Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Joe, the 'Ra and MeAuthor(s): Seán KearneySource: Fortnight, No. 411 (Feb., 2003), pp. 8-10Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25560776 .

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I Fortnight FEBRUARY 2003|

memoir

JOE, THE 'RA ANDIM

Making a difference: Joe Cahill with the hat, in select company.

When Joe Cahill recruited me into the IRA I was in my early teens and he had just been released from prison, having served about 7 years of a life sentence. He and five others had been sentenced to death for the

murder of a Catholic policeman but only one, Tom Williams, was hanged, on September 2nd, 1942.

Brendan Anderson's book highlights this incident several times, but the reader is

not made aware that execution was common both north and south, during this period. On March 5th of the same year, George Plant, another IRA man, was executed in the south, and the British hangman who dispatched Tom Williams, was later engaged by De Valera, to hang Charlie Kerins, a former Chief of Staff of the organisation.

It wasn't long before Cahill introduced me to James Steele, when he too was released after a long sentence. Steele was the most senior republican in Belfast in the Fifties, and I found him conservative in his outlook and ultra-Catholic in his values. In order to organise the small number of committed republicans into a battalion of the IRA he gathered around him a group of like-minded men, most of whom had been interned during the war years. This was in response to events in Dublin where a new IRA had been re-organised by three men, Patrick McLogan, Tony Magan and Tomas

McCurtain, which ended republican

conflict with the South in order to use it as a base for attacks on the North.

EMBRYO Thus, the embryo of a new IRA campaign was created, just a few years after the total failure of a former one, led by Sean Russell, another Chief of Staff who collaborated

with the Nazis and died aboard a German submarine. Brendan Anderson pays scant attention to these important events, with only one chapter devoted to the Fifties and the failure of the Belfast IRA to participate in a campaign which it had been anticipating since 1949.

Cahill blames the entire fiasco on the treachery of an informer, but this is an over simplistic explanation for poor leadership.

The existence of an informer is indisputable, and it had been an open secret for two or three years, before the campaign was launched. This man was the battalion Intelligence Officer, who had been interned during the war, and was part of the inner circle created by Steele. Yet he is allocated just a few paragraphs in this

book, and Cahill seems to use him as a scapegoat for the failures of himself and his

mentor, James Steele. These resulted in the arrest and

internment of themselves and most of the foot soldiers, such as myself. Only one officer, Frank McGlade, managed to escape, but he was arrested later in the South and

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PAGE 8

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Sean Kearney

interned also. No shots were fired in Belfast in 1956/57 and even a unit from Cork, that arrived to destroy a transmitter, was apprehended in Co. Antrim as a direct result of the informer's activities. Yet Cahill does not name him, or describe his role in the organisation, which seems to contradict his assertion that this man alone was the sole cause of failure. His story produces no new revelations and leaves many questions still unanswered. The most important of these is why, if a person was identified as a threat to everyone else, was he not at least suspended from his post? How did he escape with his life (he still walks the streets, according to Cahill) when many men and

women, guilty of lesser crimes before and since, were murdered without mercy?

AWAY In many ways the Fifties debacle in Belfast

was worse, from the republican point of view, than the disaster of 1969 when once again the IRA failed to rise and was

mockingly given the title 'I Ran Away.' Republican strategy of the Fifties is inadequately described by Anderson, and the reader cannot grasp from the sparse information offered by Cahill, the extent of the movement's total isolation from main stream politics. Jamnes Steele stood as a Sinn Fein candidate for West Belfast, for example, in 1950, and on February 25th of that year he only polled 1,482 votes, compared to 30,539 for Jack Beattie, Labour, and 33,917 for the Rev McManaway, Unionist. Shortly after that election I was encouraged to involve myself in Sinn Fein byJoe himself, and soon I was an enthusiastic activist.

Public meetings, however, which I regularly addressed, usually attracted more Special Branch personnel than supporters, and it wasn't tuntil barrack raids in the North were launlched by southern units, that the IRA itself began to be noticed once again. The failure of a raid at Omagh in

October 1954, paradoxically, boosted Sinn Fein's popularity. Eight men were arrested and two of themn, Tomn Mitchel and Phillip Clarke, were selected as candidates in the election of 1955, for Tyrone and mid-Ulster.

I slpe1 t weeks that summer electionece-inig for Sinn Fein, and it took the comnhbinied effort of party activists from all over Ireland, to get the prisoners elected. Even that would not have been enouglh, if the mnain stream nationalists had not left the way clear for uls and abandoned their traditional stupporters. In the event,

Clarke and Mitclhel were elected, but were unseated again dule to a Unionist legal challenge, and thle election had to be foulght once mlore. Thle violence of the IRA camnpaign pult an- enld to politics, howevei-, and internmllent endled Belfast's role- in both-.

DEVASTATING Cahill admits that internment was a devastating state weapon, and even goes as far as to say that he felt the IRA was finished, when it ended. But it wasn't ill treatment or brain washing that produced the apathy. We were nearly always well treated, and the prison resembled a hostel,

with meals served to us in our cells, even when we chose to remain in bed. Despite a wide range of activities, however, the main enemy was boredom, so people with greater energy found it more difficult to accept than others. It follows, that older men with a more serene outlook, actually enjoyed the relative peace, while the campaign continued sporadically on the outside.

That campaign was a fiasco, and few prisoners felt that it warranted the sacrifice of many years of freedom. My gut instinct was to air views of that kind, which didn't help my popularity, even as Cahill, now the prisoners' barber, cut my hair! Later, in the Sixties, Cahill admits to finding it as difficult as anyone to find employment, and the cares of ordinary life seem to have pre occupied him during the peaceful period that preceded 1969. He and Steele even resigned from the IRA because they felt it had become less militant and more political, in a socialist way.

They later became identified with the Provos when the IRA split into Provisional and Official camps, after the organisation again failed to distinguish itself during the sectarian strife that erupted in 1969. Once again, Cahill finds a scapegoat, and this time the culprit is the Official IRA. If they had been armed and willing to fight, he argues, then the outcome would have been different. My view is that there would certainly have been more bloodshed, but not necessarily a better outcome.

BOMB The Provos were soon able to shoot and bomb at will when they were bankrolled by a Dublin government, and in the early '70's Cahill was made OC of the Belfast area. This was one of the bloodiest periods of 'The Troubles' but he expresses little remorse for the deeds of his followers. After scores of defenceless people had been slaughtered by no warning car bombs in

many incidents, he avoids accountability by blaming the 'unstable car bomb' and claims falsely that it was banned by the Provos in 1972, and thereafter.

The increased violence and the ruthless disregard for civilian life achieved nothing. Any changes that came about could have been realised by negotiation if the nationalists, including the republicans, had united and put their case in a rational way.

Worse was to come however. The Provos found a new source of supply in L,ibya when C7olonel (,addafi befr iended them and

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Sean Kearney - retruited into the IRA by Joe Cahill.

I PAGE 9 |

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I Fortnight FEBRUARY 2003

memoir Sean Kearney

JOE, THE RA AND ME continued Cahill claims a central role in developing this link.

It is surprising that he should admit this, given the current climate in the wake of September 11th, but then, he was never a diplomat. The Colonel wanted nothing in return, and there were no strings attached to his support, he claims. He just wanted to help the IRA because he admired it, but then Hitler would probably have said the same thing, when his regime manipulated the IRA of the Forties.

The 'no strings attached' aid, resulted in the first successful operations by the IRA in Britain, which was of course Gaddafi's real purpose. With the willing help of Irishmen he had no need to risk a single Libyan life, while he vented his vengeance on the British through the IRA. From his point of view, therefore, it was a sound investment. Cahill claims that Gaddafi's

motivation was hatred of England, but this is overly simplistic. If Gaddafi confided in

Cahill that he hated England he must also have expressed a similar revulsion for America, which traditionally provides much support for republican political objectives.

His hostility to the West is legendary and before September 11th 2001 he was regarded as the world's no. 1 terrorist.

Cahill of course is incapable of understanding that a pathological hatred of England or any other country is no excuse for attacking its citizens, and it is the reason

why I became disillusioned with Republicanism. Most of the time it resembled Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in its attitude to what it considered its enemies, but there is no place for such a murderous ideology in modern society. Another great

weakness in Brendan Anderson's account of Cahill's life is that these issues are not debated.

Brendan Anesn author._ _

HATRED Cahill's hatred of the Special Branch is common to all republicans, and it is understandable. Apart from the Ulster unionists, the two great obstacles to the IRA were internment and the Special Branch. Cahill describes the latter as the Heavy Squad whose counterpart in the South has little regard for human rights. People were harassed by them, apparently, and one poor fellow even had to leave the country, he felt so terrorised! Isn't that enough to keep all right thinking people awake at night? Joe, however, has nothing to say about the IRA's own brand of terrorism against civilians.

There are no words of condemnation of the so-called Punishment Beatings, and no sorrow for the murder, maiming and torture of defenceless victims, which has been a feature of IRA activity for 30 years. In the closing pages of the book, however, there is a touching scene at the newly located grave of the martyred Tom

Williams. Cahill tells how the prison authorities helped in the search for his grave by marking TJW crudely on a brick to guide them. At that point my thoughts went to another unlocated grave, and one that is

not referred to by Brendan Anderson - the grave of poor Jean McConville - murdered by the IRA because she was a Protestant and a suspected informer. They left no directions to her lonely grave and have failed to help her family in the search for her remains. She was only one of thousands

murdered in 'The Struggle' but she serves as a poignant reminder of republican double standards.

Undoubtedly, Cahill has travelled far since I, an enthusiastic youth, became one of his willing helpers, but this book proves that he hasn't learned much about life in the interim period. The reader will search it in vain for words such as compassion, compromise, mercy or forgiveness, simply because an organisation such as the IRA inevitably destroys the soul of its followers.

And when all is said and done, what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose the most precious thing of all - his humanity?

Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA Fy Brendan Anderson

The O'Brien Press, Dublin ISBN: 0-86278-674-6

I PAGE 10

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