Joe Cahill
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Joe Cahill (Irish: Seosamh Ó Cathail (May 1920 – July 23, 2004) was a controversial Irish republican and former leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).
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[edit] Early life
Cahill was born in Divis Street in West Belfast in 1920. He spent much of his life in the fighting British rule in Northern Ireland. He joined the IRA in the 1930s and was sentenced to death for killing a police officer in the 1940s during the Northern Campaign (IRA).
However, he had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment due to pressure on the British government by the Irish Free State; the Pope also allegedly called on the Northern Ireland government to grant clemency. Of the six men sentenced to death for the murder of Constable Patrick Murphy of Clowney Street, the Falls Road, Belfast - only one was executed. He was Tom Williams, the leader of the IRA unit that killed Murphy. Cahill was released in the 1949.
During the 1950s IRA Border Campaign, Cahill was again arrested and interned. He was released in 1962, but during the 1960s he drifted away from the IRA, dissillusioned by its increasingly left wing politics.
[edit] Founding the Provisional IRA
In 1969, Cahill was a key figure in founding the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969, Cahill along with Billy McKee, tried to defend the Catholic Clonard area from attack, but were unable to prevent Bombay street being burned out by loyalists. When he subsequently tried to organise the defence of the Ballymurphy area, he was initially chased away by the nationalist residents, who were disgusted with the IRA's response to the events of August 1969.
Angry at the failure of the IRA, led in Belfast by Billy McMillen, to defend Catholic areas during this rioting, Cahill and McKee stated in September 1969 that they would no longer be taking orders from the IRA leadership in Dublin, or from McMillen. In December 1969, they declared their allegiance to the Provisional IRA, who split off from the leadership. The remnants of the pre-split IRA became known as the Official IRA. Joe Cahill served on the first Provisional IRA Army Council.
[edit] IRA career
In April 1971, after the arrest and imprisonment of Billy McKee, Cahill became the commander of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. He held this post until the introduction of internment in August of that year. It was during this period that the IRA campaign got off the ground in the city. Cahill authorised the beginning of the IRA's bombing operations as well as attacks on British troops and the RUC. He based himself in a house in Andersonstown and toured the city, coordinating IRA operations. The day after the British Army mounted Operation Demetrius, designed to arrest the IRA's leaders, Cahill held a press conference in a school in Ballymurphy and stated that the operation had been a failure. He said, "we have lost one Brigade officer, one battalion officer and the rest are Volunteers, or as they say in the British Army, privates". Cahill himself however had to flee to the Republic of Ireland to avoid arrest -thus relinquishing his command of the Belfast Brigade.
In March 1972, Cahill was part of an IRA delegation that held direct talks with the British prime minister Harold Wilson. However, although the IRA called a three day ceasefire for the talks, no permanent end to violence was agreed upon.
On his return to Ireland, Cahill was arrested in Dublin by the Gardai and charged with IRA membership. However he went on hunger strike for 23 days and was subsequently released due to lack of evidence. In November 1972, Cahill became the IRA's chief of staff, he held this position until his arrest in the following year.
Cahill was then put in charge of importing arms for the PIRA. He liased with the NORAID group in America and with the Lybian dictatorship of Colonel Gadaffi to this end. In March 1973 he was arrested by the Irish Navy in Waterford, aboard the Claudia, a ship from Lybia loaded with five tons of weapons. Cahill was sentenced to three years imprisonment by the Irish Special Criminal Court. Cahill stated at his trial that, "If I am guilty of any crime, it is that I did not succed in getting the contents of the Claudia into the hands of the freedom fighters of this country". Upon his release, Cahill again was put in charge of arms importation and to this end went to the United States. He was deported from the United States in 1984 for illegal entry. (See Provisional IRA arms importation).
Cahill served on the IRA Army Council as late as the 1990s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he argued against proposals for Sinn Fein to stand in elections. However, in 1985, he spoke at the pary's Ard Fheis in favour of republicans contesting elections and taking seats in the Irish Dail or parliament.
[edit] Peace Process
In his later years as honorary life vice-president of Sinn Féin he was a strong supporter of Gerry Adams and the Good Friday Agreement. In 1994 a controversial but central aspect of the IRA's ceasefire was the granting of a limited visa by then United States President Bill Clinton to Cahill, in the face of strident opposition by John Major's government. This was to facilitate a trip to the United States to win support for the new Sinn Féin strategy from Irish American PIRA supporters.
Cahill died of natural causes in July 2004, aged 84, in Belfast.
[edit] Sources
- Anderson, Brendan. Joe Cahill: a life in the IRA. Dublin : O'Brien, 2002.
- Richard English, Armed Struggle - A History of the IRA, MacMillan, London 2003, ISBN 1-4050-0108-9
- Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA, Penguin, London 2002,
- Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA, Corgi, London 1988. ISBN 0-552-13337-X
- Brendan O'Brien, The Long War - The IRA and Sinn Féin. O'Brien Press, Dublin 1995, ISBN 0-86278-359-3
