BEAUTY FROM A FAMILY DRENCHED IN BLOOD
She’s just replaced Martin McGuinness and is being hailed as the soft new face of Sinn Fein. Shame about the sickening IRA history of her father and two cousins
GLOSSY blonde hair. Bright lipstick. Curled eyelashes. Painted nails. Figure-hugging outfits. Michelle O’Neill certainly isn’t what we expected. The glamorous mother-of-two was unveiled this week as the new face of Sinn Fein, the person chosen to succeed Martin McGuinness as leader of a party that numbers convicted IRA bombers and murderers in its ranks.
Could there be a greater contrast between the glitzy Miss O’Neill and the blood-soaked old guard?
She represents, to quote Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, a ‘new generation’ for the party. She is supposedly free, in other words, of the IRA baggage that tarnished Sinn Fein under her predecessor.
Miss O’Neill, 40, was not born until five years after Bloody Sunday, and was only 17 at the time of the IRA ceasefire in 1994.
Behind the rhetoric, however, and her much-publicised liberal credentials (championing ‘issues of equality, autism, disability and mental health’), behind the make-up and stylish clothes, behind her upbringing in rural County Tyrone, an interesting picture emerges of Miss O’Neill’s family history. Put simply, she was born into an IRA family. Her father and uncle were IRA prisoners and at least two of her cousins were shot, one fatally, while on ‘active duty’ with the IRA.
There was perhaps an insight into her views on the men of violence on her first day in the job when, in a rare public relations slip, she expressed empathy for four IRA men (‘young fellas’, she called them, quite an affectionate term you might think) shot dead by British troops in her home village of Clonoe in the early Nineties. She was later condemned by a family bereaved by the IRA.
It was proof, said her critics, of where Miss O’Neill’s true loyalties lay, a sentiment reflected in a mocked-up photograph posted on Twitter within hours of her becoming Sinn Fein supremo.
It depicted a ‘miniature’ Miss O’Neill in Gerry Adams’s pocket. Security sources believe Adams was once a senior IRA commander and, although he has consistently denied this, he says he will never ‘disassociate himself from the organisation’.
Nor, for all the headlines in Ulster hailing his protege’s appointment, has Miss O’Neill, it seems, judging by her comments in her interview a few days ago apparently mourning the deaths of those IRA men in Clonoe.
A republican stronghold, Clonoe is where her mother Kathleen lives and Miss O’Neill still lives with her two grown-up children. It is also where her late father, Brendan Doris, was a Sinn Fein councillor.
‘He was a brilliant man,’ Miss O’Neill said of her father in a promotional video released on the internet this week. ‘He definitely played a big part in shaping who I am today.’ Remember those words. Brendan Doris is fondly remembered in the area; not just for his time on Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council from 1989 to 2001, but also for his role in the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade in the Seventies.
Known locally as the ‘A Team’, the notorious unit became one of the IRA’s most professional and effective units, killing dozens of British soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary officers in a bombing campaign on Army bases and police stations.
It is not known what Doris’s role was, but he was interned at the height of the Troubles because of his membership of the IRA, serving time in Long Kesh and a number of other jails which became synonymous with the IRA, including Crumlin Road, Armagh and Magilligan.
Friends say he was ‘popular’ but had a ‘ bad temper’ and was regularly involved in confrontations with the prison guards.
In 1994, long after he had become a councillor, Doris was up in court for assaulting two policemen. The outcome of the trial isn’t known.
Brendan Doris died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 54, in 2006. Gerry Adams delivered a graveside eulogy at his funeral and his obituary appeared in the Republican newspaper An Phoblacht.
Miss O’Neill’s father was not the only member of her family to ‘distinguish’ himself in the East Tyrone Brigade.
Her cousin, Tony Doris, was a part of a brigade ‘death squad’ preparing to assassinate a high-ranking member of the security forces in 1991 when their stolen Vauxhall Cavalier was ambushed by the SAS shortly after crossing the bridge between Londonderry and Tyrone.
The vehicle burst into flames, killing 21-year-old Doris and his two fellow accomplices, who were burnt beyond recognition. The trio are immortalised in the brigade song Ambush At The Bridge.
Tony Doris is buried in the cemetery not far from Michelle O’Neill’s home. His headstone reads: ‘In proud and loving memory of vol. [volunteer] Tony Doris, East Tyrone Brigade, Killed on Active Service, 3rd June, 1991, aged 21 years.’
A second cousin, Gareth Doris, also joined the brigade. He was part of a cell which hurled a device packed with high explosives at a fortified police base at Coalisland, County Tyrone, in 1997.
Doris, 19, fell under a hail of bullets from anti-terrorist officers who were lying in wait. After undergoing surgery for a wound to his abdomen, Doris was charged with attempted murder and causing an explosion.
Gareth Doris was given a ten-year jail sentence but released less than three years later under the peace deal drawn up by Tony Blair which ensured an effective amnesty — widely dubbed Get Out Of Jail Free cards — for hundreds of IRA terrorists.
The Doris clan’s involvement with the IRA was highlighted by the Irish Edition, a monthly newspaper covering ‘Irish events . . . , political developments and news’ in the U.S.
Last year, it profiled Paul Doris — Michelle O’Neill’s uncle. He lives in Philadelphia and is president of Noraid, the organisation that raised funds for the Republican movement in the States.
The article is revealing because Doris refers to ‘two’ of his brothers having been in prison. Until now, we only knew of one, Brendan Doris, the father of Miss O’Neill.
‘I had two brothers in jail . . . and I would probably have wound up in prison myself,’ he said. ‘I also had a cousin killed [Tony Doris] and another wounded [Gareth Doris] by the SAS. ‘Back then, you could be locked up for anything . . . it was part of life that wherever you went you could be stopped by the British Army or the RUC. It was just terrible harassment.’
So, Michelle O’Neill might be the first Sinn Fein leader with no direct paramilitary involvement but her father, and at least two cousins we know of were in the IRA and her uncle was a passionate supporter.
Other figures in Miss O’Neill’s life have proved equally controversial.
One of her mentors after she became a full-time Sinn Fein activist following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, was Mid Ulster MP Francie Molloy.
The name might not mean very much to people outside Northern Ireland, but in 2007 he was accused, in the House of Commons, of helping to murder of a former RUC reservist who
‘My dad played a big part in shaping who I am’ Her tribute to a terrorist suspect caused outrage
was shot dead in 1979. Mr Molloy, who was pictured with Miss O’Neill this week, has always strongly denied any involvement in the attack.
At the time, he said that anyone wanting to make claims about him should not do so under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. Asked if he condemned the killing, Mr Molloy replied: ‘All murder is wrong, and we want to move on.’
Martin McCaughey is another name which crops up in the Michelle O’Neill story. He was a local Sinn Fein councillor with her father. He was also a family friend.
McCaughey and an accomplice, known as the ‘widow maker,’ were suspected to have been behind an IRA campaign against servicemen and their families in Europe during the Eighties.
Both McCaughey and the ‘widow maker’ (Dessie Grew) were shot and killed by the SAS as they left an arms cache — wearing balaclavas and carrying Russian Kalashnikov assault rifles — at isolated farm buildings near Loughgall, County Armagh, in 1990.
Martin McCaughey has never been forgotten on Dungannon Council, where he was a councillor with Miss O’Neill’s father.
In 2010, Miss O’Neill became Dungannon’s first female mayor. Among the first things she did in office was unveil a framed commemorative portrait of Martin McCaughey at a reception in the mayor’s parlour. Among the guests was the aforementioned Francie Molloy.
The event outraged opposition politicians. One said: ‘ Michelle O’Neill is supposed to be the first citizen, that means serving the whole community, not abusing her office in this sectarian offensive way. Martin McCaughey was a terrorist criminal. Any attempt to pretend otherwise is a lie.’
Even as she was being criticised, Michelle O’Neill was already tipped for bigger things at Stormont. She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007 where she estab- lished herself as the ‘poster girl’ of the new generation. As health minister, she enhanced her liberal credentials by lifting Northern Ireland’s ban on gay men donating blood.
Miss O’Neill outlined her hectic daily schedule in a recent newspaper interview. ‘I get up at 6 am, attempt a gym class, maybe spin or body pump,’ she said. ‘I always check in with emails and social media and put the radio on to hear the headlines.’
She is married to a local man, Paddy O’Neill, with whom she has two grown-up children.
On her husband’s Facebook page, there’s a picture of Frances Hughes, who is described as a ‘legend’ and one of the ‘ most fearless and tenacious guerrilla fighters of the 20th century’.
The truth is that Hughes, who took part in scores of IRA bombings and attacks on off- duty soldiers, was once the most wanted man in Ireland. He died during the 1981 hunger strike at the Maze prison.
Michelle O’ Neill will now have only a few weeks to prepare for a snap election on March 2, called after a botched green energy scheme cost- ing millions brought down the previous power-sharing arrangement.
Her supporters, including Martin McGuinness, hailed her as a ‘people’s politician’. Not for all the people in Northern Ireland, though.
Miss O’Neill’s empathy for the four IRA ‘martyrs’ from the village where she grew up prompted a furious reaction from Ann Travers, whose sister Mary was shot dead by an IRA gang in 1984 as she walked home from mass in south Belfast.
‘She [Miss O’Neill] spoke about the IRA unit that was killed [in Clonoe], but earlier that night they had attacked a police station,’ she said.
‘How does she think it is going to make the RUC widows or other family members of officers who were killed feel? It doesn’t give me hope.’
One thing’s for sure; Miss O’Neill’s father would be proud of her — and so would all his former comradesin- arms in the notorious East Tyrone Brigade.
‘How is it going to make RUC widows feel?’