Maurice Gilvarry

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Maurice Gilvarry, 1960 – 20 January 1981, IRA volunteer killed by the IRA.

Gilvarry was one of a family of eleven children in Ardoyne. As a boy, he was a member of Holy Cross intermediate Gaelic football team, who in 1968 won the Belfast Intermediate League. He was remembered by a neighbour in those days as "a very quiet individual. He was a bit of a loner." The Troubles erupted in August 1969, Gilvarry's brother Eamon stating that:

"You just never slept. I mean you knew what was going on outside. There was a lot of shooting and I remember the taste of the CS gas. It didn't sink in, though, until you read the paper. I remember seeing that on the 14th or 15th of August a man sitting in his house here had been shot by the police. That's when it hit you, when you knew how serious it was."

A family friend, Ciaran Murphy, was murdered in a random attack in 1974, while neighbour Cyril Murray was shot dead in his home by the UVF. A former member of the intermediate team, Seamus Clarke, joined the IRA. He was interned in Long Kesh in the early 1970s, aged sixteen, one of the youngest interned. Following his release he became a highly active member of the IRA.

Gilvarry disappeared early in 1981. The family only heard of his death on TV, which announced that a man's body had been found near the border, executed by a shot to the back of his head. His hands had been tied behind his back. The IRA released a statement declaring that Marurice Gilvarry had been executed because he had been an informer. At his funeral, Eamon Gilvarry witnessed a group of local republicans:

"They laughed as we passed them with the coffin. I never laughed at anybody's death."

The truth of the allegations behind Gilvarry's death remain unclear. He had been kidnapped in Ardoyne and taken to south County Armagh where he was tortured in an underground bunker close to the border for over a week. Later allegations that IRA member Anthony Braniff (aged twenty-two when executed by the IRA on 27 September 1981) was an informer were denied by his family, who also denied that Braniff had any role in Gilvarry's death.

At least one source credits Gilvarry with the February 1980 killing of husband and wife Violet and Patrick Mackin of Oldpark Road.

Gilvarry was one of at least fifty people killed by the IRA who were suspected of passing information to British security forces.