18 March 1999 Edition
Remembering the Past: A Rebel Voice
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.
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.