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The opening days of the year demonstrated the terrible speed with which sectarian violence could generate retaliation. On 4 January, loyalist gunmen killed six members of the Reavey and O’Dowd families in County Armagh and County Down. The following evening, ten Protestant workmen were murdered after their minibus was stopped at a bogus checkpoint near Kingsmill, County Armagh. The assault was claimed by the Republican Action Force, widely understood to have been a cover name used by elements associated with the IRA. One passenger survived despite being shot.
For Ireland, 1974 was dominated by the rapid unravelling of the Sunningdale experiment and by violence that reached with appalling force into the Republic. The year opened with a new Northern Ireland Executive formally taking office on 1 January. It was the practical outcome of the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973: an administration containing unionists, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the cross-community Alliance Party, alongside proposed all-Ireland institutions including a Council of Ireland. Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael–Labour government in Dublin regarded that cross-border element as a necessary acknowledgement that Northern Ireland could not be governed securely without the Irish Government’s involvement. For many unionists, however, it appeared to threaten Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
