Martin O'Hagan
Encyclopedia
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
investigative journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
from Lurgan
Lurgan
Lurgan is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town is near the southern shore of Lough Neagh and in the north-eastern corner of the county. Part of the Craigavon Borough Council area, Lurgan is about 18 miles south-west of Belfast and is linked to the city by both the M1 motorway...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. He was the most prominent journalist to be killed as a consequence of the Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
and the only one to be specifically assassinated as a result of his work.
Life
Martin O'Hagan's father served in the British ArmyBritish Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. One of six children, he spent part of his childhood in the married quarters of military bases in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. His grandfather was also a soldier, and saw service at Dunkirk
Operation Dynamo
The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 26 May and the early hours of 3 June 1940, because the British, French and Belgian troops were...
. O'Hagan's family returned to Lurgan when he was seven, and he was educated in the town, leaving after taking O-levels to work in his father's TV repair shop.
As a teenager, he joined the Official IRA
Official IRA
The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA is an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to create a "32-county workers' republic" in Ireland. It emerged from a split in the Irish Republican Army in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of "The Troubles"...
's Lurgan unit. He was drawn to the Officials because of their then radical socialist-republican
Irish Republicanism
Irish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.In 1801, under the Act of Union, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
politics, and became active in their military wing. He was interned in 1971 and spent more than a year in the Official IRA compound at Long Kesh. After he was released in 1973, he was jailed for seven years for transporting guns, and was released in 1978.
He despised the sectarianism
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
of Northern Ireland life and married a local Protestant girl, Marie Dukes, by whom he had three daughters. O'Hagan retained his socialist outlook throughout his life. He studied sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
and the University of Ulster
University of Ulster
The University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...
.
O'Hagan worked as a reporter for the tabloid newspaper The Sunday World
Sunday World
The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Sunday Newspapers Limited, a division of Independent News and Media. It is the largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and is also sold in Northern Ireland .-Origins:The Sunday World was Ireland's first tabloid newspaper...
. In this capacity, he wrote about a range of criminals and paramilitaries. He was also secretary of the Belfast branch of the National Union of Journalists
National Union of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists is a trade union for journalists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1907 and has 38,000 members. It is a member of the International Federation of Journalists .-Structure:...
at the time of his death.
Work
Notwithstanding his history with the Official IRA, Martin became accepted into the press community in Northern Ireland. His hard work quickly gaining him respect. In addition to his "insightful stories" on paramilitaries, he was known for "old-fashioned, muck-raking tabloid stories". He was known for exposing the private and sometimes seedy lifestyles of loyalists. One story included a picture of a well-known Orangeman, wearing regalia, beside one of the same man, found in a sex-contact publication, showing him naked.In the late 1980s he was prominently featured in the controversial Channel 4 documentary "The Committee", which made allegations of RUC collusion in loyalist murders of Roman Catholics. As a witness in a subsequent libel action against the producer of the program at the High court in London he said: "I have tried to be an independent and objective journalist but my conviction has hung over me like a sword, although I have always tried to be honest about it. "I have always tried to be squeaky clean because people will always try to cast this up in my face."
Not all of his work was controversial. In the early 1990s he collaborated with several Portadown
Portadown
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 23 miles south-west of Belfast...
musicians and took over a talent competition previously run by the Ulster Star
Ulster Star
The Ulster Star is a newspaper based in Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is published by a holding company entitled Johnston Publishing , part of Johnston Press.-External links:*...
newspaper in Lisburn, turning it into a national event for Northern Ireland.
Martin would often throw paramilitaries by writing under an assumed name or by not naming the subject of his articles. He would instead use a nickname. The person would be described in great detail: appearance, habits, haunts, associates, type of car, etc. – everything but his name, but in the Who? column (a long running and sometimes hard hitting page of snippets in the newspaper) he would refer to the person by name in a way which would allow the reader to link both stories.
In the early 1990s, he wrote several pieces about the Ulster Volunteer Force's Mid Ulster Brigade. He coined the nickname, "the rat pack" for this group and "King Rat" for their leader Billy Wright
Billy Wright (loyalist)
William Stephen "Billy" Wright was a prominent Ulster loyalist during the period of violent religious/political conflict known as "The Troubles". He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1975 and became commander of its Mid-Ulster Brigade in the early 1990s...
. Wright founded the Loyalist Volunteer Force
Loyalist Volunteer Force
The Loyalist Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed by Billy Wright in 1996 when he and the Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force's Mid-Ulster Brigade was stood down by the UVF leadership. He had been the commander of the Mid-Ulster Brigade. The...
a breakaway loyalist faction. He was responsible for an attack on the Sunday World offices in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
and threatened to kill O'Hagan. Wright himself was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army
Irish National Liberation Army
The Irish National Liberation Army or INLA is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group that was formed on 8 December 1974. Its goal is to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist united Ireland....
in 1997.
Provisional IRA abduction
O'Hagan was abducted by the Provisional IRA in 1989 following a report by the Sunday World Newspaper about the killing of John McAnulty on 18 July 1989. He was interrogated for several days regarding the source of reports to the newspaper (supposedly from an IRA insider) and expected to be killed. He was later released unharmed. Following this incident and Loyalist threats he moved to the CorkCork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...
offices of the newspaper for several years but later returned to Belfast.
Assassination
Having previously published a series of articles on drug dealing in a loyalist paramilitary grouping he had been the subject of death threats. Indeed he had bumped into a known loyalist on a previous walk home from his pub and had been advised that he had been "clocked" (a local term meaning 'observed') walking the route. He and his colleagues on the Dublin-based Sunday World were used to threats of this nature, however, and although "rattled" by the veiled threat, O'Hagan continued to walk home from the pub on Friday nights but varied his route as a precautionary measure.On 28 September 2001 Martin and his wife Marie walked to "Fa' Joe's" pub, a well-known mixed bar on Lurgan's Market Street, for their usual Friday night drink together. The pub had been Martin's favourite for many years. As they walked home to Westland Gardens, close to the loyalist Mourneview Estate, a car pulled slowly alongside them just yards from their house. Martin pushed his wife into a hedge as a gunman opened fire from the car hitting him several times. As he lay wounded he asked his wife to summon an ambulance. When she returned from doing so he was dead.
Martin O'Hagan's murder was "claimed" by the Red Hand Defenders
Red Hand Defenders
The Red Hand Defenders is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1998 by loyalists who opposed the Belfast Agreement and the loyalist ceasefires. Its members were drawn mostly from the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Volunteer Force...
, a nom de guerre used by the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
Legacy
No-one has yet been prosecuted for the killing of Martin O'Hagan however his colleagues at the Sunday World (particularly Jim Campbell who was also wounded in an assassination attempt by Loyalist paramilitaries), and the NIJ continue to ask questions of the police in Northern Ireland and produce columns asking WHY? On 6 April 2008 the Sunday World published the name of Robin "Billy" King as the killer and asked pointedly why the PSNI had not arrested and charged him with the murder. In the same issue the newspaper ran a story on the unveiling of a plaque in memory to Martin at Belfast's Linenhall Library 1 and 2. The Sunday World have continued to pressure for answers by running a series of weekly articles which have "targeted the O’Hagan suspects with an extremely accurate weekly account of their activities."
The NUJ have discovered that Martin's journalistic notes, written in a personalised and initially undecipherable shorthand, have been partially decoded and the PSNI are examining the translations in connection with the Omagh Bombing
Omagh bombing
The Omagh bombing was a car bomb attack carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army , a splinter group of former Provisional Irish Republican Army members opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, on Saturday 15 August 1998, in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Twenty-nine people died as a...
.
An article in "Freelance" the NUJ newsletter, Kevin Cooper wrote in September 2008 said:
He continues to be remembered and missed by his colleagues and friends of the Belfast and District Branch of the NUJ. We miss his good humour, his love of mischief, his tireless commitment to socialism and trade unionism. He was no saint; he was, like the rest of us, human and made mistakes. He could infuriate and delight you at the same time. He was not always treated with the respect and dignity he deserved.