Sanitising Loughgall’s Lynagh Is Only Making A Rod For Republicanism

Dr John Coulter ✍ The recent Jim Lynagh Winter School in south Fermanagh, named after one of the most notorious republican serial killers of the Troubles, was certainly a blunt ‘Up Your’s’ to victims’ groups and the pro-Union community alike, but in the long-term may come back to haunt republicanism.

Lynagh - a Sinn Fein councillor at the time of his death - was one of eight Provisional IRA terrorists ambushed by the SAS and RUC in the Co Armagh village of Loughgall in May 1987. An innocent civilian was also killed in the incident.

All eight Provos were members of genocidal East Tyrone Brigade, responsible for dozens of murders and attacks as part of the IRA’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the pro-Union border community in that region.

Lynagh’s psychopathic reputation had earned him the nickname, The Executioner. Whilst it was the SAS who dispatched him into eternity to meet his Maker, conspiracy theories have abounded as to how the British obtained the intelligence which led to the 1987 Loughgall ambush.

Within the republican movement, Lynagh was also viewed as being among the most militant of the hawks and was vehemently opposed to the Adams/McGuinness Sinn Fein peace process agenda, believing it diverted much-needed funds away from purchasing resources for the terror campaign.

It was also believed that Lynagh intended to form a breakaway dissident republican terror gang such was his dissatisfaction with the Sinn Fein peace agenda. Had he and his gang not been wiped out in 1987, I - speaking as a radical Right-wing Unionist commentator - doubt if the 1998 Good Friday Agreement would ever have become a reality.

Put bluntly, for the peace process to have become a practical reality and not an aspiration, Lynagh had to die. As a committed follower of the terror tactics of China’s former communist leader Mao Zedong, Lynagh was not someone who could be lured into peace negotiations like one of his IRA predecessors, Michael Collins.

Readers of The Pensive Quill may pose the question - why my personal interest in Lynagh given the Provos’ lengthy list of killers during the Troubles, especially when the so-called South Armagh IRA Brigade is taken into consideration?

The answer is simple - Lynagh once tried to kill my late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE. Dad was a mainstream Presbyterian minister, a senior Loyal Order chaplain, and later a UUP politician serving 13 years as a North Antrim Assembly member.

When the RUC’s B Specials were disbanded in 1970 to be replaced with the Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment, dad signed dozens of references for folk from the north east Ulster Bible Belt wanting to enlist. It was his role as a referee for so many which brought him to the attention of the Provos and their desire to kill him.

It almost happened one Sunday in dad’s native Tyrone. He and the late Rev Martin Smyth, a former Grand Master of the Orange Order, were preaching at a Loyal Order service in the county. The service finished ahead of schedule and dad left early. At the time the service was scheduled to end, Lynagh turned up outside the church.

Dad was told he was the target. I recall my dad telling me that Lynagh had even been spotted near our then family home in Clough, Co Antrim.

Being honest, as my dad also had a background role in the peace process, I said a prayer thanking God when I heard that Lynagh was among the Loughgall IRA dead.

However, there is also a bitter lesson for republicans who try to rewrite or revise history to portray terrorists like Lynagh as role model republicans. It will create the impression among young republicans that terrorist violence is an acceptable form of expression for a political agenda.

Senseless talk of there being no other alternative, or that certain murders were necessary, could lay the foundation stones for another generation of republicans that if they were to lose a future border poll on Irish Unity, then violence is the flip side of the ballot box coin.

And republicans need to remember their own history. They have a very nasty habit of resorting to bloody feuds if some of them don’t get their way. It may be a joke with a jibe, but there is an old saying that when a new republican group is formed, the first item on the agenda is - the split!

Each Easter, republicans hold parades to remember the people who sparked the failed 1916 Rising. Behind all the marching and speeches dedicated to James Connolly and company, is hidden the fact that not all republicans were in favour of the Rising and that after it failed, as the Irish Volunteers were marched into captivity, many citizens of Dublin spat on them for leaving parts of their city in ruins.

When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was eventually negotiated after the War of Independence in the 1920s, the republican movement split sparking the bloody Irish Civil War which saw more anti-Treaty IRA men killed or executed by the pro-Treaty Free State forces than were killed in the War of Independence against the British.

During the past Troubles, we witnessed the equally bloody feuds between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA; the Official IRA and the INLA; disputes within the INLA; the Provos and the IPLO, not to mention the number of Catholics and nationalists who have been attacked or murdered by republican terror gangs.

Events such as The Jim Lynagh Winter School and the South Armagh Volunteers commemorations may seem on paper like a good way of politically sanitising the activities of IRA terrorists to a modern generation of republicans to encourage them to vote Sinn Fein.

In reality, when the next Assembly elections come around in 2027, for many potential first-time republican voters, people like Lynagh will be mere names in a history book.

But it is not only potentially radicalising another generation of violent republicans which such sanitising of Lynagh could spark; it is also sending a harmful message to a future generation of militant loyalism should the pro-Union community ever lose or very narrowly win a border poll - violence pays!

There has also been much focus recently on the UVF’s no warning bombings of Dublin and Monaghan in 1974 which saw around 30 people murdered and dozens more injured.

At that time, the Unionist political parties which formed the Unionist Coalition were primarily interested in bringing down the power-sharing Sunningdale Executive. They succeeded as a result of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike.

But those same Unionist parties had no workable alternative to Sunningdale at that time, so the Dail government put forward proposals which effectively were joint authority under another name. The result - the UVF retaliated with the Dublin and Monaghan bombing massacres. Dublin then shelved any talk of joint authority until 1985 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

There has been much effort lately to try and get Unionism and Loyalism to engage with the conversations about Irish Unity. Nationalism needs to be careful what it wishes for.

Could a section of Loyalism take the horrendous view; if it worked in 1974, it can work again if a border poll results in a victory for Irish Unity? Holding events to turn dead terrorists into 21st century political role models is not a smart idea.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM.