Today AP/RN publishes extracts of a new book charting the history of
republicanism in Belfast from partition to the onset of the present
phase of struggle which was launched in the Sean O'Neill Craft Centre
in Conway Street, Belfast on Thursday March 4.
Based mainly on interviews with republican veterans whose efforts and
commitment ensured that the spark of republicanism was never
extinguished by either the British and unionists in the North or the
Free Staters in the years through the thirties and forties, in
particular.
The book A Rebel Voice written by John Quinn , therefore, is a
tribute to their tenacity.
In the early hours of Friday August 15 1969 amid the carnage of
murder and destruction that had engulfed the border line streets of
the Lower Falls a Protestant mob of around 200 broke out from Percy
Street into Divis Street and attempted to petrol bomb houses close to
St Comgall's school.
The small school itself was a target and should the building burn a
direct line would be opened to St Peter's Cathedral. Catholic youths
tackled the mob by returning petrol bombs, but with a situation out
of control and RUC armoured cars firing tracer rounds in an
indiscriminate manner, it was a question of time as to whether the
Divis Street line would hold.
But hold it did for desperation turned t hope as the young defenders
watched as a small group of seven `forties' men made their way into
the back of the school to take up positions. One carried a Thompson
sub-machine gun, another a .303 rifle whilst the others had hand
guns. The man with the Thompson climbed onto the roof with orders to
fire over the heads of the crowd, which he did, sending them back up
Percy Street. For the next hour and a half the `forties' veterans
directed gunfire across into Percy Street holding back any mob
incursions and wounding at least eight as they returned fire through
the darkness.
Amid a sense of hopelessness these men had come t the fore despite
being stripped of any real means of taking military action by a
leadership in Dublin totally out of touch with the reality of a need
by the IRA in Belfast to be able to be in a position to fulfil it's
tradition role of protecting nationalist areas from loyalist attack.
`From the ashes of 69 arose the Provos' but the back bone of that
rise came from the veterans, men like Jimmy Steele, Billy McKee, Joe
Cahill, Seamus Twomey, Liam Burke and Jimmy Drumm. They were the
force behind building a defence structure and rebuilding the IRA in
Belfast and enabling it to, again, be an effective military force.
The rest is history and the IRA became the most effective guerrilla
force in Western Europe, if not the world.
A section of the book carries a tribute to those republicans, under
the leadership of Frank Ryan who fought on the side of the Republican
Government against the fascist lead by Franco and who were supported
by the Irish Catholic hierarchy of the time. Peter O'Connor, from
Waterford, talks about the Battle of Jarama one of the great battles
of the Spanish Civil war.
``On February 23 our battalion took part in the first attack on the
fascist lines. It was very dark and the olives groves were lit up
with rifle and machine gun fire. We advanced too far but dug in where
we were. Paddy Power was just near me in a section of a trench cut
off from our main lines. It was here that Charlie Donnelly, Eamon
McGrotty and the Reverend M Hilliard were killed and Alan MacLarnan
from Dublin was wounded''.
In the Jarama trenches Liam Tumilson had become friendly with Donegal
man Paddy `Roe' McLaughlin, a veteran of the `War of Independence'
originally from Main Street in Moville who had volunteered from
America in the hope of teaming up with his old friend George Gilmore
one of the founders of the Republican Congress. The banter between
Tumilson and McLaughlin was always good. It was a sign of buoyant
morale despite the conditions. Liam Tumilson wrote home to Belfast in
March from the trenches, ``still determined to stay here until fascism
is completely crushed. Impossible to do other than carry on with the
slogan of Cathal Brugha `No Surrender'''
Liam Tumilson was killed on March 14 1937.
`Northern Ireland' as a state stood with it's back to the wall, the
IRA uprising it had feared since it's formation was upon them. The
nightmare had come to life and the oppression of 50 years had blown
up in their faces.
Stormont was on it's way to extinction, Sir James Craig's `Protestant
Parliament and Protestant State' was about to be eclipsed. It's
downfall came on 24th March 1972 when the British government
transferred all executive and0 legislative powers to Westminster -
Stormont was abolished. It's abolition came about ultimately because
of it's own inadequacies and vices, but the IRA widened the cracks so
deep, it left the British with no choice but to take direct control.
ENDS
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