Hugh Torney (Irish republican)

Hugh Torney (c.1954 – 3 September 1996) was an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary leader best known for his activities on behalf of the INLA and Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in a feud with the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO), a grouping composed of disgruntled former INLA members, in the mid-1980s.

In his youth Torney had been a member of the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and as early as 1970 he was injured on duty along with fellow OIRA member Jackie Goodman when both were wounded during an attack on the Henry Taggart British Army base in Ballymurphy, Belfast. He switched allegiance to the INLA around the formation of that group in 1974. Being held in Long Kesh at the time, Torney officially declared his loyalty to the IRSP on 12 December 1974.

Around 1984 Torney was one of a number of leading INLA members in Belfast to be imprisoned on the evidence of "supergrass" Harry Kirkpatrick. During the absence of Torney and the other leaders the INLA in Belfast came under the command of Tom McCartan, a close ally of Dominic McGlinchey. Under McCartan the Belfast INLA moved into extortion and racketeering, damaging their popular support and opening up the possibility of a wider feud with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which controlled much of the Belfast rackets. McCartan and the increasingly "anti-social" direction taken by the group under his leadership was met with anger by Torney and the others held in prison and led to a factionalisation of the INLA in prison. One group under Gerard Steenson favoured liquidating the INLA altogether, a second under John "Jap" O'Reilly, to which Torney belonged, favoured reform of the organisation and a third, loyal to Tom McAllister, vacillated between Steenson and O'Reilly.

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