marita Ann operation in 1984, in which a substantial consignment of weapons was intercepted, is independently documented. Crawley adds his own perspective, including his dealings with people connected to James 'Whitey' Bulger's criminal organisation in Boston.

He also claims that Martin McGuinness encouraged him to maintain those relationships because of the difficulty of obtaining significant quantities of military equipment through more conventional republican networks.

Crawley's recollection illustrates an uncomfortable reality — armed campaigns require money, weapons, logistics and international networks. Ideological language can sometimes conceal the very ordinary mechanics of organised violence.

A simmering pot

Crawley's most interesting argument concerns the IRA's strategic approach. He suggests that the leadership wanted to “keep the pot simmering” without allowing the conflict to escalate to a level that could ultimately threaten the organisation.

This raises an important question about the relationship between violence and the developing political strategy of Sinn Féin.

The movement increasingly had to balance two objectives: maintaining the credibility of armed struggle while building electoral legitimacy.

Eventually, the second became more important than the first. I would argue it came through necessity rather than choice. This was not a Damascene conversion. It was the acceptance of the reality of impending defeat, which is why Gerry Adams was seeking an 'out' from the 1980s.

That is where Crawley's disillusionment becomes particularly significant. Those who joined the IRA were told they were fighting for a united Ireland. Yet the political settlement eventually accepted by its leadership allowed the people of Northern Ireland to decide their constitutional future.

The images of black cabs racing through west Belfast after the 1994 ceasefire, horns blaring and tricolours flying, represented a very different political moment from the one envisaged when the Provisional IRA began its campaign. Republicans celebrate the transformation of their movement, but there was an irony at its heart.

The principle that ultimately delivered political progress was consent, precisely the principle that armed republicanism had spent decades attempting to circumvent.

As the late Henry McDonald pointed out, many of the civil rights objectives claimed by republicans as part of their eventual political success had their roots in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association campaign of the late 1960s, rather than the IRA's armed campaign. For unionists, that should prompt a degree of historical confidence.

Resilience

A boxer surviving 12 rounds against a stronger opponent has demonstrated resilience, but it does not necessarily mean he won the fight.

The IRA survived, adapted and exerted influence, but the constitutional outcome ultimately rested upon consent, not coercion.

That distinction is perhaps the most important lesson in Crawley's memoir as it offers another window into the contradictions of a movement which promised one destination through violence, but ultimately arrived at a political settlement based upon an entirely different principle.

The Union survived the IRA's armed campaign.

Whatever political arguments lie ahead, its future will ultimately be determined not by the gun, the bomb or the mythology surrounding either, but by the consent of the people who live here.