Leaders of the Phoenix Front

One of the most highly decentralized terrorist forces on Earth, the Phoenix Front are only loosely organized by the force of personality in a select few leaders, some on the battlefield, others to the people.

## Figures

### P. O'Neill

Several newspapers in Ireland and the UK have received letters from the Phoenix Front. Each one describes what the Front wants, how it will achieve these goals, and how they can be stopped from doing them. Each letter appears to be written individually and then carbon copied, but they all bear the same name.

P. O'Neill.

Increasingly, P. O'Neill is becoming the unofficial leader of the Front, the only name of leadership attached to the organization. Whoever P. O'Neill is, he displays a simple but powerful view of the international political situation, and writes constantly on the struggle of the working classes in Belfast with such description that there is little doubt he knows it firsthand. His writings on the conditions in the Sprawl, coupled with Allied actions along the border and inside cities like Derry and Crossmaglen, have fueled anti-Allied sentiment both in Ireland and around the world.

INTERPOL only has the more bare of theories concerning who P. O'Neill truly is. Any attempts to find the man result only in small shootouts and more casualties. Trying to find informants in the organization presently is difficult, as the lure of money is strangely absent in these new guerrillas. The hope is that with time and further conflict, some will become disillusioned with the Front's rhetoric and fall to INTERPOL's open arms and wallets. The primary theory is that P. O'Neill is a simple pen name used by a variety of writers working off a similar script. Experts have disputed these claims, stating that certain writing styles would show in the letters. Each time a P O'Neill letter is received, it is immediately handed over to INTERPOL, but copies are still printed as quite often they are of little good to a continuing investigation.

Whoever P. O'Neill is, he considers Fowl a personal favorite to launch a diatribe against. "Fowl is no less than the dark shadow of thousands of years of oppression," he had written in a letter to the BBC. "He is the bastard son of English tyranny and greed, coupled with the new blind eye turned on his actions in Satellite City by a placated and increasingly abusive Allied Nations." The letters themselves are often freely distributed at random in Satellite City, and despite constant raids of print shops the letters are still released under the noses of Legion Security.

### Cathal Goulding

*""The Allied and Syndicate forces in the six counties will be confronted by such a force. It is inevitable that they will be. This military camp combined with the economic resistance camp can be successful. It will be successful if we unite and fight for it."*

-  Cathal Goulding's "There Must Be A Fight"
No man is more responsible for the leftist shift in Irish Republicanism than Goulding. Under his leadership as the new Chief of Staff of the Phoenix Front, Goulding feels it is the fault of the "bourgeois" that Northern Ireland has long been divided between Catholics and Protestants.

Born to a working class family in the poorer parts of Dublin, a young Goulding became actively involved with the IRA's youth wing, eventually joining as a teenager. He was arrested in 1946 for trying to reorganize the IRA in preparation for the coming war, but was soon released and led the organization's Dublin cells during World War II. He was again jailed for raiding a British Army post in Essex, and while imprisoned he befriended members of EOKA and Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs. While in British prison he became interested in the Russian Revolution, and on his release he became the IRA's quartermaster general, only to be arrested again for possession of a revolver.

On his release, Goulding was able to escape the rounding up of the Republican and Loyalist militia through Ireland, staying with close associates in a small cottage in Myshall, County Carlow. Despite the dangers involved, he made what is so far the most famous speech against what has happened in Ireland, "There Must Be A Fight", decrying the Irish government for what Goulding and others see as selling out the people for the interests and money of foreign parties at the expense of the working people on both sides of the border.

When the new Phoenix Front formed from what was the IRA, Goulding jumped in to lead, and was made the new Chief of Staff for the group to take over leadership in the Republic. His leadership focuses on the reality that, as long as Belfast is held by Straylight and Northern Ireland forcefully made British, there will always be armed struggle. This view has been reinforced by Syndicate actions towards all residents of Belfast, and forceful Allied crackdowns in other areas in Ulster. His calls for an Ireland free of foreign control is gaining support, and both ACIN and SPIDER consider Goulding a dangerous influence.

### Gusty Spence

*"An element of the Front were almost enlisted by the Straylight 'government' at a fee of ten credits a day to promote a sectarian war."*

- Gusty Spence, speaking on the situation in Satellite City.
Part of the growing number of unionists in the Phoenix Front, "Gusty" Spence is considered on of the leading figures for the former unionists who have joined the Front to battle Straylight Electronics and the Peacekeepers.

Part of the British Army immediately after WWII, Spence saw combat station in Cyprus fighting against EOKA guerrillas until 1961, when he was given a medical discharge for a non-combat ailment. However, Spence had also grown up as part of unionist street gangs, fighting against republican gangs near the predominantly-unionist Shankhill Rd. Due to his history, Spence was drawn into the nascent unionist militia movement that was forming in response to the rising tide of the republican-dominated civil rights movement. However, Spence soon found himself drawn to the hope that Satellite City would be a new opportunity for the unionist community. When the reality was finally revealed, Spence found himself forming the unionist arm of the Front's forces in Belfast.

Currently Spence is trying to remind his men under the command of 1st Battalion, Shankhill Road that they are soldiers, and that soldiers do not kill civilians. This is a message that has not quite come across yet, as Spence has noticed a troubling trend of young unionists joining the secretive and violent group calling themselves the Red Hand Commandos. Suspicious of the group due to their secrecy and apparent willingness to inflict casualties no matter the cost, Spence has petitioned the Front to start investigating the group immediately.