June-August 1967

June 6th, 1967--On his way back to the U.S. after participating in ceremonies in France commemorating the 21st anniversary of the D-Day invasion, President Lyndon Johnson makes a brief stopover in Dublin to confer with Irish prime minister John Lynch on the question of possible U.S. armed forces logistical support to the regular Irish army in future combat operations against the FUA.

June 8th, 1967--Two Irish Air Corps jets are shot down northwest of Dungarvan; one of the jets crashes into an Irish regular army supply convoy, killing 40 and injuring 62.

June 9th, 1967--Chicago police thwart an assassination attempt on the city’s Irish consul-general. On further questioning, the would- be assassin is identified as a local FUA sympathizer who had been previously arrested for defacing anti-FUA posters on Chicago’s South Side.

June 11th, 1967--The prime suspect in the foiled attempt to murder the Irish consul-general in Chicago two days earlier is indicted in a U.S. federal court in Detroit.

June 12th, 1967--Radio Free Ulster broadcasts a propaganda recording calling on Irish nationals in Great Britain to begin armed rebellion against the British government; the hope among the FUA leadership is that such a revolt will forestall London from doing anything to help Dublin crush the FUA. However, the propaganda appeal falls upon deaf ears as far as most Irish living in Britain are concerned; almost no one among them wants anything to do with the organization, and many of them openly detest the group-- in extreme cases a few of the more paranoid among them even believe the FUA is a front concocted by the British government to give Whitehall a pretext for invading and re- occupying the rest of Ireland.

June 14th, 1967--London’s largest Irish newspaper publishes an editorial rejecting the FUA’s call for an insurrection among Irish nationals living in Great Britain.

June 16th, 1967--Gerry Adams serves as keynote speaker at an Irish Unity Party of Ulster rally in Antrim; before a audience of close to 50,000 people he pledges to continue working to keep Ulster unified with the rest of Ireland “even if they shoot me dead where I stand”. Moments after he makes this statement it nearly becomes reality when an FUA assassin tries to kill him with a hand grenade; the grenade turns out to be a dud, and the would-be assassin is arrested by two Garda agents.

June 17th, 1967--Irish Communist militias attack an FUA weapons depot northwest of Belfast. 28 FUA insurgents are killed and 15 wounded in the attack; Communist casualties total 11 dead and 7 wounded.

June 20th, 1967--FBI agents raid the Seattle home of a suspected FUA sympathizer as part of Operation Finn MacCool.

June 22nd, 1967--In commemoration of the 26th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Russia, the Communist Party of Ireland holds an anti-FUA rally near the grounds of the former German embassy in Dublin.

June 23rd, 1967--Romanian premier Nicolae Ceaucescu rejects the FUA’s request to open a “people’s embassy” in Bucharest.

June 24th, 1967--The Romanian embassy in Dublin is attacked by masked gunmen suspected to be linked to the FUA; there are no deaths in the attack, but one of the gunmen is seriously wounded in an exchange of fire with the embassy guards.

June 28th, 1967--The United States Congress approves a multi-million dollar military aid package for Ireland aimed at strengthening the Irish regular army against the FUA’s relentless guerrilla campaign.

July 1st, 1967--On the centennial anniversary of the founding of modern Canada, thousands of Irish-Canadians gather in Toronto to denounce the FUA.

July 3rd, 1967--30 Irish regular army troops are killed and 17 more wounded in a firefight with FUA guerrillas near Castledeagh. Radio Free Ulster triumphantly boasts after the skirmish that “soon our heroic fighters shall be hoisting the flag of a free and socialist Ulster over Belfast”.

July 4th, 1967--Irish-Americans take to the streets in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles and Detroit to denounce the FUA and show support for Irish unity. That same day thousands of young Irish-Canadian men gather in Ottawa to sign up as volunteers to fight the FUA.

July 8th, 1967--The RTE Armagh news bureau is bombed by FUA guerrilla troops; eight people are killed and seventeen injured in the blast.

July 10th, 1967--The director of Britain’s MI-5 counterintelligence service meets with the head of Ireland’s Garda police force for a debriefing on the latest information obtained by British police on suspected FUA operatives in the United Kingdom.

July 11th, 1967--Radio Free Ulster broadcasts an hour-long speech by FUA general secretary Liam Delaney denouncing the Irish Unity Party of Ulster as “leeches” and “traitors” deserving of nothing more or less than execution; in response, the party makes its own radio speech vowing to resist all attempts by the FUA to destroy it.

July 14th, 1967--French president Charles de Gaulle uses his annual Bastille Day speech to voice his support for the preservation of Irish unity; within hours after the speech ends, the French embassy in Dublin is bombed in what is suspected to be an FUA terror attack.

July 15th, 1967--An Irish regular army battalion commander is shot and killed while leading a search-and-destroy operation against a suspected FUA guerrilla base southwest of Antrim. At the time the killing is thought to be the work of the insurgents; not until ten years later will it emerge that the battalion commander was actually the victim of friendly fire.

July 18th, 1967--Five people are killed and twenty-eight injured in an FUA machine gun attack against the Irish Unity Party of Ulster’s Londonderry branch office.

July 22nd, 1967--Three suspected FUA sympathizers are arrested in Paris after being identified as having possible ties to the Bastille Day bombing attack on the French embassy in Dublin. On their arrest, the three Irish nationals are extradited back to Ireland.

July 23rd, 1967--The British counterintelligence service MI-5 picks up hints that the FUA is plotting some kind of attack on Buckingham Palace in the next thirty days. Details concerning the nature of the attack are sketchy at the time, but one troubling clue is contained in reports that a large quantity of explosives normally employed for building demolitions has gone missing from a construction site near Shannon.

July 24th, 1967--French president Charles de Gaulle postpones a long- scheduled state visit to Canada in order to meet with survivors of the FUA’s Bastille Day bomb attack on the French embassy in Dublin. That same day Irish regular army troops repulse an FUA attack on the Belfast mayor’s office.

July 28th, 1967--FUA secretary general Liam Delaney is secretly flown to Stockholm for surgery to remove a potentially cancerous tumor in his right lung.

July 31st, 1967--Irish army special forces troops, covertly assisted by a squad of British SAS commandos, raid a suspected FUA ammunition and weapons storage complex near the village of Killybegs. The SAS men’s involvement in the raid marks the first time British soldiers have set foot on Irish soil since the last units of the British Army contingent in Ulster withdrew from that region seven years earlier.

August 3rd, 1967--FUA deputy secretary general Seamus Murphy is named Liam Delaney’s successor as leader of the organization in the event Delaney dies prematurely. The appointment is made as part of a change to Delaney’s last will and testament.

August 6th, 1967--A group of Buddhists visiting Hiroshima to mark the 22nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bomb attack on that city uses the occasion to also pray for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing civil war in northern Ireland.

August 8th, 1967--FUA insurgents seize the village of Downpatrick.

August 11th, 1967--Irish regular army armored units commence a pincer movement against FUA occupation forces in Downpatrick. The offensive quickly stalls after the second wave comes under attack by anti-tank rockets fired from FUA defensive positions at the edge of town.

August 12th, 1967--Reserve troops are dispatched from southern Ireland to break the logjam at Downpatrick. Irish Air Corps fighter jets bomb the main FUA positions in the village in conjunction with the reserve units’ arrival.

August 14th, 1967--FUA occupation forces hastily evacuate Downpatrick, sustaining heavy casualties in the process.