The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve.
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest single incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the actual location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand but police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI; Irish: Seirbhís Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann; Ulster-Scots: Polis Service o Norlin Airlan), officially the Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary), is the police service responsible for law enforcement and the prevention of crime within Northern Ireland.
James Hugh Allister,, is a British Unionist politician and barrister in Northern Ireland. He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) political party in 2007, leading the party since its formation. Allister has served as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Antrim since 2011, and is the TUV’s only representative in the Assembly.
Free Derry was a self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland that existed between 1969 and 1972 during the Troubles. It emerged during the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, which sought to end discrimination against the Irish Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government. The civil rights movement highlighted the sectarianism and police brutality of the overwhelmingly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
The Milltown Cemetery attack took place on 16 March 1988 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the large funeral of three Provisional IRA members killed in Gibraltar, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, Michael Stone, attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols. He had learned there would be no police or armed IRA members at the cemetery. As Stone then ran towards the nearby motorway, a large crowd chased him and he continued shooting and throwing grenades. Some of the crowd caught Stone and beat him, but he was rescued by the police and arrested. Three people had been killed and more than 60 wounded. The "unprecedented, one-man attack" was filmed by television news crews and caused shock around the world.
The Battle of the Bogside was a large three-day riot that took place from 12 to 14 August 1969 in Derry, Northern Ireland. Thousands of Catholic/Irish nationalist residents of the Bogside district, organised under the Derry Citizens' Defence Association, clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and loyalists. It sparked widespread violence elsewhere in Northern Ireland, led to the deployment of British troops, and is often seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles.
Sir John Charles Hermon was the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary from 1980 to 1989.
The Claudy bombing occurred on 31 July 1972, when three car bombs exploded mid-morning, two on Main Street and one on Church Street in Claudy in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The attack killed nine civilians, injured thirty and became known as "Bloody Monday". Those who planted the bombs had attempted to send a warning before the explosions took place. The warning was delayed, however, because the telephones were out of order due to an earlier bomb attack. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) issued an immediate denial of responsibility, and later stated that "an internal court of inquiry" had found that its local unit did not carry out the attack. On the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing, there was a review of the case and in December 2002 it was revealed that the IRA had been responsible for the bomb explosions.
Sir Ronald Flanagan is a retired senior Northern Irish police officer. He was the Home Office Chief Inspector of Constabulary for the United Kingdom excluding Scotland. Sir Ronnie was previously the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) since its creation in 2001 to 2002, and had been Chief Constable of its predecessor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) until 2001.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, or CEOP Command, is a command of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), and is tasked to work both nationally and internationally to bring online child sex offenders, including those involved in the production, distribution and viewing of child abuse material, to the UK courts. The centre was formed in April 2006 as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and was absorbed into the NCA on 7 October 2013 by the Crime and Courts Act 2013.
Sir Paul Robert Stephenson is a British retired police officer who was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner from 2009 to 2011.
Martin McGartland is a former British informer who infiltrated the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1989 to pass information to RUC Special Branch.
Jim Wells is a Northern Ireland politician, formerly of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for South Down from 1998 to 2022; he was one the longest serving MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Wells is also a former Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and was a councillor on Down District Council from 2001 to 2011.
Madeleine Beth McCann is a British missing person who, at the age of 3, disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The Daily Telegraph described her disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.
Brice Dickson is a barrister from Northern Ireland and Emeritus Professor of International and Comparative Law at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast. Formerly Professor of Law at the University of Ulster, he became the first Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) on its establishment in 1999, serving two three-year terms. He was a key figure related to the Holy Cross dispute in which Loyalists sought to blockade a Catholic primary school in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast. After his time on the Commission Dickson worked as a Professor of International and Comparative Law at Queen's University Belfast from 2005 until his retirement in 2017.
Ken Barrett is a Northern Irish former loyalist paramilitary. A leading figure within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Barrett was involved in collusion between loyalists and the British security forces during the Troubles.
The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Protestant establishment. The Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was founded by Conn McCluskey and his wife, Patricia. Conn was a doctor, and Patricia was a social worker who had worked in Glasgow for a period, and who had a background in housing activism. Both were involved in the Homeless Citizens League, an organisation founded after Catholic women occupied disused social housing. The HCL evolved into the CSJ, focusing on lobbying, research and publicising discrimination. The campaign for Derry University was another mid-1960s campaign.
Jamie Bryson is a loyalist activist in Northern Ireland who originally attracted media attention as a leading figure in the Belfast City Hall flag protests. He is the author of four books and is the editor of Unionist Voice, a monthly unionist newsletter and online site. He also runs a consultancy business focusing on loyalist public relations, legal work and advocacy.
Simon Byrne, is a senior English police officer. He served as Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) from July 2019 until he resigned in September 2023. He was the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police from 2009 to 2011 and the Assistant Commissioner for Territorial Policing in the Metropolitan Police Service from 2011 to 2014. He then served as Chief Constable of Cheshire Constabulary from 2014 to 2017.
