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THE PATRIOT GAME
THE PATRIOT GAME
by Mike McCormack, AOH Historian
World War II brought change to Northern Ireland as Loyalists and
Nationalists who shared the same bomb shelters broke down the barriers
of prejudice erected by the Unionist Ascendancy to keep them divided.
The war also created jobs, and the small measure of prosperity
experienced by the nationalists satisfied many grievances. After the
war, England rebuilt the barriers to maintain control of the north.
Churchill publicly blasted the Irish Free State for neutrality during
the war despite the cooperation extended to the allies by the Irish, and
the tens of thousands of Irish volunteers in the British military - all
of which was well known to the government though not to the general
public. Anger grew in Ireland in an era of post-war high taxes, and
unemployment.
In 1948, the Irish Free State abolished its Commonwealth status and
passed the Republic of Ireland Act. The date for it to go into effect
was not announced, but it was signed on December 21. On January 20,
1949, northern P.M. Basil Brooke, called a general election for February
10. Southern Prime Minister Costello urged support for anti-partition
candidates in the upcoming northern election, and pamphlets describing
the discrimination and the gerrymandering in the north were published.
Unionists retaliated with a torrent of anti-Republic, and anti-Catholic
propaganda that worked on sectarian fears declaring that if the border
went, loyalists would be victims of IRA gunmen, urged on by Catholic
clergy, in an effort to establish the Pope as the ruler of Ireland. The
propaganda, as well as years of conditioning by the Orange Order, had
the desired effect as record numbers went to the polls to return the
Unionists to power!
In the south; Dail Eireann brought the Republic of Ireland Act into
effect on Easter Monday, April 18, 1949 - 33 years after Pearse's
declaration on the steps of the GPO. On May 3, British Prime Minister,
Clement Atlee declared Northern Ireland remains part of the United
Kingdom and it is hereby affirmed that in no event will Northern Ireland
or any part thereof cease to be part of Her Majesty's Dominions without
the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. The new Republic of
Ireland protested Britain’s continuation of partition, and mass meetings
urged action, but the new Republic was not prepared for anything
stronger than a protest. With tempers at a fever pitch, a call for
action was heard, and the rebirth of the IRA was underway.
Depleted in numbers and finances after the war, the IRA began
reorganizing by attacking unemployment and high taxes. They gathered
support by standing against the mistreatment of Republican prisoners,
and emerged in their traditional role of spokesmen for the Irish people
with the rallying cry: ‘The Border Must Go!’ On June 5, 1951, the Derry
unit of the new IRA raided Ebrington Barracks and captured a quantity of
guns and ammunition. As raids continued, the situation in the north
became more tense, and nervous B-Special patrols became more violent.
The Irish Times urged the northern government to curb its patrols noting
that, "para-military forces are an anachronism in a democratic society",
but it was to no avail. On August 15, 1955, four men attacked a Royal
Artillery Training Camp, but fled as a sentry gave the alarm. Citing the
attack, the Minister of War made a special report to the Cabinet, and
P.M. Anthony Eden ordered mobilization to deal with the new IRA
campaign. It was later abandoned when four British Officers confessed to
the ‘raid’ to make things hotter for the IRA. An embarrassed War Office
sent a communique to the police apologizing for the trouble caused and
the matter was dropped.
Then, on the night of December 12, 1956, IRA volunteers assembled in 10
different areas along the border in an arc from Antrim to Derry. On a
signal from the campaign center in Monaghan, the morning quiet of
December 13 was broken by numerous explosions. The border campaign to
retake the six counties had begun. Reaction was swift. By December 15,
the Special Powers Act was revived allowing arrest and internment
without warrant or trial, a curfew was imposed, and police forces
strengthened. On December 22, the RUC spiked or blew up every border
crossing road and bridge that had no customs post. By the end of the
year 3,000 RUC and 12,000 B-Specials were called into action, and the
north was an armed camp.
On the morning of January 1, 1957, an IRA raiding party set out for the
RUC barracks in Brookborough, Co. Fermanagh. They parked their truck in
front of the barracks in the center of town and opened fire on the
barracks with rifles and a Bren gun while an assault group attempted to
set off a land mine against the building. The mine did not explode and
the assault group returned, through a hail of bullets, for another one.
This too misfired. The raiders began to run out of ammunition as guns
from the barracks returned a deadly rain of fire. Misfortune continued
to plague them as one of the raiders threw a grenade toward a barrack
window to cover their retreat. The grenade bounced off the building, and
rolled under the truck where it exploded, blowing the tires, and
damaging the gears. Somehow the raiders made it back to the crippled
truck and the truck limped away. At Baxter's Cross, near the town of
Roslea, the truck gave out, and the badly shot up raiding party sought
refuge in an abandoned barn. Six members of the party were wounded, two
of whom were unable to travel – 19-year old Fergal O'Hanlon of Monaghan
and 27-year old Sean South of Limerick. Both were unconscious. One of
the party, volunteered to stay behind and hold off the pursuing RUC so
the others might escape, but it was felt that such an action would
endanger the lives of their unconscious comrades. It was decided to
leave South and O'Hanlon to be captured so they would at least get the
medical attention they needed. The rest of the raiding party retreated
toward the border.
The RUC arrived just after the IRA had left, and opened fire on the
abandoned truck. After finding it empty, they approached the barn. The
retreating IRA men heard another burst of fire. They prayed it was just
the warning shots associated with assaulting a military target, but they
later learned it was the murder of their two unconscious comrades. This
was a source of unforgiving bitterness in IRA circles for years to come.
Author Tim Pat Coogan wrote, In a sense the Brookborough ambush explains
everything about the IRA, and its hold on Irish tradition. It shows all
the courage, the self-sacrifice, the blundering, and the emotional
appeal that have characterized and kept alive the IRA spirit for
centuries. The two young men who lost their lives in the Brookborough
affair were given two of the biggest funerals in living memory - but
during their lives there was never sufficient public support for their
aims for them to receive proper military training or even or even to be
correctly briefed on the target that claimed their lives.
The courage of the poorly trained, ill equipped and inexperienced
‘lads’, in going up against the superior RUC and British, caught the
Irish imagination and re-ignited the nationalist spirit. As the cortege
of Sean South made its way south towards Limerick, it was met with
thronged crowds and blazing bonfires, in inspirational procession. At
midnight on Jan 5, 1957, 50,000 people, including the mayor and local
politicians, stood in the freezing rain to welcome Sean South back home.
On the following day, 20,000 people attended his funeral.
In later years, a memorial was erected at Moane Cross in Fermanagh using
stone from the abandoned barn in which South and O'Hanlon were killed.
Sean South and Fergal O’Hanlon took their place among the martyrs to
Ireland’s cause, and their memories were kept alive in songs which have
become part of the Nationalist tradition - Sean South of Garryowen and
The Patriot Game.
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