On This Day / October 26, 1971
Go BackReproduced with permission from The Irish News.
October 26, 2021
Publication Date
Listen Along in Éamons Voice *
Summary: On This Day – 26th October 1971, the shooting of two sisters on the Falls Road and three men in Newry intensified tensions, while the Provisional IRA announced an offensive campaign. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.
Troops Shoot Falls Sisters | On This Day – 26th October 1971
A MAN was shot dead and a woman wounded by plain clothes policemen and another detained after a bomb had been placed inside the Celebrity Club in Belfast.
Meanwhile the Falls Road seethed over the weekend following the killing by soldiers of two sisters on vigilante patrol in the area.
Pictures taken after they were shot showed that, contrary to an Army claim, they were not ‘dressed as men’ and a tape recording made in Raglan Street as soldiers raided a house recorded only the burst of gunfire followed by two other shots discharged by troops after the car in which the women died.
Mr Jim O’Hara, who was taken away by the Army during the search of Cape Street, was released soon afterwards but he had been badly beaten.
It was when the floorboards of his home were being ripped up and the house searched – nothing was found – that the car in which the two women died with a warning Claxton horn blaring, went down Raglan Street and turned up Cape Street to alert people in the district that the Army were raiding and the order was shouted to ‘Stop that car.’
Three Men Shot in Newry
SILHOUETTED against thirty- foot flames from a fiercely burning timber yard, thousands of mourners marched through Newry last night behind the coffins of the three men shot dead on Saturday night by troops.
Women and children lined the debris-strewn streets as mourners, in military formation, marched behind the coffins.
The three men who were killed were James McLaughlin (27), married with two children of Barcroft Park; Robert Anderson (25) of Mourneview Park and Sean Ruddy (19) of St Clare’s Avenue, all of Newry.
Troops who shot the men were last night described as ‘murderers’ by Miss Bernadette Devlin, MP.
IRA ‘on Offensive’ – IRA Chief
THE North’s struggle is now entering ‘the vital phase’, Mr Sean MacStiofain, Chief of Staff of the militant Provisional IRA, told Sinn Fein in Dublin.
‘Our fight has changed from a defensive to an offensive campaign in all parts of the occupied area,’ he told 600 cheering delegates in Liberty Hall.
In the front row was Mr Joe Cahill from Belfast and behind him was Mr Joe Clarke, a veteran of the 1916 Rising.
(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: THE controversial shooting by British troops of two sisters in a car on the Falls Road and three men outside a Newry bank added to the sense that the North was rapidly descending into chaos and civil war.
At this point the IRA announced that it was engaged in an all- out offensive to force a British withdrawal from Ireland.)
On This Day – 26th October 1971
Further Reading on Irish History:
List of other On This Day columns
Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive
On This Day is a daily column in the Irish News looking back either 50 or 100 years. The column was compiled by Dr Éamon Phoenix from the mid 1980s until autumn, 2022. The Foundation is very grateful to the Irish News for giving permission to reproduce Eamon’s columns. Funding gratefully received from Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and the Magill Trust.
* The Foundation has worked hard to recreate Eamon’s distinctive voice through AI. Since this is an emerging technology, occasional imperfections may be audible.