50 Years Ago

PRISONER RELEASES AND CROSS-BORDER BODIES

In the first week of August 1950 two of the remaining Republican prisoners held in Crumlin Road jail, Belfast were released.

Hugh MAteer, Derry city, former IRA Chief-of-Staff, and Liam Burke, Belfast, former GHQ Staff Officer, were set free unconditionally. They had been serving sentences of 14 and 12 years respectively since 1943.

Burke was interviewed by the press. He said: "We have been released from prison but Ireland has not been released from the prison-house of the Empire."

He went on to refer to Jimmy Steele, held still and serving 12 years: "The last man has not been released yet from Belfast jail -- nor has the last man gone into it" (a reference to the continuing struggle in the future.)

Friends and relatives greeted them on their release and they had their photograph taken with Eoin "Pope" O'Mahony, a tireless worker for the release of the Republican prisoners in England and Ireland, and for the Breton nationalists held in French jails.

On Sunday, August 6, they received a warm welcome and applause when they attended the unveiling of a memorial to Roger Casement and twelve other Antrim patriots at Shane's Cairn, Cushendun, Co Antrim.

The ceremony was held by the Co Antrim Branch of the National Graves Association, of which the Republican veteran Pat McCormick was Chairperson.

Pádraig Mac Logáin, former O/C of the North Antrim Brigade, IRA and a member of the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle in 1950, performed the unveiling:

"While we honour the names which deck the pages of Irish history, we must never forget the more humble -- yet none the less faithful and true -- who gave their lives for Ireland.

"Dan and Patrick Duffin, Charles McAlister, Patrick McVeigh, James McAllister, Harry Carey, John Gore, John Hill, Patrick McCarry, Joseph Murray and Archie McAnn are names that outside their native county are not so well-known as that of Roger Casement, but like him and with him they died in a phase of the long struggle for freedom.

"Republicans merely enunciate the national faith of the martyred dead, from Wolfe Tone to Roger Casement and his comrades, from them to Seán McCaughey and from him to the man who yet endures a living death behind the bars of Belfast jail."

He concluded: "A country capable of rearing such sons as they, a country that for centuries has resisted foreign domination and aggression, a country where the Republican faith and spirit still lives despite all efforts to kill it and whose loyal citizens, young and old, are prepared to labour and make sacrifices for its freedom can never finally pass from the circle of liberty-loving and free nations."

There is no doubt that the publicising of the situation of Republican prisoners in Belfast jail through their nomination as candidates in the Westminster election of February 1950 did hasten their release.

The story of the 1940s would end with the liberation of the last remaining prisoner of the period -- a story which began with the first deaths (in an accidental explosion) in 1938.

To move to another aspect of the scene fifty years ago, June 1950 brought the inauguration of the first "cross-border bodies". These institutions, it was insisted falsely, would through time and "working together" bring about a "united Ireland".

In Leinster House on June 13 and in Stormont on June 27, the [River] Erne Drainage and Development Acts were passed to give effect to an agreement between the two states for a joint scheme of drainage and electricity generation.

On January 9, 1951 another agreement was reached between the Six-County and 26-County states on the Great Northern Railway (as it was then) which operated on both sides of the Border.

It was not until September 1, 1953 that the GNR began to operate under a board appointed jointly by the Leinster House and Stormont administrations.

Another "cross-border body" set up fifty years ago was the [River] Foyle Fisheries Commission. In addition, a similar institution was later created to deal Carlingford Lough which forms the Border between Counties Down and Louth.

Besides the Erne Scheme, the joint railway board and the Foyle Fisheries and Carlingford Lough Commissions, other such bodies were initiated in the early 1950s. These had to do with the control of animal diseases such as bovine TB, anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease etc.

There were four of these "cross-border bodies" to begin with, and it was argued plausibly by the Leinster House politicians that "working together" like this would produce results that the Anti-Partition campaign of the time had failed to do.

Such arrangements between states with adjoining land frontiers in Europe, for instance, are commonplace. They make life easier for people living in both jurisdictions, and especially for those in Border areas on both sides.

But experience has shown that they do not result in a change of sovereignty on either side which has been amply demonstrated by the working of the "cross-border bodies" in Ireland over the past 50 years.

Take the case of Gibraltar, for example. The English captured it in war taking it from Spain as long ago as 1704. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 confirmed British possession of the Rock although Spain has long made claim to it.

Gibraltar is a heavily fortified key British naval and air base, controlling the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Spain has cut off communications with it in the past as a means of exercising pressure on it.

Down the years England has developed in an area of two-and-a-quarter square miles a mixed Italian and Spanish population of 30,000 which is favourable to British rule.

But no "cross-border co-operation" with Gibraltar by Spain has resulted or is likely to result in its being returned to the Spanish state.

The year 1950 also saw the outbreak of the Korean War when North Korea invaded the South on June 25. The entire Korean peninsula had been an independent kingdom until 1910 when Japan took it over and made it a Japanese colony until the end of WWII in 1945.

Russia then occupied the northern part and the United States the southern. From this situation were formed two separate states on opposite sides in the Cold War.

When hostilities broke out with the Soviet-backed North invading the US-supported South, many people thought it was the beginning of WWIII.

The UN Security Council, which the Soviets were boycotting at the time, met immediately. They demanded unanimously a ceasefire and the withdrawal of North Korean forces from South Korea. No Soviet representative was present to veto this action.

Two days later, on June 27, the Security Council, noting continued North Korean aggression, called on member states of the UN to assist South Korea in repelling the armed invasion. US President Truman ordered air and naval forces into action in support of South Korea. General Douglas MacArthur, C-in-C of US forces in the Far East, urged that ground forces be employed as well and Truman agreed.

Britain, Canada, Australia and Turkey provided the bulk of the other UN troops brought under a unified United Nations command with the US and South Korea.

Then Brigadier-General Dorman O'Gowan, a leading Anti-Partitionist, called for an Irish Brigade to be formed to serve in Korea as an integral part of the American army. He said this at the annual Co Fermanagh Feis in Newtownbutler, organised by the parish priest, Canon Thomas Maguire.

O'Gowan, who had changed his name from Smith, had served in the British army in WWII as Chief-of-Staff to General Auchinleck in the North African desert.

He prepared the plans for the first Battle of El Alamein in 1942 when Rommel and his Afrika Corps were turned back from taking British HQ at Alexandria in Egypt.

For their pains both Dorman O'Gowan and Auchinleck were relieved of the commands by Churchill and replaced by Montgomery. Later they were both forced to resign from the British army.

An t-Éireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman of September 1950 took O'Gowan to task for his Newtownbutler remarks. He also proceeded to denounce the policy of abstention from Westminster and Stormont, showing himself "a traitor to the cause he professes to espouse".

This move to sacrifice national independence for unity was in line with the Leinster House proposal to join the Atlantic Pact (NATO) if England would "remove the Border". They would commit Irish people to help England in all her wars.

In an earlier edition of the same Republican paper -- July 1950 -- the surviving sister of the martyred Lord Mayor of Cork, Eithne Mac Swiney, attacked Dorman O'Gowan and the Dublin politicians, John A Costello and Seán MacBride:

"O'Gowan says the Border must be removed. But why? Because Ireland must be a unit of defence in the next war. All the ports of Ireland must be brought up to date for the defence of England.

"The deep fjords of south-west Munster must be fitted with the latest type of Mulberry Harbours. All the manhood of Ireland must be organised behind these latest Mulberry Harbours and other forts.

"The Border must be removed to make way for this planning. It has been guaranteed by Mr MacBride, Mr Costello and the rest.

"The proposal was ‘no removal of anything but a firmer fastening of England's chains on this land'.

"And then all is safe for the defence of England by Irishmen, while Ireland provides the outposts, and the refugees' shelter -- rather questionable shelter -- as Ireland will undoubtedly be the first casualty if she allows herself to be embroiled in England's wars -- or America's."

The fighting spirit of the Mac Swineys of Cork was strong to the very end -- as evidenced by these emphatic words from the last survivor, Eithne, of that heroic family. A new generation was learning its Republicanism from a source steeped in sacrifice for Irish freedom.

(More next month. Refs. An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman, July and September 1950 and A Chronology of Irish History Since 1500 by Doherty and Hickey, publ Gill and Macmillan 1989.)
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