Milltown Cemetery attack
Encyclopedia
The Milltown Cemetery attack (also known as the Milltown Cemetery killings or Milltown Massacre took place on 16 March 1988 in Belfast
's Milltown Cemetery
. During the funeral
of three Provisional IRA
volunteers, Ulster Defence Association
(UDA) volunteer
Michael Stone attacked the crowd with grenades and pistols, killing three and wounding over sixty.
, Seán Savage
and Mairéad Farrell
, who had been killed
by the SAS
in Gibraltar
, were due to be buried in the republican plot
at Milltown Cemetery
, Belfast. In a change from normal security procedures, the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) and British Army
had agreed to stay away from the funeral. The funeral service and requiem mass went ahead as planned, and the cortege made its way to Milltown Cemetery, off the Falls Road.
leaders Gerry Adams
and Martin McGuinness
with several RGD-5 hand grenades, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol and a .357 Magnum revolver. Stone killed three people: Catholic civilians Thomas McErlean (20) and John Murray (26), and IRA member Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh (30), who had tried to disarm him. The whole event was recorded by television news cameras.
Stone made his escape towards the motorway, chased by several members of the crowd, but continued firing his handguns and throwing hand grenades at his pursuers. Stone made it as far as the M1 motorway
, but was caught by the crowd, who began beating him and shouting that they would kill him. He was eventually put in the back of a car and was being driven away to be shot by the IRA, when the car was intercepted by the RUC, who arrested him and took him to Musgrave Park Hospital
for treatment of his injuries. Stone later confessed to the three killings at Milltown and a further three paramilitary killings committed beforehand. The final toll was three dead and upwards of sixty injured.
.
Shortly after the Milltown killings, one of Stone's victims, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, was being buried when two British Army
Corporals (Derek Wood and David Howes) drove into the path of the funeral cortege — apparently by mistake. Scenes relayed on live television showed the two corporals being cornered by black taxis and dragged from their car before being taken away by republicans to be beaten, stripped naked, and then shot dead. This event is often referred to as the corporals killings
.
The Browning pistol Stone used during the killings was grabbed by the mob on the day of the attack and was eventually used by an IRA unit at Belfast to ambush a combined RUC/British Army patrol on 13 October 1990. A constable was shot dead and another badly injured.
In his autobiography, None Shall Divide Us, Stone claimed that he had received "special assistance" from RUC operatives in carrying out the cemetery attack. He also stated that he deeply regretted the hurt he had caused the families of those he killed, and paid tribute to the bravery of two of the men who had tried to disarm him at the cemetery, John Murray and Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, whom he shot. Stone said in the book "I didn't choose killing as a career, killing chose me".
In November 2006, Stone was arrested while attempting to gain entry to the parliament buildings at Stormont
while armed with an imitation handgun, three knives, a hatchet, a garrotte and several crude homemade explosive devices all of which failed to explode. On 8 December 2008 Stone was jailed for 16 years for attempting to murder Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
's Milltown Cemetery
Milltown Cemetery
Milltown Cemetery is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland.It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and the M1 motorway. Milltown Cemetery opened in 1869 and there are now approximately 200,000 of Belfast's citizens buried there. Most of those buried there are...
. During the funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
of three Provisional IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
volunteers, Ulster Defence Association
Ulster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association is the largest although not the deadliest loyalist paramilitary and vigilante group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during "The Troubles"...
(UDA) volunteer
Volunteer (Ulster loyalist)
Volunteer, abbreviated Vol., is a title used by a number of Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisations to describe their members.-History of the term volunteer in Ireland:...
Michael Stone attacked the crowd with grenades and pistols, killing three and wounding over sixty.
Background
On 16 March 1988, Provisional IRA members Daniel McCannDaniel McCann
Daniel "Danny" McCann was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army who was killed by British Army Special Air Service soldiers in Operation Flavius.-Background:...
, Seán Savage
Seán Savage
Seán Savage was a volunteer of the Provisional IRA who was shot and killed by British Army Special Air Service soldiers in Operation Flavius.-Early life:...
and Mairéad Farrell
Mairéad Farrell
Mairéad Farrell was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army . She was killed by SAS soldiers during Operation Flavius, a British Army operation to prevent a bombing in Gibraltar.-Early life:...
, who had been killed
Operation Flavius
Operation Flavius was the name given to an operation by a Special Air Service team in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988 tasked to prevent a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb attack...
by the SAS
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
in Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, were due to be buried in the republican plot
Republican plot
In Ireland, a republican plot is a cemetery plot where combatants or members of various Irish republican organisations are buried in a common grave, as opposed to being buried with family members. These plots may often also hold the bodies of casualties of earlier 19th and 20th-century campaigns by...
at Milltown Cemetery
Milltown Cemetery
Milltown Cemetery is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland.It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and the M1 motorway. Milltown Cemetery opened in 1869 and there are now approximately 200,000 of Belfast's citizens buried there. Most of those buried there are...
, Belfast. In a change from normal security procedures, the Royal Ulster Constabulary
Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2000. Following the awarding of the George Cross in 2000, it was subsequently known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary...
(RUC) and British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
had agreed to stay away from the funeral. The funeral service and requiem mass went ahead as planned, and the cortege made its way to Milltown Cemetery, off the Falls Road.
Attack
As the coffins were being lowered into the ground, a burst of gunfire was heard. At first, it was mistaken for the usual three-volley salute given at IRA funerals and some people even applauded. However, it was not a salute. A lone UDA member from East Belfast, Michael Stone, had infiltrated the crowd of mourners in an attempt to eliminate Sinn FéinSinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
leaders Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams is an Irish republican politician and Teachta Dála for the constituency of Louth. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the second largest political party in Northern...
and Martin McGuinness
Martin McGuinness
James Martin Pacelli McGuinness is an Irish Sinn Féin politician and the current deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. McGuinness was also the Sinn Féin candidate for the Irish presidential election, 2011. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland....
with several RGD-5 hand grenades, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol and a .357 Magnum revolver. Stone killed three people: Catholic civilians Thomas McErlean (20) and John Murray (26), and IRA member Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh (30), who had tried to disarm him. The whole event was recorded by television news cameras.
Stone made his escape towards the motorway, chased by several members of the crowd, but continued firing his handguns and throwing hand grenades at his pursuers. Stone made it as far as the M1 motorway
M1 motorway (Northern Ireland)
The M1 is a motorway in Northern Ireland. It is the longest motorway in Northern Ireland and runs for from Belfast to Dungannon through County Down and County Armagh...
, but was caught by the crowd, who began beating him and shouting that they would kill him. He was eventually put in the back of a car and was being driven away to be shot by the IRA, when the car was intercepted by the RUC, who arrested him and took him to Musgrave Park Hospital
Musgrave Park Hospital
Musgrave Park Hospital is a regional specialist hospital, managed by Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It specialises in orthopaedics, rheumatology, sports medicine and rehabilitation of patients of all ages. These specialties are spread out across a large site in...
for treatment of his injuries. Stone later confessed to the three killings at Milltown and a further three paramilitary killings committed beforehand. The final toll was three dead and upwards of sixty injured.
Aftermath
At his trial, Stone received sentences totalling 682 years, but was released after serving just 13 years as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. Apart from time on remand spent in Crumlin Road Prison, Stone spent all of his sentence in HM Prison MazeMaze (HM Prison)
Her Majesty's Prison Maze was a prison in Northern Ireland that was used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000....
.
Shortly after the Milltown killings, one of Stone's victims, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, was being buried when two British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
Corporals (Derek Wood and David Howes) drove into the path of the funeral cortege — apparently by mistake. Scenes relayed on live television showed the two corporals being cornered by black taxis and dragged from their car before being taken away by republicans to be beaten, stripped naked, and then shot dead. This event is often referred to as the corporals killings
Corporals killings
The corporals killings was the killing of corporals David Robert Howes and Derek Tony Wood, two British Army soldiers of the Royal Corps of Signals killed on 19 March 1988 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The non-uniformed soldiers were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army , after they...
.
The Browning pistol Stone used during the killings was grabbed by the mob on the day of the attack and was eventually used by an IRA unit at Belfast to ambush a combined RUC/British Army patrol on 13 October 1990. A constable was shot dead and another badly injured.
In his autobiography, None Shall Divide Us, Stone claimed that he had received "special assistance" from RUC operatives in carrying out the cemetery attack. He also stated that he deeply regretted the hurt he had caused the families of those he killed, and paid tribute to the bravery of two of the men who had tried to disarm him at the cemetery, John Murray and Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh, whom he shot. Stone said in the book "I didn't choose killing as a career, killing chose me".
In November 2006, Stone was arrested while attempting to gain entry to the parliament buildings at Stormont
Parliament Buildings (Northern Ireland)
The Parliament Buildings, known as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont area of Belfast is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive...
while armed with an imitation handgun, three knives, a hatchet, a garrotte and several crude homemade explosive devices all of which failed to explode. On 8 December 2008 Stone was jailed for 16 years for attempting to murder Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
See also
- Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actionsTimeline of Ulster Defence Association actionsThis is a timeline of actions by the Ulster Defence Association , a loyalist paramilitary group formed in 1971. Most of these actions took place during the conflict known as "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland....
- List of massacres in the United Kingdom
External links
- Milltown Cemetery Killings — from the CAIN project at the University of UlsterUniversity of UlsterThe University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...
- Photograph - People ducking as Stone shoots Belfast Telegraph archives