J. Connolly, 1862-1916: creating James Connolly

This is the second of four posts on James Connolly’s early life looking at what helped shape him. The first looked at the 1872 lamplighters strike. This one looks at his brother John. The next post will look at some early writing by Connolly from 1889-1891 (which may not have been recognized up to now).

James Connolly was one of five children. The oldest, Margaret, was born in January 1859 but died as an infant in 1861. The next, John, was born in January 1862, followed by a second girl, Mary who was born in July 1864 but died of rubeola and bronchitis before she was a year old. The two youngest were boys, Thomas born in Campbell’s Close off Cowgate in April 1866 and James born in June 1868 when the family’s address is given as 107 Cowgate, which is where Campbell’s Close is located (the details of each is taken from Paul Gorry’s 2016 book Seven Signatories). Thomas, an apprentice print compositor in the 1881 census (supposedly with the Edinburgh Evening News) rapidly disappears from sight in the 1880s, reputedly having emigrated. No clear candidate for Thomas has yet been found in conventional emigration databases or the likes of United States census returns. John, who joined the British Army around 1878, is the only one of Connolly’s surviving siblings that seems to feature in his later life.

I previously looked at John while trying to disentangle some more clarity on James Connolly’s reputed British Army career. Some biographers have James Connolly joining the same regiment as his older brother John, who had enlisted underage using a false name, in 1878. John’s regiment is (variously) given as the Royal Scots or the King’s Liverpool Regiment and the suggested false name is usually ‘John Reid’ (much of this is teased out in Donal Nevin’s James Connolly: a full life and I’ve discussed it previously, here). John Connolly re-enlisted in the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots (see WO/363, service number 20308), during World War 1. John was discharged due to ill health in February 1916. The reason given was Bright’s Disease, brought on through exposure to bad weather while guarding German prisoners at Stobs Camp in the Scottish Borders in 1915.

The ‘John Reid’ pseudonym assigned by some biographers to James Connolly is possibly a garbled version of Connolly’s older brother’s military career as John Connolly had enlisted using the name James Reid. Peter McBride, a neighbour in Carrubers Close in the 1870s, a colleague of the Connolly boys’ father, is clearly the individual who is later described as James’ socialist, Fenian ex-soldier uncle. He was still in the army reserve in the 1870s when active during the lamplighters strike in 1872. Some sources claim he had enlisted under a false name. That could be taken to mean, as his daughter Ina later refers to James Connolly’s father’s brother Peter, his real surname was actually Connolly – which he listed as his mother’s name as Connolly on his marriage record. False names for enlistment were obviously common – if Peter did it, so too did John and James Connolly.

John Connolly had served, as James Reid, in the Border Regiment according to the documentation when he re-enlisted in the Royal Scots in the first world war, although his medal and decorations are not entirely consistent with those awarded to the Border Regiment. Either way, confusing James and his brother John seems to be the origin of the ‘John Reid’ claim for Connolly and the association with the ‘Royal Scots’ regiment. A John Connolly, a private in the 1st Royal Scots assaulted a policeman in Candlemakers Row in July 1878 but there is nothing to suggest whether this is the same John Connolly (it is plausible as he possibly had to use his real name as he was known in Edinburgh). The name ‘John Connolly’ occurs with alarming frequency in newspaper reports of incidents in and around where the Connollys lived in Edinburgh often involving alcohol and violence. Greaves, Connolly’s biographer, suggests John was ‘flamboyant’ with explaining what he means.

John’s ill-health and role guarding prisoners in 1915-16 may, in part, explain why James Connolly’s last statement (smuggled out of his cell by his daughter Nora) begins, “I do not wish to make any defence, except against the charge of wanton cruelty to prisoners.” Given that he followed John into the army and then to Dundee, it would seem that he was close to his older brother. Concern at his brother’s reaction may even have influenced how James framed his own last words. John never recovered his health. He died on 22nd June 1916 and is buried in Edinburgh’s North Merchiston Cemetery.

There is a ‘James Reid’ listed in the Border regiment in WO/121, service number 1524, who joined on 9th July 1878 and was discharged in Dublin (due to ill health) on 9th March 1886. This fits Johns details. The dates match up so this may mark his departure from full-time service into the reserves. Like his false name, John’s age was consistently recorded as two years younger than it was, due to his enlistment underage as James Reid. He does correctly list his wife’s surname as Connolly in his army documents, though. John had medals for his service in Afghanistan and Egypt (1882). His military file also included documents from when he re-entered the Royal Reserves in Edinburgh for a year up to April 1901 (service number 1597). This adds a new layer of complexity to the John Connolly story, though. The James Reid in those documents was married to a Sarah Jane Reid who lived at 122 Sycamore Street in Newcastle (one of the Border Regiment depots). He appears to have left the Border Regiment in 1894 after a period in the serves (possibly from 1886 onwards), with Sarah Jane Reid also listed for this latter period. This would be consistent with John Connolly’s service dates. However, John Connolly is documented as having married Elizabeth Atchieson in Edinburgh in 1891 with his brother James as one of the witnesses.

The period when John was in the reserve and was based in Edinburgh was when James returned to the town. A lot has been made about James Connolly’s time in Dundee early in 1889. There is very little detail available but Connolly makes his appearance there when John Leslie, an Edinburgh-based socialist, has been summoned to support a free speech demonstration and protests. Leslie brought some additional support from Edinburgh, which could well have included James Connolly. This would mean Connolly was already active as a socialist and really only in Edinburgh in passing (I’ve found some writings from 1889 that suggest he was already articulating socialist views). James publicly features in Edinburgh socialist activity by at least 1891.

John was also an active socialist (not unusual for ex-servicemen) and was central to a dispute over his dismissal by the Council’s Cleansing Department for socialist activity (the same Department which Peter McBride and his father had battled in 1872). But during the hearings it was also alleged that John had been dismissed previously. Unfortunately the name John Connolly is too common in Edinburgh to identify if he is in the individual involved in any of the many other recorded incidents involving a ‘John Connolly’. These include a twelve year old John Connolly being stabbed in the shoulder in October 1872 in Cowgate (which the Connollys surely heard of whether it involved John or not). A man of that name features in a series of public order offences, assaults on women and thefts in Edinburgh. There is a John Connolly involved in other socialist activity up to around 1897-1898 when he seems to slowly withdraw from politics. This would seem consistent with his return to the service during the Boer War (which seems unlikely for a committed socialist).

Obviously there could be an error here and the 1901 re-enlistment includes a file belonging to a different James Reid as the alternative is that John Connolly may have had more than one wife at the same time. And while at least one Greaves suggests that his brother may have been a little flamboyant, ordinarily it would be assumed that the military records are in error here apart from one odd little detail. In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Connolly, as the most high profile leader, features in mini-biographies across a range of newspapers. The level of accurate detail is dreadful, some due to misleading information Connolly himself propagated. This is most obvious in the fact that in early May he is simultaneously reported as being from Cork, Belfast, Liverpool and Monaghan. The most accurate summary of Connolly’s life with some quite telling errors was published in the Newcastle Daily Journal on May 2 1916. The text is below:

Newcastle Daily Journal, May 2 1916.

“James Connolly, who was previously reported shot, and is now said to have surrendered with other rebel leaders, was born in Edinburgh on 6th June, 1866, in Campbell’s Close in the Cowgate, the house where he was born being no longer in existence. His parents were Irish, and his father worked as a carter in the service of Edinburgh Corporation for 42 years, when he received a pension.

James learned the tile-laying trade, and later entered the Corporation service as a carter, and became prominent in Labour disputes. As a boy he showed a great deal of intelligence, and was marked among his companions for the ready way in which he grasped things. On Sundays and holidays he would go for long rambles into the country, and so great was his power over the other boys of his own age that they would do anything he asked them.

He received his education first at the Catholic School in Lothian Street and later at the school in Market Street. He married a Dublin girl who was in service in Perth and he had six children, five of whom are still alive. The other child was burned to death through her clothing catching fire. Connolly was at that time in America and his wife was preparing to follow him….

Connolly’s brother John, who has been discharged from the National Reserve, resides with his family at 57, Calton Road, Edinburgh. He has served twenty years in the Army, and two of his sons have been killed at the front, while one is a prisoner of war in Germany.”

Notably here, James Connolly’s date and place of birth is almost correct apart from the fact that it is out by two years – but that would match the likely date he would have given if he joined the British Army under-age. Similarly the address is pretty much correct, given the Connollys moved around quite a bit in Edinburgh (as far as it is possible to tell from street directories, Campbell’s Close was actually located at 107 Cowgate and that might also have been used as its address). The Catholic School referred to in Lothian Street was run by the Sisters of Mercy and admitted girls, so it is possible that Connolly attended the infants school there. The later schooling in Market Street is a little confused as Market Street was one of two Catholic run schools that were merged together as St Patricks in Cowgate by the time James would have attended. However, it would still have been a separate school when John Connolly attended. It is tempting then to see John Connolly having sufficient links to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne that it becomes the place where the most accurate details of James Connolly’s life get published in 1916 (at least until another explanation is found).

Next up – James Connolly’s earliest political writings, rediscovered.

The 1872 Edinburgh Lamplighters strike: creating James Connolly

I’m going to do some posts on James Connolly in the run up to the anniversary of his execution next week, in particular some of the unexplored experiences that may have shaped his politics and values and created the James Connolly that emerges in his later writing and politics. I’m going to start by looking at the 1872 lamplighters strike in Edinburgh. Obviously, the strike is interesting in its own right, but I’ll get to the relevance to Connolly (who was born in 1868) at the end.

Briefly, in August 1872 the Edinburgh lamplighters (the men who lit and extinguished the street lights, among other duties – they were sometimes called ‘Leeries’) went on strike over pay and conditions. Almost immediately, a Peter McBride and three other lamplighters were made an example of by the town council, seemingly as ringleaders. In the end, the four were fined for breach of contract but within a week or so the strikers demands were met (the account below is mainly taken from The Scotsman during August 1872, except where indicated).

To start with, the lamplighters worked seven days a week on a ‘beat’ where they had to light and extinguish all the lamps as well as other duties. The lights sometimes had to be extinguished as early as 3:40 am after extinguishing others at midnight. A worker also had to issue a four week notice to leave their post or miss a day while they could simply be let go. And typically many of Edinburgh’s thirty lamplighters were let go in May each year and some rehired each September although the Inspector of Lighting and Cleaning in 1872, Mr Patterson, claimed they were issued with four weeks’ notice if being let go in May (these details came out in McBride’s trial, see press on 17 August 1872). The terms and conditions of their employment appeared to be completely weighted in favour of the Lighting and Cleaning Committee of the town council. They

There were also tensions over lamplighters being obliged to train new ‘hands’ with the trainers potentially being laid off in May and then replaced with the trainées in September. Lamplighters had to sign a contract confirming their working conditions. Peter McBride had done so in September 1866. However, as he pointed out in court, McBride and others hadn’t been asked to sign up to those conditions since 1866 or each year after regular breaks in their employment and there was no copy posted up anywhere that the lamplighters could read.

Not that the lamplighters’ pay demands appeared out of the blue. In mid-July 1872, immediately before the lamplighters’ strike, the one hundred and forty Council ‘scavengers’ in Edinburgh had gone on strike (‘scavangers’ was the term used for dustmen and street cleaners). After around a week the scavengers strike committee met with the Council and their requested pay increase of 2s was met. A number had initially been prosecuted for going on strike and given two days to return to work before being penalised. But the agreement with the Council specifically included protection for those prosecuted or dismissed during the strike. The agreement that concluded the strike was made on 20 July 1872 (see North Briton, 24/7/1872). The lamplighters seem to have originally have submitted a collective request for improved pay and conditions of 2s per week in a petition to the Council as early as mid-July 1872, possibly in tandem with the scavengers. Lamplighters had been typically paid 3-4s more per week than the scavengers. The lamplighters’ request was referred to Patterson and his Committee who dismissed it as ‘informal’ despite being in line with the similar to requests for pay raises that were being met by council.

An Edinburgh lamplighter at work (1928, photographer unknown)

As a group, the lamplighters then ‘formally’ wrote to the Inspector of Lighting and Cleaning on 5 August with their request for improved pay and conditions and threatened to go on strike on 13 August. They quickly withdrew the strike threat after being advised that the Lighting and Cleaning Committee would discuss their request. But by Friday 9 August, though, an issue had arisen over a lamplighter, George Leslie, refusing to train new ‘hands’. That day the lamplighters re-instated the threat to strike on the morning of the Tuesday (13 August) if their request for improved conditions was not met or if any of them were punished over the threatened strike action. The timing of the strike threat was not incidental. Queen Victoria was to be in Edinburgh during the threatened strike. According to the Glasgow Herald (14/8/1872), it was difficult to say whether the royal visit or the lamplighters strike was exciting the most interest among the public.

The Lighting and Cleaning Committee then met twice on the Monday (12 August) but refused to even consider the pay demands only considering the terms on which lamplighters could resign. Instead some of those involved were dismissed and a policeman sent to their house to instruct them not to extinguish the lamps on the Tuesday morning and to return their tools to the Committee. Those dismissed included Peter McBride and at least three others, Charley Riley, John Fegan and George Leslie (these were the four charged and brought to court on the Friday, 16 August). The lamplighters then posted placards around Edinburgh advising the public of the strikes and their petition to the Council for an increase in wages. A reference to the placard in The Scotsman on the Wednesday implies that the strike was being directed by a committee (possibly made up of the four dismissed lamplighters).

In response to the dismissals, strike action then began on the Tuesday morning and, without lamplighters, the Council had to suffer the embarrassment of leaving the lamps burning all day while Queen Victoria was in town. The lamplighters’ petition was discussed by the Council that day. Before dismissing it, the Council debate was interrupted by at least one member of the public, an old woman dressed in mourning clothes who demanded the right to address the council (what she said wasn’t reported). The police also had to prevent ‘public-spirited citizens’ from extinguishing the lamps on the Tuesday. With strike taking place, there would be no lamplighters to put a flame to them again that evening and the town streets would be left in darkness. But on Wednesday, the Inspector of Lighting and Cleaning, Mr Patterson, advised the council that he had hired new ‘hands’ to cover every ‘beat’ of those on strike. He had also instructed the Sherriff to issue the warrants against McBride and the others for ‘desertion of service’ under the Master and Servant Act.

Attempts to simply replace the lamplighters were resisted. On the Tuesday evening, Patterson had already dispatched some new lamplighters to try and re-light some of the lamps leading to confrontations and violence. Presumably these were lamps that had been extinguished that morning, either by the ‘public-spirited citizens’ or lamplighters who hadn’t gone out on strike (as yet). A carter named George Thomson received ten days in prison for trying to prevent a lamp being lit on the Tuesday evening in Cockburn Street while Alexander Clunas was fined 5s for intimidating a lamplighter on High Street. In both cases the lamplighters were new ‘hands’ and Thomson and Clunas had tried to dissuade them from breaking the strike.

Previous lamplighter strikes had taken place in Glasgow (1855), Blackburn (1867), Limerick (1870) and Brussels (1871) and strike action in general was not uncommon in August 1872. On 14 August, for instance, The Scotsman and other papers reported strikes in Glasgow (miners), Dundee (shoemakers) and Hawick (spinners), while compositors were also out on strike. The Scotsman even sued a London compositor that it had hired as a strike-breaker for breach of contract when he refused to break the strike (eg Shepton Mallet Journal, 6/9/1872). It is also notable that new lamps had just been tested in Glasgow in July-August 1872 which took less time to light the globe. Trials suggested an eighty-five minute route could now be completed in fifty-five minutes. It was being proposed that the cost of introducing the new globes would be offset by reducing the number of lamplighters by a quarter. The report was submitted to the Council in Glasgow just after the strike but the trials must have taken place before the strike began and knowledge of the results may well have spread to the lamplighters in Edinburgh (eg see Glasgow Herald, 27/8/1872). Notably a lamplighter strike also followed in London later in 1872.

As with the posting of handbills to explain the strike action, the lamplighters were also ready for the court action against McBride, Riley, Fegan and Leslie on the Friday. That day, a letter was published by The Scotsman, from ‘a lamplighter’. It was entitled ‘Duties of Lamplighters’ and read:

“Sir, as the public generally imagine that the duties of a lamplighter only consist of cleaning, lighting and extinguishing a certain number of lamps, would be so kind as to give space to the following correct statement of the duties which a lamplighter is compelled to perform? 1st. In addition to cleaning, lighting and extinguishing our lamps, which is considered sufficient work for any man when it is borne in mind that, for eight months in the year, we have to turn out at 12 o’clock each night to extinguish half the lamps, we are compelled to water the streets in dry weather, which every one is eye-witness to. 2nd. To work with the blacksmith, tinsmith and joiner; and, in fact, any other work that our inspector may send us to.

I am, etc Lamplighter.”

In court on Friday 16 August, Peter McBride was found guilty for his role in the strike and fined £5 plus a guinea costs (his weekly wage was 19s) or, in default, ten days in prison. The others received similar sentences. The Council though, by the next Wednesday, was reported to have revisited the petition the previous day and authorised that the pay and conditions requested by the lamplighters be accepted.

Peter McBride, who seemed to be regarded as the ringleader of the strike, lived in Carrubers Close. McBride, was also a Sergeant in the Army Reserve, having joined the 26th Foot, the Cameronians in 1855. He and his wife were later recorded running a coffee stand in 1881 when both their birthplaces are recorded as County Monaghan. McBride had spent nearly four years in Bermuda while in the British army, leaving full-time service in 1865 shortly before he began working as a lamplighter in Edinburgh in 1866. The address he lists as his intended residence is Corrybreany, Ballybay, presumably Corrybranan on the southern side of Ballybay in County Monaghan. His sons, Robert, Thomas and John, were likely playmates of James Connolly’s older brothers John and Thomas as they were around the same ages. The Connollys lived next door to the McBrides in Carruthers Close in 1871 and John Connolly, James’ father, was himself a lamplighter. John must have been on strike with the lamplighters too (this may well be the strike that various James Connolly biographers mention). Legend has it that Connolly and McBride both lost their jobs soon after the strike, which is consistent with later census records.

What is more, various biographers mention Connolly’s ‘uncle’, variously mentioning the names ‘Peter’ and ‘McBride’. He is claimed to have walked many paths along which his nephew James followed: this ‘uncle’ was a socialist and Fenian who had joined the military under a false name. Some remembered an older uncle who was a socialist and Fenian who seemingly introduced Connolly to left wing activism in Edinburgh from 1890. James Connolly’s daughter Ina also mentions (in a witness statement to the Bureau of Military History) an ‘uncle’ Peter in Edinburgh, his father’s brother, who came over to Belfast and tried to get James to come to Monaghan to sign over a family farm to him in 1912.

Peter McBride’s marriage record names his parents as Robert McBride and Margaret McBride, née Connolly. His military records provide no next of kin information but he gives his address as Corrybranan, Ballybay, Co. Monaghan. The dates of his military service are consistent with dates for other ex-servicemen who joined the Fenians (and Edinburgh had ‘green scares’ in the 1870s over a mobilized ‘Irish’ vote and ‘Fenianism’). His socialist and syndicalist credentials are shown by the 1872 strike. He is very much the almost mythological figure conjured up by James Connolly’s biographers. Was he just a neighbour of John Connolly’s? A fellow lamplighter? Another Monaghan lad he met in Edinburgh? McBride enlisted in Edinburgh in 1855, roughly when Connolly first arrived in the city. John Connolly’s mother was named Mary and his father John (or Owen). Perhaps Peters mother was John Connolly’s mother’s sister (‘uncle’ being meant as an older male relative rather than, strictly, as a brother of your mother or father). Maybe McBride’s ancestry was entirely fictional as he was indeed John Connolly’s brother (there is a lesson there I’ll come back to in a future post). Ina Connolly also gives her father Ballybay roots – but Corrybranan has no obvious candidates to match McBrides father or mothers name in Griffiths Valuation or the Tithe Applotment Books, so that is yet to be confirmed.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter as it is now clear that the socialist ‘uncle’ Peter, possibly a Fenian too, was a very real figure rather than a romantic device concocted by Connolly’s later biographers to explain his political formation. McBride’s (and John Connolly’s) involvement in the strike was surely retold down the years and may have ingrained in James Connolly, who was only 4 in 1872, that it was a template for successful industrial action. Both Peter McBride and John Connolly rapidly lost their jobs as lamplighters after the strike, so they may well have borne the real cost of a successful action for workers.

Next up, James brother John…

The Wayfarer, by Padraig Pearse

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

The Wayfarer was written by Pearse in his cell as he awaited execution along with Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh, on this day in 1916.

Clarke, with a revolutionary career spanning back to the 1870s where his activism brought him into contact with the likes of Robert Johnson and others who had, in their youth, met United Irishmen. The emotional resonances of this connection with a historical tradition in republicanism was likely a significant factor in motivating their political activity. Clarke was imprisoned for 15 years, a period on incarceration that was not experienced again by republicans until the 1930s-1940s. In that regard, analogies between Clarke’s career and later republican activists in the renewed IRA campaigns after 1969, works on a few different levels.

You can read more about those individuals and 1969 elsewhere on this blog.

Videos and Books: Library now online

You can now watch various videos as well as read books on the Library pages on TreasonFelony.com.

These are organised under the Library tab (at the top of the page). With separate pages for videos (Video) and books and articles (Reading). Keep an eye on the pages as they will be periodically updated with additional material. For now, here is a link to the latest video update – I was going to give a talk on the background to the Odd Man Out film sometime this month as it is 75 years since the novel was published. Given the current circumstances it obviously wasn’t going to happen, so I’ve uploaded it as a talk instead. Briefly it covers the background to the novel/film regarding the IRA in Belfast in the 1940s and also has a look at audience reactions, particularly to the film, as the RUC had to guard the Classic cinema showing the film, at least one arrest during a showing, political criticisms, leafleting outside cinemas and more.

You can watch the talk below. There is a link to the film (on YouTube) at this post here and there is some more on the film here on Irish Central here.

Library update: IRA Constitution

The blog now has a Library page where I’ve gathered together various documents and books that have been posted up over the last few years.

The most recent is a copy of the IRA’s Constitution (in this case the edition issued in 1934). You can access it below.

It’s full title is actually “Constitution and Governmental Programme for The Republic of Ireland and Constitution of Oglaigh na h-Eireann.” Fourth edition (1934). Published by Republican Press Limited, 12 St. Andrew Street, Dublin. It’s not particularly long but it includes the internal processes the IRA used to maintain its structure (as mentioned in here).

The other books in the Library include National Graves Association, Belfast publications from the 1960s, Torture (published by Association for Legal Justice in 1971), Hugh McAteers memoirs and more. I intend posting up some of the republican ephemera I’ve collected including the issues of An Síol from the 1930s, Belfast editions of Republican News from the 1940s and the (I think only) edition of An tÓglach published in 1943. But that’ll be in the near future.

from the 1930s, Belfast editions of from the There are extracts and excerpts from other books up there too. If anyone has any pre-1970 publications (particularly issues of Belfast publications like An Síol, Republican News, Resurgent Ulster, An Glór, Tírghrá etc) that they’d be happy to have posted, please do drop me at a mail (to treasonfelony@litter.press).

A forgotten child death of the conflict, Joseph Walsh

In 1935, fourteen month old Joseph Walsh died as a result of injuries he received when his family were burnt out of their home in Academy Street. Oddly, histories of the period overlook his death.

During 1935 Belfast saw significant violence, which saw a number of people killed over the period from the 12th July until the end of September. Conventionally, ten fatalities are identified with the conflict that occurred that summer. However, a reading of the press coverage of the period clearly identifies at least two further deaths which should be included in accounts of that summer, that of Joseph Walsh and another, a fifteen year old named Bertie Magowan.

At the end of September, the last major outbreak of the 1935 violence happened over the weekend of the 20th/21st September. On the Friday, two teenage apprenticeships, Bertie Magowan and Bertie Montgomery, were trying to fit an illegally held Webley revolver into a holster while at work in Harland and Wolff. Revolvers had been repeatedly used in street violence throughout that summer. Montgomery discharged the revolver, shooting Magowan in the stomach. He died from the wounds the next day and Montgomery, from Earl Street, was charged with murder. That charge was dropped but Montgomery was still prosecuted for possessing the revolver with ‘the intent to endanger life’ (ie for use during street violence). For that he was fined £5 and bound over to keep the peace. The same day as he shot Magowan, George Clyde was shot dead in trouble in Greencastle and the next day (when Magowan died), in Earl Street a Catholic publican, John McTiernan, was also shot dead in the evening.

Robert (Bertie) Magowan’s death is not typically associated with the conflict in 1935 yet it clearly happened within the context of the violence of that summer.

The story of the second death, of fourteen month old Joseph Walsh, was told by his mother, Rose Ann Walsh, in Belfast Recorders Court at the end of October:

THE WORST CASE
Further stories of mob violence in Belfast during the riots were related to the Deputy Recorder, Mr. ]. D. Begley, K.C., yesterday, when more claims for compensation were heard.

Mrs. Rose Ann Walsh claimed compensation for herself and her infant daughter as the result of a disturbance in Academy Street on I6th July. Mrs. Walsh resided at No. 19, Academy Street along with another lodger, Mrs. Margaret Partington, who also claimed compensation.

Mr. P. A. Marrinan (instructed by Mr. Brian Cosgrove) appeared for the applicant.

Mr. Marrinan said that of all the things that occurred in Belfast the facts connected with the present case were probably the worst. The climax of the attack in Academy Street led to a most terrible tragedy, one of Mrs. Walsh’s three children, who was aged two, dying as a result, he submitted, of the knocking about and trouble that the family sustained. It appeared that the funeral of one of the victims of the riots was in progress along York Street, and was entering the junction of Royal Avenue and Donegall Street when there was a panic among the crowd, following the firing of a shot. The crowd broke into Academy Street, which was off Donegall Street. They entered the house of Mrs. Walsh who had had a baby only two days before, and of Mrs. Partington, who had children, aged three and five years.

SET FIRE TO THE HOUSE

The crowd appeared to have armed themselves with fire-raising material, for they throw paraffin about and set fire to the house. The applicants, with their children, ran upstairs. Mrs. Walsh returned downstairs on realising the danger 6hc was in from fire, and the crowd set upon her and threw her into the street. She- was only 6aved by the arrival of police and soldiers. Mrs. Partington endeavoured to escape by the back of the house from an upstairs window by lowering her children out and jumping herself. Mrs. Walsh” had to so to the Union, and Mrs. Partington, who was the wife, of an English ex-Serviceman, after treatment went to Dublin, where she was attended at St. Stephen’s Hospital. Mrs. Walsh later got shelter in an old empty house, and there her child of two years died from the shock. The other child suffered from debility and inflammation from the suffering which the mother endured. Mrs. Walsh herself was still in a dangerous state of health. Mrs. Walsh being called stating her age was 22, Mr. J. Craig (for the Belfast Corporation) said counsel’s story was substantially correct, and the evidence could be confined to the question of damage. Mrs. Walsh, said she had three children at the time of the occurrence, Catherine being only two days old, Catherine was still in bad health, as the result of witness’s condition. Joseph, her second boy, died mainly from the knocking about that he received. Mrs. Partington said she was lodging with her husband in Academy Street. When the fire was started in the kitchen she ran upstairs. She lowered the children from a window three storeys high on to a scullery roof, and jumped out herself. They went to the Mater Hospital, and later to Dublin. She had not yet recovered her usual health.

After medical evidence-—including that of Colonel Mitchell, who said that while Mrs. Walsh bore no marks, she had evidently come through a very tragic time—judgment was reserved.

[Belfast Newsletter, 1st November 1935]

 

Irish Press, 17th July 1935

The Recorder subsequently award £60 to Rose Ann Walsh, £10 to Catherine Walsh and £40 to Margaret Partington. Walsh and her husband, Francis, had lived at 19 Academy Street for a number years in the house where Francis had grown up. His father had worked as a bill poster, and Francis followed him into the same trade. Rose Ann, whose maiden name was Boland, had grown up in Ballymacarrett, later moving to the Market district. After being burned out of Academy Street the empty house they moved into was a former hostel at 42 Frederick Street. It was there that Joseph died on the 5th September, six weeks after the attack on their house. His official cause of death was given as gastro-enteritis but the Recorder’s Court didn’t challenge the statement that his death was a direct result of injuries received during the attack on the house. The Walsh family subsequently moved to Ormond Place (off Raglan Street) in the Falls Road.

For some context on the deaths, below is the recent talk I gave in St Josephs, Sailortown, on the 1935 violence as part of the launch of the new Belfast Battalion book about the Belfast IRA from 1922 to 1969 (which you can order here).

This post was original published in 2018

An Indian hunger striker in 1940

Parallels were often drawn between the Irish and Indian experiences of colonialism and imperialism in the early twentieth century. The Irish drive for independence was seen as a source of inspiration by many India nationalists. It may even have provided a significant influence on Udham Singh, one of the iconic figures of India’s anti-colonial struggles. Singh was reputedly in touch with the IRA in England in the early 1930s and was also believed to have been influenced by the IRA’s sabotage campaign in England in 1939. Ultimately, though, Singh’s formative political experience was the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar [1].

Udham Singh (as a film extra in ‘Elephant Boy).

On 13 April 1919, British troops had opened fire there on Indian civilians, killing maybe 400 people and injuring 1,000 more. Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, was held by many to be ultimately responsible (you can read a more detailed post on O’Dwyer by Sean Gannon here). The President of the Indian National Congress, Lala Lajpat Rai, condemned O’Dwyer saying “No man in the whole history of British rule in India has done such great disservice to the British Empire and has brought such disgrace on the good name of the British nation.” Udham Singh was deeply scarred by the massacre, where his brother and sister were among the dead. In 1940 he shot O’Dwyer dead at a public meeting of the East India Association and Royal Central Asian Society in Caxton Hall, London.

Michael O’Dwyer, Illustrated London News 23/3/1940

Some of the Indian press, such as the Lahore Tribune (16/3/1940), believed that Singh was attempting to instigate a campaign similar to the IRA’s sabotage campaign of 1939. The New Statesman also noted the parallels between the execution of IRA activists and Singh’s likely fate and the impact that would have on anti-colonial sentiment.[2]

Different writers have presented contrasting versions of the subsequent events. Sikander Singh claims that the experience of political prisoner trials in India meant that it was likely both that Udham Singh would use court proceedings as a platform for anti-colonial political messages [3]. While the officials debated how to conduct his trial and how to limit publicity, on 2 April the Director of Intelligence Bureau of India warned the authorities that censorship was needed as Singh would seek to present himself as a martyr in the cause of Indian Freedom. On being held on remand in Brixton, Udham Singh made various attempts to link up with his contacts on the outside and arrange for a revolver or hacksaw blades to be smuggled in to him for an escape attempt.

Singh after his arrest in 1940, Illustrated London News, 23.3.1940

Sikander Singh’s sympathetic biography of Udham Singh explores this prison experience in some detail, drawing heavily on contemporary sources. The most recent biographical treatment of Singh, Anita Anand’s The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj, though, barely explores that prison experience and seems to assume Singh wanted a hacksaw blade to cut his wrists rather than for an escape.

By the time Udham Singh was brought to trial on 4 June 1940 he was reported to have been on hunger strike for 42 days (the authorities also documented his weight loss over this period). His hunger strike began on 26 April 1940. Hunger strikes as a political weapon in India had often taken their cue from examples in Ireland, particularly that of Terence MacSwiney in 1920, which received global press coverage. In the week before Udham Singh began his hunger strike, two members of the IRA, Tony D’Arcy and Jack McNeela, had died on a hunger strike in Dublin. In the days before Udham Singh embarked on his hunger strike, their deaths were widely reported in the press in Britain including the verdict of the inquest jury that criminal status should not be accorded to political prisoners.

The prison authorities, as was standard in the case of hunger strikes in prisons in Britain, ordered that Singh be force-fed. Anand portrays this as an attempt by the Prison Medical Officer, Dr Grierson, to keep him alive as long as his hanging but the same policy was applied to Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike in England (and also to David Fleming in Crumlin Road in 1946). Singh was force-fed ninety-three times. The process for force-feeding, involving restraints, a clamp for the mouth and feeding-tube was gruesome. Anand present’s Singh’s hunger strike only as an attempt “…to starve himself to death” rather than a political act.

Representation of force-feeding (Republican News)

 

Singh’s apparent revenge for Jallianwala Bagh and subsequent execution on 31 July 1940 transformed him from a relatively unknown figure in Indian politics into a legend. In the years after Jallianwala Bagh Singh had travelled widely through Britain and the United States where he came in contact with the left wing Indian nationalist Ghadar Party. Singh returned to India in 1927 but was arrested for gun smuggling and spent five years in prison. On his release he returned to England.

According to Alfred Draper, on arriving in England, Singh was in contact with the IRA and stayed with one of its leaders in the Isle of Wight [4]. While Singh meeting an IRA figure in England might seem implausible, in the early 1930s Indian nationalist leaders like Krishna Deonarine had been feted by senior Irish republicans like Peadar O’Donnell and Sean McBride at various events in Ireland. Public messages of solidarity and support had been sent by Irish republicans to the Indian anti-colonial movements. In that regard, Singh connecting with contacts from the IRA is entirely plausible although the IRA, in the early 1930s, was struggling to decide on its own purpose and was not in position to provide much in the way of help to Singh.

If Singh was influenced by the actions of Irish republicans it doesn’t appear to have been reciprocated. The surviving republican newspapers from that time and likes of Irish Freedom and Irish Workers Weekly did not make any mention of Singh’s arrest, trial, imprisonment or death. Oddly, though, all clearly identify with India’s struggles against British colonialism. India even features in articles while Singh was imprisoned but without reference to Singh. Further research might shed more light on the level of awareness of Singh’s case amongst Irish republicans.

After being hung in Pentonville Prison, Udham Singh was also buried there. In 1974, his body was repatriated to India and cremated in his home village of Sunam.

 

[1] There are various legends around Singh’s early life so it is hard to now which is true. One story (in Kulwant Singh Kooner and Gurpreet Singh Sindhra’s 2013 book Some Hidden Facts: Martyrdom of Shaheed Bhagat) claims Singh had been installing a water tap for protestors to drink from at Jallianwala Bagh on the suggestion of a British agent who was trying to get militants to assemble so they could be shot down.

[2] Peter Barnes and James McCormack had been hung in Winston Green prison on 7 February 1940 for an IRA bombing that had killed five people in Coventry the previous year.

[3] Sikander Singh, A Great Patriot and Martyr Udham Singh.

[4] In his book Amritsar: The Massacre That Ended the Raj.

Odd Man Out, 80 years on…

Many people are familiar with Carol Reed’s ‘Odd Man Out’, an Oscar-nominated film noir starring James Mason set in Belfast. The film was adapted from a novel of the same name, written by Laurie Green and adapted by him for Reed’s film. Green’s novel was first published in March 1945, seventy-five years ago this month. One of the film’s Irish stars, legendary actor Cyril Cusack, dismissed Green’s novel as “…a bad book made into a very good film”. Yet there is much more to Green’s novel than meets the eye.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t even watched the film, never mind read the novel, skip to the end of this post where there is a link to the film on YouTube.

James Mason, as IRA leader Johnny, in Odd Man Out.

 

The book (and subsequent film) tell the story of an IRA leader in Belfast who is wounded in a botched robbery and is then hunted through the city’s streets. With ground-breaking direction and cinematography, Reed’s film was, and continues, to receive critical acclaim, infamously being cited by Roman Polanski as his favourite film and influencing later work like ‘Taxi Driver’ and much of more recent film-making about ‘the troubles’. It was even remade in 1969 (as ‘The Lost Man’) with Sidney Poitier, then at the height of his fame, as a black militant on the run in New York.

The film’s opening titles tell viewers that “This story is told against a background of political unrest in a city of Northern Ireland. It is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organisation, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved.” Similarly, the novel never mentions either the IRA (calling it ‘the Organisation’) or Belfast by name. However, the novel repeatedly name checks locations in Belfast and Mason’s journey takes him from an IRA safehouse somewhere off the Falls Road across the city to Sailortown. While The Crown Bar, which inspired the set used to film a famous scene set in a pub in the film, the bar in the novel is clearly located in Sailortown in the Belfast docks area.

And further, despite the initial denial, much of the description of the IRA in Green’s novel also accurately mirrors historical events from 1943-44 when he was writing the book. More intriguingly, subtle shifts in the IRA’s structure and circumstances between 1944 and 1946 are again reflected in changes in detail between the novel and the film. All of this suggests that Green was, in fact, very much concerned with the historical accuracy of his depiction of the IRA.

Green wrote the novel between October 1943 when he finished his previous novel ‘On the Edge of the Sea’ and August 1944, when he produced the first full typescript of ‘Odd Man Out’. In the novel, the IRA’s Chief of Staff (Johnny Murtah) is hiding out in Belfast. It can’t be a coincidence that the only time an IRA Chief of Staff was ordinarily resident in Belfast was 1942-43 (and again, briefly in 1944-5). This was not necessarily public knowledge.

Even more revealingly, by the time of the film screenplay in 1946, the main character, now called Johnny McQueen is merely “…the leader of the organisation in this city…” and is clearly no longer the Chief of Staff as he states that “…I’ve got my orders and I’ll see them through.” By this time the IRA’s leadership was once again based in Dublin (all of this is described in more detail in the Belfast Battalion book on the history of the Belfast IRA at that time). The background given for Johnny – as having recently escaped prison – matches the IRA’s leadership at the time, like Hugh McAteer, Jimmy Steele and Seamus ‘Rocky’ Burns.

Laurie Green. (Photo: John J Burns Library, Boston College)

Born in Portsmouth, England in 1902, but with Irish roots in Cork, Frederick Laurence (Laurie) Green had moved to Belfast in 1929 and all fourteen of his novels were published while living in the city. One other novel, ‘Of the Night of the Fire’ was also made into a film. Margaret Edwards, who had married Green, was from a well-known Belfast family (hence his move to the city). Green himself became an integral part of Belfast’s arts and literary community some of whom, like John Hewitt, provided the inspiration for characters that feature in ‘Odd Man Out’. The journey that the IRA leader ‘Johnny’ makes across Belfast in the book takes him further and further from the safety of his hideout in the Falls to the scene of a robbery, onto Belfast’s streets, into a Protestant district and, from there to Sailortown. Green’s Belfast audience would have clearly understood the importance of Sailortown as a location, having been the ‘storm centre’ of violence both in 1935 and 1920-22. He next ends up in the hands of the Belfast arts community with characters lampooning the likes of Hewitt.

This isn’t accidental. In reference to ‘Odd Man Out’, Green reputedly chastised the Belfast arts scene about the lack of political focus in its outputs, saying that “…I’m writing what you and your friends should be writing about, the dramas that are going on here. You people are ignoring what is going on on your own doorstep.” (recorded by W.J. McCormack in his 2015 biography ‘Northman: John Hewitt 1907-1987’).

The Unionist government, though, clearly noted the political undertones in Green’s work and made a point of providing no assistance when the film was being made.

Many episodes in ‘Odd Man Out’ reflect real events that happened during the years just before Green published the novel. The immediate inspiration for the central event was a botched robbery at Clonard Mill in Odessa Street in October 1943 in which an RUC constable (Patrick McCarthy) was shot dead. Teresa O’Brien, who betrays IRA men to the RUC in another key scene, echoes a Teresa Wright, a widow who in 1937 claimed shots were fired at her Quadrant Street home due to ‘ill-feeling against her’ and because “…several people had called me an informer …”.

‘Odd Man Out’ also has a clear sense of internal debates within the IRA (which, again, may not have been widely known). In the film Johnny McQueen says “…we could throw the guns away, make our cause in the parliaments instead of in the back streets…” at the same time as internal IRA memos were discussing how far to get involved in politics. This also foreshadows later disputes within Irish republicanism over abstentionism and political engagement. All this suggests that Green was very well informed about what was going on within the IRA. The likely source for this was Denis Ireland, a prominent figure in Belfast’s literary scene and a leading light in the Ulster Union Club in Belfast which (despite the name) was the main source of Protestant recruits for the IRA. Even Johnny’s brief stay with two Protestant women may be a knowing wink in the direction of safe houses used by the IRA in unionist areas of Belfast like the Shankill Road and the Village.

Taken together the book and movie are filled with cues that would resonate with a wide range of audiences. Green and Reed’s high-brow themes of personal redemption and internal torment chimed with the concerns of many contemporary authors and film-makers. Writers like Ruth Barton (from Trinity College in Dublin) have examined how Reed explores concepts of gender representation, viewing James Mason’s phenomonal performance as Johnny through the prism of (toxic) masculinity in post-war Britain and Kathleen Ryan’s as the antithesis of the quintessential bourgeouis heroine of contemporary British cinema. Green, though, provides rich pickings for a Belfast audience who could knowingly follow and engage with the geography of the book and film in a way that would escape other audiences. As Johnny moves around, they would understand the political and cultural significance of the different parts of the city.

Others too reacted to a perceived realism in ‘Odd Man Out’. Hysterical outrage from Bertie Smylie (using the pseudonym Nichevo), in ‘An Irishman’s Diary’ in The Irish Times has a wonderfully contemporary air: “There is no doubt that it is a really good film. There equally is no doubt that, in essence, it amounts to a glorification of the IRA! If I had been a youth, emerging from the Theatre Royal on Sunday night, and saw on the walls of Trinity College the slogan “Join the IRA”, I have not the least doubt that I should have been sorely tempted to do so! All the romance is on the side of the “the Organisation”. James Mason gives a magnificent performance as Johnny McQueen; and, although the name of the IRA never was mentioned, nobody who knows anything about this country in general, or of Belfast in particular, can have the least doubt concerning the “Organisation’s” identity. So much for that!“

For all the quality of the film, it is the collected work of the novel and film that gives Odd Man Out a historical authenticity that means you need to read the novel to appreciate many aspects of the film.

Laurie Green’s novel was first published by Michael Joseph in March 1945. A collection of Greens personal papers are held by the John J. Burns library in Boston College. You can read the historical background to ‘Odd Man Out’ in ‘Belfast Battalion: a history of the Belfast IRA, 1922-1969’.

So if you haven’t watched the film (never mind read the novel), you can watch the whole thing here on Youtube before reading the rest of this:

 

The Derry Jail Great Escape, 20th March 1943

On the 20th March 1943 the IRA staged a mass escape through a tunnel from Derry Jail. The escape was one of a series of high profile actions by the IRA in the north in the first half of 1943 (there is more on the context of the escape here). The escape itself is well covered by an episode of the TG4 series, Ealú. This article looks at the wider context of the escape in terms of the 1940s IRA campaign.

Information about the escape was only disclosed to the Chief of Staff McAteer and the Northern Command Adjutant Jimmy Steele at an IRA army convention held in Ballymacarret in February 1943. McAteer and Steele had themselves escaped from Crumlin Road in January 1943. Finance for the Derry escape had already been (unwittingly) procured in a hold-up in Strabane on 2nd February by Jim Toner, O/C Tyrone, and his adjutant, Joe Carlin which netted £1,500[1]. The outside operation  was to be planned by Steele, Liam Burke, Harry White and Louis Duffin. Toner and Jimmy Clarke would help organise back-up. Word was sent in that the escape was to take place on the Saturday morning, 20th March, at 8.30am.

The actual planning of the Derry escape had begun in October 1942 when a tunnel was started in the cell of Harry O’Rawe and Jimmy O’Hagan[2]. The month previously, Tom Williams execution had coincided with an upsurge in activity in the north by the IRA. For the escape a fifteen foot shaft had been sunk and then an eighty foot tunnel burrowed out towards a house in Hardinge Street. All the spoil had been disposed of within the Jail. Communication in and out of the jail was by secret text between the lines of letters to Annie Hamill by her fiancée, Paddy Adams, who was O/C of the prisoners (she was also a sister of another internee, Sean Hamill). The tunnel was now nearing completion having gone through all manner of problems including water-logging, a collapse (nearly killing Billy Graham), and even having to dig under a coffin. The excavated soil from the tunnel even clogged the drains which had to be cleaned out but didn’t arouse suspicion.

Twenty men were to attempt to escape, to be supported by waiting IRA units in Derry and across the border in Donegal. Selection was based on those who would commit to reporting back for duty to the IRA, north of the border, once they had escaped. Once the twenty had passed through the tunnel, any other internée was free to follow them and make their own way to safety. It was hoped as many as eighty might escape.

For use in the Derry escape, Liam Burke had went to Currans to hire a furniture lorry and driver on the 18th March. The cost of the hire was to be £9 (this was paid to the firm after the escape). He and Jimmy Steele were to travel up to Derry in the lorry with the driver, called Davy, who was unaware of their true mission.

The lorry was going to be left at the corner of Abercorn Place, so that the escapers, who were expected to emerge in Harding Street, could run down and jump into the back. The escape was confirmed for 8.30 am on the Saturday morning. There were three flights of steps at the top of Abercorn Place, where it met Harding Street, which prevented the lorry being moved to just outside the house where the tunnel would emerge but also meant that it wasn’t close enough to arouse suspicion. Liam Burke was to position himself at the top of the steps to guide any escapers to the lorry.

The tunnel had been propped with bits of wood salvaged from around the prison plus sandbags made from pillow cases. In total 15 tons of clay had been removed for the tunnel. The sound of digging it up had often been masked by music practice. The tunnel itself had been completed before the IRA had organised the getaway vehicles and so there was a nervous wait inside the prison by the internees who were itching to get out[3]. The exit was in the coal bunker of Joseph Logue’s house in Harding Street.

The next day, Friday 19th March, Steele and Burke were picked up by the lorry which then began the drive up to Derry. On the way, the driver Davy wasn’t very talkative. He then stopped off at the main door of an RUC station in Castledawson, parked up the van, and went inside. Steele, sitting in the front seat, and armed with a revolver, had no idea whether the driver had recognised him (his niece worked for the same firm)  or become suspicious and was, at that very moment, giving him away to the RUC. It can’t have been too far from his mind how Hugh McAteer, the previous October, had accepted an invitation to an old school friend’s house only to deliver himself, the Chief of Staff of the IRA, straight into the hands of the waiting RUC without a fight.

To make matters worse, Steele was sitting at eye level right beside a wanted poster that said:

“Royal Ulster Constabulary, Reward of £3,000. The above Reward, or proportionate amounts thereof, will be paid to the person or persons furnishing information to the police leading to the arrest of any one or more of the persons whose photographs and descriptions are given hereunder, and who escaped from Belfast Prison on the morning of 15^th January, 1943.”

Under the text were pictures and descriptions of himself, Hugh McAteer, Ned Maguire and Pat Donnelly.

The wanted poster.

Jimmy Steele’s disguise at the time of the escape.

Eventually, though, Davy returned to the van, got in and drove off (it turned out he had got lost and went looking for directions).  When they reached Derry, Steele produced his revolver and told Davy that his van was being commandeered by the IRA. Davy looked at the revolver and then told Steele that it wasn’t necessary as he was an IRA supporter. He even pointed out that he could drive the van better than anyone else so it would be better if he stayed with them[4]. Steele explained why the furniture van was being commandeered but Davy agreed to remain with them and help out with the escape. As it was, he was the best placed to act as the getaway driver[5] anyway.

Steele and Burke had arranged to be billeted in a safe house in the city. Other members of the Belfast IRA had arrived separately, in twos and threes, to help in the escape.

On the morning of the escape, the prisoners found that the mouth of the tunnel had been blocked. As time wound down to the escape the idea had begun to take hold that the authorities’ failure to uncover the tunnel was a rouse and the plan was simply to shoot the internees as ‘escapers’ as they emerged from the tunnel. So, on discovering the tunnel blocked, they assumed the escape was over. Outside, Steele and Burke were unaware of any of the dramas inside the prison as the agreed time of 8.30 am approached. By now, the prisoners had realised that the tunnel was blocked by two bags of coal which were then transported back through the tunnel and into the prison clearing the way for the escape.

The prisoners then began to emerge from the tunnel and, much to the Logue family’s shock, ran through the house into the road. Kevin Kelly remembers that Joseph Logue had stood with one leg in his trousers in the parlour as they ran through. When he reached the street he saw Liam Burke and Chips McCusker and, even sixty years later, remembered the feeling of elation and how fresh the air was after being inside (Derry Jail was notoriously dark and damp). Kelly himself says:

“You could never describe the feeling.”

Burke then handed Kelly a revolver and directed him towards the van in Abercorn Place where Steele was still sat in the front with the driver.

Back in the Logue’s house, Sean Hamill was keeping watch over the Logues as the other members of the escape team emerged from the tunnel. He remained there until the last man came out, even then delaying to make sure no-one else was going to emerge[6]. Kelly had jumped into the back of the lorry while some others delayed in Abercorn Place. To free up space Steele and Burke were going to stay in the city, rather than leave with the lorry, and Ned Maguire took over in the lorry’s cab with the driver for the next part of the escape bid[7].

A young girl who noticed the escapees in the street went to the prison gates and informed the staff (who were already suspicious that something was going on). By the time the warders discovered the tunnel, 21 men had passed through it and had escaped.

The Republican News in April 1943, names the twenty official escapees as: Paddy Adams, Sean Hamill, Liam Graham, Albert Price, Seamus P. Traynor, Seamus Burns, Alfred White, Brendan O’Boyle, Hubert McInerney, Harry O’Rawe, Cathal McCusker, Liam Perry, Thomas M’Ardle, Seamus O’Hagan, Sean McArdle, Frank McCann, Daniel McAllister, Kevin Kelly, Hugh O’Neill and Seamus McCreevey. As he hadn’t been part of the official escape party, Jimmy O’Rawe’s name was not included on the list, even though he did actually escape through the tunnel. The individual named as Alfred White’s was actually Alphonsus White and was more usually known as Alfie ‘Shuffles’ White.

Fourteen of them climbed onto the lorry. Some, including Harry O’Rawe[8], Hubert McInerney, Brendan O’Boyle, Chips McCusker and Billy Graham didn’t go on the lorry and made their way to Letterkenny on foot[9]. Sean Hamill had remained in the Logues to prevent them raising the alarm. By the time he left the house, the lorry had already driven off. Having previously spent time in the city (he had originally been picked up and interned there), Hamill then decided to stay in Derry on the run, and felt able to make his way across the border. O’Boyle was the last official escapee[10], while Jimmy O’Rawe, the last to escape through the tunnel, was the first non-official member of the escape team to go through the tunnel and the only non-official escaper to get out. He didn’t know Derry well and was picked up during the blackout on Sunday night by the RUC.

Those in the lorry drove off[11], making the four and half mile journey to Carrigans where they were to cross the border with the intention of linking up with the waiting IRA unit on the other side. The journey was pretty uneventful and the apprehension and tension among the escapers in the back exploded in a yell of triumph when they crossed over the border at Carrigans and travelled on to St Johnston where they were supposed to be met by another lorry. Instead, nine ended up surrendering that night to pursuing Free State soldiers and Gardaí. They were re-interned (a certain naivety still existed among northerners about the capacity of Fianna Fáil to support the unionist government), this time in the Curragh. A famous photograph shows eleven men captured by Free State soldiers in the back of a lorry.

Photo showing prisoners re-captured by Free State soldiers in Donegal (published in Tim Pat Coogan’s The IRA.

Having left the lorry (it was eventually found in Sion Mills), Steele and Burke made an uneventful train journey back to Belfast. Steele was dressed in his Auxiliary Fire Service uniform while Burke was dressed as a priest. After they arrived back in Belfast, the £9 was forwarded to Currans to pay for the hire of the lorry.

Some, like Kevin Kelly, believed the timing of the escape was wrong and they should have gone out in the evening to take advantage of the blackout and then night-time. Within a week only three of the 21 were still at liberty. Lessons from the May 1941  and January 1943 escapes from Crumlin Road had not been learned, like not using getaway cars or trying to co-ordinate with outside help, with obvious consequences (in contrast, it was months before any of the May 1941 or January 1943 escapees were recaptured).

Strategically, the IRA appeared to have an eye, either consciously or subconsciously, on the propaganda value of an escape over the immediate practical contribution freeing 21 experienced volunteers would make to its northern campaign. As the IRA’s centre had shifted to the north in the early 1940s, a growing emphasis was put on positioning the question of Irish unity on the agenda of any expected Versailles-style conference that might happen after the world war. The IRA’s sabotage campaign in Britain had started in January 1939, but by September the start of the world war held out the prospect that a British reverse might be a catalyst to the re-establishment of the Irish republic as declared at Easter 1916 (the IRA’s ultimate objective).

As the possibility of British defeat receded, attitudes changed and, different dynamics emerged, first with the German invasion of Russia[12], and then with US entry into the war. The latter in particular, created the hope of a Versailles-style conference. And this is not as far-fetched as it now sounds. Irish unity had been an active issue in the public discussions of US support for the allies and then participation in the war. And until the Yalta conference in 1945, it was assumed there would be a negotiated end to the war. In Belfast, the IRA, under Hugh McAteer, had issued a number of public statements about the deployments of US troops in the north in 1942 and 1943 hoping to gain some headlines in the US. In his historical novel, An Ulster Idyll, Vincent McDowell (himself a 1940s internee) captures the general thinking among republicans in 1942:

“They could look forward to peace eventually and some kind of normality, but the IRA hoped that they would have a place in the final peace conference, and that the question of Irish unity would be raised, hopefully with the help of the Americans.”

McAteer, in the Sunday Independent in 1951[13] wrote that by the middle of April 1943 the IRA leadership were openly admitting to each other that the military offensive begun in September 1942 was failing:

“…we acknowledged to each other what we had long felt in our own hearts – that the possibility of our plans in the North succeeding was out of the question for the present. The propaganda value of the Derry escape, as evidenced by the many popular ballads, was tremendous; the practical result very small. The mass of the people were thoroughly disillusioned by the attitude of the 26-County Government towards us in the North; hundreds of our more experienced men were imprisoned or interned. The pattern of our work was thus clear. We had first of all to preserve the spirit of the movement, even if we could achieve nothing more concrete, and, secondly, to keep ourselves out of the jails as long as possible, and even this was becoming more difficult.”

By April 1943 then, the IRA’s northern offensive had largely petered out and by the middle of that year there was a clear shift towards dealing with prison issues. McAteer’s statement about the IRA’s thinking in March and April 1943 may also reflect growing public confidence in the possibility of an outright allied victory following Stalingrad and El Alamein and the realisation that a post-war conference to settle territorial claims and disputes was now looking unlikely.

With the possibility of a Versailles-type settlement gone, as McAteer states, the priority was now “..to preserve the spirit of the movement”. That set the stage for next big propaganda coup of the IRA, its 1943 Easter Commemoration in Belfast, which I’ll cover another day.

You can read more about the background to all of this in the Belfast Battalion book.

[1] McEoin (Harry), p133

[2] There are various accounts, including in Harry and The IRA in the Twilight Years, also an episode of the TG4 series, Ealú: To Hell and Back.

[3] Kevin Kelly, interviewed on Ealú.

[4] Hayes, 2004, 69

[5] Hayes 2004, 69

[6] Information as related by Sean to his son Féilim.

[7] Based, in part, on Hugh McAteer’s account (Sunday Independent 13.5.1951)

[8] O’Rawe had stood and watched Eamon Ó Cianáin and others escape over the wall in Crumlin Road in May 1941, only for warders to arrive and end his chances of escape. O’Rawe had helped wrestle the warders away from Gerry Doherty who was the last man over the wall on that occasion.

[9] As Chips McCusker was standing with Liam Burke when Kevin Kelly emerged from Logue’s, those who didn’t go in the lorry appear to have chosen not to do so either to divide the escapers up to evade capture or due to lack of space (McAteer, writing in 1951, implies that they were left behind).

[10] Coogan 1970 The IRA, 185

[11] According to Liam Burke’s account in The IRA in the Twilight Years, the driver and Ned Maguire took the lorry to the border, himself and Jimmy apparently staying the city.

[12] In Ar Thóir mo Shealbha Tarlach Ó hUid describes how a loose collaboration between the broad left in Belfast and the IRA in 1940 came apart over differing opinions over the ending of the German/Soviet pact with the German invasion of Russia. Joe Cahill (in Anderson’s 2002 biography of him A Life in the IRA) also relates that the moods in the prison and relations between warders and prisoners ebbed and flowed with the fortunes of the war and the changing alliances.

[13] Sunday Independent 20^th May 1951

List of IRA leaders in Belfast

Every now and again, I’ve posted updates and revisions to the list of commanders of the Belfast Battalion covering the period from 1922 and up to 1969.

Here is the current revision (below). As ever any corrections or suggestions can be added in the comments section. A table outlining the various roles prior to September 1922 is included below. It covers the Belfast Brigade of the IRA’s 3rd Northern Division and it’s previous incarnations from when it was the Belfast Battalion of the Irish Volunteers in 1916. The overall structure of the IRA in Belfast varied as it was organised as Brigade with two battalions from September 1922 onwards. In the later 1920s it was reorganised into a single battalion with a varying number of companies (from two to eight). In the 1940s the IRA created a battalion structure among internees and sentenced prisoners with the battalions reporting to the IRA’s Northern Command. After the second world war, the Belfast Battalion remained small and was generally organised into only one or two companies.

Battalion OCs were normalley elected where the IRA observed its own rules. When circumstances permitted, the I.R.A.’s Companies elected delegates to attend a Battalion Convention as follows: one delegate from the Company staff; one additional delegate if the Company had up to fifteen members, two if it had up to thirty, then an additional delegate for every further ten members (based on the Constitution of Óglaigh na h-Éireann published by the I.R.A. Army Council in March 1933). The Battalion O/C was selected or confirmed by the Convention. If arrested, O/C’s lost their rank and the Battalion staff selected an Acting O/C until a Convention formally ratified a new appointment (given the circumstances that prevailed the IRA often had to suspend its formal processes and appoint provisional O/Cs). If the previously elected O/C was released prior to the Convention the Battalion staff could meet and vote to confirm their return to the post.

Overall organisation and commandants of Belfast republican forces from 1916 to 1923.

 

1922-23 Hugh Corvin

Former Quartermaster of the I.R.A.’s 3rd Northern Division, he had replaced Pat Thornbury as O/C Belfast which had by then been re-organised as a Brigade in October 1922. Corvin had supported the Executive against G.H.Q. over the Treaty in 1922. Subsequently interned in April 1923, he was elected leader of the I.R.A. prisoners and was involved in various prison protests. Corvin was involved in the Irish Volunteers prior to 1916.

1923-24 Jim O’Donnell

O’Donnell replaced Corvin as O/C while Corvin was interned. When Corvin was released from internment at the end of 1924 O’Donnell appears to have stepped back and Corvin took over again as O/C.

1924-26 Hugh Corvin

When Corvin returned as O/C of the Belfast Brigade it was during the re-organisation that followed after Joe McKelvey’s re-burial in Milltown on 30th October 1924.

1925-1926 Jim Johnston

When the Belfast I.R.A. shot Patrick Woods in November 1925 the R.U.C. arrested one individual for questioning but detained a further fifty men, more than twenty of whom were interned until January 1926 including most of the Battalion staff. This included Hugh Corvin. Barely a week after the arrests the outcome of the Boundary Commission was leaked into the press. Judging by correspondence recovered in his house in February 1926, Johnston seems to have acted as O/C while Corvin was interned. He was to remain active with the Belfast Battalion into the 1930s.

1926 Hugh Corvin

Either before Johnston’s arrest in February 1926 or just after his own release in January, Hugh Corvin returned as O/C Belfast. He only stayed in the position until April 1926 when he resigned citing business reasons (he had set up an accountancy firm). He had been arrested in November 1925 and held until the end of January 1926 along with twenty others following the shooting of an informer.

He was to remain a prominent public figure, through involvement in the G.A.A. and as secretary of the Gaelic League in Belfast. He publicly participated in fund-raising for Fianna Fáil in Belfast in the early 1930s and when he stood as an ‘independent republican’ in West Belfast in February 1943 he was largely portrayed by the I.R.A. as a proxy for Fianna Fáil. His later political activity and the coincidence of the Fianna Fáil split suggest it may have been a motive in his resignation.

1926-8 Dan Turley

In Belfast I.R.B. Circle with 1916 leader Sean McDermott as early as 1907, Turley mobilised at Easter in 1916, was director of elections for Sinn Féin in Belfast at the 1918 elections and was Head of Intelligence in 3rd Northern Division. He was interned on the prison ship Argenta. He took over from Corvin but, apparently clashing with the organiser sent from Dublin (Davy Fitzgerald) and personalities at G.H.Q., he was portrayed as being difficult to get on with and unpopular. He remained active as Belfast Adjutant and in other staff posts, although he was a recurring target in clashes between the Belfast I.R.A. and G.H.Q.. The RUC used this tension to conspire against him and he parted with the I.R.A. in 1933 and then was shot dead in disputed circumstances in 1936. Turley was being held responsible for the loss of arms dumps over 1927-1928 and as Davy Matthews took over as Belfast O/C in 1928, Turley appears to have remained as O/C until some time in 1928.

1928-33 Davy Matthews

From Albert Street. A former O/C of C Company, 1st Battalion in the 1920-23 campaigns, including the Raglan Street ambush, and a former internee on the Argenta. Took over from Dan Turley who remained as part of his staff – according to Matthews pension application file in the Military Archives in Dublin this was in 1928. Instigated re-organisation of the Belfast I.R.A. in 1929, including training camps, Irish language classes and recruitment to Fianna Éireann. Bob Bradshaw quotes a description of him as having a ‘heart of gold and head of ivory’. Also active in Sinn Féin at a time when there were internal divisions within the I.R.A. over whether to co-operate with Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil or a left-wing political project (or if they were to co-operate with anyone at all). In November 1933, Matthews was arrested in possession of I.R.A. documents and received a short sentence. So many other senior Belfast staff were arrested, including Jimmy Steele, Charlie Leddy, George Nash, Tom O’Malley and Jack Gaffney that a temporary staff was formed, including Jack McNally, Jim Johnston and Sean Carmichael.

1933-34 Jack McNally

From the Bone. Another 1920-23 campaign veteran. Appears to have taken over as O/C while Davy Matthews served a short sentence in 1933-34 (this is implied but not explicitly stated in his memoir Morally Good, Politically Bad). While he was in prison Matthews decided to sign an undertaking that he would cease his I.R.A. membership if he was released just before Christmas. So too did another veteran, George Nash. Whether Matthews intended to honour the commitment or not, he was court-martialled in January 1934 and dismissed from the I.R.A.. McNally only stayed as O/C for a number of months but remained active on the I.R.A.’s G.H.Q. staff until his arrest at Crown Entry in 1936. He was interned in December 1938 and was to later be active in the Anti-Partition League and became an abstentionist Senator in the Northern Ireland Senate at Stormont.

1934-36 Tony Lavery

From Balkan Street, a Fianna Éireann veteran of the 1920s, Lavery took over role as O/C Belfast (at the time designated Ulster Area No 1). Despite an order from Army Council not to, he instructed those charged by the northern government over the Campbell College raid to be defended in court. After they were acquitted, the Army Council charged Lavery with disobeying a direct order and he was to be court-martialled in Crown Entry on 25th April 1936 (although it was expected, unlike Matthews, he would merely get a slap on the wrists). Crown Entry was raided just as the court martial was to take place and all those present were arrested including the I.R.A.’s Adjutant-General, Jim Killeen, G.H.Q. staff and senior members of the northern and Belfast leadership of the I.R.A. including Lavery’s Adjutant, Jimmy Steele, and other staff members like Liam Mulholland and Mick Traynor.

1936-37 Sean McArdle

McArdle took on role of O/C Belfast after the loss of Lavery and other Belfast staff members at Crown Entry. In October 1937, the R.U.C. raided what appears to have been a battalion staff meeting in Pearse Hall in King Street. McArdle was arrested and sentenced to six months in Crumlin Road for having I.R.A. documents in his possession.

1937-38 Chris McLoughlin (?)

While McArdle was in prison for three or four months, Chris McLoughlin may have acted in the role as O/C Belfast (he seems to have attended at least one I.R.A. convention in that capacity).

1938 Sean McArdle

On his release, McArdle returned as O/C Belfast until he was interned in December 1938.

1938-39 Charlie McGlade

Arrested in Crown Entry, Charlie McGlade was not long out of Crumlin Road when he was sent as an organiser to England as part of the S-Plan campaign. He took over as O/C Belfast from Sean McArdle following McArdle’s internment in December 1938. Apparently influenced by Jim Killeen, McGlade was responsible for developing the Northern Command concept that was put in place in late 1939, with McGlade as Northern Command Adjutant and Sean McCaughey as O/C. He edited the Belfast edition of War News and remained as O/C Belfast until 1940.

1940 Jimmy Steele

A Fianna and IRA veteran of 1920-23, Steele had been imprisoned since the Crown Entry raid, only being released in May 1940. For some time there had been unease at reports that were coming in to the IRA prisoners in Crumlin Road about disciplinary procedures being applied by the Belfast IRA staff. On his release, Steele was appointed to the I.R.A.’s Northern Command staff as Director of Training. Later that year, with McGlade and Northern Command O/C Sean McCaughey busy in Dublin, Steele took over the role as O/C Belfast until his arrest in December 1940.

1941 Liam Rice

Bowyer Bell (in The Secret Army) implies Liam Rice was O/C Belfast in May 1941, when he then left for Dublin to assist in the investigation into Stephen Hayes. Rice had been arrested in Crown Entry and also spent time in prison in the south. He was wounded and arrested in Dublin and spent time on the blanket in Portlaoise during the 1940s. It seems likely that Rice took over from Steele as O/C directly after Steele’s arrest in December 1940.

1941 Pearse Kelly

When Rice left for Dublin, Bowyer Bell states that Pearse Kelly took over as O/C Belfast in May. Kelly too left for Dublin in July to take part in the investigations into Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes. Kelly was eventually to become Chief of Staff himself and ended up in the Curragh. Afterwards he went on to a senior role in RTE as Head of News.

1941-42 Hugh Matthews

During 1941 Hugh Matthews, brother of Davy Matthews and another 1920-23 veteran, took over as O/C in Belfast, and was O/C during the Army Conference in Belfast in February 1942 (according to Bowyer Bell in The Secret Army). Ray Quinn (in A Rebel Voice) says he took over from Jimmy Steele but dates it to a later Army Convention in Belfast in February 1943. It is not particularly clear from surviving accounts, but Matthews appears to have been O/C as further disputes arose about disciplinary practices of his Belfast staff members (but not direct criticism of Matthews himself).

1942 John Graham

Prior to 1942, Graham had been O/C of an independent unit, mostly made up of Protestant IRA men. Graham took on the role of Director of Intelligence for the Northern Command and (according to Joe Cahill), was also O/C Belfast. He presumably took on the role after Hugh Matthews some time after February 1942 although the timing is unclear. He was arrested along with David Fleming in the Belfast HQ on Crumlin Road on 3rd October 1942, where printing presses and radio broadcasting equipment were also recovered. Graham, a divinity student in the 1930s, on his release he was to become a noted professional golfer.

1942-43 Rory Maguire

Maguire was O/C Belfast in the autumn of 1942, apparently following Graham’s capture in October.

1943 Jimmy Steele

Escaping from Crumlin Road prison on 15th January 1943, Steele re-joined the Northern Command staff as Adjutant and took over the role of O/C Belfast from Rory Maguire (Maguire’s brother, Ned, had escaped with Steele). He remained O/C Belfast when he took over as IRA Adjutant General after Liam Burke’s arrest.

1943-44 Seamus Burns

Following Jimmy Steele’s arrest in May, Seamus ‘Rocky’ Burns took over as O/C Belfast. Burns had been imprisoned as a 17 year old in 1938, interned in 1939. He took part in the mutiny in Derry jail and was moved to Crumlin Road prison, only to be returned to Derry from where he escaped with 20 others through a tunnel in March 1943. Recaptured in Donegal, he was interned in the Curragh. Harry White had Burns resign from the I.R.A., sign out of the Curragh, then re-join the I.R.A. and return north (when he took over as O/C Belfast). He was shot trying to escape from RUC officers in Chapel Lane in February 1944 and died the next day.
1944 Harry White?

In February 1944, Harry White apparently took over as O/C Belfast after Burns’ death. He was also on the run continuously. He seems to have taken on the role of O/C Belfast for much of the time and also delegated it to others. At this point the sequence of O/Cs gets a little messy.

1944-45 Harry O’Rawe?

By April 1944, Harry White went underground to Altaghoney in County Derry seemingly leaving O’Rawe as O/C Belfast. In his memoir, Harry, Harry White implies that he casually delegated the role to O’Rawe and they effectively alternated as O/C Belfast.

1945? Johnny Murphy

When Harry O’Rawe was arrested in March 1945, it seems likely Johnny Murphy took over as O/C Belfast. Murphy was one of a number of I.R.A. volunteers that were induced to sign out of internment by Harry White. White himself had resigned from the I.R.A. then signed out of internment in the Curragh and then was reinstated in the I.R.A.. He later got others to do the same to replenish the Belfast Battalion staff. An organiser sent by the I.R.A. in Dublin, Gerry McCarthy, visited Belfast in April 1945 and that may have prompted the reorganisation of the various roles. By this time the IRA’s structure was severely depleted and it is possible that there was, effectively, no Battalion to lead.

1946-? Paddy Meehan

While the identities of the O/C Belfast after Rocky Burns’ death are repeatedly unclear, Paddy Meehan was O/C in 1946-7 as individuals like Billy McKee who reported back to the I.R.A. in that time were referred to Meehan as O/C. One profile of Seamus Twomey (in The Irish Press on 15th July 1972) stated that he was O/C Belfast in 1945 but this seems unlikely cannot be corroborated from other sources. Since arrests tended to be the catalyst that lead to a changes in O/C, it is possible that in October 1946 Murphy replaced White as O/C Northern Command and Meehan took over at that date.

?-1949 Seamus McCallum

Richard English names McCallum as O/C when Des O’Hagan joined the IRA in 1949. Frank McKearney had taken over as O/C when Joe Cahill was released in November 1949, by which date McCallum may have moved to Liverpool (where he became O/C of the local I.R.A. unit). As noted above, it is not always clear who was in charge of what was left of the Belfast IRA between early 1944 and 1949, so the date that McCallum took on the role is unknown.

1949-50 Frank McKearney

By the late 1940s, Frank McKearney had taken over as O/C Belfast before November 1949. He had received a six year term for possession of a revolver in 1939. He appears to have taken over as O/C during 1949, at least until some time after the release of Jimmy Steele in 1950.

1950-56 Jimmy Steele

On release from Crumlin Road in 1950, Jimmy Steele again returned to active service with the IRA and once more took over as O/C Belfast while remaining prominent in other organisations such as the National Graves Association and also Sinn Féin. Stayed as O/C until 1956, when he stepped down (Steele was to remain an active republican until his death in 1970).

1956 Paddy Doyle

Took over as O/C in Belfast in preparation for the coming campaign in December, dubbed Operation Harvest. Doyle was highly thought of at GHQ but, due to suspicions about an informer, did not disclose planned operations in Belfast to his own Belfast staff. Doyle spent his time in Crumlin Road completing his education, later qualifying as an accountant, and didn’t get involved in republican activities again on his release.

1956-57 Joe Cahill

Cahill, who had a death sentence commuted in 1942, had been released in 1949 from Crumlin Road. He took over from Paddy Doyle on his arrest in December 1956 until Cahill himself was interned in July 1957.

1957-60 Tom McGill

There is a gap in available information from mid-1957 until about 1960. Jimmy Steele may have taken over again from Cahill until his own internment that summer although Tom McGill, who was also later interned, was O/C Belfast during this period.

1961-63 Billy McKee

On his release from internment in 1961, Billy McKee took on the role of O/C Belfast re-building the battalion effectively from scratch. He had been imprisoned in the 1930s and 1940s and was to remain active in republican circles ever afterwards. During the Wolfe Tone commemorations of 1963 he got involved in a dispute with Billy McMillen, eventually resigned first as O/C Belfast and then from the I.R.A..

1963-69 Billy McMillen

Following the argument over the Wolfe Tone commemorations in June 1963, McMillen took over as O/C Belfast. Having earlier been associated with unofficial bombings in 1950, McMillen had left the IRA in the mid-1950s following an argument and linked up with Saor Uladh. After his release from internment in 1961, he first went to England then returned to Belfast and rejoined the I.R.A.. He remained O/C through the 1960s and was interned just before the pogrom in mid-August 1969.

1969 Jim Sullivan

When McMillen was interned from mid-August to late September, Sullivan acted as O/C Belfast in his place. He was imprisoned for a number of brief periods, such as 1966, when he was presumably replaced with an acting O/C such as Jim Sullivan, who was his Adjutant. Sullivan filled the role in August-September 1969 when McMillen was interned.
1969 Billy McMillen

As part of the fallout over the failure of the Belfast I.R.A. to adequately prepare to defend areas during the pogrom, on release from internment McMillen called a Battalion staff meeting to seek confirmation that he would continue as O/C. When he was forced to restructure his staff, he was also asked to withdraw supports for Cathal Goulding as Chief of Staff on 22nd September 1969.

Thanks to all those who have supplied further information, photographs etc.

You can read more about the Belfast I.R.A. in the new book.