Word: carron
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...constituency, proved to be a winner in an important by-election last week. At stake was the British Parliament seat vacant since the death of Bobby Sands, the first of ten Irish nationalists who have starved themselves to death in the Maze Prison near Belfast. The victor was Owen Carron, 28, Sands' former campaign manager, whose triumph over Protestant Kenneth Maginnis by 31,278 to 29,048 votes boosted the spirits of the Roman Catholic minority that wants independence from Britain...
...Carron was helped by the coincidence that only 50 minutes after the polls opened, Michael Devine, 27, became the latest prisoner in the Maze to die as the result of a hunger strike. Serving a twelve-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms, Devine was, like Sands and the other would-be martyrs, seeking treatment as political prisoners for the 700 I.R.A. members now held at the Maze. In Belfast and elsewhere, rioters subsequently attacked police and British troops with gunfire and bombs; at least 30 people were injured, including three soldiers and three Northern Irish policemen...
...Neither Carron's victory nor Devine's death was likely to soften Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's stand against the prisoner demands. Indeed, British authorities were encouraged when the family of 25-year-old Patrick McGeown, who had gone blind and suffered from severe head pains after 42 days without food, agreed to let doctors treat him. But some Catholics hoped that Thatcher might be influenced by a bold proposal from an unexpected quarter. In an editorial, London's Sunday Times, a pillar of the Establishment, argued that Britain should give up sovereignty over Northern Ireland...
...voters of Fermanagh and South Tyrone will not be represented in the House of Commons any more by Carron than they were by Sands, whose status as a prisoner prevented him from taking his seat. Carron does not plan to attend Parliament, or even draw his salary. Instead he will concentrate his activities in Ulster. Proclaimed the jubilant Carron after his victory: "The hunger strike will go on until the British government gives in to the demands of the prisoners...
...rival resolution endorsing Gaitskell's stand seemed doomed to defeat-until twinkling little Bill Carron, leader of the Amalgamated Engineers (907,000 members) suddenly made a bid to save his old friend. His engineers were committed to vote for unilateral nuclear dis armament. But Carron proclaimed, after consulting with his delegation, that he found no contradiction between the two resolutions and would therefore cast his union's big vote for both...