It Occurs To Me: A Bitter Harvest - the murder of Seán Brown and his family’s campaign for justice

On May 14, 1997, an LVF spokesperson rang the Donegal Democrat offices in Ballyshannon with this message: “We, the Mid-Ulster Brigade, was [sic] responsible for Mr Brown’s death, a leading GAA figure who was responsible for Martin McGuinness’s success in Mid Ulster. Mr Brown was to the forefront of the Protestant parade being re-routed. Finally, the Mid-Ulster Brigade will target the GAA on both sides of the border if any more parades are re-routed.”

The Mr Brown referred to was Sean Brown of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAA Club who was murdered by the LVF on May 12.

What they were claiming was utter nonsense…Seán had absolutely nothing to do with politics or re-routing. He was a target because he was a Catholic and a prominent GAA man. As his daughter, Siobhan says in Garbhan Downey’s excellent publication, A Bitter Harvest: The good life and unresolved murder of a Derry GAA man, “When there was the marching dispute, [1995-6] Daddy didn’t want to get involved with it at all. Definitely, definitely not. And he would have gone out of his way to resolve things. He was friendly with the local Protestants – he would have tended to some of their gardens and greenhouses when they were away at their caravans.

“They would have been very friendly. When Daddy died they were very upset – and very sympathetic towards us. In small towns like this, because they’re so small, people don’t want to fall out. They always try to resolve things. A number of businesses in the town over the years were targeted because their owners were Protestants or Catholics, but the local community would generally rally behind them as they rebuilt.”

In February 2025, GAA President Jarlath Burns invited Seán Brown’s family to be special guests of the Association on the opening night of GAA Congress 2025 in Donegal Town.

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His purpose was to issue a pledge that the GAA would fully support them in their campaign for a public inquiry into his murder. He said:“GAA Congress brings together the largest contingent of GAA members every year, people who are representatives of the likes of Seán Brown, a family man, a community man and a GAA man who was abducted and murdered while he stayed back alone to lock up the club grounds of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones.

“Volunteerism is the energy that fuels the GAA, people who put others first, who think nothing of selfless acts like sending everyone else home to stay back and lock up the gates on their own.Two different High Court Judges, having reviewed all available evidence, in its original unredacted form, have come to the conclusion that the circumstances surrounding Seán Brown’s murder in Bellaghy merit a full statutory public inquiry.

“The dignity and determination that the Brown family have shown in the face of the obfuscation of the British Government and Northern Secretary is admirable.

“Tonight, to mark the opening of Congress and the gathering of the membership of the GAA and representatives of our counties at home in Ireland and its 1,600 clubs and the nearly 500 who make up World GAA, I have invited Seán’s widow Bridie and the rest of the Brown family to see at first hand the esteem in which they are held and how their resolve is acknowledged. We as an Association are fully committed to supporting them on their journey and search for truth and justice for Seán. Seán was one of our own and In we make no apologies for doing all we can to assist the long-suffering, dignified but steadfast and resolute family that are the Browns. To do otherwise would be a failure to live up to our ideals and values as an organisation and as their extended family.”

GAA perils and cold blooded murder

In Garbhan’s book, Monsignor Andy Dolan, then PP in Bellaghy, has an interesting take on the realities of being part of the GAA in the north. He said: “Even within the GAA itself, there can be a partitionist mindset – sometimes there seems to be a Northern GAA and another one for the rest of the country.

“Southern players and commentators don’t always understand or give credit to those who play and support the game in the North, where it was neither easy nor simple to be in the GAA. You went to training and your car was stopped and emptied out. You faced armed checkpoints on country roads and deliberately-manufactured queues. The badge on your shirt marked out your identity. Players and followers alike suffered in the North. There was suspicion of who you were. And in many cases, people were targeted solely because they were part of the GAA.

“You had to sacrifice an awful lot more to be part of the GAA in the North.That was why it was so important what Joe McDonagh did at Seán’s funeral; the speech he made to the community. But, just to make an observation of my own, no representative from the Southern government visited the funeral. Given the magnitude of the atrocity, if Seán had been a GAA chairman of a Southern club, I have no doubt that they would have been there.”

The Pat Finucane Centre report on Sean’s murder shows that he set the alarm at the clubhouse at 11.27pm on May 12, 1997, and was attacked between 11.32pm and 11.35pm.

“He [Seán] was bundled into the back of his own Sierra (a hatchback). It was driven in convoy, led by a Vauxhall Cavalier fitted with false number plates. The third car, a white Ford Escort, was the back-up car in the convoy. This convoy crossed the River Bann and was timed passing the adjacent Toome RUC station at 11.41.06pm precisely a distance of five miles from Bellaghy. Police claim that the tail-end car, the white Ford Escort, did not cross the River Bann into Co. Antrim. This cavalcade drove a further 5.2 miles on the A6 to the start of the M2 motorway near Randalstown. Seán’s Ford Sierra car was driven into a secluded laneway running above and parallel to the start of the motorway. He was then dragged from the car and shot, and his car set on fire.

“The blaze was reported at 11.45pm to the local Randalstown RUC station less than a mile away. When the local RUC investigated, they found Seán Brown’s body with six bullet wounds to the head, partially burned from the intense heat, lying behind his burnt-out car.”

Seán and Seamus Heaney

As I mentioned before in this column, my vivid memory of Seán was his closing of the same Bellaghy GAA gates behind us, as we departed after a BBC Radio Ulster programme in the club, where Áine Brolly, sister of Joe, was crowned the Derry representative of the Ulster Rose of Tralee in 1995. Earlier, we shared stories of Downings, where he and his family loved to take their caravan on holidays. Killybegs and Portsalon were other favourites.

One of his proudest moments - which I attended - was hosting the homecoming celebration for Seamus Heaney at the Bellaghy GAA Clubhouse after the local hero was awarded the Nobel

Prize for Literature. As the book reminds us: “Heaney loved it. His brother Dan later told RTÉ that, of the many receptions heralding his success, this event was particularly special.The guest list for Seamus Heaney’s homecoming had been painstakingly compiled to ensure it would be cross-community and fully representative of the locale – ‘both sides of the house’ – a fact that did not go unnoticed by the honoured guest.”

In a letter to the Irish News, Heaney wrote: “Seán’s murder was shocking and sinister. I have known two generations of the Brown family. They are people of great probity, much respected in the Bellaghy district, so my heart goes out to them at this moment. I heard the news in Olympia just after I had visited the stadium where the original Olympic games were held, and given Seán Brown’s role as chairman of the Gaelic Athletic Club in Bellaghy, I could not help thinking of his death as a crime against the ancient Olympic spirit.

“The Greeks recognised that there was something sacrosanct about the athletic ideal and regarded any violence during the period of the games as sacrilegious. Athletics and drama, two of the great civilising activities of Greece, were two of the activities which Seán Brown promoted, in his capacity as a lifelong member of the local Wolfe Tones Club.

“He was a man of integrity and good will, qualities which were manifest when he presided at an event organised in January last year to celebrate the award of the Nobel prize to this particular Bellaghy man. Many things were precious about that evening including Seán’s presentation to me of a painting of Lough Beg and the country around it, where we both grew up.

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“But even more important was the fact that the celebration was attended by people from both sides of the Bellaghy community, Protestant and Catholic. He represented something better than we have grown used to; something not quite covered by the word “reconciliation” because that word has become a policy word – official and public.

“This was more like a purification, a release from what the Greeks called the miasma, the stain of spilled blood. It is a terrible irony that the man who organised such an event should die at the hands of a sectarian killer.”

A Bitter Harvest is published by Colmcille Press in Derry and will be launched in Canavan’s (Peter), Omagh Road, Garvaghy, (ten minutes from Ballygawley) on June 19, at 8pm.