EIRE NUA REPUBLICAN FLUTE BAND

OGLAIGH NA hEIREANN

B COY

2ND BATTALION BELFAST BRIGADE

 

  LIAM MC PARLAND

MICHAEL KANE

      DOROTHY MAGUIRE

MAURA MEEHAN

MICHAEL SLOAN

EAMONN MC CORMICK

PATRICK CAMPBELL

MICHAEL MAGEE

JOHN DOUGALL

BOBBY MC CRUDDEN

MICHAEL CLARKE

ANNE PARKER

JIMMY QUIGLEY

EDDIE O'RAWE

EILEEN MACKIN

CATHY MC GARTLAND

PATRICK MULVENNA

ANNE MARIE PETICREW

JIM BRYSON

PADDY TEER

JOHN STONE

JIM MC GRILLEN

TOMMY TOLAN

PAUL MC WILLIAMS

KEVIN DELANEY

TERENCE O'NEILL

BILLY CARSON

PEARSE JORDAN.

 

 

 

JIMMY MADDEN WAS BORN ON 1 OCTOBER 1961 IN WEST BELFAST. HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE BAND SINCE ITS FORMATION IN 1980 AND WAS A HELPING HAND TO ALL. HE DIED ON 1 JULY 2007 DUE TO A HEART ATTACK. JIMMY WAS A LEADING FIGURE WITHIN THE BAND ESPECIALLY TO THE YOUNG MEMBERS. HE DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO HIS FAMILY AND TO THE BAND AND FOR THIS WE ARE GREATFUL. HE WILL BE SORELY MISSED WITHIN OUR RANKS. YOU CALL THE TUNES, WE'LL KEEP PLAYING THEM.

In Memory Of Vol. Pearse Jordan
	The band would like to take this opportunity and remember one of its past members, Vol. Pearse Jordan, The members past and present of the Eire Nua R.F.B would like to thank Pearse’s mother and father Teresa and Hugh Jordan, for the continued support towards the band over the years.

 

 

Pearse Jordan was shot-dead by the RUC 25th November 1992 on the Falls Road Belfast. Pearse Jordan was driving alone along the Falls Road when the car in which he was travelling was rammed from behind by one of a number of RUC covert vehicles that had been following him. A second RUC car cut across his path blocking any possible escape. Several armed RUC men jumped from their vehicles and took up positions. Eyewitness reports told of how Pearse seemed dazed from the impact and as he exited the car he was shot three times without warning in the back falling to the ground.

Plain clothes RUC members immediately surrounded him. It was reported that he was repeatedly kicked. An ambulance arrived and took Pearse to the nearby RVH. He died within a couple of hours. 

Immediately following the incident the RUC, in a number of press briefings, told the media that they had attempted to stop a car carrying a bomb and that gloves, mask and a gun had also been recovered from the car. They also said that bomb-making material had been found in a house nearby. This was false. No gun, bomb, mask or gloves were found. And there was no bomb-making material found nearby. Pearse was driving a vehicle which had earlier been taken but which was unreported. But the misinformation fed into a media frenzy that took almost a week to clear. So too did a second RUC statement that claimed Pearse had a previous conviction for possession of explosives. This was untrue. Once again after a deliberate shoot-to-kill incident truth became the next casualty. The only true fact was that Pearse was a member of the IRA.

A press statement from the CAJ (Committee on the Administration of Justice) stated: ' It now appears as a matter of course immediately following such incidents misleading information is passed to the press in a systematic fashion'.

The inquest into Pearse's killing has yet to be completed. Like in so many others incidents where excessive and unnecessary force is used and where there also clearly exists sufficient evidence, both forensic/ballistic and eyewitness to prosecute, the DPP refused.

Pearse Jordan was stopped and held at a joint RUC/British Army road-block in West Belfast three weeks before his death, photographed and told that he would be shot dead. His mother, Teresa, was a passenger in the car that had been stopped. This was not an isolated incident.

The Jordan family has endured what can only be described as a living nightmare of harassment from the RUC. After Pearse's killing their 15 year-old son Matt was arrested, assaulted and also had his life threatened. On another occasion Pearse's parents, Hugh and Teresa, were stopped as they left their family home by the RUC and asked for their details, names and addresses. Considering that this was the fourth time in as many days by the same RUC members they refused. They were arrested, physically assaulted and put into an armoured carrier driven to the loyalist Shankill area and thrown out. Thankfully they managed to make their way back to a safe area. They were eventually forced to close their city center small business due to harassment.

Liam Paul Thompson 25 years, from Dermot Hill, West Belfast, was shot dead by the UFF while he was a passenger in a friends’ car at Springfield Park on 27 April 1994.

           On the night of his death Mr Thompson was with his friend, Paddy Elley, a taxi driver. Around 11.30pm the two men were in Mr Elley’s car, Mr Thompson in the passenger seat, when it was driven into Springfield Park, a cul-de-sac off the Springfield Road near the Ballymurphy area in west Belfast. The car was driven to the bottom of Springfield Park and as it turned to go back up the street a unionist paramilitary gunman stepped through a hole in ‘Peace-line,’ separating the nationalist Springfield Park area from the unionist Springmartin area, and opened fire with an automatic rifle. Mr Thompson was hit in the chest and died a short time later. Mr Elley, also wounded in the shooting, managed to get out off the car and escape. 

          The UDA/UFF claimed responsibility for the killing. The weapon used by the gunman was believed to have been an AK47 assault rifle, part of the huge haul of weaponry imported into the North of Ireland from South Africa in 1987 by unionist/loyalist paramilitaries with the knowledge and the assistance of various British intelligence agencies.