Death in Derry Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA’s War Against the British

When civil rights protests in the 1960s gave way to armed struggle, the Provisional IRA in Derry – both city and county – led the fight against the British security forces. In the city Martin McGuinness – a young butcher’ s assistant from the Bogside – quickly rose through the ranks, launching a bombing campaign that reduced the city centre to rubble. In tandem, the IRA’ s active service units fought the British Army in the streets and alleys of the Bogside, Creggan, Shantallow and the Waterside. Out in the townlands, a new generation from the county’ s traditional republican families waged an equally ruthless war against their neighbours in the RUC and UDR. The Derry Brigade’ s success would help propel McGuinness to the very top of the IRA’ s Army Council. By the early 1980s the Derry Brigade appeared untouchable. However, in reality, Special Branch and British Intelligence had infiltrated it from top to bottom and almost destroyed the brigade. By the mid-1990s its war was all but over, its ranks decimated by death and incarceration. This is the story of that war told by those from all sides who survived it.

A graduate of Bristol University and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Jonathan Trigg served as an infantry officer in the Royal Anglian Regiment, completing tours in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, as well as the Gulf. He is the author of over a dozen books of military history, including Death in the Fields: The IRA and East Tyrone (Merrion Press), and his book on the destruction of Hitler’ s Axis allies in Russia, Death on the Don, which was nominated for The Pushkin Prize for Russian history in 2014.