'Nature without Borders'- North & South Ireland unite to Restore Native Ecosystems

In a fine example of cross-border cooperation to tackle the Biodiversity Crisis, the 'Friends of Little Woods' in Fermanagh and the Tuatha of Terryland Forest Park have partnered together to create native wildlife habitats.

We gave this all-island initiative the title of 'Nature without Borders' as an encouragement to others to follow suit and to recognise that only humans put in the artificial barriers that disconnects humans and the rest of nature from each other.

The initial contact between both volunteer groups and the subsequent monies received as a result of our application under the Community Climate Action Fund were only made possible thanks to the involvement, advice and encouragement of Tiarnan Mc Cusker, the hardworking and visionary Community Climate Officer at Galway City Council.

Chris Hillcox of the Friends of Little Woods last weekend generously hosted a delegation from the Tuatha to take part in conservation activities (making bird boxes & setting up a Wildlife Observation Post) as part of the programme to develop a wet woodland in the Clogher Valley area of county Fermanagh.

It is hoped that this long-term rewilding project will provide a suitable habitat to facilitate a gradual migration of flora and fauna across the locality that are traditionally native to the area including endangered species such as pine marten and red squirrel.

 

Photo shows (L-R) Tobias, Mike and Ruth from the Tuatha with Chris of the Friends of Little Woods at the bog site in Clabby county Fermanagh.

Bloody Sunday massacre in January 1972 was part of a wider campaign of oppression against the nationalist community of Northern Ireland

Six months before the deliberate shooting of 26 unarmed civilians in Derry, the same elite unit of the British Army had shot dead at least 9 civilians over the course of three days in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast whilst at the same time hundreds of homes were being raided across Northern Ireland by the British military with hundreds of people arrested and imprisoned without trail in internment camps, many of whom were tortured.

More reminiscent of contemporary scenes from the streets of South American cities during the brutal coups and authoritarian regimes of military junta, this state terrorism was happening though in a modern democratic European state which was a member of the European Economic Community (now the Europan Union)

See the article below that I wrote on the subject for the Galway City Tribune last May.

 

After 50 years, the truth finally come out yesterday in a British court that the British Army shot dead nine innocent people over three days in west Belfast during August 1971. All the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre were members of the nationalist community. 

 

At the same time as these murders were being carried out hundreds of homes were being raided across Northern Ireland by the British military with hundreds of people arrested and imprisoned without trail in internment camps. Many were immediately humiliated and tortured by their captors. Very few of these prisoners were associated with the IRA (the supposed reason for their arrest); many were members of the civil rights movement and left-wing organisations. 

 

7,000 people mainly nationalists at this time were forced from their homes in the North due to burnings and attacks by mobs. Thousands fled over the border with refugee camps being set up in the South. In spite of the fact that British Loyalist paramilitaries were targeting Catholics and carrying out indiscriminate bombings in the period, not one member of these Unionist sectarian gangs was arrested and interned. The Unionist government in Northern Ireland made sure of that.

Over the full period of internment that continued until 1975, of the estimated 1,981 people interned; 1,874 were nationalist, while 107 were loyalist.

 

During the course of the killings in Ballymurphy that included a priest holding a white flag attending to a wounded person, the British Army press officer on the ground was telling the media that those shot were IRA gunmen. That officer, belonging to the First Parachute Regiment, was Mike Jackson who was head of the British Army (Chief of the General Staff) during the illegal invasion of Iraq by British-American forces in 2003. A few months later (January 1972) he was in Derry when the same regiment shot 26 civilians (13 died immediately) during a peaceful Civil Rights march.

 

Boy on the Border

As a young boy living a few kilometres inside the border in Carrickmacross county Monaghan at the time, I witnessed the families fleeing for safety, victims of vicious pogroms in Belfast and elsewhere. I use to listen to the BBC/UTV television channels and the British mainstream media telling the world that the British military in the North were a peacekeeping force protecting the ordinary people of the North from the terrorism of Irish republicans. As a member of a Catholic family living in Ulster (Monaghan), I would hear Ian Paisley being quoted at Loyalist rallies stating “(Catholics) breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin" and that “Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners”. I knew then what was being said and written were pure lies. I realised even as a young teenager that the British media were very much part of the propaganda war effort. Censorship applied. Fake news was continuously being spread. An example was the front page of a News of the World newspaper in 1977 showing a (false) image of a Soviet (Russian) submarine off the coast of Donegal (supposedly delivering weapons to the IRA).

 

As a student activist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was painfully aware of the dirty tricks and terror campaign being organised by the British state. Bombings and bank robberies took place in the Republic and in the North carried out by British military, their spy network, their special forces such as the SAS, their allies in the Loyalist military and agent provocateurs (e.g. Littlejohn brothers) which were blamed on the IRA. Other covert operations involving collusion between British clandestine security forces in Northern Ireland and loyalist paramilitaries led to killings on both sides of the border. According to witnesses including some former members of the British forces and of loyalist gangs, this included the Miami Showband massacre (July 1975) and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 (33 deaths). During the 1980s and 1990s I was involved in the campaigns to release the imprisoned Birmingham Six, Maguire Seven and Guildford Four, innocent mainly Irish people living in the UK framed by the British police for the murderous IRA bombing campaign in Britain.

 

British Heroes of Justice and Truth

But there were the courageous few in Britain who were not afraid to speak out and demand justice and truth even though they were subsequently ridiculed, lied about, harangued and even framed for crimes that they never committed by the British media and British state. These heroic people included ex-British soldiers such as Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd (who also exposed the British Intelligence cover-up of abuse of children in the Kincora Boys Home Belfast by Unionist paramilitaries) and those unnamed squaddies who gave evidence of the psychopathic behaviour of some of their fellow soldiers involved in the shooting of unarmed civilians; British politicians such as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn and Clare Short; British investigative journalists such as Chris Mullin; lawyers such as Michael Mansfield and Gareth Pierce; artists such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Vanessa Redgrave; and British police officers such as Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker who exposed the shoot-to-kill actions of the security forces under which suspected IRA members were deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them.

 

Why A Reign of Terror in Northern Ireland?

So the question has to be asked, why was such a brutal system imposed by the British establishment? The answer was partly due to the desire to protect a right wing corrupt sectarian elite in Northern Ireland because they were loyal to a British state that still had 'big power' imperial aspirations. But it was also because of the situation happening globally during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. It was a time when all across the world (United States, Vietnam, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Algeria, South Africa, Palestine, Iran, Czechoslovakia, Poland…) peoples and the youth in particular were rising up against racism, discrimination, tyranny, occupation and colonialism. In the case of this island, there was a fear amongst the powerful elite in Britain that a ‘Catholic’ Ireland could go the way of a ‘Catholic’ Cuba and become a bastion of communism that could spread to neighbouring countries.

 

Ballymurphy Massacre & the British State’s Dirty War in Northern Ireland.

After 50 years, the truth finally come out yesterday in a British court that the British Army shot dead nine innocent people over three days in west Belfast during August 1971. All the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre were members of the nationalist community. 

 

At the same time as these murders were being carried out hundreds of homes were being raided across Northern Ireland by the British military with hundreds of people arrested and imprisoned without trail in internment camps. Many were immediately humiliated and tortured by their captors. Very few of these prisoners were associated with the IRA (the supposed reason for their arrest); many were members of the civil rights movement and left-wing organisations. 

 

7,000 people mainly nationalists at this time were forced from their homes in the North due to burnings and attacks by mobs. Thousands fled over the border with refugee camps being set up in the South. In spite of the fact that British Loyalist paramilitaries were targeting Catholics and carrying out indiscriminate bombings in the period, not one member of these Unionist sectarian gangs was arrested and interned. The Unionist government in Northern Ireland made sure of that.

Over the full period of internment that continued until 1975, of the estimated 1,981 people interned; 1,874 were nationalist, while 107 were loyalist.

 

During the course of the killings in Ballymurphy that included a priest holding a white flag attending to a wounded person, the British Army press officer on the ground was telling the media that those shot were IRA gunmen. That officer, belonging to the First Parachute Regiment, was Mike Jackson who was head of the British Army (Chief of the General Staff) during the illegal invasion of Iraq by British-American forces in 2003. A few months later (January 1972) he was in Derry when the same regiment shot 26 civilians (13 died immediately) during a peaceful Civil Rights march.

 

Boy on the Border

As a young boy living a few kilometres inside the border in Carrickmacross county Monaghan at the time, I witnessed the families fleeing for safety, victims of vicious pogroms in Belfast and elsewhere. I use to listen to the BBC/UTV television channels and the British mainstream media telling the world that the British military in the North were a peacekeeping force protecting the ordinary people of the North from the terrorism of Irish republicans. As a member of a Catholic family living in Ulster (Monaghan), I would hear Ian Paisley being quoted at Loyalist rallies stating “(Catholics) breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin" and that “Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners”. I knew then what was being said and written were pure lies. I realised even as a young teenager that the British media were very much part of the propaganda war effort. Censorship applied. Fake news was continuously being spread. An example was the front page of a News of the World newspaper in 1977 showing a (false) image of a Soviet (Russian) submarine off the coast of Donegal (supposedly delivering weapons to the IRA).

 

As a student activist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was painfully aware of the dirty tricks and terror campaign being organised by the British state. Bombings and bank robberies took place in the Republic and in the North carried out by British military, their spy network, their special forces such as the SAS, their allies in the Loyalist military and agent provocateurs (e.g. Littlejohn brothers) which were blamed on the IRA. Other covert operations involving collusion between British clandestine security forces in Northern Ireland and loyalist paramilitaries led to killings on both sides of the border. According to witnesses including some former members of the British forces and of loyalist gangs, this included the Miami Showband massacre (July 1975) and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 (33 deaths). During the 1980s and 1990s I was involved in the campaigns to release the imprisoned Birmingham Six, Maguire Seven and Guildford Four, innocent mainly Irish people living in the UK framed by the British police for the murderous IRA bombing campaign in Britain.

 

British Heroes of Justice and Truth

But there were the courageous few in Britain who were not afraid to speak out and demand justice and truth even though they were subsequently ridiculed, lied about, harangued and even framed for crimes that they never committed by the British media and British state. These heroic people included ex-British soldiers such as Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd (who also exposed the British Intelligence cover-up of abuse of children in the Kincora Boys Home Belfast by Unionist paramilitaries) and those unnamed squaddies who gave evidence of the psychopathic behaviour of some of their fellow soldiers involved in the shooting of unarmed civilians; British politicians such as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn and Clare Short; British investigative journalists such as Chris Mullin; lawyers such as Michael Mansfield and Gareth Pierce; artists such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Vanessa Redgrave; and British police officers such as Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker who exposed the shoot-to-kill actions of the security forces under which suspected IRA members were deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them.

 

Why A Reign of Terror in Northern Ireland?

So the question has to be asked, why was such a brutal system imposed by the British establishment? The answer was partly due to the desire to protect a right wing corrupt sectarian elite in Northern Ireland because they were loyal to a British state that still had 'big power' imperial aspirations. But it was also because of the situation happening globally during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. It was a time when all across the world (United States, Vietnam, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Algeria, South Africa, Palestine, Iran, Czechoslovakia, Poland…) peoples and the youth in particular were rising up against racism, discrimination, tyranny, occupation and colonialism. In the case of this island, there was a fear amongst the powerful elite in Britain that a ‘Catholic’ Ireland could go the way of a ‘Catholic’ Cuba and become a bastion of communism that could spread to neighbouring countries.

Memories of the Lisdoonvarna Folk Festival

Ireland's first weekend youth musical festival took place during the summer of 1978 in what was then a backwater- Lisdoonvarna in County Clare. Thanks to the foresight of Jim Shannon and Paddy Doherty, it was the Electric Picnic of its time & an Irish equivalent of Woodstock.
The festival was billed as a Folk Festival. But though it started as an upbeat all-Irish Feilé, it expanded its repertoire over the years and hosted some of the finest musical acts on the planet including Jackson Browne, Van Morrison,  Rory Gallagher, Emmylou Harris and Planxty.

Maria O'Malley from UCG & Mayo at Lisdoonvarna, 1978

The  scene that greeted arrivals was a countryside of stone walls, small fields and narrow botharíns. But from this unlikely landscape sprung forth a huge tent city populated by amongst others, students, German hippies (from Clare & south Galway), Irish trad aficionados, Hells Angels, Hare Krishnas, left wing revolutionaries... Of course with so much young people on one site, undercover cops were also present, making the odd arrest for possession of hash etc.

Largely peaceful, the 1983 festival was marred by eight drowning fatalities at nearby Tra Leathan and by the violence that broke out when Hells Angels, inexplicably hired as festival security(!), started to beat up some of the festival goers. Thus ended a magical festival that corresponded too and reflected much of my fun  student days and my political awakening.

For me, my happiest memory was in 1981 when Irish supergrpup Moving Hearts (Christy Moore, Davy Spillane, Declan Sinnott...) played highly politicized songs from their album of the same name. Songs such as 'No Time for Love', 'Hiroshima Nagasak'i and 'Before the Deluge' reflected the conflict in Northern Ireland, the H-Blocks, the early global environmental and the anti-war movements that were a largely youthful response to the real threat of mass annihilation that could have emanated from the 'Nuclear Arms Race' then taking place between the USSR and the USA.

Thatcher: A Destroyer of Communities

I very rarely speak ill of the recently departed. But I have little affection for Margaret Thatcher who died today.

When she became Prime Minister in 1978, she used the words of St. Francis to define the tenets of her new government, “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope."

However she practiced the complete opposite and brought division, suffering, unemployment and poverty to so many communities across Britain and Ireland. Her political philosophy of individualism, light touch business regulation and free markets, was anathema to me and as a young radical in the early 1980s, I took part in many protests against her policies including that of the H-Block prisoners. 

Her government operated a dirty war in Northern Ireland and controlled Loyalist death squads that killed nationalist civilians. When IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected MP with a bigger mandate than she ever achieved, she had the law changed to stop prisoners from participating in parliamentary elections. She supported right-wing anti-democratic terror regimes in countries such as Pinochet's Chile, Saudi Arabia and apartheid South Africa.

Thatcher with Pinochet

She was the chief ally of a United States that openly funded military puppet regimes in Central and South America that launched vicious wars of oppression against their own peoples.

US President Ronald Reagan and Thatcher were united in building a new expensive generation of nuclear missiles (Cruise & Pershings) that were to be placed on British and European soil. This decision spawned an international peace movement that included the huge female peace camp outside the RAF base at Greenham Common Berkshire where these weapons were to be sited.
 
Thatcher used all the forces of the state to destroy traditional mining communities in England. 

She took away local government in London when she abolished Greater London Council (GLC) then led by Ken Livingston. Thatcher privatised key sectors of the economy to the detriment of the British people, oversaw the loss of many of nation's manufacturing industries and the growth of the financial services. Britain no longer had an international image of being a country that made and exported things. Instead London became instead an international centre for banks and financial houses which spawned a generation of young bankers and stock traders who arrogantly portrayed themselves with a 'Greed is Good' ethic. The peoples of Northern England particularly suffered immensely under her rule as the large manfactured industries closed down and as the new financial services gravitated towards the south. 
The Poll Tax left to high levels of civil unrest.
 
She left Britain a deeply divided unequal society. 

"Nobody would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only good intentions. He had money as well." (Thatcher 1980)

 

Thatcher with Rupert Murdoch

She assisted the news corporations to undermine the media trade unions and to monopolise ownership of a press that became a mouthpiece for big business.

A quote from an interview that she gave in 1987, best summaries her life’s work, “there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families".  Such a philosophy has little time for the weak and community and only promotes greed, selfishness and egotism. 

Bloody Sunday: Truth & Justice at Last!

June 2010 was an historical month for Ireland & Britain. Truth and Justice finally won out over decades of state propaganda and blatant lies as a British government finally admitted that the 14 people killed in Derry by the British Army on Bloody Sunday 1972 were unarmed innocent civilians taking part in a Civil Rights march.

The Saville Report stated that the soldiers called before it had lied; that none of those killed were carrying weapons, that no warnings were given, that no soldiers were under threat at the time and that the soldiers were the first to open fire.

These findings totally contradict the statements of the British army and officialdom from the time of the killings onwards. Particularly scurrilous were the findings of the Widgery report published in April 1972 which was recognised at the time by independent minds as nothing more than a whitewash. For in spite of evidence to the contrary, Lord Widgery concluded that the soldiers were fired on first and blamed the marchers for participating in an illegal march (which was part of ongoing peaceful protests calling for an end to discrimination against Catholics in Unionist Protestant statelet of Northern Ireland).

Northern Ireland during the 'Troubles' (1969-1990s) was used by the British Army and the British secret services as a real laboratory for testing out methods, tactics and weapons that could be used someday to combat expected social unrest in Britain (and were to a degree used in mid-1980s in areas of British inner cities such as Brixton & Toxeth). Internment and non-jury courts were introduced. A series of miscarriages of justice took place where innocent Irish people were jailed for crimes that they did not commit. The most notable were the Guildford Ford and the Birmingham Six jailed in the 1970s and finally exonerated and released in 1991. (I played a humble and small part in this campaign, being chairperson in the laste 1980s of the West of Ireland 'Release the Birmingham 6 & Guildford 4' committee)

British forces, their agents and their loyalist allies also undertook a series of covert operations both in Northern Ireland and the Irish republic that included bank raids, shootings, secret assassinations, bombing, many of which were deliberately blamed on the IRA in an effort to discredit Irish civil rights activists and republicans. Some day the truth of the British establishment's secret and dirty war in Northern Ireland will be made known and published.

But in the meantime- Fair play to Prime Minister David Cameron for being the first British leader to apologise unequivocally over military crimes against civilians. Truly historical.

Northern Ireland’s Sperrin Mountains–a hidden Rural Gaelic heartland

Abandoned house, Sperrin Mountains, Northern Ireland
Originally uploaded by Speedie1.

I have just spent a few wonderful days living in the midst of the Sperrin Mountains, a region of untold natural beauty and a stronghold of vibrant Gaelic culture.
I was pleasantly surprised to come across such a vast area of largely unspoilt natural beauty in development-driven Ireland. Unlike most of the rural regions of the Irish republic that are sadly being urbanised at an alarming rate, there are here stringent controls on building and road construction, on overgrazing as well as the ample provision of state funds to protect natural heritage.
Our northern brethren & the British government can teach us southerners a thing or two on environment protection and land management.
The Sperrin region consists of a landscape of gently rolling mountains, deep valleys (glens), small streams and boglands where ‘sheep’ is king.

Here farming seems to be thriving: you can see young farmers driving tractors, sheep pens dotting the hillsides and busy market days in towns such as Draperstown. Sizeable government grants are provided to stop sheep grazing mountains at certain times of the year so flora can blossom and provide cover for nesting birds.

Likewise, funds are allocated to encourage the replanting of hedgerows along the roadsides. The results are remarkable: a blanket of purple heather covers the hillsides and there are unbroken lines of hedgerows.This farm building is home to the 'sheep collector', a man whose job is collect stray sheep and return them to their owner. The animals are identified by the colour and shape of the dye on their wool.

The Flaming Red of the Rowan Tree
At this time of year in the Sperrins, one of the great Irish trees of Celtic mythology- the 'Mountain Ash'- gives a beautiful red colour to the autumn days. Also known as the 'Rowan', or 'Caorthann' in Irish, the red berry fruit of this tree only matures in the autumn thereby providing much needed food to wildlife. Its redness and bearer of autumn food made it associated in ancient Celtic times with life giving properties and with fire.

Amazingly for the 21st century, you come across more cyclists, walkers and farm vehicles than cars along the narrow roadways.
A large re-forestation programme is underway. Though primarily commercial and dominated by conifers, nevertheless it is helping to re-introduce the forests that once dominated the landscape. Interestingly, copses of trees woods sprinkle the hillsides planted by farmers to provide shelter for their sheep
The Sperrins are reminiscent of an Ireland that existed 150 years ago.

Mountain Stream

The intricate detail shown in the stone walls of this old farm building is testimony to the superb
craftmanship of the buliders of a bygone era

The area is also steeped in pre-history: it is a treasure trove of stone circles and megalith tombs some dating back 5,000 years.

Catholic Highlands & Protestant Lowlands

But it is its living folk traditions that helps bolster the unique identity that is the Sperrins. Traditional Gaelic music thrives in the pubs and schools; the names of most mountains, rivers, woods and towns are Gaelic in origins and labelled on all road signs. Monuments and posters to IRA volunteers and hunger strikers give visual expression to the strong republicanism that permeates many of the local population, the majority of whom are Catholic. Television news bulletins over the last few decades often spoke of finds of secret weaponry caches in the Sperrins. The inaccessible terrain with its dozens of abandoned farmsteads must have provided safe hide-outs for many an armed republican. Interestingly, locals also speak of other visitors staying incognito in these old buildings, namely British army undercover squads their presence often identified by the butts of their cigarettes left behind.
A Roadside Poster Sign dedicated to the IRA prisoners who died on hunger strike in British jails in their efforts to have the British authorities accord them 'political' rather than 'criminal' status

This strong sense of Irish nationalism is a product of both the history of the Sperrins and of wider Ulster. From the early 17th century onwards, the northern province experienced waves of British Protestant colonists who forced the native Catholic population from their lands. The Irish were either killed outright, forced to flee overseas or transplanted to poorer lands further west. However many escaped to the neighbouring highlands of the sprawling Sperrins where mountains, bogs and forests provided sanctuary from the British settlers and armies. The colonists preferred to concentrate their plantation activities in the rich fertile lands of the lowlands and left much of the difficult inaccessible terrain of the Glens of Antrim and the Sperrins to the natives to try and eke out an existence.An old abandoned farm house. Notice its three-levelled structure which I believe was divided as follows: the larger section was for human habitation, the middle section for storage of grain and somtimes larger animals and the smallest section for poultry or pigs

It was a lean and hungry life in the Sperrins; the dozens of ruined homesteads bear grim testimony to the harshness of their new existence which eventually forced many to emigrate.

‘Raparrees’: Ireland’s ‘Robin Hoods’
But the natives did not accept the loss of their lands lightly. From the forests of the Sperrins, armed raids were launched on the settlers in the lowlands during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many of these rebels became famed in song and verse for taking on the British occupiers, robbing wealthy colonists and giving the money to starving and destitute people many of whom were now reduced to the status of tenants on their former lands. These armed horsemen were known as ‘Tories’ but more usually as 'Rapparees' and were looked as by the local populace as the Irish equivalent of the English ‘Robin Hoods’. The term ‘Rapparees’ probably derives from a mix of Irish (ri= king) and French (rapier=sword) words that translates as the ‘King’s Swordsmen,’. For many of these highwaymen were originally Gaelic Catholic gentry who had joined the army of the Catholic British King James 1 in the hope of reclaiming their lost lands.
Probably the most famous Sperrin outlaw was Shane Crossagh who operated in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. According to Jim McCallen in his book ‘Stand & Deliver’, Shane’s real surname was “McMullan’; Crossagh meaning ‘pock-marked’ was a nickname. He took to the hills after he narrowly evaded capture during a secret visit to his family’s former home from whence they had been evicted. There are many tales of his gang’s daring exploits. One relates to a British General Napier who was overheard by Shane boasting in an inn one night that he would have the rebel’s head on a pike within the week. Next morning the general and his cavalry unit were ambushed by Shane’s men at a bridge near the village of Feeny. After the soldiers were forced to surrender, they were stripped, tied up in pairs and marched off led by General Napier dressed up as a women!
Brave Death of a Raparree
But Shane was eventually caught and sentenced to be hanged along with his two sons. However, he was surprisingly offered pardon by an influential planter Henry Carey, whose life he had once saved. But when he was told that his sons were not to be spared, he declined the offer of a pardon. According to a witness- John Low the Presbyterian minister of Banagher- he died with a son either side of him, holding each by the hand after making a speech to an sympathetic crowd thanking them for their support over his years as an outlaw.

The British police barracks in Draperstown now no longer in use

But with the Northern Ireland Peace process now over a decade old, a cultural, social and economic transformation is taking place. The imposing and foreboding Police barracks is closed (see photo), tourism is taking place, housing estates are being built in the towns for new city commuter residents, religious animosities are diluting and young Eastern European workers are starting to populate the shops and factories.The place of Presbyterian worship in the centre of Draperstown. Not as ornate as a Catholic or Anglican church, nevertheless it possesses an innate beauty of its own.