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The McMahon killings, also called the McMahon murders, occurred on 24 March 1922 in Belfast, Northern Ireland when six Catholic civilians were shot dead and two were wounded, allegedly by members of either the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) or the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The dead were aged between 15 and 50, and all but one were members of the McMahon family. The policemen broke into their house at night and shot all eight males inside. It is believed to have been a reprisal for the Irish Republican Army's killing of two policemen the day before. The Northern Ireland polity had been created ten months beforehand, in the midst of the Irish War of Independence. During this time, its police forces – especially the USC, which was almost exclusively Ulster Protestant and unionist – were implicated in a number of attacks on Catholic and Irish nationalist civilians as reprisal for IRA actions, especially against Protestants and Unionists in the south or in Ulster's republican hinterlands. ==Background== The killings occurred after the acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but with the violence of the Irish War of Independence still raging in the new political entity of Northern Ireland. The Treaty copper-fastened the Partition of Ireland, which was first established in the Government of Ireland Act. In the first half of 1922 however, in the words of historian Robert Lynch, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), "would make one final attempt to undermine the ever hardening reality of partition by launching an all out offensive on the recently established province of Northern Ireland".〔Lynch, Robert. ''The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition''. Irish Academic Press, 2006, p. 98〕 To counter this, the new unionist government of Northern Ireland established the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), a reserve police force to the Royal Irish Constabulary, which was first deployed in February 1921. The USC had a mutually hostile relationship with both pro-Treaty nationalists and anti-Treaty republicans in the area which became Northern Ireland, especially in Belfast. Lynch writes of the USC: "some were polite and courteous, others merely arrogant and destructive whilst a small anonymous minority set out to kill".〔Lynch, p. 68〕 The MacMahon killings are believed to have been a reprisal for the IRA's killing of two USC policemen in Belfast.〔("The McMahon family massacre: Remembering the past" ), ''An Phoblacht'', 23 March 2005; retrieved 24 March 2012.〕〔(Wilson, Tim ), "‘The most terrible assassination that has yet stained the name of Belfast’: the McMahon murders in context", Irish Historical Studies (2010), vol 37:145, pp. 83-106.〕 On 23 March 1922, USC officers Thomas Cunningham and William Cairnside were patrolling Great Victoria Street in the city centre when they were approached by a group of IRA members and shot dead. Two Catholics, Peter Murphy (61) and Sarah McShane (15), were later shot dead in a suspected reprisal attack several hours later in the Catholic Short Strand area by unidentified gunmen.〔Parkinson, Alan F. ''Belfast's UnHoly War: The Troubles of the 1920s''. Four Courts Press, 2004, p. 229.〕 The McMahon family had no connection to any paramilitary violence. Owen McMahon was a supporter and personal friend of Joe Devlin, the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) Member of Parliament, who rejected Irish republican violence.〔Lynch, p. 122〕 McMahon was a prosperous businessman, who owned several pubs in Belfast and had at one time been chairman of the Northern Vintners' Association. His home at Kinnaird Terrace, off the Antrim Road in north-central Belfast, near the New Lodge area was described as a "sprawling Victorian mansion".〔Parkinson, pp. 229–230〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「McMahon killings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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