On This Day PIRA

Act I - The School Run William Staunton In 1972   the PIRA campaign was at its most intense but even in places profoundly impacted by the violence daily life went on. Thus it was that William Staunton, like parents all over the world, made the school run with his two daughters and some of their friends on 11th October 1972. He drew up outside St Dominic’s High School on the Falls Road around 8:45am. Most of the children had left the car when two men pulled up alongside on a motorcycle. One of the magistrate’s daughters was still in the car when the pillion passenger on the bike fired through the driver’s window hitting Mr Staunton in the head and body. Belfast Telegraph report on the shooting. He slumped forward over the wheel and the car went out of control, crashing into the nearby school wall. He was helped by passers by including a doctor from the nearby Royal Victoria, underwent a seven hour operation and spent 15 weeks in intensive care.  But the father of 4

John Proctor The 14th September 1981 hadn’t been an easy day for John Proctor. Earlier he had served as a pallbearer for his friend and neighbour Alan Clarke, a UDR man shot two days earlier as he walked along Hall Street in the Co Londonderry town of Maghera. The two had been close friends. Paradoxically, however, as the off duty RUCR man arrived at Magherafelt Hospital his thoughts were of new life. He was going to visit his wife June who had just given birth to a baby boy, the couple’s second child, and his wife recalled some thirty years later how they teased one another over how fast she had been in getting back to her ward to watch her husband from the window after leaving him to the front door of the hospital. She said that as he passed the hospital ward window, he joked: "You're very fast tonight", to which she joked back: "I'm not as fat as what you are”. As her husband walked on, she told him for the last time: "God ble

I have previously blogged about how the PIRA often didn’t claim murders which they obviously carried out because they believed admitting to them would damage their campaign and the image they sought to present, particularly outside Northern Ireland. That is not to say that they never owned up to murders which they recognised might damage their cause. In fact, throughout the terror campaign they quite often issued statements apologising for murders. The idea for this blog came to me when I recently tweeted about the bombing of Newry customs office in 1972. I noted that on that occasion that the PIRA apologised for the “unintentional loss of life” but seemed more concerned with responding to a statement issued by the Official IRA which criticised the bomb: “In their very prompt statement condemning this morning’s accidental explosion in Newry, the National Liberation Movement (Official IRA) have once more joined in the Imperialist chorus led by British Government mem