Dominic McGlinchey (1954 – 10 February 1994) was an Irish republican paramilitary leader and chief of staff of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in the early 1980s. Known for his role in cross-border bombings and assassinations during the Troubles, he was nicknamed "Mad Dog" by the press. He was imprisoned multiple times and survived an assassination attempt before being shot dead in 1994. His legacy remains divisive, with portrayals in Irish fiction, music, and political commentary.
Background The IRA's last campaign in Northern Ireland, called off in 1962, failed to make an impact on either the government or nationalist consciousness. This failure contributed to the organisation's gradual shift toward Marxist politics. Since Northern Ireland's creation in 1922, the Catholic minority had experienced varying degrees of discrimination from the Protestant and Unionist majority. By the mid-1960s, a growing popular and peaceful campaign emerged to demand civil rights for Catholics. The Northern Ireland government accused the campaign of being a front for republicanism and communism, and indeed, the IRA had infiltrated it from its foundation. Within a few years, tensions between the two communities escalated into violence, and the IRA sought to position itself as the defender of the Catholic population.
In 1969, the IRA split into two factions: the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. The Officials declared a ceasefire in 1972 and embraced non-violent civil agitation, while the Provisionals intensified their armed campaign against British forces. In 1974, the Officials expelled Seamus Costello, their Operations Officer, for what they termed "factional activity". Costello, dissatisfied with the leadership's rejection of armed struggle, went on to found a new organisation that would combine the Provisionals’ militancy with the Marxist politics of the Officials.
The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), were founded on 8 December 1974 at the Spa Hotel in Lucan, Dublin. According to journalist Liam Clarke, the Officials made a "determined effort to strangle the breakaway INLA at birth". A bloody feud soon broke out between the groups in Belfast, resulting in six deaths. Costello had fought in the Border campaign in south County Londonderry, and his reputation still carried weight in the area. As Holland and McDonald note, his new organisation had no difficulty attracting recruits from the Officials — by 1977, nearly the entire Official IRA membership in the area had joined the INLA.
Founder members included Jimmy Brown, Tom McCartan, Gino Gallagher, Dessie O’Hare, and Gerard "Dr Death" Steenson — most of whom would later fight alongside or against McGlinchey over the following decade.
Early life Dominic McGlinchey was born in 1954, in the family home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry. He was the third of eleven children in a staunchly republican family. His father owned a garage; some of his father's police customers would later die at McGlinchey's hands. His mother Monica was a devout Catholic. McGlinchey had seven brothers and four sisters. Educated at the local school, he was a bright child, although not outstandingly so, classmates later said. When he was 16 he began an apprenticeship in his father's garage. About this time he was joining the numerous civil rights marches that were taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but Dillon speculates that "he was reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offered glamour and a close identification with his own community".
Internment and Irish republicanism
In August 1971 the British army launched Operation Demetrius, which involved the mass arrest and of 342 people suspected of being involved with the IRA. McGlinchey was one of those interned as a result, interrupting his fledgeling career as a car mechanic. He spent five days being interrogated in Shackleton Barracks; like his fellow internees, he had no access to either family or legal representation. He was then transferred to Magilligan Prison, and later Long Kesh. There he met IRA veterans from the Border campaign, some of whom ran classes in left-wing politics—based on the writings of Marx and James Connolly—as well as military tactics. One man imprisoned with McGlinchey later recalled him as "a big kid out of his depth" who possessed only a limited knowledge of republican history and ideology.
Released in either May or June 1972, McGlinchey's experience appears to have been the catalyst for him to join the physical force movement. Coming from a deeply republican area—the failed Border Campaign still a fresh memory—his background gave him "first-class" republican credentials. For those intending to follow such a path, there was still a choice to be had between joining the Official or the Provisional IRAs; McGlinchey chose neither. Instead, he joined with Francis Hughes—a childhood friend—Ian Milne and Tom McElwee, and together they formed their own informal unit. McGlinchey later explained their rationale for doing so during what he called "that colourful period": "You meet fellows who now say they had a political philosophy but they had not. You just went out and did it. When I was doing that at the start. I had no idea I was reacting against the State."
The choice of McGlinchey and Hughes to join the Provisionals was probably, Dillon speculates, based on its local image. Particularly in the clubs and bars McGlinchey frequented, "young Provisionals quickly acquired a hero-worship status", and the movement was rooted in the same romantic nationalism that he had grown up with. Having joined the IRA's South Derry Brigade, he almost immediately went on the run. Often going south for days or weeks at a time, he was able to avoid immediate re-internment. His training, McGlinchey said, was rudimentary, later stating: "I just picked it up as I went along". Although he occasionally attended IRA training camps with Hughes—who showed an innate aptitude for marksmanship—McGlinchey's skills were in organising and logistics.
McGlinchey was arrested in 1973 for possession of guns, for which he received 18 months imprisonment. Back in Long Kesh, he recommenced his studies in politics and history. This time the class leaders were not old Border campaigners, but relatively young Provisionals. During the period of his incarceration, the external leadership were in secret negotiations with the British government and was considering a ceasefire. McGlinchey did not approve, telling Hughes that he felt that there was an element within the Army Council that was insufficiently committed to the armed struggle.
IRA career
On his release from Long Kesh McGlinchey was appointed "Double O"—Operations Officer—for the region, and lived on the run for the next three years. This promotion, says Dillon, now allowed him to select his own targets. Reuniting with Hughes and the others, he told them that he would not become an "armchair general" and would continue to take part in their operations. They carried out frequent and brutal attacks on the British Army. Their activities, says the author Tim Pat Coogan, became the stuff of legend. Such was their impact, says David Beresford in his book Ten Men Dead—giving the example of their murders of Constables John McCracken and Keneth Sheehan in Magherafelt on 8 April 1977—that the Royal Ulster Constabulary issued wanted posters of McGlinchey and the others. These posters—described by later writers as "an unprecedented step" and "a desperate attempt to elicit public support"—listed at length the bombings, shootings and deaths the men were wanted for.
According to McGlinchey, the trio expanded their theatre of operations—"we didn't confine ourselves to South Derry", he said—after the IRA's failed 1974 ceasefire. Their activities included bombing barracks (for example, Magherafelt and Toomebridge), towns (including Kilrea, Maghera and Ballymena), as well as killing RUC and UDR men. He particularly favoured those of the latter who lived in isolated, exposed houses, as this made them particularly vulnerable. The towns and police stations he targeted were always in strongly nationalist towns, as he felt that not only would the operation be popular but they would have good escape routes. McGlinchey later calculated that this amounted to over 200 operations over "an intricate maze of fields, lanes, country roads and ditches with which they were intimately familiar". They knew where to hide, how to escape, and who was sympathetic to them; the latter provided them not only with food and drink but intelligence on police and army movements. On one occasion in 1977, McGlinchey evaded the RUC in Randalstown, Antrim—three members of which he had just shot at—with the help of a friendly fisherman who hijacked a motorboat and ferried him across Lough Neagh to Tyrone and his escape. The author Ed Moloney interviewed an anonymous IRA man from the time who described McGlinchey's gang, as well as relations between them and the IRA leadership of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
Dominic McGlinchey, Frank Hughes, and their gang were in Donegal hiding out for a while. They looked like mujahideen, longhaired, scruffy, heavily armed, driving wrecks of cars. They were fed up staying in cow barns when they heard Adams and McGuinness were on holiday in the area. They found out where Adams was staying and turned up at his chalet, where they were sniffily shown the door. There was no way Gerry and Colette would let that crowd darken their door. So then they went to where McGuinness was staying. He was annoyed and cursed them up and down, but he let them in and allowed them to stay.
In June 1973, McGlinchey's unit left a car bomb in Coleraine; six people were killed. McGlinchey was also active in internal security, particularly hunting down those he believed to be assisting the security forces. His victims included a caterer from Derry City who was employed at Fort George British Army base. In March 1977 McGlinchey was allegedly part of a gang that killed 67-year-old Hester McMullan, a retired postmistress, in Toomebridge. They had already shot and wounded her son, an RUC reservist, and she died when they then fired on her house. The IRA claimed the attack. A later commentator described how "the woman had been riddled with bullets during an attack on her house in the early hours of the morning, and other members of her family had narrowly escaped". The SAS placed patrols to intercept McGlinchey in areas their intelligence expected him to be in the north, especially along the border. On one such occasion, believing him to be drinking in a specific bar, they raided the house, firing into the ceiling. The SAS reasoned that the patrons would throw themselves to the floor—all except McGlinchey, whom they expected to reach for a weapon and return fire. However, their intelligence was erroneous; McGlinchey was elsewhere.