Facts about Brendan McKenna (Brendan Mac Cionnaith)

Biography of McKenna

I.R.A Activist,
Orchestrator of Mob Rule,
Terrorist BRENDAN McKENNA

The chairman of Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition is a former republician prisioner. Aged 24, he was jailed for six years for his part in the 1982 I.R.A. bombing of the Royal British Legion Club, Portadown. Mr. McKenna received concurrent sentences for a fire-arms offence, false imprisonment and hijacking. He was one of two masked men who held a Churchill Park family hostage for three hours while their car was stolen. Neither Mr. McKenna nor his IRA associates or Sinn Fein have abandoned violence as a means to their ends. They unlike loyalist paramilitaries have not come out in favor of dissarmament and still have access to significant stores of weapons and high explosives.

The following news articles may help you to grasp the nature of Mr. McKenna's political agenda and come to realise why he has not been accepted as a peacemaker by the people of Ulster.

Given his republican background, his involvement in the Coalition is seen as sinister, and an attempt by republicans to manipulate the parades issue. - Belfast Telegraph 28 January

1997 Brendan Mac Cionnaith,
"Garvaghy Road Residents Association": Took a Garvaghy Road family hostage while other republicans blew up a British Legion Hall in Portadown. Convicted of kidnapping, hi-jacking and arms offences. Last summer he took upon himself the role of "speaking for the residents" during the Drumcree controversy. Does not live on the Garvaghy Road, instead he lives on a separate housing estate half a mile away. -The Ulster Cyber Community

McKenna was also mentioned in a secret document of 1997 concerning possible negotiation points to resolve the 1997 parade. Has he ever actually done this? It is indeed unfortunate that the government believed in 1997 that the problem could be avoided simply by a kiss and confess by McKenna rather than by real change on the part of his IRA terrorist comrades and Sinn Fein on the issue of decommissioning and abandonment of strategies dependant upon violence.

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