Belfast Battalion (sample)

Page 1

The ‘Second Civil War’: 1938-46

internment (again)

The night after the customs posts were blown up, there were more attacks. The I.R.A. had simply been placing bombs with a delayed fuse in suitcases and leaving them ‘for collection’ at customs huts (a fairly common practice at the time). That same night, at Castlefin in Donegal, three I.R.A. volunteers (none from Belfast) died in a premature explosion. Immediately there were public calls for the re-introduction of internment. The Battalion anticipated a major swoop and most known republicans stayed away from their homes for some weeks. A week before Christmas, I.R.A. G.H.Q. in Dublin advised them that it was safe to return. Almost immediately, on 22nd December, the Unionists carried out a large-scale swoop, arresting and then interning thirty-four men. Liam Rice claims the R.U.C. received information from Dublin to carry out the round-up.1 Some of those arrested were held without trial until 1945. By mid-December, some of the I.R.A. volunteers who had been in Spain had also begun to return to Belfast. Some, like Willie O’Hanlon, returned to Birmingham in preparation for active duty there.2 In January 1939, the I.R.A. formally declared war on Britain. Some Belfast I.R.A. volunteers had transferred to units in England but continued unionist attacks meant there was an ongoing need for the capacity to defend districts as it had done in 1935. It also kept a sceptical eye on developments in Dublin from where strategy was directed. The Battalion was to become increasingly uncomfortable with what it could see. During the night of 18th January, 1939, unionists yet again bombed the republican plot at Milltown. The R.U.C. responded with more raids on suspected republicans that led to fresh arms finds. In a letter to the Irish Press, Maud Gonne McBride contrasted the hysteria in the newspapers about the English sabotage campaign with the indifference shown towards the sustained unionist bombing campaign in the north.3 The same day the newspapers reported how Dawson Bates had gone to London to meet security officials about the I.R.A. campaign and had announced to the press that the R.U.C. had recently discovered an ‘execution list’ of prominent figures in the north. In London, he lobbied for more money for extra R.U.C. constables and to call up the B Specials. The arrests had again increased the number of republican prisoners in Crumlin Road.4 Some of the news brought into the prison began to alarm Jimmy Steele and the other senior I.R.A. men who were held in A wing. Tim Pat Coogan records that, for some time

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