Tyrone Volunteers’ families strengthen bonds with Galway republicans

ÓGLAIGH Brian Campbell’s and Colm McGirr’s families in Tyrone have presented members of Galway Sinn Féin with plaques in a moving recognition of the bonds that have developed between republicans from the two counties.

Last year, members of the Mulvoy, Campbell, McGirr Sinn Féin Cumann in Galway – Councillor Mairéad Farrell, Michael Barden, Martin Concannon and Stephanie Flaherty Klapp – travelled to Tyrone to honour the memory of  Brian Campbell and Colm McGirr, were shot dead by an undercover SAS squad on 4 December 1983.

They were accompanied by two members of the Liam Mellows Cumann, Naoise Ó Faolain and Dermot Browne, who proudly champion republican ideals on the NUI Galway campus.

After a wreath-laying ceremony at their gravesides, family members brought their guests to the site of the deadly ambush, a very emotional moment for everyone involved.

Precisely one year later, all those who attended the annual wreath-laying ceremony were presented with republican plaques, a heartfelt gesture that strengthens the bonds between the two cumainn.

◼︎ On 4 December 1983, at the height a crown forces' shoot-to-kill policy, two unarmed IRA Volunteers were summarily executed by undercover British operatives. 

Nineteen-year-old Brian Campbell and 23-year-old Colm McGirr, from Coalisland, County Tyrone, were gunned down in a hail of bullets on Sunday afternoon 4 December 1983 by an undercover SAS squad, seconds after they left their car to check an IRA arms dump off the Cloghodg Road. 

The fact that the SAS were in the immediate vicinity of the dump, showed they had awaited the arrival of the Volunteers and executed them on the spot without any attempt to arrest or detain them.