The Irish National Liberation Army Belfast Brigade was the main brigade area of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). The other Brigade areas were in Derry which was split between two battalions, the first in Derry City, and the second battalion in south County Londonderry, and County Armagh which was also split into two battalions, a south Armagh and a north Armagh battalion,Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions (1994) pg.76-80 with smaller units in Newry, east and west County Tyrone and south County Fermanagh.Jack Holland & Henry Mcdonad - INLA: Deadly Divisions p.62
Formation The Irish National Liberation Army Belfast Brigade or simply INLA Belfast Brigade was a unit of the Irish Republican and Socialist Paramilitary organization the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) that was based in Belfast. Along with the INLA's Derry and Armagh brigades the Belfast INLA was one of the most active in the organization during its 24 year paramilitary campaign. It was formed in 1975, a few months after the Irish National Liberation Army and the groups political wing the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) were themselves formed in Dublin in 1974 by the groups' leader Seamus Costello and his supporters. The INLA and IRSP were formed when Volunteers in the Official IRA (OIRA) left that group as they were frustrated with the progress it was making and the OIRA's 1972 ceasefire. In a 1975 interview for the IRSP's first edition of their newspaper called The Starry Plough, Seamus Costello claimed that in Belfast 200 members had left the Official Republican movement to join the new IRSP movement.
Activity and actions The INLA Belfast Brigade's first actions were feuding with the Official IRA. Dissenters had left the group early in 1974 led by Paul Tinnelly, who formed the short-lived Tinnelly Brigade, and the OIRA moved quickly to crush that group and met little resistance.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions pg.68
The OIRA hoped to do the same with the newly formed INLA which used the cover name People's Liberation Army (PLA) in its first few months. The OIRA met more stronger resistance from the INLA than they did with any other dissenters, this was mainly due to the support Costello had & how highly regarded he was among his followers & the size of the INLA. Most of the OIRA/INLA feud was played out in Belfast. Six people were killed in the feud and several others were injured, mainly from the OIRA. The highest-profile victim of the feud was Official IRA Belfast Brigade OC Billy McMillen who was rumored to have been killed by Gerard Steenson and Brendan McNamee (a former Provisional IRA volunteer) at Dunlewy Street near the Falls Road. INLA Volunteers also tried to kill an Official IRA member and a veteran Republican Sean Garland. He was seriously injured in an INLA attack in Dublin on 13 March 1975 by Volunteers from the INLA Belfast Brigade. The attacks on McMillen and Garland were not sanctioned by the INLA Army Council and INLA Chief of Staff Seamus Costello was reportedly furious when he heard the news of the attacks. The Belfast Brigade staff believed that since it was the one directly under attack from the OIRA that it should decide when and whom to attack, not the INLA leadership which was based in Dublin and not under threat from the feud.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions pg.52, 68 McNamee who helped kill McMillen was himself shot dead soon after by the OIRA in Suffolk, Belfast. The feud between the OIRA and INLA ended soon after this killing when a truce was agreed upon. The INLA would be involved in two more feuds during its 24-year armed campaign, against the IPLO in 1986/87 and an internal feud in 1996, both of these feuds were also mainly played out in Belfast as well.
The brigade's first action against a member of the British security forces occurred on the 9 August 1975 when Belfast INLA units injured two soldiers from the British Army: the first attack in Ballymurphy a sniper shot a soldier in the neck and the second along the Lower Falls a soldier suffered a serious head injury. There was an attack on soldiers in Divis Flats as well but the unit claimed no hits.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions pg.82 It wasn't until a year later that the brigade killed a member of the British Army in the Turf Lodge area of Belfast, when a sniper shot dead private Andrew Crocker who was shot in the neck and died the next day.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions pg.82, pg.359 In September 1976 however the INLA was accused of a double sectarian murder when Volunteers from the Belfast brigade shot dead two Protestant civilians at their home in Ormonde Park, Finaghy. The INLA claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the INLA developed into a modestly large urban guerrilla organisation in Northern Ireland, operating primarily from the Divis Flats complex in west Belfast, which, as a result, became colloquially known as "the planet of the Irps" (a reference to the IRSP and the film Planet of the Apes).The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, Penguin Books, p. 290 The brigade went through a number of leaders in its first year but its first full-time Officer commanding (OC) was Ronnie Bunting whose father was Ulster Loyalist politician and British Army Major Ronald Bunting who was a follower of Ian Paisley. The Belfast INLA was the most active operational area of the INLA, and their capabilities were enhanced after obtaining a number of AK47s from the Middle East via a connection with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1978. which were first used by the Belfast INLA in August 1978, injuring a number of British soldiers.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions pg.130,360 After Bunting was shot dead along with an IRSP member by the UDA in 1980, Gerard Steenson became OC of the INLA in Belfast. Steenson became the brigades Operations Officer in 1980 & was OC from 1981 - 1983. Around the same time period Jimmy Brown (Irish republican) became the brigades Intelligence officer (I/O), Thomas "Ta" Power, Hugh Torney Martin "Rook" O'Prey & future supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick was also highly active in the brigade during the early 1980s.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions (Updated edition) pg.259 This was the most active period in the INLA's history. Both Steenson & Brown would later go on to form the IPLO & attack their former comrades in the INLA. In September 1982 an INLA unit detonated a bomb in Divis Flats aimed at killing British soldiers but instead killed two young local boys aged 14 & 12 and a British soldier. This bombing prompted an angry response from residents of the Divis Flats, and about 200 women held a protest march at the IRSP's offices on the Falls Road.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions (Updated edition) pg.259, 260 Eleven days after the Divis Flats bombing an INLA unit carried out another bomb attack against the British Army in west Belfast, this time killing a British soldier with a booby-trapped bomb attached to a security gate. After this attack the INLA warned that it would increase its bombing attacks on British security forces.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald - INLA: Deadly Divisions (Updated edition) pg.261
On 15 June 1984 Paul "Bonanza" McCann, one of the INLA's most active members in Belfast, a Staff Officer and an opponent of Tom McCartan's leadership, was surrounded by an RUC unit in a Lenadoon flat in west Belfast along with three other INLA volunteers, one of whom was future INLA leader Gino Gallagher. McCann was armed with an AK47 that he stole from an OIRA arms dump. Three of the INLA volunteers, including Gallagher gave themselves up, as three RUC officers tried to enter the flat McCann hit them with a burst of automatic fire, badly injuring two & killing a third RUC man Michael Todd (22), McCann was also dead hit by a ricocheting bullet from his AK47.https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dyndeaths.pl? querytype=date&day=15&month=06&year=1984 The INLA paid tribute to McCann saying he was "one of the finest soldiers ever to fight for national liberation & socialism".Irish News, 19 June 1984 McCann was the brother of Sinn Féin councillor Francis McCann. At Paul "Bonanza" McCann's funeral, his coffin was carried by then Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams.Jack Holland & Henry McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (1994) pg.256,363 & INLA unit (2 men & a woman) fired a volley of shots over his coffin. The INLA Belfast lost direction in the mid '80s and a feud with the newly created Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO) weakened the group further. The IPLO was formed by former INLA members Gerard Steenson and the new group's leader Jimmy Brown. Hugh Torney became OC of the INLA in Belfast during the feud, narrowly surviving an ambush ordered by Steenson in which senior INLA men John O'Reilly and Thomas 'Ta' Power were killed. A few months later Torney was responsible for an ambush in Belfast which resulted in the death of Steenson along with another IPLO member.
During the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the INLA barely existed as a coherent paramilitary force. It wasn't until the early-mid 90s that the Belfast INLA began carrying out paramilitary attacks again. It is believed Gino Gallagher was in charge of the brigade staff during this period. In 1992 the INLA shot and seriously wounded several Protestant civilians in Belfast, usually claiming afterwards they were loyalists.Fortnight Magazine, Issue 306, p. 28-29. Fortnight Publications, 1992.Sunday Tribune, 4 October 1992.https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch92.htm#101292 CAIN: A Chronology of the Conflict - 1992 - Thursday 10 December 1992: The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) carried out a gun attack and wounded a man who worked for Belfast City Council. In January 1993 the brigade shot and seriously injured leading UVF member John "Bunter" Graham at his house on the Shankill Road. Later that same month the brigade shot dead a Protestant civilian in what the INLA claimed was a case of mistaken identity. Throughout 1992 and 1993 the INLA was responsible for sporadic gun attacks on British security forces in Belfast,Sunday Life 27 December 1992. injuring an RUC officer in August 1993 after INLA members opened fire from a hijacked vehicle at Grosvenor Road RUC station. Liverpool Echo, 24 August 1993. In June 1993 the INLA shot dead a former RUC officer in a hotel in Belfast. On at least two occasions the INLA also tried to kill off-duty members of the Royal Irish Regiment, although the RUC denied one man left with serious injuries after an attack at his home in Dunmurray was a member of the regiment.Irish Independent, 21 July 1993. In September and October 1993 as loyalist paramilitary attacks on the nationalist community intensified the INLA made several attempts to assassinate senior members of the UDA, including Johnny Adair; three INLA gunmen were intercepted and arrested by the RUC near his home in the Shankill area of Belfast.Irish Independent, 22 October 1993.Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland: 1993. Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN).