August-October 1967

August 15th, 1967--A key player in the FUA conspiracy to attack Buckingham Palace travels to Liverpool for a meeting with two people he thinks are expert bomb-makers. When he arrives at the designated meeting spot, however, the supposed bomb-makers turn out to be undercover agents from Interpol and he is arrested on terrorism charges.

August 16th, 1967--Scotland Yard begins a nationwide manhunt for the remaining members of the FUA’s Buckingham Palace bombing plot.

August 20th, 1967--Three more of the principal members of the FUA conspiracy to bomb Buckingham Palace are arrested in Manchester; a fourth member is found dead in London that evening, victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

August 22nd, 1967--Realizing that the FUA’s plot to attack Buckingham Palace is collapsing, general secretary Liam Delaney orders that the operation be cancelled and all attack plot members still at large to go to ground immediately. Unfortunately for the primary conspirator, Delaney’s orders come too late; he has already been picked up by two Scotland Yard detectives and will shortly be extradited to Ireland.

August 25th, 1967--The five principal conspirators in the aborted plot to attack Buckingham Palace are indicted on terrorism charges in a London court.

September 4th, 1967--FUA guerrillas wipe out an Irish regular army mechanized infantry detachment near the town of Coleraine.

September 5th, 1967--Citing suspected co-operation between the FUA and Palestinian and Arab radical groups in the West Bank, Israel’s foreign ministry declines an FUA request to establish a “people’s embassy” in Tel Aviv. Hours after the Israeli government turns down the FUA’s application to establish a diplomatic office in Tel Aviv, the Israeli embassy in Dublin is bombed, killing 68 and wounding at least a hundred.

September 7th, 1967--Thousands of British Jews gather in London for a memorial rally in honor of the victims of the September 5th attack on the Israeli embassy in Dublin. That same day the Garda issues a reward equivalent to $50,000 US for any information leading to the arrest of the embassy attack’s perpetrators.

September 10th, 1967--Two of the perpetrators in the September 5th FUA bombing of the Israeli embassy in Dublin are arrested at a flat in Cork.

September 11th, 1967--Irish regular army troops destroy an FUA bomb- making plant south of Antrim.

September 13th, 1967--A third FUA bomber is arrested by the Garda in connection with the September 5th Israeli embassy attack.

September 16th, 1967--The chief planner in the September 5th Israeli embassy attack is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

September 18th, 1967--The surviving perpetrators in the September 5th Israeli embassy bombing are indicted by an Irish army tribunal.

September 20th, 1967--While revising the second draft of his Sunday sermon, Rev. Ian Paisley is shot and seriously wounded in what the Garda immediately suspect is an assassination attempt orchestrated or at least encouraged by the FUA.

September 22nd, 1967--People’s Brigade for the Defense of Irish Unity partisans raid a known FUA safehouse in the town of Ardglass. The raid sparks controversy when a Cork Examiner article printed two days later reveals that a dozen civilians who had no ties to the FUA at all were inadvertently killed in the attack.

September 23rd, 1967--In an action that sparks rumors Great Britain may be about to take a more overt military role in the struggle to crush the FUA insurgency, the Lynch government in Ireland signs an accord granting Royal Navy warships access to Irish seaports.

September 26th, 1967--Opposition leaders in the Dail Eireann call for an investigation into the civilian deaths in the Ardglass raid.

September 28th, 1967--Irish naval patrols intercept a cargo ship attempting to smuggle guns and rocket launchers to the FUA. Many of the weapons are determined to be of Chinese origin, fueling a growing suspicion inside the upper levels of the Lynch government that China’s Mao Zedong regime is secretly backing the insurgents.

September 30th, 1967--The Irish ambassador to the United Nations goes before the General Assembly to call for an international probe into suspected ties between the Chinese Communist government and the FUA. Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai blasts the Irish U.N. envoy’s actions as “a gross insult to the People’s Republic” and demands an apology from Dublin along with the Irish ambassador’s immediate resignation.

October 1st, 1967--Irish Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken categorically rejects Zhou’s demands and warns that further Chinese involvement in the FUA’s insurgency will be interpreted as an act of war against Ireland.

October 3rd, 1967--An explosion rips through the Irish embassy in Seoul just after 12 noon local time. Four people are killed and 21 injured in the blast; evidence recovered from the wreckage shortly afterwards suggests Chinese intelligence agents may have planted a bomb on the embassy grounds.

October 4th, 1967--South Korean police launch a nationwide manhunt for the perpetrators of the previous day’s bomb attack on the Irish embassy in Seoul.

October 8th, 1967--Two Irish diplomats in Bangkok are shot and badly wounded by masked gunmen riding a stolen motorcycle. Like the Seoul embassy bombing five days earlier, the shooting is suspecting to be the work of Communist Chinese counterintelligence agents. Scotland Yard detectives and a team of FBI ballistics specialists arrive in Bangkok the next day to assist Thai authorities in uncovering clues to the shooters’ identity.

October 10th, 1967--Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai reiterates his demands for an apology from the Irish government; as it did the first time, the Lynch administration rejects this demand.

October 12th, 1967--The Irish ambassador’s office in Paris is bombed just after 6:00 AM local time. The ambassador himself is out at the time, but ten members of his staff are present in the office; eight of them are killed out in the blast and a ninth dies of head wounds en route to the French capital’s largest hospital.

October 13th, 1967--Sûréte agents arrest six Chinese nationals in Marseilles on suspicion of having been part of the previous day’s terror attack on the Irish embassy in Paris. Their suspicions are confirmed when one of the Chinese reveals under questioning that he and his associates had infiltrated France for the purpose of making attacks against Irish diplomatic offices on French soil as a way to show support for the FUA’s cause.

October 15th, 1967--The British Ministry of Defence announces it will deploy 50,000 new troops to Hong Kong in one week’s time to bolster existing land defenses in the Crown colony. Ostensibly the deployment is intended to keep the island safe from attack should existing Soviet-Chinese tensions escalate into full-scale war; in reality, however, the troops are being dispatched to Hong Kong as a tacit warning to China that Whitehall will not tolerate Beijing’s interference in Irish internal affairs.

October 18th, 1967--The Chinese embassy in Havana transmits a secret message to the FUA leadership that Beijing must temporarily curtail its assistance to the Ulster rebel group “in light of recent events in London and Hong Kong”. While it is uncertain at the time whether the decision was made because of fears of British action against China or because of political infighting among Mao Zedong’s senior deputies stemming from the Cultural Revolution, the message makes it clear that the British troop deployments in Hong Kong have not gone unnoticed by Mao’s regime.

October 21st, 1967--FUA guerrillas kill a hundred and ten regular Irish army troops and wound nearly 400 others in a pitched battle near the town of Dunnamanagh. Civilian casualties total at least 65 dead or wounded, sparking outrage among Prime Minister Lynch’s critics and accusations of incompetence against the officers who led the Irish regulars in the engagement.

October 22nd, 1967--Radio Free Ulster broadcasts a speech by FUA general secretary Liam Delaney hailing the events at Dunnamanagh as “a historic victory for our noble cause” and calling on Prime Minister John Lynch’s government in Dublin to surrender at once. Not surprisingly, Lynch rejects Delaney’s demand.

October 24th, 1967--The Irish regular army accepts a delivery of fifty Bell UH-1 assault helicopters from the United States. These choppers will play a critical role in operations against the FUA during the next few months.