Siobhán O'Hanlon (1963 – 11 April 2006)
/ref> was an

IRA Ira or IRA may refer to: *Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name *Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name *Iran, UNDP code IRA Law *Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...

volunteer Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...

and

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gri ...

activist.Sinn Féin website
sinnfein.ie

Family

O'Hanlon was born in North

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

in 1963, one of six children of a

republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

family. Her father, Sam, had been interned, and her maternal uncle was

IRA Army Council The IRA Army Council was the decision-making body of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary group dedicated to bringing about independence to the whole island of Ireland and the end of the Union between Northern Ireland and Great B ...

member

Joe Cahill , birth_date = , death_date = , birth_place = Belfast, Ireland , death_place = Belfast, Northern Ireland , image = Joe Cahill.png , caption = Cahill, early 1990s. , allegiance = Provisional Irish Republican ...

, who died in July 2004. O'Hanlon married Patrick Sheehan with whom she had a son, Cormac. One of her sisters, Eilis, is a newspaper columnist critical of

physical force Irish republicanism Irish republicanism ( ga, poblachtánachas Éireannach) is the political movement for the unity and independence of Ireland under a republic. Irish republicans view British rule in any part of Ireland as inherently illegitimate. The developm ...

; the two apparently remained estranged at the time of Siobhán's death.

IRA activity

In 1983 O'Hanlon was jailed after being found in a bomb-making factory. She served four years of a seven-year sentence for explosives offences. She was again arrested in

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

in 1989, briefly jailed then deported after admitting she concealed her conviction on US immigration forms. Some British newspapers claim she was involved in an attempted

Provisional Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reun ...

bombing in Gibraltar, prevented by the

Special Air Service The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...

(SAS) in Operation Flavius. In 2009 Professor Christopher Andrew was given access to

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...

's records, to prepare a book for the centenary of the organisation. The book contains a surveillance photo of O'Hanlon taken in Gibraltar in 1988, prior to the shootings of three other IRA members by the SAS. It contains a map of her movements. The files indicate that she noticed she was under surveillance in Spain and returned to Ireland.

Sinn Féin activity

O'Hanlon was a member of the first Sinn Féin delegation to meet the British Prime Minister

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...

Downing Street Downing Street is a street in Westminster in London that houses the official residences and offices of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Situated off Whitehall, it is long, and a few minutes' walk ...

in December 1997. She was heavily involved in Sinn Féin's negotiating team at Stormont in the run up to the

Good Friday Agreement The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), or Belfast Agreement ( ga, Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or ; Ulster-Scots: or ), is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of The Troubles, a political conflict in No ...

. In October 2001, she arranged and accompanied Adams on a visit to South Africa where they met

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

and unveiled a memorial (to ten republican hunger strikers who died in the

1981 Irish hunger strike The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republicanism, Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government ...

) at Robben Island Prison where the former

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...

leader had been jailed. She was a member of Sinn Féin's Belfast Executive and participated in the

Northern Ireland peace process The Northern Ireland peace process includes the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and subsequent political developm ...

negotiations in Stormont.

Activism

O'Hanlon died from breast cancer at age 43, having been diagnosed three and a half years earlier. In that time she became a breast cancer activist who organised a conference as a way of bringing activists together to talk about breast cancer, raise awareness and draw attention to the mobile breast cancer screening units. O'Hanlon also co-founded the West Belfast Festival called Feile an Phobail and devoted many years to its success, and she performed voluntary work for adults with

Down's syndrome Down syndrome or Down's syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is usually associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual disa ...

Tributes

Sinn Féin President

Gerry Adams Gerard Adams ( ga, Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician who was the president of Sinn Féin between 13 November 1983 and 10 February 2018, and served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth from 2011 to 2020 ...

was a pallbearer at O'Hanlon's funeral, which was attended by more than 1,000 mourners. He eulogised: "She headed up our office here in West Belfast. When we think back to that time it was a very dangerous and difficult ... Comrades and friends were killed or wounded. And every day we picked ourselves up and worked on." Adams dedicated his commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the 1916

Easter Rising The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...

to O'Hanlon. Danny Morrison for the ''

Daily Ireland ''Daily Ireland'' was an Irish daily newspaper which existed from January 2005 to September 2006 to cover news stories from an Irish republican viewpoint. It was linked to the Belfast local newspaper, the ''Andersonstown News''. In September 20 ...

'' wrote: "We shall benefit from the work Siobhán did in her life – in the freedom struggle, in the peace process, in the bridges she built, the international fraternities she established and maintained, for the goodwill she engendered towards republicanism – and for the huge political enterprises to which she contributed."Forumer.com

References

External links

Siobhán O'Hanlon's obituary and photograph
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohanlon, Siobhan 1963 births 2006 deaths 20th-century politicians from Northern Ireland Deaths from breast cancer Deaths from cancer in Northern Ireland Irish people imprisoned abroad People deported from the United States Paramilitaries from Belfast Provisional Irish Republican Army members Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict Sinn Féin politicians Women in the politics of Northern Ireland