Latest news with #Troubles
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
Father Patrick Ryan, the IRA's ‘Terror Priest' whose detonators were used in the Brighton bomb
Father Patrick Ryan, who has died aged 94, was a curate in London during the early days of the Troubles who moonlighted as a robber, money launderer and the IRA's linkman with the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi; gifted and arrogant, he refused to join the IRA, but ploughed his own furrow as a bomb-maker responsible for hundreds of deaths, earning the nickname 'the Padre' from his allies – and, from the press, 'the Terror Priest' and 'the Devil's Disciple'. He was born in Co Tipperary in 1930, the second son of a family of six on a small farm. He joined the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, the Pallottine Fathers, aged 14, became a talented amateur engineer and a mercy pilot as a missionary in Tanganyika. There were clues in his youth to what he would become. His mother was a gifted storyteller who gripped him with stories about her heroism and the wickedness of the Black and Tans a decade before he was born; mothers have traditionally been the primary passers-on of Irish tales of British injustice. 'I was captivated by her stories,' he told his biographer, Jennifer O'Leary, in The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest Who Armed the IRA with Gaddafi's Money. 'It was like I was back there with her, watching and listening out for the enemy. All she wanted was for us to listen, and we did. All you had to do was mention the subject and she was off, it was in her bones.' From an early age Ryan displayed characteristics that would be useful in facilitating mass murder: as an eight-year-old poacher of fish, pheasants and rabbits, he showed himself more ruthless than his siblings, who called him Paddy the Skinner. Later, in Tanganyika, he would show an aptitude and enjoyment for big game hunting. When he became a fierce anti-colonialist, he felt remorse for killing three elephants, saying: 'It was elephant country before any man or women.' But he showed no remorse for the men, women and children whose murders he facilitated: 'The only regret I have was that I wasn't more effective; that the bombs made with the components I supplied didn't kill more. That is my one regret.' He was bored with the spiritual part of his job and quit as a curate in 1973. He based himself for a time in Benidorm, collecting millions in donations from the Continent and beyond, which he laundered and delivered to the IRA in complex financial operations. But his major contribution was to transform the efficacy of the IRA's bombs, which had suffered from faulty detonators. In 1975, having spotted Memo Park timers in a Geneva shop window, he purchased the entire stock, which he re-engineered to become perfect bomb timers that would feature in atrocities including the 1979 Warrenpoint massacre of 18 British soldiers and the 1984 Brighton bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher. A skilful global arms and finance procurer – 'I set out to go around the world and discover the enemy of my enemy, the Brits, and make their enemy my friend' – he was also quartermaster of a brutally effective IRA murder squad in Belgium and a leading suspect in murders on the Continent. Amid furious international rows Mrs Thatcher unsuccessfully sought to have him extradited from Belgium and Ireland ('Ryan is a really bad egg,' she told the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey); met with indifference in Belgium, hostility in Ireland and the obduracy of the European Court of Human Rights, she failed at every turn. Ryan secured 30,000 votes as an independent candidate in the 1989 European elections in Ireland. In 1993 he was expelled from the Pallottine Order 'for persistent refusal to comply with the legitimate instructions of his superiors'. He fell out with Martin McGuinness ('not to be trusted') and other prominent IRA men such as Joe Cahill ('reckless') and Brian Keenan (who 'should never have been let loose on society'). An attractive young English Protestant became smitten with him in London and sometimes shared the van in which he lived, but he permitted little intimacy in his life. 'I would say she was in love with me, yes,' he said. 'I gave it no thought, but I kept in touch with her because you see, you never know when you might need to call in a favour.' Indeed, she became a money mule until he ditched her as a security risk. 'The trick is to be patient,' he explained to his biographer, 'because, you see, every person wants something badly, and if you can wait and slowly find out what that something is and then provide it, you're a winner in any walk of life.' Patrick Ryan, born 1930, died June 15 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Shane Lowry bids to repeat fairytale Open triumph - but must end unwanted six-year record
Shane Lowry knows that if he can just channel a little bit of the ruthlessness and nervousness from his win at The Open in 2019, then he will take some stopping - but he's not won a major nor a tour title, solo, since his victory at Royal Portrush Frustrated by his inability to convert form into trophies this season, Shane Lowry knows that if he can just channel a little bit of the ruthlessness and nervousness from his win at The Open, then he will take some stopping. The occasion, six years ago, would have overwhelmed many. As he stood on Royal Portrush's 18th tee, with the wind in his face and the rain on his cap, Lowry puffed out his cheeks, addressed his golf ball and prepared to take the most important swing of his life. And, on an island that has produced dozens of legendary boxers, perhaps the most important swing anyone has taken in Irish history. With a six-shot lead, you'd think there was never a chance he could muck it up but this was the 72nd and final hole of The Open – the stage where in previous years, leaders like Jean van de Velde went bare-foot into a creek out of sheer panic and desperation and Doug Sanders missed a putt from a distance barely further out than a fag end. They both lost. Nothing can be guaranteed and the last hole at Royal Portrush is not for the faint-hearted, either, with out of bounds lurking down to the bottom of a dramatic run-off on the left. But this was Lowry, this was 2019 and this was special. He struck his tee shot so sweetly it cut through the wind and danced through the rain to end up in the heart of the fairway. And with that, the jeopardy was gone and the celebrations could begin. The significance of the week was enough to make the 2019 Open one for the history books, the biggest ever sporting event held in Northern Ireland. Portrush waited 68 years for a second crack at hosting, largely due to the Troubles - and boy was it something to celebrate - but an Irish winner was poetic. The scenes that greeted Lowry down that 18th fairway, and then towards the green were biblical. It was more Glastonbury than golf – and he was the pied piper leading them to Disneyland. Ireland might unite under one flag for rugby, but the men's national team plays all of their home games in Dublin and the team has long-been Leinster-heavy. It's a one-way relationship. This was on Ulster's patch, tucked up against the Antrim coast. Those in the gallery were not south or north, or Catholic or Protestant, they were Irish. Through Lowry – who hails from Offaly - they came together – and through Lowry they united. On the walk to the green, the 'Fields of Athenry' reverberated. They were soaked wet through but no-one cared. 'I could not believe that was happening to me,' he said. 'Twelve months previous I was lying in the car crying to myself after missing another cut. This feels like an out-of-body experience. I can't wait to wake up on Monday morning and find out what it's going to feel like then. It's just going to be incredible.' Lowry packed up the van and trekked four hours down to Dublin for a night on the town, with a posse of family, friends, celebrities and anyone else who was up for the craic. He was videoed with the Claret Jug in one hand and a pint in the other, swaying along to another rendition of that famous folk song. Even his wee granny Emily got in on the fun. 'I haven't had a brandy since 2009 but I had two watching Shane,' she told RTE. 'It's nearly killed me.' The next day, he went home, to Clara in County Offaly, and did it all again. 'I was asked by an American journalist just how big the party would be tonight?' Lowry said. 'I felt I had to put him right, 'You mean how big the party would be all week?'' Lowry was not a shock winner but he was hardly among the favourites. Obviously talented, he'd had a few big wins – including the Irish Open as an amateur - and decent major performances. But whether he was cut out to win one of the big four was dubious, especially after he chucked away a four-shot lead on the last day of the US Open in 2016. But in 2019, something clicked. Six years on, it remains Lowry's sole major triumph, underlining how hard these things are to win, while he has only won one tour event since, and that came in a team event with Rory McIlroy at the Zurich Classic. Still, he has become a much more consistent golfer since and his form is also good. His record in the majors this season – a tied-42nd and two missed cuts – don't suggest it, but Lowry believes he is in the form of his life, he has just been unable to win. At the Masters in April, he was only three shots behind going into the weekend but a final-round meltdown ended his chances. There have been two runners-up finishes and two further top-10s on the PGA Tour. Sundays, bloody Sundays, as another Irish icon once sang. 'I think it's the best I've ever been, but I don't feel like I'm getting rewards, to be honest, because every Sunday I come off the golf course I feel like I'm after getting punched in the gut,' he said. 'It's been a very consistent, very good year, but I can't remember the last time I walked off the 18th green on the Sunday afternoon happy with myself, so that's hard to take. 'It's hard to take when you feel like you're putting so much time and effort in and time away from your family and your kids and these Sundays have become quite difficult. But that comes from good golf, expectation, the want to succeed, and not being happy with second best. I am having a great year, but there's one thing missing.' Familiarity, then, could help. Like McIlroy's Green Jacket, Lowry has his own permanent reminder of his success. A year ago, the R&A unveiled a new mural in Portrush of him holding the Claret Jug and he stopped by to check it out earlier this month, as part of a pre-Open reccy, before heading to Dublin to play indoor golf with American folk-pop artist Noah Kahan. He might spend much of his time in the States, but Ireland suits him and that makes him a dangerous proposition this year. 'Royal Portrush will always be the highest point of my career,' he told the Telegraph. 'I'm often asked how I can top 2019, and I have no idea. I won by six, so maybe win by seven?' He added: 'I don't want to win every tournament, just want to win one or two. But there will be some Sundays soon, hopefully, where I'm walking off that 18th green, pretty happy and pretty proud of myself.'
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Blazes in Northern Ireland recall an old message: You are not welcome here
Advertisement But the violence shares a common message: You are not welcome here. If you won't leave, we may make you. 'Territorialism in Northern Ireland is still embedded — and not only embedded, it's being patrolled by armed groups,' said Duncan Morrow, a politics professor at Ulster University in Belfast. 'Northern Ireland as a society escalates extremely rapidly, because so much of this is already in the whole way society's organized.' The town of Ballymena, about 30 miles from Belfast, is sometimes called the 'buckle' of Northern Ireland's Protestant Bible Belt. The most recent violence erupted there after two 14-year-old boys were charged with the attempted oral rape of a local girl on June 7. The two boys, who the BBC reported spoke in court through a Romanian translator, denied the charges. Advertisement The night after the boys appeared in court, a peaceful vigil for the girl in Ballymena spiraled into a riot, targeted at members of the Roma community in the Clonavon Terrace area. For six consecutive nights, more violence broke out across the region. Rioters in Ballymena burned several homes, many of them belonging to immigrant families. Masked gangs in Larne, about 20 miles east, set fire to a leisure center that had been temporarily used as a shelter for those who had been displaced. And angry mobs bore down on immigrant housing in Portadown in County Armagh, where landlords urged residents to temporarily relocate until the threat had quieted. Since then, 21 families have been placed in temporary housing for shelter and safety as a result of the attacks, according to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. A vast majority of those who live in Northern Ireland do not endorse violence. Still, last month's harrowing scenes were a reminder that the area's embers of riot and tribalism are still flammable. Not far from the facades of charred homes in Ballymena is the former site of a Catholic primary school, which was set alight in a 2005 attack that police described as sectarian. Nearby, Our Lady of Harryville Catholic Church, since demolished, was a lightning rod for arson attacks both before and after the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace deal that largely ended the Troubles. In recent years, a relatively modest trickle of immigrants has become the subject of hostility both in the Irish Republic and in Northern Ireland, which remains the least diverse area of the United Kingdom by a significant margin. On an island that was defined for centuries by outward emigration, the demographic shift has been highly visible, especially in poorer, working-class communities where many immigrant families land. Advertisement 'The geography of it is, if you like, a little bit more like 1969 when you had odd Catholics living on the streets,' said Dominic Bryan, a professor at Queen's University in Belfast who studies conflict. In August 1969, Loyalist mobs attacked and burned Catholic homes in Belfast and Derry, forcing thousands of families to flee. Today, Bryan said, immigrant families are obvious minority targets on the otherwise largely homogeneous streets of the North. 'They've become very exposed,' he said. Further agitating the scene are various criminal and paramilitary elements on its periphery. Ballymena remains a locus for dissident, Loyalist paramilitaries, some of whom have regrouped as criminal syndicates. Court cases indicate the town is also believed by police to have been used as a base for a Romanian organized crime gang, which traffics in drugs and prostitution. Police have long accused Loyalist paramilitary groups of fomenting unrest. Last summer, officials in Northern Ireland and the Republic blamed those actors for facilitating widespread anti-immigrant violence in Dublin, as well as in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland. Officials have not pinned the arson attacks in June on Loyalist gangs, but they said they were probing possible connections. Experts say much of the recent disorder was organized online, where some Loyalist factions have adopted far-right, anti-immigrant language in recent years. Last Thursday, overlapping ideologies were visible in the effigy of the migrant boat set on fire on top of a celebratory bonfire for the Twelfth of July, an annual Unionist commemoration of a Protestant king's military victory over a Catholic king. Banners on the bonfire read 'Stop the boats' and 'Veterans before refugees.' Advertisement This kind of nativist sentiment has historically found fertile ground in Ballymena, the land of Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant preacher who shaped the hard-line politics of contemporary Unionism, the movement to remain part of the United Kingdom. As paramilitary groups have retreated into more entrenched, isolated corners, they have maintained a cultural and social hold, particularly on disenfranchised youth. To walk the streets last month around Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena — an interface between what were the traditionally Protestant and Catholic areas of the town — was to rewind Northern Ireland's clock. Union Jacks and red-and-white Ulster flags were ubiquitous, plastered against doors, flying out of windows or draped as garden ornaments. When a photographer and I stopped outside a home, draped in British and Ulster memorabilia, a young man stuck his head out of a window, demanding to know who we were, what we were doing and why. Farther down the block, I glanced back and saw that the man had stepped outside into his garden and was silently watching us until we turned the corner. This article originally appeared in
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
No 10 says work on repealing Legacy Act ‘in lockstep' but minister may quit
Downing Street insisted the Government was 'working in lockstep' on repealing the Legacy Act amid reports that a defence minister could resign over the changes. Sir Keir Starmer's Government plans to repeal and replace the Legacy Act, brought in by the Conservatives in 2023 to halt investigations into all but the most serious allegations involving Troubles-related cases. Human rights groups criticised the act for providing immunity to British soldiers. But opponents to scrapping it fear that the changes will open up a 'two-tier' system in which IRA members are given immunity but British troops are open to prosecution. Veterans minister Al Carns is expected to quit over plans to repeal the law, The Times reported. A No 10 spokesman said the Government was 'working in lockstep' when asked if Mr Carns agreed with Sir Keir's approach, a No 10 spokesman said. 'The Government is always working in lockstep to deal with issues such as this, and we're working in lockstep to fix this issue and the mess that we were left.' 'And as I say, we will set out a process that gives veterans and their families confidence and sets out a process that's proportionate, that's not malicious, that has safeguards in place, and fixes the mess that we were left with. He said the Government was setting out a course that is 'lawful with fairness at its heart' and that 'we will always protect our veterans'.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Legacy Act: Hilary Benn accuses Conservatives of making false promises to veterans
The Northern Ireland secretary has accused the Conservatives of making "false promises" to veterans with the controversial Legacy Act, as he defended Labour's plans to replace Benn was speaking during a three-hour debate in Parliament, which saw MPs clash over legacy in the presence of some military act, which was brought in by the Conservatives, introduced a ban on inquests and civil actions related to incidents during the also sought to offer a conditional amnesty for people suspected of Troubles-related crimes in exchange for co-operating with a new information recovery body - that was later ruled unlawful. Labour is in the process of repealing the act, but has faced a backlash from some who say it could reopen prosecutions against military in Westminster on Monday evening, Benn said that 202 live inquiries into Troubles-related killings of members of the armed forces were brought to a stop in May 2024 and a further 23 involving veterans - as a result of the controversial legacy was responding to a petition signed by more than 170,000 people calling for Labour to safeguard "protections for veterans around prosecutions for Troubles-related incidents".Benn said hundreds of military families were still seeking answers, and that the government was "listening carefully" to veterans as well as victims and their relatives."I and the defence secretary are engaging with our veterans community and with all interested parties over future legislation, and we will ensure that there are far better protections in place," he Conservative MP and Shadow Armed Forces Minister Mark Francois described the government's plans as "two-tier justice at its worst".He said many veterans now effectively had a "sword of Damocles hanging over them again". Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Gavin Robinson accused the government of seeking to "rewrite the history of the past", and said his party had opposed the Legacy Act for "very different reasons" than Sinn Féin."We're asking for the government to protect those who protected us," he Unionist Party (UUP) MP Robin Swann hit out at what he called "point-scoring" between Conservative and Labour MPs during the debate, adding that any party in power had a duty to "get this right to make sure those people who served aren't dragged through the courts".Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister said the secretary of state needed to take veterans' concerns seriously."This government is said to be tackling legacy issues and if this government is going to tackle it, then it needs to stem it by tackling inquests and that route which is now producing potential prosecutions of some of the bravest of our citizens," he of the debate, hundreds of military veterans protested in Westminster against Labour's plans to change the say they fear it could reopen the possibility of more prosecutions against Army veterans. 'Labour fell for this' Almost 170,000 people signed a petition backed by Francois, demanding Labour not make any changes to the law that would allow Northern Ireland veterans to be prosecuted – a level which means the subject has to be debated by those at the protest were Geoff Butler and Glen Espie, who each served tours in Northern Butler said his message to the government was to "get rid" of its plans and listen to veterans."It's totally ridiculous the way this has come to a head... Labour fell for this, half the MPs in the Commons weren't born during the Troubles, what do they know about it?"Mr Espie said he attended the protest to support colleagues who he felt were at risk of being "put in court as elderly veterans"."It's not right. Successive British governments have let down the veterans community." What is the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act? The act was passed by the Conservative government in September 2023 despite opposition from Labour, all Northern Ireland parties, several victims' groups and the Irish created a new legacy body known ICRIR to take over all Troubles-era cases from 1 May 2024, including those on the desk of the Police Service of Northern act shut down all historical act's most controversial element, the offer of conditional immunity to suspects, was disapplied following legal action by bereaved court ruled this part of the act was incompatible with human rights' legislation and the Windsor July, the Labour government wrote to the Belfast courts abandoning an appeal against the striking out of the amnesty clause in the December, the secretary of state formally started the process to repeal the act, but as well as prompting a backlash from veterans who do not want to see the law repealed, he was criticised by some political parties and victims' groups for not moving quickly enough.
