Dominic McGlinchey

Background

McGlinchey was one of 11 siblings born into a large Bellaghy family, with a "strong republican background".

Paramilitary activities

In August 1971, at the age of 17, he was interned without charge for ten months in the prison camps of Ballykelly and Long Kesh. After his release, he was imprisoned again in 1973 on arms charges.

After his next release, he joined a South Derry Independent Republican Unit along with Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikers Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee. The unit would later merge with the Provisional IRA. Their activities led the Royal Ulster Constabulary to take the unusual step of issuing wanted posters.

IRA

McGlinchey was arrested by the Gardai in 1977 and charged with hijacking a police vehicle in Monaghan, threatening a police officer with a gun, and resisting arrest. In 1982, while serving time in Portlaoise Prison, he clashed with the IRA leadership; he was later expelled from the IRA.

INLA

The INLA welcomed McGlinchey because of his previous experience. He joined in 1982 as Operations Officer for South Derry and became Chief of Staff within six months. Under McGlinchey the organisation began to shake off its reputation for disorganization and incompetence. In a Sunday Tribune interview McGlinchey admitted involvement in the Droppin Well bombing in Ballykelly, County Londonderry, in which eleven off-duty soldiers and six civilians were murdered. He also said he had provided the weapons for the Darkley massacre but had not approved that attack. It has been alleged that he was targeted for assassination by 14 Intelligence Company.

Internal feud

Tim Pat Coogan, a historian of the Irish republican movement, asserted that McGlinchey's authority within the INLA was absolute and that he re-enforced it by ordering the deaths of 'anyone he didn't like'. However other authors claimed that decisions were actually taken collectively by a council of leading members, although those disgruntled with the outcomes tended to attribute everything solely to McGlinchey. When a powerful northern unit based around an extended family did not turn over £50,000 raised in a fake postal order scheme (which was essential to the INLA's finances) the scheme's originator insisted that unless the offending unit was punished he would not supply any more funds. It was decided, reportedly against McGlinchey's objections, that members of the northern faction were to be killed. Two were summoned to a meeting: because Mary McGlinchey was acting as an emissary the pair were lulled into thinking that there would be no danger of violence. However, they were led to waiting gunmen and shot dead. This incident sparked a long-running series of tit for tat revenge killings, including Mary McGlinchey for her involvement in the two above-mentioned killings.

Imprisonment and release

In March 1984 McGlinchey was wounded in a shoot-out with the Gardai in Ralahine, Ralahine, Newmarket on Fergus, County Clare and arrested. He was extradited to Northern Ireland and sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of murder. This conviction was overturned in October 1985 by the Belfast Appeals Court on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and McGlinchey was returned to the Republic of Ireland, where he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on firearms charges. His wife Mary was killed in her Dundalk home by INLA gunmen who broke in while she was bathing her children on 31 January 1987. McGlinchey was unable to attend her funeral as he was still imprisoned in the Republic. After being released from prison in March 1993, he investigated claims that criminals in the Republic were involved in money laundering with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). He survived an assassination attempt made by UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Billy Wright in June 1993.

Death

On 10 February 1994, McGlinchey was making a call from a phone box in Drogheda when two men got out of a vehicle and shot him 14 times. No-one has been charged with his killing and it is not known who carried out the assassination or precisely why.

His funeral took place in his native Bellaghy. The mourners included Martin McGuinness and Ruairi O Bradaigh. In spite of their differences McGlinchy was respected by the Provisional IRA. The oration was delivered by Bernadette McAliskey. During the oration she described journalists, particularly from the Sunday Independent, who had claimed that McGlinchy was involved in criminality as:

Family

In the midst of his paramilitary career, he married Mary O'Neill on 5 July 1975. The couple had three children: Declan, Dominic, and Maire (who died as an infant from meningitis). Mary later became a member of the INLA. Dominic Jr. also became a republican activist.

In October 2006, Declan McGlinchey was remanded in custody at Derry Magistrates' Court on explosives charges. The charges were connected to the discovery of a bomb in Bellaghy in July. He was cleared of these charges. He was again arrested on 14 March 2009 in connection with the murder of Police Service of Northern Ireland Constable Stephen Carroll but no charges were brought. Declan McGlinchey died suddenly of a heart attack on 1 November 2015, aged 39.

Song

Dominic McGlinchey is the subject of the songs "Paddy Public Enemy Number One" by Shane MacGowan of The Pogues, and "Hands up Trousers Down" by The Irish Brigade. The former charts McGlinchey's life from his teens through to his eventual killing in a phonebox while the latter references his theft and use of Garda uniforms.