Rose Dugdale, a former British socialite, Wittgenstein scholar, and heiress, renowned for association with the IRA and bomb-making, passed away at the age of 82. She was born on the 25th of March 1941 and departed this life on the 18th of March 2024. Dugdale famously attributed her allegiance to the Provisional Republican Paramilitary group to the infamous Bloody Sunday events of 1972, although her trajectory into this ideology had been established years prior.
She achieved fame or infamy – depending on perspective – through her deeds as an art burglar and for an unsuccessful helicopter-bomb assault on the Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Strabane. Both actions were plotted with her ex-partner, Eddie Gallagher. For some, her exploits revealed a Bonnie and Clyde-like attraction, but Dugdale was empowered by a dogmatic, restricted perspective that justified Provisional IRA’s lethal actions with her resolute Marxist dispassion.
Her reflections on the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972 where 14 lives were taken by the British army, motivated her to commit to the “liberation of the Irish people” from the grip of British imperialism. She candidly professed in an interview with TG4 that involvement in such a cause inevitably means accepting the potential necessity to take lives.
The question of how and why an affluent woman from a wealthy English family would choose such a violent path has lingered over the years. Bridget Rose Dugdale was born in Devon in 1941 with no Irish lineage in recent history. Her father, Eric, was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British army during World War II, overseeing a vast estate in East Devon and a Chelsea residence, and making a name for himself at Lloyd’s.
Her glamorous mother, Caroline, came from a prosperous Gloucestershire family. Despite the strictness of her upbringing, Dugdale remembered having a “radiant childhood”. However, from her late teenage years, she resolved to reject her parents’ affluence. As explained by Sean O’Driscoll, author of the biography, “Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale”, her radicalisation took place progressively.
In 1958, as a young woman of 17, she railed against the concept of debutantes presenting themselves to the Queen, which she equated to a vulgar event. However, she struck a bargain with her parents that she would participate in the ceremony – including a curtsy to the Queen in Buckingham Palace – on the condition she could attend Oxford University.
At Oxford’s St Anne’s College, where her education focused on philosophy, politics and economics, she commenced a heterosexual relationship with her tutor, Peter Ady, whom she subsequently referred to as her greatest romance. At the same time, she teamed up with a fellow student to dress as a male and secretly gain entry into the all-male Oxford Union debating society, as part of their efforts to abolish the ban on women that wasn’t lifted until 1963.
Recognised for her sharp intellect, she attained her master’s degree via a thesis on Wittgenstein at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and went on to attain a doctorate in economics from the University of London.
During the turbulent time of the lively 1960s, she took part in a Cuban tour and partnered with Wally Heaton, an ex-British soldier and left-wing union promoter, who steered her onto the avenue of violent revolt.
As she they started offering her inheritance to London’s poverty-stricken, Heaton acquainted her with the emerging civil rights scene and sectarian tension in Northern Ireland where she also begann to be involved in gun smuggling for the IRA. Initially, she was met with scepticism by its leaders, however, she slowly proved that she was as devoted as their most radical member.
In 1973, she, Heaton, and a number of others stole artwork and silver metalwork worth £82,000 from her own family residence in Devon, with the profits allegedly destined for the IRA. When caught, she confronted her father during her trial, professing her love for him, but also her disdain for his values. Her punishment was a two-year sentence in suspension, with the judge predicting it was improbable she would reoffend.
In January 1974, she was involved in the hijacking of a helicopter alongside Eddie Gallagher and some IRA members. They passed themselves off as journalists on a photographic assignment to Tory Island, filling the helicopter with cans of high explosives and compelling the pilot to navigate to Strabane. Despite failing in their mission to detonate Strabane’s RUC barracks, they managed to drop two of the cans.
In April, the residence of former Conservative MP and South African mining beneficiary, Sir Alfred Beit, known as Russborough House in Co. Wicklow, was targeted by thieves. They succeeded in stealing 19 artwork pieces crafted by luminaries such as Vermeer, Goya, Velázquez, Rubens, Hals, and Gainsborough. If evaluated in today’s market, the stolen pieces would be worth an estimated €120 million. Dugdale, who had insight into art, selected which paintings to confiscate and which to ignore.
The criminals demanded a ransom of £500,000 and the freedom of incarcerated IRA members in English prisons, specifically the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, along with Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney. Dugdale was apprehended in west Cork a month later, with all 19 paintings found. She served a nine-year sentence and gave birth to her son Ruairi in Limerick Prison, fathered by Gallagher. Even though the relationship had deteriorated, they married in 1978 while in prison to evade potential extradition to Northern Ireland.
After a transient and sometimes challenging early life, Ruairi later established a successful business career in Germany. In 1975, Gallagher and Marion Coyle abducted Dutch industrialist Tiede Herrema, demanding the freedom of Dugdale and two other incarcerated IRA members. After an 18-day ordeal, Herrema was released and Gallagher received a 20-year sentence.
After Dugdale’s release, she resumed her republican activities, joining the vigilante group ‘Concerned Parents Against Drugs’. This entity focused on the drug peddlers in the working-class estates of Dublin. In O’Driscoll’s biography, it was unveiled that Dugdale, still quite under the radar, had become a skilled and creative bombmaker for the IRA since the mid-1980s, teaming up with her new partner, Jim Monaghan. Monaghan was one of the renowned ‘Colombia Three’ who were arrested in Colombia in 2001 and were later sentenced to a 17-year imprisonment for training FARC rebels. However, they managed to escape the country and return to Ireland.
The life of Dugdale was featured in a film called Baltimore or Rose’s War in the US, which was released in Ireland and Britain on March 22nd.
Rose Dugdale lived her final days without remorse, residing in a Dublin-based nursing facility managed by nuns. Never perturbed by the pain she may have inflicted directly or indirectly, she remained a staunch ideologue. Her most joyful moment, she claimed, was the assault on the Strabane RUC barracks, stating, “That was the first instance where I truly felt in the thick of it.”
Rose Dugdale is succeeded by her companion, Jim Monaghan, her child, Ruairi, and Eddie Gallagher, to whom she stayed wedded.