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

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

volunteer Volunteering is an elective and freely chosen act of an individual or group giving their time and labor, often for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency ...

and

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

activist.

Family

O'Hanlon was born in North

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

in 1963, one of six children of a republican 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 ...

member

Joe Cahill Joe Cahill (; 19 May 1920 – 23 July 2004) was a prominent figure in the Irish republican movement in Northern Ireland and former chief of staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He joined a junior-republican movement, Na Fia ...

, who died in July 2004. O'Hanlon married Pat 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 () is the political movement for an Irish republic, void of any British rule. Throughout its centuries of existence, it has encompassed various tactics and identities, simultaneously elective and militant and has been both w ...

; 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 LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 2023. Its population is greater than that of 40 individua ...

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

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-terr ...

(SAS) in

Operation Flavius Operation Flavius (also referred to as the Gibraltar killings) was a military operation in which three members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) were shot dead by the British Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar on 6 March 198 ...

. In 2009 Professor Christopher Andrew was given access to

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

'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 politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

Downing Street Downing Street is a gated street in City of Westminster, Westminster in London that houses the official residences and offices of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In a cul-de-sac situated off Whiteh ...

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 ( or ; or ) is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April (Good Friday) 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland since the la ...

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

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

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 republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976 when the British government withdrew Special Categ ...

) at Robben Island Prison where the former

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

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 develop ...

negotiations in Stormont.

Activism

O'Hanlon died from

breast cancer Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...

at age 45, having been diagnosed three and a half years earlier in October 2002. 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.

Tributes

Sinn Féin President

Gerry Adams Gerard Adams (; born 6 October 1948) is a retired 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. From 1983 to 19 ...

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 (), 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 aim of establishing an ind ...

to O'Hanlon. Danny Morrison for the '' Daily Ireland'' 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."

References

External links

Siobhán O'Hanlon's obituary in the Irish Times
– via

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohanlon, Siobhan 1963 births 2006 deaths 20th-century politicians from Northern Ireland Deaths from breast cancer in the United Kingdom 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 from Northern Ireland in politics