Hugh Doherty (Irish republican)

Hugh Doherty is an Irish republican and former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He is noted for his role in the Balcombe Street Siege of December 1975, at the resolution of which he was sentenced to eleven terms of life imprisonment for murder, with a judicial recommendation he serve at least 30 years.

Doherty and fellow members of his active service unit had targeted civilians, off-duty soldiers, policemen and politicians as part of the IRA's campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. During this time they are believed to have killed sixteen people in England including Ross McWhirter, who had offered a £50,000 reward for their arrest, and Gordon Hamilton-Fairley.

The Balcombe Street gang, who were named after the London street on which they were arrested after a five-day siege, were responsible for 16 murders. During a 14-month campaign of terror across the south-east of England they carried out 50 bombings and shootings.

Doherty's bloody bombing campaign was brought to an end during a five-day siege that was broadcast live on television and watched by millions.

Doherty served 23 years in British prisons before being transferred to Portlaoise prison in Ireland.

In 1987 Jeremy Corbyn handed a petition to then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher demanding better visiting conditions for Doherty and his fellow IRA prisoner Nat Vella and “the immediate transfer of Irish political prisoners to prisons near their homes”.

Doherty made an appearance at the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis at which the party accepted the Belfast Agreement, under the terms of which Doherty was later released from prison.

He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and now works as an artist in Ireland. He is the brother of Sinn Féin MP and MLA Pat Doherty.