In memory of Volunteer Patrick O’Callaghan

John Crawley delivered the oration at a commemoration in Crossmaglen on 28 April, 2024 in honour of IRA volunteer Patrick O’Callaghan.

I would like to thank Patrick’s children, who invited me to speak today, as well as a number of Patrick’s close friends and comrades who supported them in that decision.

I first met Patrick O’Callaghan in the early 1980s, although briefly, and I had no real conversation or engagement with him. However, I did know of his reputation as a dynamic and daring resistance fighter. A reputation that was well-earned and well-deserved.

I got to know Patrick better in 1994 after my release from Portlaoise Prison. We had cause to meet on a number of occasions. I was impressed by his drive, energy, and focus.

Patrick was beginning a potentially lucrative career as a carpenter in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, when he downed tools in 1972 and returned home to pick up the Armalite. He rapidly gained a reputation as a courageous guerrilla fighter who led from the front. Patrick played a prominent role in many IRA operations throughout the campaign, ranging from devastating attacks on enemy personnel and installations to helping, with others, to provide the wherewithal and logistical backup for prison escapes North and South. He and his brother Seán provided invaluable assistance to the IRA Engineering Department in developing a wide array of improvised mortars, rockets, and explosives. Patrick completely immersed himself in resistance activities. His contribution covered the entire spectrum of IRA military operations. The death of his close friend Volunteer Seamus Harvey, who was killed in action by undercover British soldiers in January 1977, hardened his resolve to pursue the struggle until full and final victory. Patrick named his only son after his fallen comrade.

Patrick was eventually appointed Operations Officer for Northern Command. As a result, he became well-known and respected outside his home area of South Armagh. He proved to be a highly motivated republican soldier who was not afraid to go toe to toe with the enemy and had scant patience with those less determined to do so. Patrick was in it to win it.

About ten years ago, I met Patrick again at a republican commemoration, and we began a conversation that continued regularly until his untimely passing. We didn’t agree on everything, but we were like-minded on the essential things.

Patrick O’Callaghan was not a supporter of the Good Friday Agreement and its fundamental premise that the model of Ireland as one nation is a discredited concept. Patrick remained loyal to the Irish Republic, proclaimed in 1916, ratified by the 32-County First Dáil Eireann in 1919, and formally outlawed by England that same year. Britain has never slackened in its crusade against that Republic.

History teaches us that Irish republicanism is easy to understand but all too easy to forget. Patrick O’Callaghan never forgot who he was, where he was from, or what he represented.

Patrick did not join the Irish Equality Army or the Irish Nationalist Army, not the Agreed Ireland Army, the New Ireland Army, or the Shared Island Army, but the Republican Army. Patrick believed and had every right to expect that the term ‘Republican’ was not merely a suggestion but a resolute declaration of intent.

What does it mean to be an Irish Republican? Patrick had no doubt what was meant by the Irish Republic he fought to achieve. It is Ireland unfettered by foreign control or domestic divisions cultivated by the foreigner. It does not defer to Britain for terms and conditions regarding its unity and independence. The Republic is a thirty-two-county sovereign and secular democracy to which Irish citizens of all traditions give allegiance. It stands for freedom, social justice, and civic unity.

Patrick O’Callaghan was damn sure of what Irish republicanism didn’t mean:

* It didn’t mean pretending that the British government supported the principle of consent, a principle they never granted Ireland as a whole.

* It didn’t mean there was a democratic alternative to an artificial statelet gerrymandered specifically to deny Ireland the right to national self-determination.

* It didn’t mean recognising that British Crown forces retained a monopoly on the right to bear arms and the lawful use of force in any part of Ireland.

* It didn’t mean attending the coronation of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment as he was crowned King of South Armagh along with the rest of occupied Ireland.

* It didn’t mean internalising the British analysis of the nature of the conflict as a domestic dispute between sectarian factions.

*It didn’t mean that Ireland is not one country but a shared island of two nations, and British royalty should be applauded for representing one of them.

Patrick despaired of what had become of the republican project to break the connection with England and assert our country’s independence. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter.

Patrick understood that the struggle for an Irish Republic and the aspiration for a United Ireland are not always the same thing. Does wanting to achieve a united Ireland mean that you are a republican? Not necessarily. England fought for centuries to unite Ireland as a single polity under her jurisdiction and control. England governed a united Ireland for hundreds of years.

Unionists never had an issue with a united Ireland per se. The Orange Order is an all-Ireland institution. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches are all-Ireland ministries. And, of course, the Church of Ireland is not the Church of Northern Ireland. Their real objection is to becoming subject to the democratic decision making of a national electorate.

If the struggle for Irish freedom was merely about ending partition, what was the 1916 Rising about? There was no partition in 1916. What were Wolfe Tone and the 27 other Protestant founding fathers of Irish republicanism determined to achieve when they formed the United Irishmen in 1791? What did they mean by a united Ireland? There was no partition in 1791. Their objective, of course, was to break the connection with England and to embrace national unity across the sectarian divide.

Patrick was politically astute. I remember a conversation with him in which he was critical of the demotion of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution from a constitutional imperative to a notional aspiration. Dublin’s partitionist elite pushed the line that these Articles were outdated and aggressive and should defer to Britain’s claim to jurisdiction here. The Brits and the unionists had continually protested that the existence of Articles 2 and 3 were the real impediments to peace and stability in Ireland, not partition. Patrick recognised the strategic mistake of diminishing these constitutional provisions. He disagreed profoundly with members of the Provisional movement who scorned Articles 2 and 3 as little more than political posturing by Éamon de Valera. They argued these Articles could be effectively discarded as they had never been of any practical use to an IRA volunteer on hunger strike or on active service in the North.

Patrick saw beyond the shallow rationalisations for weakening the Irish State’s claim to Ireland. He believed that Articles 2 and 3, in their original format, were an attempt to address the injustice of partition by declaring that Ireland was one nation. Ireland had been treated as one nation by England for hundreds of years. Diluting Dublin’s claim to the six north-eastern counties gave a veneer of democratic legitimacy to partition. It demonstrated that the Dublin government had partnered with London in declining to acknowledge Ireland as one democratic unit and had conceded that fact in an international agreement. Patrick saw it as another of many steps designed to draw the Provos deeper into a constitutional funnel from which they could never turn around and get out.

It is a credit to the negotiating skills of the British government, and the negligence of the so-called pan-nationalist front that weakening the Irish territorial claim to Ireland was the only binding constitutional change required by the Good Friday Agreement.

The overwhelming counter-insurgency goal of the British state in Ireland was the defeat and disbandment of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA had to be got rid of because, from its inception, the IRA was the ultimate guarantor of the Republic. So long as the IRA remained in the field, the Republic lived.

Patrick O’Callaghan did not oppose peace but believed he was entitled, indeed duty-bound, to be critical of a process that could not lead to the objectives republicans fought for so long and sacrificed so much to achieve.

Anyone who believes the British government will simply leave Ireland when the unionist population dwindles to an unsustainable level and close the door behind them is mistaken. The Brits play the long game and are working now, as they have been working for years, to shape the strategic environment and set the conditions for the constitutional future of an Ireland that will work to their benefit. London can live with a united Ireland within the British Commonwealth and NATO. It will not tolerate a sovereign republic immune to its influence. At the heart of the so-called Irish peace process lies the hidden agenda of a British war process.

In February of this year, Policy Exchange, the most influential conservative Think-Tank in the United Kingdom, published a document called Closing the Back Door. This document, which is forwarded by two former UK Secretaries of State for Defence, states that:

…the UK quite obviously has a strategic interest in Northern Ireland by territorial definition, and per the contours of geopolitical rivalry…the interests of the island of Great Britain and the territories of Northern Ireland are indissolubly intertwined…Northern Irish and British strategic interests are one and the same…Northern Ireland is therefore the key to addressing the UK’s security concerns.

In a British government command paper called Safeguarding the Union, published in January of this year, the Brits reaffirm their determination to maintain and strengthen the political, territorial, and economic integrity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It states:

A key element of the Government’s determination that it will never be neutral on the Union is that it will be unashamedly making the positive case for Northern Ireland’s integral place in the United Kingdom.

In this paper, the Brits commit to holding periodic British government cabinet meetings in the North of Ireland to emphasise its rightful place under British jurisdiction. It is interesting to note that with all the talk of there having been no government here for the past three years, the British are reminding us that the North always has a government. The head of that government is the British Prime Minister and its head of state is King Charles III. Neither could care less whether a Catholic or a Protestant is nominally in charge of the occasionally functioning and always dysfunctional executive at Stormont; they are both on their payroll.

Bearing in mind the British government’s declared determination to preserve the political, territorial, and economic integrity of the United Kingdom and recent military advice from influential thinkers and policy advisers that they must integrate the Six Counties more fully into their national defence network, any political leader telling you a British border poll is within touching distance is either delusion, strategically illiterate, or lying through their teeth.

Patrick O’Callaghan experienced the cutting edge of the British presence like few others. He used to say that operating in South Armagh was a game of cat and mouse. ‘Some days we’re the cat and others we’re the mouse’. His advice to young Volunteers, if arrested, was ‘put your boots on the table and sign nothing’.

He had a great sense of humour and could laugh at the absurdity of some incidents. I recently heard a story of Patrick leading an IRA unit in South Armagh that was being filmed by a foreign news crew. Wearing a balaclava to disguise his identity and carrying an Armalite rifle, Patrick stopped a passing car and asked the occupants if they had noticed any Brits in the area. A woman piped up from the back seat, ‘They were outside your house this morning, Patrick’.

Patrick loved Crossmaglen and its people. He fought hard to defend them. Patrick would speak movingly of fallen comrades like Brendan Burns and Brendan Moley, who were killed in February 1988. Patrick would insist with a certainty beyond doubt that neither Brendan would have agreed with the recognition of His Majesty’s constabulary as a lawful authority in Ireland. The premature death of his brother and comrade in arms, Sean O’Callaghan, affected him deeply.

Patrick O’Callaghan and his gallant comrades defeated British policing in South Armagh and contained the British army. While no patriot would glorify or gloat in the death of any human being, the fact remains that one in six British soldiers killed during the conflict were killed within three miles of this town square, a number of them in this square and its adjacent streets.

Here in Crossmaglen and the surrounding countryside, the true nature of the conflict was fought at its starkest. Here, it was a war between Óglaigh na hÉireann and the British government. An intense struggle between an Irish army and the British army. This area was a propaganda nightmare for a British government determined to portray the conflict as a sectarian faction fight between Catholics and Protestants.

Unlike loyalist death squads who had the backing of UK national intelligence and security agencies providing them with arms, training, and targeting information, Patrick O’Callaghan and his fellow volunteers had no national government to organise their resistance or to act politically on their behalf.

Northern nationalists and republicans often accused the Irish government of abandoning them, which is true, and of standing idly by, which is not true. Dublin did not stand idly by. It stood firmly with the British government in their fight against the Irish Republican Army. It continues to play a major role in encouraging northern nationalists to reconcile themselves with British sovereignty and to acknowledge the lawful authority of Crown forces in these six Irish counties. Dublin accepts and urges northern nationalists to accept that if there ever is to be a border poll, it will be under terms and conditions that the British government alone can interpret and adjudicate.

Patrick was a brave, capable, and effective soldier, but he was no militarist. Patrick recognised the necessity of politics and the crucial importance of making the concept of a 32-County Irish Republic relevant to the lives of an electorate indoctrinated by decades of partitionist propaganda.

To Patrick’s dismay, however, far from leading us to the Republic as they had promised, the Provisional leadership ended up as stakeholders in a regional franchise of the Westminster Parliament. Patrick fought for freedom, and they settled for office.

James Connolly wrote in 1915:

When a foreign invader plants himself in a country which he holds by military force his only hope of retaining his grasp is either that he wins the loyalty of the natives, or if he fails to do so that he corrupts enough of them to enable him to disorganise and dishearten the remainder…The chief method of corruption is by an appeal to self-interest.

The government of the 26-County state is preparing to enact a law banning anyone from using the term Óglaigh na hÉireann to label any armed force in Ireland other than their Defence Forces. It is a name they are keen to monopolise so they can hijack the Republican ideal and console themselves that the aims and objectives of the 1916 Proclamation have been sufficiently achieved through the mechanism of partition.

The term Óglaigh na hÉireann was used to describe the Irish Volunteers founded in 1913 and continued throughout the Tan War when no one doubted that the Irish Republican Army was the National Army of Ireland—the legitimate armed forces of the 32-County Dáil Eireann.

While inspecting Irish Volunteers at Vinegar Hill in Wexford in the early autumn of 1915, Pádraig Pearse said:

We, the Volunteers, are formed here not for half of Ireland, not to give the British Garrison control of part of Ireland. No! We are here for the whole of Ireland.

When Patrick O’Callaghan and his comrades were operating in this square, in its surrounding roads, lanes, and countryside, you can be certain that the hard-pressed British forces of occupation were in no doubt who Óglaigh na hÉireann was.

In a letter to his mother written shortly before his execution by the Free State government, Liam Mellows declared, ‘I die for the truth’.

That truth was spoken by James Connolly at his court martial in 1916 when he said, ‘The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland . . .’

British policy is to ensure that remaining faithful to that truth incurs a cost few Irishmen will consistently pay. Many nationalist politicians believe that the truth doesn’t matter. It’s perceptions that matter because, unlike the truth, perceptions can be shaped.

Patrick O’Callaghan valued the truth. He never feared the truth nor the truth’s consequences. A man of unpurchaseable conscience, his commitment to his country’s complete freedom and independence never wavered. There is a saying that a true leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. Patrick showed the way and did so from the front. He personified Napoleon’s observation that ‘Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy.’

On the gravestone of United Irishman Jemmy Hope is an inscription that could have been written for Patrick O’Callaghan:

In the best era of his country’s history a soldier in her cause, and in the worst of times, still faithful to it: ever true to himself and those that trusted in him. He remained to the last unchanged and unchangeable in his fidelity.

We honour him today: friend, father, and revolutionary comrade.

Long live the memory of Volunteer Patrick O’Callaghan.

Long life and victory to the Irish Republic.

* John Crawley is a former IRA volunteer and author of The Yank.

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