Former DUP founder and Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley had funding links to an Ulster Volunteer Force bombing campaign in the 1960s – including one in Donegal – a documentary series on the Troubles claims.
The seven-part series, which starts on Tuesday, also contains rare footage of former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness allegedly preparing a car bomb for an IRA attack on Derry’s Guildhall in 1972.
The allegations against Paisley in the first programme of the series relate to a number of bombings of water and electricity installations that the UVF and a group called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers carried out in early 1969, according to The Irish Times.
At the time, the unionist prime minister Terence O’Neill was trying to bring in reforms to meet some of the demands of the civil rights movement.
The UVF hoped the bombings against targets such as the Silent Valley reservoir in the Mourne mountains and the water pipeline at Annalong, Co Down, would be blamed on the IRA. The plan was that it would generate further unionist hostility to an already beleaguered O’Neill and force him to resign.
Also reported in the documentary are the alleged funding links between late DUP leader Paisley and a series of UVF bombings in the late 1960s, including one in Co Donegal.
The programme reports that Samuel Stevenson, Paisley’s bodyguard in 1969, told former SDLP and Fine Gael politician Austin Currie the UVF was planning to bomb the hydroelectric power station at Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. In that attack in October 1969, Thomas McDowell was killed when his bomb exploded prematurely.
The UVF man, McDowell, electrocuted himself while preparing a huge bomb intended to blow up the ESB sub-station at Ballyshannon Co Donegal. McDowell was a quarryman by trade, and an explosives expert – by definition, an expert bomb-maker.
Mr Currie told the programme Mr Stevenson warned him of the planned attack and also told him he was supposed to be part of the UVF bomb team, but that he would try to avoid being involved.
