IRA DISSIDENTS
Belfast-born republican Anthony McIntyre was awakened by his wife, Carrie, in their home in Drogheda, just south of the border in Ireland in the early hours on 19 April 2019. “It’s not true, it can’t be true,” she was saying. “Lyra has been shot dead.”
Drowsy, confused and not quite believing what he had just been told, McIntyre fell back asleep. He awoke the following morning thinking, “What did she tell me?” McIntyre looked online, and saw it was true: their good friend, the 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee, had been observing a riot in Derry the previous night when she was shot by a republican gunman.
In the immediate aftermath of McKee’s killing, news crews from around the world descended on the Derry housing estate to pursue the story of what had happened to this young journalist and why. To the outside world, the Northern Ireland conflict had been settled with the historic Good Friday agreement in 1998. But McKee’s death was a reminder that, although the Provisional IRA’s campaign against British rule had ended with the ceasefires of the 1990s, violent action had been carried on by dissident republican groups.
Responsibility for McKee’s death was quickly laid at the door of the New IRA, one of the two armed republican groups still committed to the fight for a united Ireland. The New IRA and the Continuity IRA regard republicans from Sinn Féin and the Provisional Movement who were involved in the peace process as sellouts, and demand that armed struggle continue until Irish unity is achieved. Both groups continue to organise and recruit, and remain capable of launching attacks. Between April 2019 and March 2020, police in Northern Ireland recorded 21 bombings or attempted bombings and 40 shootings; 30 firearms were seized and 774 rounds of ammunition found. The main targets of these groups are the police and security services, but, in the same timeframe, there were numerous casualties from punishment attacks against drug dealers and antisocial elements involved in petty crim e.
The New IRA had been particularly active in the months preceding McKee’s death. In January 2019, a New IRA bomb exploded outside the courthouse in Derry and, in March, parcel bombs were sent to British army recruitment personnel and commercial targets in England and Scotland (all were made safe except one which partially exploded, but no one was hurt).
McKee had been living in Derry for two weeks when rioting broke out in the Catholic Creggan estate after police raids of republican homes in the area. In the lead-up to Easter, police stepped up searches for materials, weapons or ammunition used by the New or Continuity IRAs. In recent years, commemorations of the 1916 Easter uprising against British rule have
