IN/0261

From heartbreak to hope

1998 began with a spate of sectarian murders and ended with a glimmer of hope that parliamentary politics may soon put paid to the paramilitaries. Paul McKillion looks back at what was a momentous year for Northern Ireland

THE scenes of January, when despairing families grieved and politicians grimly tried to forward a stalled process, were in stark contrast to those just over three months later.
In a truly historic moment in April, an agreement was signed which all hoped would end the violence for good.
Just over three weeks later 71 per cent of the people north and 94 per cent south voted YES and a majority of yes candidates were returned to the first Northern Ireland assembly on July 1.
In the first major political event of the year, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam announced she would enter the Maze to meet UFF prisoners, a move seen as a last-ditch attempt to meet the group which had killed Catholic Eddie Treanor in north Belfast.
The terror would continue with more loyalist murders throughout the month.
The UDP left the London stage of the talks over the UFF's part in recent murders.
In February, it was Sinn Fein's turn. The party faced expulsion from the talks after the murders of drugs dealer Brendan Campbell by Direct Action Against Drugs, a widely recognised cover name for the IRA, and prominent loyalist Robert Dougan.
Soon after, the CIRA bombed Portadown town centre in the heart of David Trimble's Upper Bann constituency.
And a double LVF murder in the Co Armagh village of Poyntzpass left life-long friends Damien Treanor, a Catholic and Philip Allen, a Protestant, dead after a night out in their local.
Still, once the politicians had returned from their mass exodus to Washington for St Patrick's day, Tony Blair said a peace deal was "agonisingly close".
Sinn Fein indicated it would take up assembly seats, although its 75-year abstentionist policy restricted it from doing so.
George Mitchell set the deadline for the signing of the agreement for April 9 - the eve of Good Friday.
A leaked NIO document which detailed the British government's plan to secure a YES vote in the proposed referendum temporarily threw a
spanner in the works.
With only days to go, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair engaged in talks while a gap emerged on strand two - the north/south bodies.
It was the 'hand of history', however, which many saw as the guiding force in sealing the negotiations.
Last-minute glitches included the UUP's John Taylor statement that he wouldn't touch the proposed agreement with a 40 foot barge pole, describing the draft as a "Sinn Fein wish list" which had been orchestrated by the Irish government.
Meanwhile, Ian Paisley led hundreds of loyalists to Stormont late on Thursday night to register his displeasure.
Brid Rogers was captured on TV hugging an SDLP colleague, signalling an end to the marathon session of negotiations.
As the final negotiations moved inexorably from the early hours into the morning and then the afternoon, the politicians had to face the fact that they were the architects of a new Ireland.
JANUARY saw a surge of random sectarian killings when the LVF and the UFF went on the offensive in retaliation for the INLA murder of LVF leader Billy Wright in December.
The new year's eve shooting of Eddie Treanor in the Clifton Tavern in north Belfast followed hard on the heels of the December shooting of Seamus Dillon in Dungannon.
Huge numbers turned out in Belfast to grieve for community worker Terry Enright, murdered as he worked on the door of a city centre club owned by the sister-in-law of PUP member David Ervine.
The LVF spread its reign of terror outside Belfast when it murdered Maghera man Feargal McCusker. A day later, the INLA shot dead loyalist Jim Guiney in his Dunmurry carpet shop. That evening, Catholic taxi driver Larry Brennan was murdered by the UFF as he sat in his car on the Ormeau Road.
The killings continued with the UFF murder of grandfather Ben Hughes as he left work in the loyalist Donegall Road in south Belfast.
The LVF struck in the north and west of the city in quick succession when construction worker Liam Conway was killed in Ardoyne and taxi driver John McColgan was found shot dead on an isolated roadside in west Belfast.
In February the murder of drug dealer Brendan Campbell outside a south Belfast restaurant by Direct Action Against Drugs was quickly followed by the shooting of loyalist Robert Dougan in Dunmurray.
A week later the body of Kevin Conway was found in an empty farmhouse in Aghalee.
The LVF double murder in Poyntzpass in March was an attempt to de-stabilise the already stalled peace process. However, the reaction to the
deaths of Catholic Damien Treanor and Protestant Philip Allen strengthened the resolve of Seamus Mallon and David Trimble.
A week after the funerals, David Keyes, arrested for the murders, was found hanging in his Maze cell after being savagely beaten by other LVF prisoners.
The end of March saw the fourth murder in that month when the INLA claimed responsibility for the murder of former RUC man Cyril Stewart in Armagh while he was shopping with his wife.
The north-west, relatively untouched by the spate of killings, witnessed the INLA murder in April of former UVF man Trevor Deeney outside his home on Derry's Waterside.
Also in March west Belfast taxi driver Mark McNeill was slain by the INLA in a suspected grudge shooting.
Catholic council worker Adrian Lamph fell victim to the anger of loyalists after the signing of the Good Friday agreement when he was shot dead at work in Portadown. A week later, 22-year-old Crumlin student Ciaran Heffron was murdered in the early hours of the morning as he returned from a Saturday night out.
The fifth murder that month was south Belfast man Thomas Lockard, found battered to death near the border. The murder was suspected to be drugs-related.
In May Real IRA member Ronan MacLochlainn was shot dead by gardai during a security van raid in Ashford, Co Wicklow. Late that month west Belfast man John Knocker was shot dead at the Glengannon hotel outside Dungannon in an apparent drugs feud.
In June, Frank Turley was found shot dead beside a railway line at Whiteabbey, thought to be another victim of the viciously fought drugs trade in Northern Ireland.
In another suspected drugs feud, Bangor man William Paul was shot dead outside his Killcoolie estate home in July. Later that month, Andy Kearney bled to death outside his New Lodge flat following a punishment shooting for his part in a feud with a local IRA commander.
THE series of huge bombs which ripped through towns and villages across Northern Ireland was a frightening prelude to the death and destruction visited upon Omagh on August 15.
The first half of the year saw the emergence of Oglaigh na hEireann - the Real IRA.
The term was first used by the Continuity IRA, a previously dormant group thought to be allied to Republican Sinn Fein since the mid-'80s. They became the first of the breakaway republicans to protest at the Provisional IRA's ceasefire and support for Sinn Fein in the talks process.
Only three months later a reported alliance would take place between breakaway republican groups under the Real IRA banner.
A 500lb bomb placed in the centre of Banbridge and defused by the army was the year's first indication of the intent of dissident republicans.
The next month a massive bomb ripped the heart out of Portadown, the home of hardline loyalism. Loyalist leaders warned that the peace process was going "down the tubes".
An IRA statement, however, was the first concrete evidence that the Provisionals were not involved.
In March, following a CIRA attempt to bomb a Derry bank, a spokeswoman for Republican Sinn Fein said the breakaway groups believed they were maintaining the "true tradition" of the mainstream organisation.
The 32 County Sovereignty Committee was formed and became the subject of increasing media coverage over the first half of the year.
In May it emerged that disgruntled IRA volunteers, the CIRA and militant supporters of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee had banded together under the title of Oglaigh na hEireann after the IRA gave its consent for Sinn Fein to sign up to the Good Friday agreement at a special convocation in Donegal.
Sources reported that up to 20 per cent of IRA volunteers voted against the move.
At the end of June, as Northern Ireland braced itself for the worst of the marching season, the breakaway groups were blamed for the bombing of the Co Armagh village of Newtownhamilton, claimed by the INLA.
AFTER 26 years of tireless campaigning, the relatives of those killed on Bloody Sunday won a major victory when it was announced the events of that day and the actions of the Parachute regiment would be scrutinised in a new independent inquiry under Labour peer Lord Saville of Newdigate.
In an address to the House of Commons, Tony Blair announced the overturning of the findings of the 1973 Widgery inquiry. The Irish government described the controversial inquiry as "wilfully flawed, selective and unbalanced."
But David Trimble, to jeers of "shame, shame" in the House of Commons, said Bloody Sunday had been an arrest operation which had gone wrong after an illegal "republican parade".
However, by June the optimism of the relatives was firmly on the wane. The inquiry had proposed a time limit on its investigations and decided to withhold information relating to events leading up to the shootings.
Relatives were also concerned that they would not be allowed to call their own independent medical and ballistic experts.

Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS

Ref: IN/0261

Published Date: 28-Dec-98