Irish News
31 January 1996

Gino Joins His Roll of Honour
By Phelim McAleer

The day before he was shot dead, Gino Gallagher worked into the
evening compiling the INLA Roll of Honour to be read out at the 1996
Easter commemorations.

Now there is one more name to be added to that list: INLA Chief of
Staff and IRSP National Organiser Gino Majella Gallagher.

A father of four young children, he did not smoke and rarely drank -
his favourite drink was coffee.

He was not the stereotypical republican hardman.

A keen chess player, he had recently started working part-time as a
bouncer at a top city centre hotel.

Always soft spoken, polite and quiet, he was awkward in his role as
Prisons Spokesman and recently National Organiser for the IRSP.

"I'm more used to working with a balaclava on," he told this reporter
after a recent round of media interviews.

His reputation while wearing a balaclava was formidable.

He was feared on the Shankill in the same way the UFF leader Johnny
Adair was feared on the Falls and in North Belfast.

In prison on three separate occasions, he was regarded as one of the
most deadly gunmen in the North and is widely believed to have
carried out an attack on the Shankill, just before the IRA ceasefire,
in which two UVF members and another man were killed.

Gino Gallagher was born into a republican family. His father Paddy
survived a 37-day thirst and hunger strike campaigning for political
asylum when arrested in Holland during the mid-1970s.

He was the eldest of three children in a close family.

"Hardly a week went by that he wasn't talking to his father," said a
friend.

Gallagher enjoyed boxing as he grew up in West Belfast but also
developed an early interest in Irish history.

"He was very politically-aware and believed that Ireland as a whole
is a country and the British are an invading force," his younger
brother Brendan said yesterday.

But he was not just a nationalist.

An IRSP colleague said: "Some republicans become socialists but he
was a republican because he was a socialist. That was how he entered
the movement."

Following the 1981 hunger strike he joined the Patsy O'Hara Youth
Movement, the INLA's youth wing.

He was 17 when first arrested.

After serving two-and-a-half years of a four-year prison sentence for
arms offences, he was rearrested shortly afterwards on explosives
charges.

After a lengthy time on remand he was cleared of any involvement and
released.

His longest period of imprisonment followed a bizarre shooting at a
flat in Lenadoon.

Gallagher was in the flat with two others and INLA member Paul
'Bonanza' McCann.

Three police officers who burst their way into the flat were shot,
one fatally, by McCann who then died in mysterious circumstances.

The RUC has always maintained officers did not fire their weapons
during the shooting and at a subsequent inquest the Belfast coroner
found McCann had committed suicide.

This has always been disputed by his family who said he had been shot
by the RUC. Another theory advanced was that McCann was killed by a
ricochet bullet.

Sentenced to 14 years for soliciting the murder of the RUC officer, a
charge he always denied, Gino Gallagher was released in 1991 after
serving seven years.

By then he had spent most of his adult life in prison but those who
knew him in the H-Blocks or on remand said he never complained.

"He knuckled down and served his sentence and came out a very, very
dedicated and well-read republican," said a former INLA prisoner.

After prison he had a higher public profile in the IRSP.

"His reputation as a volunteer preceded him and a lot of young people
were surprised when they met him and saw his very effacing and
quiet manner. The two just didn't line up," said a member of the
IRSP.

Last April he was made Chief of Staff of the INLA. Speaking from the
Maze Prison yesterday, the organisation's commanding officer in the
complex said Gino had been one of the most popular leaders of the
organisation.

"He was constantly canvassing prison views. I saw him just yesterday
and he was in great form talking and joking," he said.

His brother Brendan said: "He was an out-and-out republican who
believed Ireland should be Ireland and not under British rule."

Brendan says his brother was never afraid to say what he believed
even if he was in the minority.

"Gino was sceptical of the peace process. He didn't believe Britain
would give Ireland anything. He always said that all they have ever
done is take from us."

Gino once described Thomas Power, a member of the INLA killed in
[1987], as "the biggest influence in my life".

Yesterday IRSP Press Spokesman Kevin McQuillan said the phrase most
associated with Power would be a fitting epitaph for Gallagher.

"'A revolutionary is a dead man on leave' - that best sums up his
attitude to the movement," he said.