On This Day PIRA

It may surprise many readers of this blog but Republicans have been successful to a degree in maintaining the fiction that they weren’t sectarian. Look up sectarian / sectarianism in the index of a book about the PIRA and you will often find yourselves directed to pages dealing with Loyalist murderers.  Sectarianism within the PIRA campaign is surprisingly frequently overlooked or minimised. The PIRA liked to present an image to the world that it was better than the loyalist murder gangs which often went out to “ shoot a taig ”. Loyalists murderers simply couldn’t - as the PIRA did - target off duty members of the security forces. Hence the pool of “legitimate targets” for Republicans was much wider. They claimed they shot the shopkeeper, the milkman, lorry driver, the farmer, the bin man, etc   not because they were Protestants but because they were off duty members of the security forces. Nonetheless, there are plenty of examples when the PIRA terror campaig...

Garrison is a small village in rural Co Fermanagh close to the border with Co Leitrim in the Republic of Ireland. It obtained its name after a barracks was erected there by the Williamite forces following the Battle of Aughrim. Despite its connection to the iconic period of Orange history Garrison was and remains a strongly Republican village, something underscored by the fact that under the aborted proposals of the Irish Boundary Commission in 1925 it would have been transferred from Northern Ireland to the Irish Free State.  There was, nonetheless, a small Protestant population in the village in the 1970s. The events of 1st March 1972 were to change that. IRA murder victim Thomas (Johnny) Fletcher Thomas Fletcher, known as Johnny, was a forestry worker as well as working a small 20-acre farm which straddled the border. He had married 3 years previously. Johnny enjoyed shooting and darts, a sport in which his left handedness resulted in some comment. He was als...