Republican News · Thursday 17 October 2002

Law student shot dead

The shooting dead by a loyalist UVF gang of 29-year-old Lurgan law student Sheena Campbell at the York Hotel in Belfast, was a further extension of a campaign to assassinate anyone who had the courage of their convictions to stand openly and articulate a positive way forward to Ireland's democratic future.

The shooting happened in Botanic Avenue close to Queen's University library where Sheena had earlier been studying.

The immediate aftermath of the shooting saw a leisurely response from the crown forces, especially from the nearby Donegal Pass barracks, less than 200 yards from the York Hotel. The area was always heavily patrolled and the many nationalist students who use Botanic Avenue railway station going to and from the university can testify to this.

The UVF death squad who carried out the shooting moved with apparent ease in and around the York Hotel before and after the gun attack. Given the well documented links between this group, both in the Belfast, Lurgan and Portadown areas, and members of the crown forces, the shooting bears all the hallmarks of yet another case of collusion.

From the time she began her legal studies at the start of October, Sheena had been stopped by the RUC and the British Army on numerous occasions. She had remarked on this upsurge of 'attention' to friends in the few weeks before her death. Shortly before her killing she told Sinn Féin colleagues of being stopped at checkpoints near her home in Lurgan as she drove to Belfast, and also being 'P' checked in the Queen's University campus itself.

Doubtless, as in the case of over 1,000 other nationalists, the UVF 'acquired' her personal details from these crown forces members and used this information to target her.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, in his comments after the shooting dead of Sheena Campbell, described her as a valued member of both Sinn Féin and her local community, where she was held in high esteem.

"Sheena was killed because she was a member of Sinn Féin, to her killers she was a nationalist who refused to stay in her place and to accept she was a second-class citizen. Sheena had refused to be ghettoised or marginalised, and to her grieving son, her family and friends, I extend on my own behalf and that of Sinn Féin our deepest condolences."

Sheena Campbell was shot dead on Friday evening, 16 October 1992, ten years ago this week.

Sheena Campbell- A croppy who would not lie down

Sheena Campbell, the law student killed a few weeks before her 30th birthday, chose to challenge the British state through Sinn Féin. Who knows what else she might have done with her talents, but Sheena's enemies didn't wait around to find out.

People in Sinn Féin quickly recognised her organising abilities. While she held the position of secretary on the Comhairle Ceantair, her role was in fact that of an organiser.

She was nominated as candidate for Sinn Féin in the Assembly elections of 1982, but her name had to be withdrawn - she was under age, not yet 20.

Sheena had a gift for details. Sheena talked about structuring meetings before anyone else in Sinn Féin, and drew up for her Limistéar detailed papers describing the jobs involved in each of the positions. She took training sessions with local secretaries and chairpersons. Yet she never saw herself as anyone of outstanding ability. She never realised how relevant and important she was to the republican struggle. Her enemies obviously did.

Of course, to republican activists throughout the Six Counties, whether or not they came into personal contact with Sheena, she remains the architect of what came to be known as the 'Torrent Strategy', named after the local election in the Torrent ward of Dungannon in November 1990. But it should really have been named the 'Upper Bann strategy', since this is where this professional, systematic approach for election work was developed, or perhaps more appropriately, the 'Sheena Campbell strategy', since she developed it.

In the constituency she worked in and the wards she was brought into to direct operations, Sheena ended years of amateurish, haphazard election work, and helped election workers schedule their work, record their findings and complete all their tasks effectively and efficiently.

Sheena packed so much into her 29 years that it is as difficult to understand why she never saw her own value and importance, as it is easy to see why she became a target. Born a woman, a northern nationalist, growing into a republican, she moved out of the ghetto of second class citizenship, a croppy who would not lie down. A mother, a lover, a friend, a comrade, she will be mourned and missed for many years to come. Yet she will live on, in the solid foundations that she built for Sinn Féin activists, in the memories of the many that worked with her, and most of all in the hearts of her family and friends.

In Sheena's memory, all we who are proud to have been hr comrades can do is make sure that the hope she carried, we carry in our hearts, and that the work she started is built upon.

"You can censor us, call us thugs and murderers, call us fanatics and lunatics, you can refuse to speak to us, extradite us, ban us, torture us and kill us, but their will always be enough of us to ensure that one day you will talk to us."

Sinn Féin Councillor Jim McAllister at Sheena Campbell's funeral