50 Years Ago

LAST PRISONER RELEASED: END OF AN ERA

AT THE end of September or the beginning of October 1950, the last Republican prisoner was released from Crumlin Road jail, Belfast.

Jimmy Steele had been in prison continuously since 1936 (when he was sentenced to five years) -- apart from three-and-a-half months at liberty following his escape in 1943 and another short period early in the 1940s.

Harry White has written that by the time he died in 1970 he had served a total of 20 years in jail. According to Republican folklore he had "spent 17 Christmases in prison".

The little Belfastman who was an inspiration to succeeding generations of Republicans immediately reported back for service to his local unit of Óglaigh na hÉireann.

The October 1950 issue of An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman published a large "Fáilte-Welcome Home" notice for him and the November issue reported on a "Reception Céilí" held in Dublin on October 16.

The Céilé was organised by the John Mitchel Cumann of Sinn Féin in the Foresters' Hall, Parnell Square in honour of Steele and his recently-released comrades Liam Burke and Hugh McAteer.

Margaret Buckley, President of Sinn Féin, welcomed the released prisoners to a thronged attendance which included some young Welsh Republicans.

The presence of the prisoners, Mrs Buckley said, demonstrated clearly that the Republican Movement recognised no Border in the country. It claimed the whole 32 Counties.

"As long as it had young men prepared to make the sacrifices which these prisoners and their comrades had made, the national cause could never be lost."

Liam Burke thanked all those old friends in Dublin who had been so helpful to him and his comrades in their work before their capture and who had continued to assist them all during their long imprisonment.

Hugh McAteer spoke of the need for rallying all Republican elements into one great movement to complete the task of freeing Ireland.

The prisoners' aid committees and release committees had received great help from unexpected sources and this help could be availed of now to rebuild the Movement.

Jimmy Steele emphasised that Republicans could accept neither Stormont nor Leinster House. Both these assemblies had been instituted to suppress the Republican Government elected by the free vote of the whole Irish nation in 1918.

He continued: "The British army which occupies the six northern counties and dominates the Twenty-Six, is the first obstacle in our path and we should rally all forces to make one great united effort to clear every British soldier out of Ireland, North and South."

Then Tomás Ó Dubhghaill on behalf of the Republican Prisoners' Release Association presented each of the prisoners with a rolled gold watch.

Jimmy Steele was to serve another four years in Crumlin Road prison -- this time with the internees in "D" Wing -- from 1956 to 1960. His release fifty years ago in 1950 marked the end of an era -- the heroic period which began in 1938 with the decision of the General Army Convention of the IRA to initiate the 1939-40 Bombing Campaign in England.

In spite of all the forces ranged against it the Irish Republican Army followed up on the English Campaign with a mini-campaign in the Six Occupied Counties from 1942 to 1944.

Nine of its leadership and rank-and-file were executed, five by firing-squad in the 26 Counties, while four died at the hands of the English hangman -- two in England and one in each of the two statelets in Ireland.

Three died on hunger strike against atrocious prison conditions in the 26 Counties while another five were killed -- shot down in the Curragh Internment Camp and on the streets of the 26-County State. All of these were unarmed as were a number of others who were wounded both in prison and outside of it.

More than half a dozen others died in prison due to the rigorous conditions while others still were killed in action. In all the IRA lost 33 of its Volunteers while on service between 1936 and 1946. Several thousand were imprisoned in England, Scotland, the Occupied Six Counties and in the 26-County State. Many were sentenced but the majority were interned without trial.

In the 26 Counties all death sentences and terms of imprisonment were imposed by Military Tribunals which had no legal training. In all situations great hardship was endured by Republicans and by their families.

But in addition to taking their lives, the Westminster, Stormont and Leinster House administrations attempted in true British style to inflict then what has been known in Irish history as "the second death".

That is to destroy their reputations and blast their characters. The British called the Republicans "terrorists", while Stormont described them as "gangsters" and "amateur gunmen".

However, it was the erstwhile Republicans in Leinster House who described their former comrades as "criminals" because they continued in the same Cause that their persecutors had abandoned in 1925 and 1926.

Sixteen Republicans were held in solitary confinement in Portlaoise jail clad only in blankets, and never allowed out in the fresh air from 1940 to 1947.

Mar a dúirt Donncha Ó Murchú (Corcaigh), ag Feis na Poblachta i 1990 nuair a bhí "Dathadaí Dearmadta" fé chaibidil aige, "Thar gach aon ní eile SAIGHDIÚIRÍ dob ea Poblachtaithe na ndathadaí".

(The Corkman affectionately known as "Bulldog" said in the course of a lecture to Feis na Poblachta in 1990 that the Republicans of the 1940s were -- above everything else -- SOLDIERS.)

On the other side of the world, in Japan there is a saying that "life is a generation but one's honour is forever". Highly appreciated is the "place that honour holds in a true soldier's heart". (The Emperor's General by James Webb, published Penguin 1999.)

With the release of the last Republican prisoner in the late 1940s -- in the 26-County State in 1948, England in 1949, the Six Counties in 1950 -- and the return to their families of the bodies of the executed men, the climate of opinion following wartime censorship became more balanced.

Huge crowds attended the funerals in 1948 of the Republicans executed south of the Border. Every honour was rendered and great dignity shown.

Barnes' and McCormack's families had to wait until 1969 for a massive tribute at the funeral from England of their loved ones in Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

For the family of Tom Williams (executed in Belfast in 1942) it was 58 years later, in 2000AD, before they were allowed to render fitting tribute to his sacrifice for Ireland. The entire Falls Road closed down and the streets were lined with people standing in respect.

Brian O'Higgins in his Wolfe Tone Annual of 1950 defends the honour and reputation of the Republicans of the 1940s as valiantly as he did in various booklets, broadsheets and ballads published underground at the time of their deaths.

Austin Clarke (1896-1974), described as "the best Irish poet of the generation after Yeats", paid them homage and acknowledged that sacrifice in his poem The Last Republicans.

But surely the most evocative tribute came from one of themselves who suffered imprisonment both in England and in Ireland, the dramatist, novelist and story teller Brendan Behan (1923-1964).

In The Dead March Past he imagines a ghostly Easter commemoration parade in which the dead soldiers of the IRA of the 1940s period march behind the men of 1916, of 1921 and of 1922:
Behind the files of Easter Week
And ranked, battalioned tread of twenty-one
Close behind the lime-stained dead of twenty-two
Seán Russell at their head they come . .

And the famous artist and writer Jack B Yeats (1871-1957) did not turn down the men of the 1940s. Roger McHugh, himself an internee in 1941-42, writes.

"I remember going to him once to ask him to sign a petition for the reprieve of some young Republicans sentenced to be hanged in the Six Counties and he signed it without hesitation."

That was for Tom Williams and his five comrades in 1942. He differed with his elder brother, the poet WB Yeats who became a Free State Senator because he (Jack) was "sympathetic to Republican and socialist thought" (R McHugh).

McHugh explains: "He was never a political activist but his sympathies are implicit in the choice of some of his subjects for paintings: Bachelor's Walk [British troops kill Irish civilians in 1914], Communications with Prisoners [outside Sligo jail], The Funeral of Harry Boland (1922), Going to Wolfe Tone's Grave; and his friendship with Ernie O'Malley was based on the sharing of more than artistic values."

Incidentally, Jack B Yeats won a silver medal for Ireland with his painting The Liffey Swim at the Paris Olympics in 1924.

From 1947, through the 1950s and 1960s, memorials were erected at their graves and sometimes in public places as in the case of Sean Russell (Dublin) and Charlie Kerins (Tralee).

The unveiling of these memorials were always significant occasions. But their interment in local Republican plots above all else meant that they were associated with all who had died for Ireland since the United Irishmen and through the centuries before that.

For the past 50 years their memory is enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen and women, at home and in exile -- and that is the greatest tribute of all.

(More next month. Refs. Songs and Recitations of Ireland, CFN Cork 1961; Austin Clarke -- Selected Poems, Dolmen Press and Wake Forest, USA 1976; Harry by Harry White, Argenta Publications 1985; and Jack B Yeats, A Centenary Gathering, Dolmen Press 1971.)
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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom October 9, 2000 Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie marked "attention web-editor".