@DerryCounty

The republican history of County Derry and adjoining County Antrim. Get in contact if you have anything of interest!

Joined August 2019
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South Derry republicans picture in H Blocks, 1992. From top left clockwise: Peadar Lagan, Maghera Martin Molloy, Maghera Rory Craig, Bellaghy, Lawrence O'Neill, Bellaghy Harry McCann, Randalstown
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Enda O'Kane, Swatragh centre of back row
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Cage 23, Long Kesh internees ...1970s Back: L-R Micky O'Neill, Kilrea, Eugene McErlean, Ballymaguigan, Sean O'Neill, Kilrea, Front: Lawrence Mulholland, Bellaghy, Tommy Donaghy, Kilrea
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Lawrence Mulholland previously interned during 50s campaign. Had a stauch republican background.. father sworn into IRA by Joe McKelvey.. mother, a nurse in Mater Hospital, Belfast, smuggled tricolour into Crumlin Road prison that was raised over the gaol by Austin Stack in 1918.
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Tommy Donaghy shot dead by UDA after his release from a subsequent term of imprisonment in the H Blocks.
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Tommy Donaghy, Kilrea assasinated August, 1991, by loyalists/Crown Forces. Interned, Long Kesh until 1975. Captured on active service, 1977, served 11 further years in H Blocks including Blanket protest. Released 1988. Shot dead at his workplace, Portna fishery, River Bann.
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Francie Wilson, The Loup, the first South Derry blanket man to be released from the H Blocks of Long Kesh.
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Tom Larkin, Ballinderry, pictured Ballykinlar, 1921. Tom helped reorganise the IRB in S Derry prior to 1916. In C'island, 1916! Interned Argenta until 1924 enduring hunger strike. Brother Sean executed in Civil War. Health suffered from ordeals and died relatively young.
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Watty Graham, United Irishman... assembled 5000 South Derry men in Maghera, 7th June, 1798 for the rising. After the rising failed, tried to make his way to the USA, spending his last night in Slaughtneil, in the McKenna home, Tirkane. Hanged & beheaded after capture.
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The tree upon which Watty was hanged.
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In the late 19th century an old women related to a local historian how, as a young child she saw the head of Watty Graham placed upon a spike in Maghera. She recalled his long blonde hair blowing in the wind.
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Veterans of the Tan War pictured in 1969.
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All are wearing their 'Black and Tan War' medals. John McKeague of Fallagloon, Maghera is pictured. Only his surname is legible.
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As a young teenager, John McKeague had tried to join local men intent on travelling south to join the Easter Rising. They refused to take him along due to his youth.
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The event may have been the unveiling of the headstone of prominent local republican, James Harkin.
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James Harkin was a life long republican activist. In later life he served the local community of Swatragh & Slaughtneil as a republican councillor on Magherafelt Rural Council. Despite having a large nationalist majority, a unionist majority was returned thanks to gerrymandering.
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Following the removal of many local republican leaders in 1922 through assasination, imprisonment or expulsion by Unionist Gov these men were among the small group in South Derry who kept the Movement alive until its reorganisation in the late 1930s.
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Co Derry & Co Antrim Republican History retweeted
Co Derry & Co Antrim Republican History@DerryCounty26 Sep 2020
On this day, 1983, 38 IRA prisoners escaped from The H Blocks. Among them South Derry men, Sean McGlinchey, Bellaghy & Joey Corey, The Loup. Sean recaptured shortly afterwards. Joey recaptured several days later in Castlewellan..
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Newbridge Irish Republican Brotherhood circle (1917). It is suggested they are posing with borrowed musical instruments to disguise the true purpose of the group.
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