DESCRIPTION:
Mairéad Farrell (Irish: Máiréad Ní Fhearghail[2]/Mairéad Ní Fhearail;[3]3 March 1957 - 6 March 1988) was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). She was killed by Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers during Operation Flavius, a British Army operation to prevent a bombing in Gibraltar.[4]

Early life

Farrell was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland to a middle class family with no link to militant Irish Republicanism other than her grandfather, who was interned during the Irish War of Independence. She was educated at Rathmore Grammar School, Belfast which she left, aged 18, to work in an insurance broker's office. She met an IRA volunteer named Bobby Storey, who persuaded her to join the Provisional IRA.[4][5]
First term of active service, 1975-1976

On 1 March 1976, the British Government revoked Special Category Status for prisoners convicted from this date under anti-terrorism legislation. In response, the IRA instigated a wave of bombings and shootings across Northern Ireland; younger members such as Farrell were asked to participate. On 5 April 1976, along with Kieran Doherty and Sean McDermott, she attempted to plant a bomb at the Conway Hotel in Dunmurry. She was arrested by Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers within an hour of planting the bomb. Her boyfriend Sean McDermott was shot dead by an RUC Reservist at a nearby housing estate. McDermott and two other members of the IRA active service unit had entered a home not realising it was a police officer's. The RUC officer managed to shoot McDermott dead whilst Keiran Doherty and another man managed to run off.[6]

At her trial she refused to recognise the court as it was an institution of the British state and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for explosives offences to be served in Armagh Women's Prison.
Imprisonment, 1976-1986

When she arrived in Armagh Gaol, Farrell refused to wear prison uniform in protest at the designation of paramilitary prisoners as criminals. She was the first woman to do so although the second person after Kieran Nugent, a prisoner in the H-Blocks of HMP Maze. Farrell instigated a dirty protest in February 1980. This meant that prisoners refused to slop-out and would smear excrement and menstrual material on the walls of their cells instead of risking being attacked by the guards while slopping out.[7][8][9][10][11][12] On 1 December Farrell, along with Mary Doyle and Mairead Nugent, began a hunger strike in Armagh prison to coincide with the one already taking place in Long Kesh. It ended on 19 December, a day after the men's strike. The dirty protest ended in March 1981 as the prisoner's rights' campaign was focused on the hunger strike being undertaken by Bobby Sands, leader of IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks. She was one of the H-Block/Armagh prisoners to stand for election in the Republic of Ireland in the 1981 General Election, standing in Cork North Central and polling 2,751 votes (6.05%).[