Bessbrook landmine attack

Convicted prisoners were refused the same rights as internees until July 1972, when Special Category Status was introduced following a hunger strike by 40 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners led by the veteran republican Billy McKee. Special Category, or political, status meant prisoners were in some ways treated similarly to prisoners of war - including not having to wear prison uniforms or do prison work.

In 1976, the British government ended Special Category Status for newly convicted paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. The policy was not introduced for existing prisoners, but for those convicted of offences after 1 March 1976.[3] The end to Special Category Status was a serious threat to the authority which the paramilitary leaderships inside prison had been able to exercise over their own men, as well as being a propaganda blow.

There were immediate protests by the republican prisoners to try to regain Special Category Status, the blanket protest first, then the dirty protest and then the 1980 hunger strike called by Brendan Hughes - which the participants ended after 53 days. The 1981 protest began in March 1981, led by Bobby Sands; when Sands died on 5 May there was rioting in some nationalist areas.

There was heightened activity at the time of the protests as well by the IRA outside the prison. In April 1979, the IRA killed four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers in a roadside bombing near Bessbrook.[4] Later in 1979, the IRA carried out its worst attack on the British Army during the whole of The Troubles during the Warrenpoint Ambush in which 18 soldiers were killed and 6 injured.[5]

In May 1980, during the Antrim Road standoff, an IRA active service unit dubbed the "M60 Gang" because of their use of a M60 machine gun killed a high ranking SAS officer and injured a second.[6]

A number of prison officers were killed during this period.[7][8][9]

The attack happened when the soldiers were travelling in an armoured personnel carrier along a road near Bessbrook in south Armagh. The estimated 1,000 lb bomb was detonated by command wire while the British Army vehicle drove right on top of the land mine causing a massive explosion and the vehicle was destroyed, killing the soldiers immediately. The explosion left a giant crater in the ground.

An army spokesman said:

The 1,000-pound land mine apparently was concealed in a culvert underneath a remote road at Altnaveigh, just north of the border with the Irish Republic and two miles from McCreesh's village of Camlough.[10]

It was the worst attack the British Army suffered in Ireland since the 1979 Warrenpoint ambush, and was the fourth worst attack suffered by the British Army at the hands of the Provisional IRA in Ireland (the British Army suffered several worse attacks in England) during the whole conflict from 1969 - 1998, but at the time it was the second worst attack they had suffered in Ireland.[11][12]

• Lisburn van bombing
• Ballygawley bus bombing