Death of Brian Keenan
BRIAN KEENAN, one of the IRA’s foremost strategists over three decades of conflict passed away in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 21 May, following a long battle with cancer.
On behalf of Sinn Féin Gerry Adams extended his sincerest condolences to Brian’s wife Chrissie, his sons and daughters, Bernadette, Annemarie, Chrissie, Frankie, Sean and Janette and his grandchildren; and to his brothers and sisters, and to the wider family circle.
Gerry Adams said: “Although Brian had been ill for many years news of his death will come as a great shock to republicans throughout Ireland and beyond. I want to pay tribute to him and his family and to thank everyone who looked after him during his illness, particularly his friends in South Armagh and Dublin.
“Brian was a formidable republican leader over 40 years of activism. He was a man of tremendous energy even in the face of a debilitating illness. He was a deeply committed socialist and trade unionist who was enormously influenced in his youth by the writings of Connolly and Mellows.
“Brian Keenan’s strong endorsement of the Sinn Féin peace strategy was crucial in securing the support of the IRA leadership for the series of historic initiatives which sustained the peace process through its most difficult times. Brian Keenan’s dedication to the republican struggle was unswerving. His working class politics and his republican and socialist principles were his constant guide through four decades of unstinting effort on behalf of republicanism.
“In a recent series of interviews in An Phoblacht Brian spoke of the imperative ‘at a time of great change’ to ‘constantly lay out the republican vision. We need to constantly remind people we are for liberty, equality, fraternity. We are against exploitation and inequality.’
“He urged republicans to ‘look at the opportunities that are there to move the struggle forward to reunification and independence’. Brian Keenan was a good friend and gifted and steadfast republican. He made an incalculable contribution to the republican struggle. Brian will be greatly missed by his family and friends and by the many republicans who over the years have been touched by his generosity, friendship, and humour.”
tribute
The North’s First Minister, Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness also paid tribute to Keenan.
McGuinness said:
“I am deeply saddened by the death of my friend Brian Keenan. Brian was a republican icon who along with his wife Chrissie and family made huge sacrifices through his dedication and commitment to the Republican struggle.
“As a leader within Irish republicanism Brian’s contribution to the building and development of the peace process was not just immense but invaluable. His contribution continued throughout his long illness.
“I was overjoyed that Brian was able to be with us in Stormont on May 8th last year to see the restoration of the power sharing and all-Ireland institutions. This would not have happened without his hugely important contribution.
“I extend myself and Bernie’s sympathy and love to Brian’s wife Chrissie and the Keenan family at this sad time.”
Brian Keenan, IRA ‘Long War’ strategist
BRIAN KEENAN, one of the IRA’s foremost strategists in ‘The Long War’ over three decades, was once described by Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff at 10 Downing Street, Jonathan Powell, as “the single biggest threat to the British state”.
Brian’s pivotal role in the political and the armed struggle was also acknowledged by his comrades earlier this year when he was among the honourees at the Le Chéile celebration for those who have given outstanding service to the republican cause and the fight for Irish freedom.
Shortly after joining the IRA, in 1968, Brian went on the run and spent the next 25 years living apart from his wife, Chrissie, his children and his grandchildren. He served 16 years in various jails across England in Special Secure Units (SSUs). His story began on Belfast’s New Lodge Road in 1941.
BORN into a family of six children during the Second World War, Brian Keenan’s home was hit by a Luftwaffe bomb during the blitz on Belfast and the family was evacuated to South Derry, where the young Brian started primary school before returning to Belfast when the war was over. For the entire Second World War, his father, Harry, served with the British Royal Air Force at Packlington RAF Bomber Command aerodrome in England while Brian’s mother, Jean, raised the family on her own. His father rarely spoke about his years in the RAF or the war despite being awarded a commendation for bravery when he saved the crew of a bomb-laden airplane which had crash-landed on take-off. The King of England also acknowledged his bravery in a quotation in the London Gazette. (Ironically, the aerodrome where his father once served became the site on which Full Sutton Prison was built, where Brian served a sentence as a political prisoner.)
When the Second World War was over, Brian’s father returned to Belfast and the Keenan family set up home on Belfast’s West Circular Road. As he was growing up he experienced at first-hand the sectarianism that was prevalent for Belfast Catholics. It was this sectarianism that led a loyalist mob to the door of his family home to drive his mother and father out of their house at the onset of ‘The Troubles’ in 1969. It was also the first time Brian Keenan carried a gun. With other armed IRA Volunteers, he arrived to protect his family and bring them to safety. Sectarianism was not confined to the streets of Belfast. It was also in the workplace where Brian, in his first-ever job, personally experienced “second-class citizenship”.
It was while working as an apprentice electronics engineer that Brian joined the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), one of the more radical unions of the time. He was 16. “Engineering was the preserve of Protestants. From day one I was made to feel second class. In those days you kept your head down. You were lucky to have a job and you wanted to keep it.”
In 1958, Brian moved to England to escape the sectarian harassment he was experiencing in work. He continued his apprenticeship in Luton in a firm which made guided missiles and it was there he met trade unionists involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He attended his first union convention as a delegate when he was just 17. It was from this point on that he analysed politics through a “class prism”.
While in England, in 1960, Brian married Chrissie. He moved back to Belfast in 1963 where he continued his involvement with the ETU and trade union politics. He was an avid reader and a deep thinker. “From 17, I was reading something or other. One of the first books was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, The War of the Flea, Small is Beautiful, and I read about the Buddhist approach to economics.” On his return to Belfast the blatant discrimination against Catholics and nationalists in the North propelled him into becoming active in the Civil Rights movement. In 1968 he joined the Irish Republican Army.
During the years of conflict he became one of the IRA’s foremost strategists and a thorn in the side of British imperialism.
Intensely proud of IRA Volunteers’ heroism and ingenuity and the struggle waged by the ‘People’s Army’ against the British Army — possibly the most professional but certainly one of the best armed, equipped and resourced military forces in the world — Brian Keenan never let this blur his vision of the needs of the struggle and the challenges it faces.
It was leaders like Brian Keenan who steered the IRA through events such as internment, the Bloody Sunday massacre by the Parachute Regiment, the unionist work stoppages, sectarian conflict, and the unrelenting war waged by the British state and its allies and agents against the nationalist people in the Six Counties.
England was a theatre of war that became central to IRA strategy to move the political situation to a resolution. It is an area that has become associated by British commentators with Brian Keenan perhaps more than any other contemporary IRA leader.
“The IRA leadership knew we could not defeat the British Army militarily but we could bring them to a point where they knew they could not defeat the IRA,” Brian told An Phoblacht earlier this year. “We aimed to exhaust their patience through war in the Six Counties and subsequently the campaign in England. You have to be able to bring the struggle to their front door.” The England campaign was a necessary appendage to the armed struggle in the Six Counties. It sent a powerful message to the British Establishment, political and military.
Brian was one of a new breed of leaders who helped re-organise the IRA — derided after unionist sectarian pogroms led by the RUC in 1969 by the wall slogan ‘IRA = I Ran Away’ — into an effective fighting force that won begrudging admiration from its enemies.
“The IRA changed urban warfare on a world basis. Other armed revolutionary organisations have borrowed the IRA’s tactics.”
Although he recognised the challenges political progress still faces, he argued that the IRA was morally obliged to look at alternative options to continuing the war, especially if there was a viable alternative.
And as a committed revolutionary, dedicated to social as well as political change, Brian Keenan ended his interview with Jim Gibney by outlining where saw the current situation.
“I would prefer we were somewhere else but we are not and that is it as far as I am concerned. Revolutionaries have to be pragmatic - wish lists are for Christmas. At a time of great change we need to constantly lay out the republican vision. We need to constantly remind people we are for ‘equality, liberty, fraternity’. We are against exploitation and inequality. Historians in 50 years’ time will tell us whether the right path was chosen or not. “Of course mistakes have been made along the way, but we have to look to the opportunities that are there to move the struggle forward to reunification and independence.”
2001: Brian Keenan addresses republicans at a commemoration of IRA Volunteers at Knockatallon on the Monaghan/Fermanagh border
The Brian Keenan interview: The Brian Keenan interview:
Photo: Brian receives award at the recent Le Chéile event in Dublin
BRIAN KEENAN joined the IRA in 1968. In the intervening 40 years he became one of the IRA’s foremost strategists and a thorn in the side of British imperialism.
Shortly after joining the IRA, Brian went on the run and spent the next 25 years living apart from his wife, Chrissie, his children and his grandchildren.
He served 16 years in various jails across England in Special Secure Units (SSUs).
His pivotal role in the struggle was recognised last month when he was among the honourees at this year’s Le Chéile celebration.
Ahead of that honour, Brian spoke to JIM GIBNEY for the first time publicly about his life as a husband and father of six children, as an IRA activist, his years in jails in England and the influences that shaped his early life.
This is the first instalment of a three-part feature where Brian Keenan tells us, in his own words, what has driven one of the most formidable foes the might of the British state has ever faced.BRIAN KEENAN was born on Belfast’s New Lodge Road in 1941 into a family of six children.
His family home was hit by a Luftwaffe bomb during the blitz on Belfast during the Second World War and the family was evacuated to South Derry, where the young Brian started primary school before returning to Belfast when the Second World War was over.
For the entire Second World War his father, Harry, joined the fight against Hitler as a member of the British Royal Air Force. He was based in England at Packlington RAF Bomber Command Base aerodrome, from where the RAF ran regular bombing raids on Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.
During the war his mother Jean raised the family on her own.
His father rarely spoke about his years in the RAF or the war despite being awarded a commendation for bravery when he saved the crew of a bomb-laden airplane which had crash landed on take-off. The King of England also acknowledged his bravery in a quotation in the London Gazette.
Brian’s father and a comrade waded knee-deep through thousands of gallons of aviation fuel, pulled the stunned crew from the stricken aircraft and dragged them from a potential inferno and almost certain death.
It took Brian many years to understand his father’s motivation in joining the RAF. His father had joined the boys’ RAF service at 15 in 1924. It was a way out of poverty for the teenager like thousands of other Irish men before him.
In time, and after many heated rows, Brian came to realise that his father was “a man of integrity, a courageous man, a man of his times, who did things according to his lights. He was a clever man, educated at Harding Street School.”
One of life’s interesting twists of fate is that Packlington aerodrome became the site on which Full Sutton Prison was built. Brian’s father would have walked the base on duty. Brian himself walked the same terrain as a political prisoner. He was a prisoner in Full Sutton. Both their feet traversed the same piece of ground separated by nearly 40 years of time and two different types of war entirely.
When the Second World War was over, Brian’s father returned to Belfast and the Keenan family set up home on Belfast’s West Circular Road.
Belfast in the 1940s was a tough place for people rearing a family. Work and money were scarce and service in the British forces was of little benefit to those coming home to poverty.
From a very young age Brian carried a hurl with him as often as he could.
“In my youth, republicanism did not come into it. I was always nationally minded. I played hurling as a teenager.”
The hurl was also a magnet for the attention of sectarian bigots on the Shankill and Springfield roads, which Brian had to pass through on his way to school or training at the GAA’s Corrigan Park on the Falls Road. He was often attacked.
As he was growing up he experienced at first-hand the sectarianism that was prevalent for Belfast Catholics.
“Sectarianism was a way of life. Sectarian tension was always there. It didn’t stop you going about Belfast but you were always aware that you could end up in a fist-fight if you travelled too far from the safety of your home streets.”
It was this sectarianism that led a loyalist mob to the door of his family home to drive his mother and father out of their house at the onset of ‘The Troubles’ in 1969.
It was also the first time Brian Keenan carried a gun. With other armed IRA Volunteers, he arrived to protect his family and bring them to safety.
Brian was angry and wanted to burn his parents’ house to the ground. The previous week, his grandmother had died and his father had had a heart attack and was in hospital. His mother told him very firmly: “If you touch a brick of that house, you’re no son of mine!”
Brian’s mother’s generosity was absent from the family whose house the Keenans got. Self-proclaimed Christians, they destroyed as much of the house as they could before they left.
Sectarianism was not confined to the streets of Belfast. It was also in the workplace where Brian, in his first-ever job, personally experienced “second-class citizenship”.
It was while working as an apprentice electronics engineer that Brian joined the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), one of the more radical unions of the time. He was 16.
“I first became acutely aware that I was regarded and treated as a second-class citizen when I started work. I was an apprentice engineer. Engineering was the preserve of Protestants. From day one I was made to feel second class. In those days you kept your head down. You were lucky to have a job and you wanted to keep it.”
In 1958, Brian moved to England to escape the sectarian harassment he was experiencing in work.
He continued his apprenticeship in Luton in a firm which made guided missiles and it was there he met trade unionists involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). They refused to build missiles designed for offensive purposes but built defensive missiles.
His involvement in trade unionism deepened and he attended his first union convention as a delegate when he was just 17.
While in the Luton factory and the ETU his class consciousness began to take shape and it was from this point onwards that he analysed politics through a “class prism”.
He is not sure where his interest in class politics came from. There were no members of his family who were staunch trade unionists, although his father was active in housing issues on the West Circular Road and was chairperson of the local tenants’ association in the early 1950s when few others had such an interest.
He thinks he may have acquired his early social conscience from his dad’s involvement in local community politics.
While in England, in 1960, Brian married Chrissie. He moved back to Belfast in 1963 where he continued his involvement with the ETU and trade union politics.
“From a young age my political outlook was shaped by my interest in trade unions. My brother was in the boiler-makers’ union.”
Brian got a class perspective on politics from his involvement in union work, strikes and working conditions.
The two big influences on him were the GAA and trade unionism. His uncle was in the IRA in the 1920s so that probably had a bearing as well.
“There were no overt republican politics in my house as I was growing up.
“In fact, I remember having a row with my mother when she found a copy of The United Irishman beneath my mattress. I had bought the paper at a GAA match in Thurles.”
By the time Brian was 21 his political outlook was formed. He was very much on the left wing of politics and has stayed there to this day. By 21 he had read Connolly’s works and Mellows’ writings.
“To me, republicanism is an ideology which should be firmly fixed socially and economically.
“To me, the enemy was capitalism and the system of exploitation.
“To me, the national question was always a class question.
“Most republicans see it in terms of British troops occupying the North. I see it in those terms as well but I also apply a socialist analysis.
“From 17 I was reading something or other. One of the first books was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, The War of the Flea, Small is Beautiful, and I read about the Buddhist approach to economics.
“I was against nationalism and I was critical of republicans in the Movement in the late 1960s/early seventies who limited their politics to nationalism.
“I don’t believe there is any form of benign nationalism. And I’m not speaking about people who are proud of their country, nor am I speaking about the positive role national liberation movements play in bringing about social and economic change.
“Looking back on the 1930s and 1940s, I could understand the difficulties that republicans like Peadar O’Donnell, George Gilmore and Frank Ryan had with right-wing people in Óglaigh na hÉireann.
“Over the years I met a lot of republicans from the ‘40s. I don’t want to be cruel to them because they were good people. They kept the struggle going in difficult times. But they relied too much on the politics of the gun.
“Their vision was a united Ireland, plain and simple. It didn’t matter on whose terms as along as it was a united Ireland.
“In the 1960s, the IRA was not an organisation working-class people could identify with.
“They were secretive, in many cases elitist, and, in some cases, family driven. It was almost hereditary to be in the Movement. It was organised around a number of well-known families in Belfast.
“Most republicans did not understand working-class and related politics. They were organised for a different purpose.
“Their focus was on independence and the politics which revolved around this. Class politics did not interest the most of them.
“Republicans, by their nature, were part of a conspiratorial movement.
“Republicans and the IRA made little impact on the plight of working-class people in Belfast.
“Some republicans labelled me a communist because of my trade union involvement. That annoyed me because people did not know what they were talking about. I was primarily interested in class politics and couldn’t understand why republicans would approve of non-unionised labour and being associated with people who owned firms that paid less than the union rates.
“My experience in trade union politics was drawn on by the IRA in 1966. I was asked to prepare a document for the Army Convention. I used a document I worked on for trade unionists in England called the Red Arrow Agreement. I gave that to one of the IRA’s leaders in Belfast. I don’t know what happened to it.”
Brian was active in workers’ rights campaigns. He trained people in his flat in Turf Lodge in this area.
“I was involved in organising a number of strikes. I got a reputation as a militant trade unionist and was blacklisted by my union, the ETU. I couldn’t get work. I had six children. It was a hard time. There was not a lot of money about.
“I got a job in Grundig on the management side of things. I built up a good relationship with the trades unions.”
While a foreman at Grundig’s, a German firm in Belfast, Brian experienced the hidden system of preferential treatment which was commonplace and which ensured discrimination in favour of Protestants in the workplace.
He supervised an applicant seeking a job as an engineer only to discover the applicant knew nothing about engineering. When Brian refused to employ him the interviewee said to him: “Have you not been told? This is all arranged.”
Brian promptly showed him the door only to be approached by one of the other foremen at the factory seeking an explanation for his actions. The applicant was a ‘B’ Special.
It was this hidden system of discrimination which relied on family connections, home address, and school name that ensured Protestants received preferential treatment.
This, and the more obvious discrimination practised by the sectarian, Six-County state, saw Brian Keenan propelled into becoming active in the Civil Rights Movement and to joining the Irish Republican Army. Things would never be the same again.
• NEXT WEEK: From civil rights to armed struggle
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The Brian Keenan interview: From civil rights to armed struggle
BRIAN KEENAN joined the IRA in 1968. In the intervening 40 years he became one of the IRA’s foremost strategists and a thorn in the side of British imperialism. Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff at 10 Downing Street during the war years described Brian Keenan as “the single biggest threat to the British state”.
Brian spoke to JIM GIBNEY for the first time publicly about his life as a husband and father of six children, as an IRA activist, his years in jails in England and the influences that shaped his early life.
This is the second instalment of a three-part feature in which Brian Keenan tells us, in his own words, about how resistance developed from agitation for civil rights to armed struggle.
BRIAN’S first taste of RUC violence and prison life happened the same day the RUC attacked Sinn Féin’s election office on the Falls Road to remove the Irish Tricolour from the office window at the behest of a young firebrand preacher by the name of Ian Paisley.
It was 1964. Brian and a friend were returning home from a night out close to the Falls Road when a car-load of RUC men descended on them and beat them to the ground. They were taken to Hastings Street Barracks, where they were again beaten.
“The RUC refused to give me water or allow me to wash myself. I was left lying in a cell on a leather mattress.”
They were charged with assaulting an RUC patrol and sentenced to three months in jail or an £85 fine.
It was the first time Brian met PJ McGrory, then a young solicitor at an early stage of his practice but who was to become a renowned legal advocate in the turbulent North of Ireland. He represented Brian and, characteristically of PJ, he demolished the RUC witnesses’ claims that Brian and his friend attacked them. But the judge ignored PJ’s obvious conclusion and convicted Brian nevertheless.
Unable to pay the fine, Brian spent two weeks in Crumlin Road Jail until the money was raised.
This was Brian Keenan’s violent introduction to the sectarian nature of the Six-County state, its police and judiciary. The experience taught him a lesson about the RUC he never forgot.
Shortly after the 1964 riots, students in Belfast began to organise under the banner of civil rights. This was a period of huge change which significantly impacted on the IRA, most notably in the Republican Movement split of 1969.
“In the late 1960s, the IRA was ineffective. They spent their time having arguments that were totally irrelevant to the unfolding and dangerous situation.
“The split was personality driven. It wasn’t solely ideological. It was also ego-driven. The split damaged the struggle big time.
“The IRA had no sense of what was coming at the people in terms of state violence. However, as an organisation it had a collective memory and knowledge of armed struggle which proved invaluable.
“Some senior Army people saw the Civil Rights movement in opposition to them; others saw the potential of it. They ended up going with the Sticks [who were dubbed by the media the ‘Official IRA’ and ‘Official Sinn Féin’, who later changed their name to the Workers’ Party].
“So why did I go with the Provisionals? I considered what the Dublin leadership of the Sticks did was a betrayal.
“I went with the IRA because of what happened to the Catholic people of Belfast. The pre-split IRA betrayed them. They believed that a bloodbath in Belfast among the Catholic people was good for the IRA. This was nonsense politics and left the people defenceless in the face of a very violent situation unfolding in the city.
“I was disgusted at the split. The Movement and the struggle were weakened. The split seriously damaged the struggle for a united Ireland.
“Certain IRA leaders wouldn’t talk to me for a long time after the split because they believed I was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. In their eyes I was not to be trusted. They believed I was aligned with Tony Coughlan, who was with the Sticks.”
But it was the spectacular growth of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s which held out the prospect of “something big happening in the Six Counties”.
“The trigger for my generation to get involved in violent confrontation with the state was not the IRA, not republican politics, nor republican ideology. The trigger was the Civil Rights movement.
“The Civil Rights movement was not controlled by republicans. In fact it was out of republicans’ control. It was students led by people like Michael Farrell, People’s Democracy and trade unionists. It struck a chord among the educated. Education was important and the Catholics had education as never before. They asserted their rights.
“There was a lot of excitement about. You felt something big was happening. There were demonstrations and riots.”
Across the Six Counties, thousands of students were on the march for civil rights. It was a students’ revolt against inequality. The students were influenced by what was happening in cities in Europe, especially Paris and the United States against the US war in Vietnam.
“The two big demands of the marchers were ‘one man one vote’ and decent houses. The housing conditions were appaling. People were living in squalor. I was angry. Why should anyone have more than one vote because they had money and property? Why could I, who had nothing, not have a vote?”
“People were always aware that, no matter how well educated you were, your expectations were never reached because of the society we lived in. People’s self-respect and self-esteem was low.”
Brian got involved in the Civil Rights movement and his latent republican politics came to the fore.
“It was a good thing that I had republican politics and that other republicans were involved in the Civil Rights movement because such movements have a short lifespan and, as we know from other experiences around the world, they fizzle out.
“If it hadn’t been for republicans, the Civil Rights movement here would have died also and the status quo would have remained cemented forever and a day.”
The Civil Rights movement struck an emotional chord with the Catholic population of the North because they were highlighting those issues which were deeply personal to Catholics – issues of injustice.
Catholics were seething with anger about how they had been treated by the unionist government for decades. They demonstrated in their tens of thousands for reforms to improve their personal and living conditions.
It was into this uprising that the IRA stepped in.
“I joined the IRA in 1968 and shortly after I had to go on the run. From that point onwards, normal family life ended. I never lived at home with my wife, Chrissie, and children for 27 years. I went home to my family in 1995 for the first time since 1968. Chrissie raised the kids.
“From 1968, I gave all my attention to the Army. The IRA was light on the ground when I joined.
“The IRA was a body of armed men. They were not trained ideologically. They were schooled in history but they were also a movement waiting to be revitalised, rearmed and reorganised into a fighting force. They needed leadership.”
Brian Keenan was an emerging leader of an organisation which had never experienced anything like what was happening to the nationalist and Catholic population of the Six Counties.
The mood of the Catholic population and the conditions in nationalist areas were akin to what had happened in the rest of Ireland during the period between 1916 and the end of the Civil War in 1923.
The conditions were ripe for the IRA to once again prepare itself and the nationalist people for war.
1969 was a pivotal year for the IRA. The organisation was disorganised and disjointed, with few weapons.
After the pogroms on the Falls Road, a slogan was seen daubed on the walls: ‘IRA – I Ran Away.’
“At the time the people were leading the IRA by their actions in places like Derry, Ardoyne and Short Strand. The strength of resistance lay with the people’s actions. It was afterwards the IRA provided the much-needed armed leadership.
“Anger and frustration about injustice brought me into the IRA. It was easy for me to move into an armed organisation. I’d no faith in any democratic confrontation with the state. It was quite easy for me to join the ranks of Óglaigh na hÉireann and translate that militancy into a military response.”
The IRA started to mobilise in a way it had always been done in secret organisations. At the time, with the threat from the RUC, ‘B’ Specials and loyalists, the most important issue was defence, particularly for Belfast Catholics. This was the strongest and most popular dynamic.
“Defence is only possible with armaments. The country was scoured for weapons. I travelled myself from Derry to Cork, picking up old bits and pieces. I remember in West Cork I got a dump from an old man and that dump had been there from the Civil War!
“They were incredible days. All of a sudden, the IRA was in your street; your next door neighbour was in the IRA; your mate’s son was in the IRA. They were the IRA.
“Of course, the IRA was in its infancy. Few knew how to deal with the situation. We drew on the experience of older republicans – the people who were in the jails, in the Army since partition. Their advice in those very early days was invaluable.
“In one sense we were shaped and moulded by the levels of continuous repression from the British Army and the RUC.
“British military repression also deepened the crisis on the streets. They behaved as if they were in one of their colonies, thousands of miles away, instead of where they actually were – in a west European country a few miles away from London.
“British repression actually created the conditions which allowed the IRA to intensify its armed struggle. The British Army was really stupid. They provoked mass revolt by their repressive actions.
“The IRA organised behind the barricades for national liberation, not social revolution. It could have been different if the IRA had been more than an organisation seeking a united Ireland. In the context of national liberation it was inevitable that the focus would be around independence.
“It was unfinished business from the period of partition.
“We did what needed to be done and we were right to do it.”
It was a popular uprising. The revolt was propelled by anger borne out of decades of discrimination and injustice; an uprising which focused on issues like jobs, housing, votes, quality of life issues – a reform agenda.
The IRA was trying to manage all of this popular upheaval, trying to find its place in the midst of chaos. Understandably, the growth of the IRA was unmanageable.
It was the first time in modern Irish history that republicans were dealing with this type of situation, where war in an urban setting was underway.
“It was really only after internment that people and the Army began to focus on the nature of the Six-County state.” By this time, the IRA was improving its efficiency.
“The IRA offensive just developed. There was no point at which someone said, ‘Right, that’s it – we are at war.’
“Sympathisers in the US were getting in various weapons: Korean War weaponry: M1s, some old M14s, BARs. We were glad of them but they were not very good weapons against what the Brits had.
“There was a concerted effort with friendly people in the States to re-equip the Army so that it could effectively fight the Brits.
“We had friends in different parts of the world procuring weapons for us. But it was the republican supporters in the US who made the difference.
“Parallel with that, our own Engineering Department was developing weaponry of a home-made nature.
“You have to remember, there was no IRA as we know it today. The IRA was badly organised and badly armed. The strength of the resistance was in the people responding spontaneously to the violence of the RUC, ‘B’ Specials and loyalists. For many it was a case of, ‘Get the guns and shoot the British Army.’
“The IRA followed the people’s response on the streets. The IRA saw the potential in the situation. The people forced the IRA to organise itself. It did so and it did a good job under difficult circumstances.
“The IRA then went on a mass recruiting campaign. It opened its ranks to anyone and everyone. This had its strengths and weaknesses from the point of view of a secret, clandestine army which needed security to survive and grow.
“The IRA’s security was compromised during these years. People were recruited who did not have the basic tenets of republicanism or nationalism. But this is one of the contradictions armed revolutionary organisations have to manage.
“You had a popular uprising which the IRA had to take advantage of because its primary project was the freedom of the country.
“Because of the immediacy of the situation on the ground, it took the IRA a number of years to put a military strategy together. Like I said earlier, the leadership saw its job as completing the unfinished business of 1921: ending partition.
“The growth of the IRA was unmanageable. It was unplanned because of what was happening on the ground. The IRA’s strength in many instances was down to individual Volunteers and their initiative in taking on the crown forces.
“When you consider it, the IRA Volunteers were self-taught, trained on the streets and highly motivated. They took on one of the best conventional armies in the world. We paid a heavy price in terms of loss of life and the attrition rate to jails was also very high but people kept volunteering to join the IRA.
“Then the Belfast Brigade of the IRA was a driving force. They were very brave; an engine driving the situation forward. They lost a lot of Volunteers in the early years in confrontations with the British military. The IRA was light on the ground in places like South Armagh until after internment, in fact until after Harry Thornton was shot dead. [Harry Thornton, a building worker, was driving his car past Springfield Road Barracks in Belfast on Sunday, 7 August 1971, when it backfired. Soldiers opened fire on the car and killed him.]
“Belfast Volunteers played a huge part at all levels in the Army structure and in all areas of its operations. Belfast Volunteers took up positions in various commands and in a short time they made a difference, especially on the Northern Command.
“Northern Command was responsible for prosecuting the war. It was very effective. It was an important development in the overall war effort. It meant that Volunteers on the ground were fighting the war. The people fighting the war were the best people to run the war. They were making the decisions.”
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The Brian Keenan interview: Revolutionaries have to be pragmatic - wish lists are for Christmas
BRIAN KEENAN joined the IRA in 1968. In the intervening 40 years he became one of the IRA’s foremost strategists and a thorn in the side of British imperialism. Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff at 10 Downing Street during the war years described Brian Keenan as “the single biggest threat to the British state”.
Brian spoke to JIM GIBNEY for the first time publicly about his life as a husband and father of six children, as an IRA activist, his years in jails in England and the influences that shaped his early life.
This is the third and final instalment of a feature in which Brian Keenan tells us, in his own words, about how the IRA sustained a heroic guerrilla campaign against one of the most powerful nations in the world for decades until a viable alternative for political progress was presented. And this leading exponent of the most successful IRA campaign since the 1920s has a message for those who cling to armed struggle as a principle rather than a tactic.
THE MILITARY situation on the ground was changing rapidly between 1969 and 1972. The British escalated their military offensive against the IRA through curfews and widespread house raids. Gun battles between the IRA and the crown forces were common as the British military tried to occupy territory in the hands of the IRA.
“The military contest between the IRA and the British forces was largely determined by weaponry.
“It was very difficult to get the best weapons for the job at hand. The AR18, the Armalite, was ideal for urban warfare but the leadership, which was Dublin-based, wasn’t in touch with the war needs on the ground. It was difficult to get the right weaponry to ensure the IRA held on to its advantageous position.
“I remember having a stand-up row with the Chief of Staff about their failure to supply the Armalite in sufficient quantities.”
Internment was a turning point in the war for the IRA and the British Army.
“We weren’t hurt at a national level. We did lose some Brigade staff personnel. Over a protracted period of time, internment became a recruiting agent. Experience lost was regained in a short time.
“Internment showed republicans how vicious the Brits were. We were forced to organise and train the IRA to a higher standard to deal with the British Army, to overhaul its structures from the ground level upwards.
“We cleared out a lot of deadwood and put the IRA on a permanent war footing.
“The war was fought on a day-to-day basis. A lot of it was trial and error and we paid a high price for this inexperience. We had the energy of the novice, of the amateur.
“The IRA leadership knew we could not defeat the British Army militarily but we could bring them to a point where they knew they could not defeat the IRA.
“We aimed to exhaust their patience through war in the Six Counties and subsequently the campaign in England.
“By creating these conditions we believed the pressure would grow inside the British Establishment for them to withdraw from Ireland.
“We were on the march forward and no one could stop us. That is the only way to fight a war. There cannot be self-doubt, half-measures or holding back. The Army’s attitude was we could win the war.
“The Army leadership began to think more strategically and politically. It was out of this thinking that, by 1973, the ‘Long War Strategy’ took shape.
“I was very concerned at that time that the vast amount of effort being put into training IRA Volunteers was not delivering on the ground in terms of casualties among the British forces.
“There was constant competition between those on the IRA side and those on the British side who were trying to protect their personnel on the ground.
The IRA’s bombing campaign was an important development.
“We believed commercial bombing had a two-fold effect: it forced British troops out of nationalist areas when there was a very high level of repression, and when London was bombed it hit big business, the financial institutions. Those affected by these bombs would pressurise the British Government to disengage from Ireland.
“There was a lot of merit in that strategic outlook. It is arguable that had we been able to sustain a bombing campaign in London a lot earlier by using Canary Wharf-type bombs then we might have changed the course of the war decisively in the IRA’s favour.
“Until the IRA developed nitro-benzine we didn’t have explosives of a high enough velocity to justify car bomb operations.
“Benzine could be produced in massive quantities. The potential for a big bomb had arrived and became an important part of the IRA’s arsenal.
“The development of the car bomb in terms of the material that went into it was also very helpful in developing culvert bombs. The culvert bomb cost the British Army a lot of personnel. It was one of the IRA’s most effective weapons.
“Other weapons that made a difference were the RPG7 rocket launcher and the GPM, as did mortars and certain types of shoulder weapons.
“There was constant competition between the IRA and British Army for tactical superiority.
“The IRA’s Engineering Department was dynamic and an indispensable part of the war effort. Their contribution opened up the IRA’s war front.
“Some of their devices were ingenious. A lot of thought and resources were put into developing self-made armaments like mortars and shoulder-fired weapons.
“These were used to good effect against the Brits’ armoured vehicles. We also advanced well with remote control and electronic bombing devices.
The IRA leadership was constantly reviewing its war strategy, looking for ways of extending and expanding its campaign. Out of this outlook emerged the IRA’s campaign in England.
England was a very important theatre of war for both the IRA and the British. All modern states rely on transport, communications and power. These were the targets of the England campaign.
“The England campaign was also a very difficult area for the IRA. To operate in England was very demanding on IRA Volunteers and, of course, it was also a huge drain on the IRA’s finances and other resources but the dividend was worth the effort.
“It soon became clear due to the number of arrests in England that the IRA had to take a different approach. Sleepers had to be put in on a long-term basis and they had to be carefully selected.
“It was a very difficult mission. Those IRA Volunteers who took the fight to Britain were particularly brave and had special qualities. To survive in such hostile territory required a high degree of dedication, self-discipline and selflessness.
“An indication of the IRA’s very cautious approach to recruiting Volunteers for this mission can be seen in the fact that there was a trawl for a specific campaign and, of 82 Volunteers interviewed to go, the IRA selected only four.
“The Balcombe Street lads were a classic example of the high calibre that was required. They were hand-picked.”
The concentration of British forces in the Six Counties made it increasingly difficult for the IRA to operate there, especially in the late 1970s.
England was wide open to a carefully planned campaign by the IRA. Opening up this front put huge pressure on the British Government and on their policy makers.
“In any military analysis it is extremely important to hit the enemy where they live.
“You have to be able to bring the struggle to their front door.
“The England campaign was a necessary appendage to the armed struggle in the Six Counties. It sent a powerful message to the British Establishment, political and military.
“In those days the Army dominated. Their needs came first and while I can understand it because we were fighting a war, it was also a mistake not to pay attention to building a political party.
“Everything was subservient to the Army. There was a lot of elitism in the Army. Politics were frowned upon. A lot of senior Army people were suspicious of politics. They thought it would corrupt the struggle – but the struggle was all about politics.
“The Army was probably too strong for its and the struggle’s good. A lot of leadership people thought republicans did not need a party, that the Army could do it all.
“This was a historical legacy. It was long and difficult to get away from this outlook. This attitude has nothing to do with republicanism or revolutionary politics.
“In urban areas they led the way and other armed organisations around the world learned from them. But it was very tight because of the concentration of British forces with their patrols and bases in nationalist areas.
“In rural areas – places like South Armagh, South Derry – IRA Volunteers were exceptional. The Volunteers knew every inch of their own land. Their fieldcraft was brilliant. They often shocked the British Army.
“It was a dynamic, unstoppable, frantic situation. Volunteers were on four operations a day.
“It was events on the ground which made the IRA into the fighting force it became.
“The biggest recruiting agent was oppression
“The British Army had infinite resources. There are nine or ten people behind every one of their armed personnel, providing back-up. In the IRA, everyone was on the gun and practically everyone wanted to be on the gun. This was not sustainable over a long period of time.”
In the late 1970s, Brian was arrested, taken to England and charged. He was convicted and sentenced.
He spent 16 years in jail, most of the time in a Special Secure Unit.
“There was never more than four other IRA Volunteers with you in these special units.
“As in all situations, there were good and bad times. You had to be disciplined about your life, try to escape if the opportunity presented itself, and occasionally use violence when necessary against the prison regime to keep them in check.
“I was a spokesperson for years in jail for prisoners. I remember Willie Whitelaw came to visit the special units. He refused to speak to IRA prisoners.
“I keenly watched the efforts being made to build Sinn Féin as a party.
“The split in 1986 was inevitable, necessary as far as building Sinn Féin was concerned in the 26 Counties. To make headway with the political project it was necessary to recognise the institutions of the 26-County state.
“I wrote a letter to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that year because I was angry that some people were using IRA martyrs as a reason for not trying to open up a new front in developing Sinn Féin. No living person can say how Pearse, Connolly or Bobby Sands would have reacted to different events.
“Looking back from this position at the overall performance of the IRA, I would say they were a remarkable fighting force.
“Against the backdrop of all the personnel, weaponry, technology, surveillance equipment, fortifications and other resources the British state deployed against us, the IRA and its Volunteers fought a remarkable war. On many occasions they successfully outwitted the British Army and secured a number of significant military strikes against them.
“My overall assessment, especially in the first decade of the campaign, is that the IRA was an outstanding fighting force. You just have to admire their capabilities. Under the most unrelenting pressure from the crown forces, they were able to sustain themselves.
“Operationally they fought in two theatres: urban and rural. The IRA changed urban warfare on a world basis. Other armed revolutionary organisations have borrowed the IRA’s tactics.
“In terms of where we are now, with the Peace Process and other huge shifts in strategy, the IRA was morally obliged to look at alternative options to continuing the war, especially if there was a viable alternative.
“I was sceptical and supportive in equal measure.
“There was no principle involved in my assessment. It was purely tactical. I had thought about alternatives in prison.
“As far as I was concerned, the IRA had to think about the best way forward, including an escalation of its operations in a more ruthless way.
“I’ve heard it argued that the IRA was too cautious in its operations against the British Establishment and the enemy exploited this caution.
“It would be wrong to assume that the IRA’s cessation in August 1994 was inevitable. It wasn’t. It came out of a particular, chosen path going back several years. It was the product of that chosen path.
“The IRA’s decision was undoubtedly difficult but it was fairly logical. It was well-debated at Army leadership level. All the alternatives were looked at: military and political. We had all the information that was needed to carry out the required assessment.
“The Army leadership was well aware of the Army’s capabilities in terms of its arms, structures and capacity to sustain its war. All of that was judged against the broad political mood, as you would expect.
“The questions were simple – the answers were more difficult.
“I can understand younger IRA Volunteers being unhappy with the twists and turns in the IRA’s strategy. If I was 40 years younger myself I might share their views. Thirty years ago I would not have considered the various changes.
“I would prefer we were somewhere else but we are not and that is it as far as I am concerned.
“Revolutionaries have to be pragmatic – wish lists are for Christmas.
“I can understand the widespread concerns by republicans about the manner in which the IRA handled its weaponry. But revolution is not about guns it is about intent.
“At a time of great change we need to constantly lay out the republican vision. We need to constantly remind people we are for ‘equality, liberty, fraternity’. We are against exploitation and inequality.
“Those who continue to use armed struggle need to hear that message. They also need to be faced with the consequences of their campaign. There is no revolutionary logic to their activities.
“But I’m not a prophet when it comes to the future use of armed struggle in this or any other country.
“Historians in 50 years’ time will tell us whether the right path was chosen or not.
“Of course mistakes have been made along the way, but we have to look to the opportunities that are there to move the struggle forward to reunification and independence.”
UPWARDS on 2,000 people attended the funeral of veteran Sinn Féin Councillor Ivan Barr in Strabane on Monday, 12 May.
