The Stormont government was not caught in a dilemma. Faced with opposition, they repressed it. In November 1955, the Northern Ireland minister for home affairs, G. B. Hanna, passed regulations allowing the arrest and detention, without warrant, of any person for up to twentyfour hours. In July 1956, his successor, Captain Terence O’Neill, banned processions associated with another County Fermanagh Feis in Newtownbutler. One hundred police officers, many in riot gear and steel helmets, invaded the village of perhaps 400 residents and enforced the ban. There were no processions, no baton charges, and no water hoses and the event passed peacefully. The only altercation of any kind was when the RUC ordered a band to stop playing. They were crossing a street and therefore engaging in a procession on a public road. The Stormont government forced the peace in Newtownbutler, but it was a short-lived peace.
The appeals of Costello and the Catholic Church and the repression from Stormont did not deter the IRA. The Westminster elections showed that it had support. Many in the leadership were influenced by Sein Cronin’s enthusiasm and his abilities. Cronin had produced a manual called Notes on Guerrilla Warfdre and a series of battle lectures, and was pushing for a campaign. The Army Council, a mix of senior and junior people, considered the possibility. Tony Magan, the chief of staff, was complemented by two veterans from the 1940s, Tomis Mac Curtiin and Paddy Doyle, and by Larry Grogan, a veteran from the 1920s. The younger people were Charlie Murphy, Robert Russell (a nephew of Sein Russell, chief of staff in the 1930s), and Ó Brádaigh, who was co-opted onto the council in July 1956. While the younger people tended to be enthusiastic, as was Ó Brádaigh, Mac Curtiin was not convinced that the IRA was ready. He believed that the political situation in the north was not quite ripe and argued that a passive resistance campaign by northern Nationalists should precede an IRA military campaign. He suggested that Stormont elections, which were scheduled for 1958, offered an opportunity to organize civil disobedience and noncooperation. The council voted in favor of a campaign but did not set a specific start date. They did set up a summer “battle school" under Cronin’s direction. Ó Brádaigh attended it.
The Army Council’s plans were interrupted by a split in the IRA. Joe Christle, who had been shot during the Omagh raid, was a maverick with an ego who thought the leadership was too conservative. He grated on Tony Magan, who insisted on complete loyalty and dismissed him. Christle took with him several members of the IRA’S Dublin unit. They organized themselves, linked up with other dissidents, and in November 1956 they began their own campaign by blowing up five unmanned customs huts along the Northern IrelandIRepublic of Ireland border. They burned a sixth hut to the ground.
This adventure had no attraction for Ó Brádaigh. Many of Christle’s followers were recent recruits who had been attracted by the arms raids. Ó Brádaigh, in contrast, had been in the IRA for five years; had been a delegate at conventions in 1953, 1954, 1955, and 1956; and was in the leadership. Christle was impatient. Ó Brádaigh is careful and meticulous. Some of those who went with Christle were “young turks,” full of energy and, to a degree, themselves. Ó Brádaigh was the opposite. On the Army Council he was surrounded by men who had been in the leadership for decades. He was so full of trepidation that he did not even speak at his first two council meetings. Magan, Mac Curtiin, and Grogan, and McLogan in Sinn FCin were building for a military campaign. As veterans of previous campaigns, he knew, they wanted a successfil military campaign. It was a question of when, not if. The Christle crowd, less cautious, seemed most interested in simply having a go at the British.
But Christle’s activities put pressure on Magan and the Army Council. More defections were likely, and when the Dublin authorities went after Christle they would also go after Sinn FCin and the IRA. They decided to skip the passive resistance phase and begin a campaign in December 1956. It has been asserted that Belfast was excluded from the campaign because the leadership feared that including it would lead to sectarian conflict. In truth, Belfast was excluded because Paddy Doyle, an Army Council member and the Belfast commanding officer, had been arrested, which created disorganization there. Four flying columns, mobile groups of IRA volunteers modeled on the guerrilla columns of the 1920s IRA that operated in the countryside for extended periods, would be sent north. The columns, operating along Northern Ireland’s 240-mile border with the Irish Republic, were named for Irish patriots: Patrick Pearse, Liam Lynch, Bartholomew Teeling, and Tom Clarke. Under Cronin’s original Operation Harvest plan, each column would have twenty-five members. The columns were cut to fifteen members, armed with Bren light machine guns, rifles, Thompson machine guns, and pistols but no heavy gear such as bazookas or mortars. Gelignite was the primary source of explosives. The columns were supposed to link with local IRA units and attack high-priority targets, including police stations and British Army barracks. Local units were also to pursue their own-mainly sabotageoperations. It was hoped that a quick start would bring new recruits and the campaign would expand in quality and quantity. To fill the columns, the leadership drew on the best members of the various units available. Following the rules of the Geneva Convention, members of the flying columns dressed in uniform-a mix of British, U.S., and Irish fatigues- and wore black berets. On their shoulders they sewed tricolor patches (flashes) indicating they were soldiers in the Irish Republican Army.
On the night of December 11–12, 1956, the campaign began with a bang. Bridges were blown up and shots were exchanged with RUC patrols. In Magherafelt, a courthouse was bombed. In Derry, a BBC transmitter was blown up. In Armagh, Gough Military Barracks was attacked and there was a gun battle. On the 14th, police stations in Lisnaskea and Derrylin were attacked. A Sinn Féin manifesto was released: “Irishmen have again risen in revolt against British aggression in Ireland.” Early estimates were that 150 IRA volunteers were involved in the various assaults.
The Stormont government immediately authorized internment, the arrest and detention without trial of persons suspected of involvement in the campaign. British Army troops were rushed to Enniskillen from Ballykinlar Camp in County Down and ordered to stand ready for action against the IRA. British Army engineers destroyed bridges crossing the border and rendered side roads impassable with spikes, barriers, and obstructions. The next day, police rounded up thirty Republicans from across the north, including Sinn Féin activists. In the last week of December 1956, the northern government banned Sinn Ftin, making the party an illegal organization. Belfast Sinn Féin headquarters were raided, equipment was confiscated, and Sinn Ftiners were interned. In the south, Costello’s cabinet met and released a statement that the guerrilla activity might lead to civil war. Irish police and army personnel arrested and questioned suspected IRA activists along the border but released them for lack of evidence. Toward the end of the month, Costello urged Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, to allow Northern Ireland to unite with the Republic, which would end the guerrilla attacks.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, an Army Council member and a general headquarters staff officer charged with raising and training the Teeling Column in the West of Ireland, missed the opening of the campaign because he was teaching in Roscommon. Tony Magan instructed him to help organize supplies for the columns but to remain at his job until the Christmas holiday, which began on December 20th. After that, he was available full-time. As his students left for vacation, Ó Brádaigh “gathered up selected people from the West, and moved up" to South Fermanagh, just below the lakes. He joined the Teeling Column as second-in-command to Noel Kavanagh, the commanding officer.
5
Derrylin, Mountjoy and Teachta Dála
DECEMBER 1956—MARCH 1957