A film seized, a parliament in uproar
The BBC Roadblock Film, 1979
In October 1979 a BBC Panorama crew filmed armed, masked IRA members manning a roadblock on the roads around Carrickmore. The film was not broadcast - instead it became the subject of a parliamentary crisis. The Conservative MP Tim Eggar asked Margaret Thatcher in the Commons to "express extreme concern" that the Panorama team had "encouraged the IRA to break the law". The Ulster Unionist leader James Molyneaux called the filming "at least a treasonable activity". The BBC governors issued a statement acknowledging the filming "would appear to be a clear breach of standing instructions in relation to filming in Ireland". Police seized the footage under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1980, following a further outcry in parliament and the press. The film has never been shown in full on British television. The incident became one of the defining moments in the long argument between the Thatcher government and the BBC over coverage of the Troubles - the same argument that would later produce Thatcher's 'oxygen of publicity' doctrine and the broadcasting ban on republican spokespeople.
Fifteen titles. The most of any Tyrone club.
An Charraig Mhór Naomh Colmcille
Carrickmore St Colmcille GAC - An Charraig Mhór Naomh Colmcille - has won the Tyrone Senior Football Championship fifteen times: 1940, 1943, 1949, 1961, 1966, 1969, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2005. No other Tyrone club has reached that total. The run in the late seventies - three championships in a row, 1977, 1978, 1979 - is the one that older supporters still measure other achievements against. In the nineties and early 2000s the club had a second dominant period, winning six titles in eleven years. The O'Neill Cup last came to Pairc Colmcille in 2005. The board at the ground carries all fifteen years. The village doesn't need to be reminded.
A 6th-century sanctuary, a rocky hill, two names
Termon Rock and the Saint's Name
The village sat on maps as Termon Rock well into the nineteenth century. The first word comes from tearmann - Irish for a church sanctuary, the protected land granted to early monasteries under Brehon law. The civil parish is Termonmaguirk (Tearmann Mhig Oirc, traditionally translated as McGurk's sanctuary), a name that preserves the memory of a Gaelic Christian network operating in mid-Tyrone fifteen centuries ago. Saint Colmcille is said to have founded a monastery here around 550 - the parish church, the GAA club, the primary school, and the sports complex are all named for him. The second word, Rock, is the hill. An Charraig Mhór - the big rock in Irish - is both the modern name and the older physical description. The change from the English map-name to the Irish one, largely completed in common use by the twentieth century, mirrors what happened across much of west Tyrone as Irish-language naming reasserted itself.