Date Posted:Mon, Apr 04 2011, 8:20:47 PDT Author:IRSCNA Subject: Danny Loughran: Fallen Comrade of the IRSM
Fallen Comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement
Danny Loughran
Staff Officer - Irish National Liberation Army
Assassinated on 6 April 1975
Danny Loughran, a 20-year-old expert marksman and former soldier in
the Irish Army (the military of the 26 Counties' government), was
assassinated by the Official Irish Republican Army close to his home
in the Divis Flats area of West Belfast during a period when the IRSM
came under counter-revolutionary attack from the OIRA. He was a
member of the OIRA before joining the INLA in December 1974.
He was given a paramilitary funeral with a volley of shots fired over
his coffin. He was a staff officer in the INLA, although 'PLA'
(People's Liberation Army, an early name used by the INLA) was carved
on his gravestone in West Belfast's Milltown Cemetery.
At his funeral, an Irish Republican Socialist Party spokesperson said,
"there are not enough bullets in Cyprus Street or in Gardiner Place
[Official Sinn Fein offices in Belfast and Dublin] to kill the dream
for which he died."
A memorial to Loughran and other comrades was dedicated in the Lower
Falls area of West Belfast on 10 April 2003.
He died as he lived: a Republican Socialist. Remember him with honour
and pride.
