Tradition and Ideology in the IRA 1948 – 1962 by David Seán Browne
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Joining the Movement: Tradition and Ideology in the IRA 1948 – 1962 By David Seán Browne Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D The National University of Ireland, Maynooth The Department of History November 2013 Head of The Department of History: Professor Marian Lyons Supervisors: Dr Martin Maguire, Dr Ian Speller Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... ii List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 ..........................................................................................................................23 The anti-partition debate and the revival of republican separatism 1948-1956. Chapter 2 ..........................................................................................................................83 „From the soldiers of yesterday to the soldiers of today‟: The inheritors of the Fenian Tradition. Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................137 „The story without an End‟. Representations of the Irish historical narrative 1932-1959. Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................188 „Cyprus now, Ireland when ?‟. The international dimension to the IRA and its appeal to a new generation. Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................244 „We thought we were the only hope‟. The economic and social appeal of the IRA. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................288 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................299 Acknowledgements There are a number of people I would like to thank for making the completion of this thesis possible. To begin, I would like to thank my family, my parents Seán and Mary Browne in particular and my sisters Roisín and Ciara, for all their vital support financial and otherwise. I am also grateful to my extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins who also encouraged and supported me and took an interest in my work over the years. In particular, Micheál Browne my uncle. I especially want to thank my grandmother Bridie Browne who passed away the week I was completing this thesis as well as my father who passed away shortly afterwards. I would like to thank the Maynooth History Department for all their help and assistance over the years. Vincent Comerford was the first person who really encouraged me to carry out a PhD and was extremely helpful and supportive of my endeavors at all times. I would like to thank his successor Prof Marian Lyons who also continued to provide similar help and assistance, as well as my supervisors Martin Maguire and Ian Speller. I am grateful to my colleagues with whom I studied alongside and indeed to all those people who helped me in any way during the years I spent in Maynooth. I would like to thank Liam Nolan and Micheál Mac Donnacha who assisted me during different phases of this research. To Darren, Louise and Aoibheann Bizzell, for their encouragement and in particular Darren‟s assistance with the technical aspects of this research. Brain Hanley was also very obliging and helpful over the years and it was a history course which he taught in 2008 which sparked my initial interest about the IRA of iii the border campaign period. To the staff in the National Library of Ireland and especially Gerry Kavanagh who provided valuable help over the years, thank you. Finally, to all those who provided interviews for this thesis, I am extremely grateful. Thank you for sharing your time and recollections with me and for being so helpful whenever we met. I want to especially thank Davey Lewsley and Jim Mcilmurray in Lurgan, Seán Lynch from Longford and Donal Donnelly from Tyrone, who put me in contact with people who were involved during the border campaign period and were always very approachable and helpful. iv List of Abbreviations ACA Army Comrades Association ANC African National Congress APL Anti-Partition League EOKA Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos RAF Royal Air Force FLN Front de libération nationale GHQ General Headquarters IRA Irish Republican Army IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood ILP Irish Labour Party IRSP Irish Republican Socialist party IWL Irish Workers League INLA Irish National Liberation movement NAI National Archive Ireland OC Officer Commander RIC Royal Irish Constabulary RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary UPM Unemployment Protest Movement v Introduction With the ending of the Civil War in 1923 and the defeat of the Anti-Treaty Forces, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), over the next the next twenty five years, remained on the periphery of Irish political life. This period also saw a steady decline in membership, while the organization struggled to define its relevance in wider society. The years between 1948 and 1962 saw the re-emergence of a new generation of young people who joined the organization. In 1956 it embarked on a military campaign in Northern Ireland that ended in failure in 1962. The objective of the campaign was to end partition and create a thirty-two county unified state in Ireland. Sinn Féin became the political front for the IRA and both organizations, which are regularly referred to as the republican movement within this thesis, attracted a renewed level of support and membership. This thesis examines the role that tradition and ideology played in the re-growth of the movement during the 1950s. The historiography of the republican movement is divided on whether the movement is best understood as a reflection of a communal bonding tradition or as an ideologically motivated movement. The IRA in the 1950s is seen by some as the paradigm of non- ideological republicanism with its simple focus on the border campaign in „Operation Harvest‟. Indeed, it has sometimes been suggested that militant republican groups such as the IRA derive from an inherited non-political sub-culture and motivation for joining has been primarily in order to be socially accepted. This thesis challenges that hypothesis. 1 Relatively little has been written about this period when compared to other periods of republican activity, including the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War and post-1969 in Northern Ireland. This is the first in depth study of this period which has been carried out using interviews with IRA members. This has made it possible to assess the importance of both tradition and ideology within the republican movement and the role that they played in motivating young people to become involved during the 1950s. Existing work by historians such as Fearghal McGarry and Tom Garvin have depicted the movement as an introspective tradition devoid of ideological motivation. This thesis will demonstrate that the roles of tradition and ideology are more complex and nuanced than has previously been thought and that ultimately the movement was an ideological organization and was seen as such by young people who joined it between 1948 and 1962. The new manifestation of the IRA which emerged from the early 1950s signaled the first real breakthrough in terms of attracting a new generation of activists in the years after the Civil War. In the years after 1923 the organization was, at times, ideologically conflicted on a number of issues and was in gradual decline, albeit with occasional increases in membership in the early 1930s. The defeat of the organization by the Free State forces left the IRA in a disorganized state. In 1924 on paper it had 14,000 members.1 In 1926 the numbers had fallen to 5,042. Sean Cronin estimated that in 1934 the IRA had 8,000 members. 2 1 General report for executive meeting, 10 Aug. 1924, in (UCDA, Moss Twomey Papers, P69/179 /104-9). 2 Brian Hanley, The IRA: 1926-1936 (Dublin, 2002), p. 17. 2 Under its Chief-of-Staff Moss Twomey, between 1926 to 1936, the IRA‟s approach towards the forces of the State in the north and south was „one of caution‟.3 Nevertheless, while there was no immediate plan to re-engage in an armed campaign with the authorities, a number of prominent political issues during the period gave the IRA a degree of political focus outside of its key objective which was the creation of a thirty- two county Republic. Remembrance ceremonies organized by the British Legion saw counter demonstrations of protest by republicans in the mid 1920s, which according to military intelligence contributed to an increase in support.4 The rise of the Blueshirt movement which evolved from the Army Comrades Association (ACA) saw a number of clashes with the IRA. Hanley contends that the establishment of the ACA offered the IRA „a boost, giving units a focus and leading to increased recruitment‟.5 The period was also significant in the IRA‟s history due to its involvement in social agitation campaigns initiated by Peadar O‟Donnell. This also contributed to sporadic increases in membership as disillusioned young people joined at a time of economic depression.6 The IRA in the aftermath of the Civil War through to the mid-1930s struggled to define its role in Irish society.