Billy Fox

Billy Fox (3 January 1939 – 12 March 1974) was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served as a Senator for the Cultural and Educational Panel from 1973 until his death in 1974, having earlier served as a TD for the Monaghan constituency from 1969 to 1973. He was shot dead on the night of 11 March 1974 by a raiding party of the Provisional IRA at the home of his girlfriend's family at Tircooney, near Clones, County Monaghan; his body was found the following morning.

Early life Billy Fox was born in January 1939 in Cortubber, Castleblayney, County Monaghan, the only son of William Fox and his wife, Helen.

Among the Bawn neighbours who grew up alongside Fox and who later recalled him fondly were Peadar McElroy, Pat Ruxton and Tommy McKeon, who remembered him as a trustworthy friend and something of a practical joker. He was elected in 1969 to the 19th Dáil as a Fine Gael TD for the Monaghan constituency, alongside John Francis Conlan, who took the seat vacated by James Dillon; this was the only occasion on which Fine Gael secured the election of two members for the three-seat Monaghan constituency.

His election was assisted by support from the County Monaghan Protestant Association, a grouping founded in the 1920s for former unionists which had continuous representation on the county council and other local bodies. He was forcibly removed from the Dáil chamber, and the incident made front-page news, attracting national publicity. The episode was later said to have played a significant part in the loss of his Dáil seat two years afterwards.

Relationship with Marjorie Coulson Fox had been going out with Marjorie Coulson, a matron at a hospital in Belfast, for some years. The couple had met in the late 1960s at a dance in Newbliss, County Monaghan, and came from neighbouring Protestant families. This claim is now understood to have been invented to distract from the fact that the killing had been carried out by the Provisional IRA.

Investigation, trial and imprisonment By St Patrick's Day, gardaí had charged five men from the Clones area with Fox's murder and IRA membership: brothers Sean and Michael Kinsella, Sean McGettigan, James ("Junior") McPhillips, and George McDermott.

All five men convicted of Fox's murder were freed in 1990, after sixteen years in prison, following a campaign supported by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich and Clones Urban District Council to have a release date set. Because Fox was a Protestant, some Fine Gael politicians have since stated that the motive for his killing was sectarian.

The circumstances of Fox's death were later explored in the RTÉ Radio 1 documentary Rumours from Monaghan, compiled and presented by Peter Woods and Seán Rocks and produced by Woods, which examined the events at Tircooney and the atmosphere of fear and paranoia felt by people living along the border during that period.

A year after Fox's death, Marjorie Coulson met and married George Beattie, then a printer based in Belfast, who later trained as a Church of Ireland minister as a late vocation in 2004; she subsequently went by her married name, Marjorie Beattie. The couple regularly attended memorial events at the Senator Billy Fox Memorial Park in Latton, County Monaghan, named in his honour, as is the Cavan-Monaghan branch of Young Fine Gael. George Beattie died in February 2024, shortly before the fiftieth anniversary of Fox's death.

On the fiftieth anniversary, a memorial service was held on 28 April 2024 at Christ Church, Aughnamullen, where Fox is buried, organised in part by the Latton Bawn Historical Society, along with a wreath-laying ceremony; the group has also proposed an interpretive centre at the church.

In July 2024, a portrait of Senator Fox by the artist Nina Rumińska, commissioned by the Office of Public Works, was unveiled at an event in Leinster House by the Cathaoirleach of Seanad Éireann, Jerry Buttimer, and Taoiseach Simon Harris, attended by members of the Fox family and by serving and former members of the Oireachtas. Buttimer described Fox as a courageous politician and a man who had worked with vigour, imagination and empathy for the good of his community.