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Death of John Havelock Nelson, Composer & Conductor

John Havelock Nelson, composer and conductor, dies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on August 5, 1996. He makes an immense contribution to the development of the cultural life of the province – and beyond – over the second half of the 20th century.

Nelson is born of middle-class parents in Cork, County Cork, on May 25, 1917, his distinctive forename being taken from a cousin of his mother who lost his life in World War I. Despite his birthplace, both his parents’ ancestral roots lie firmly in Northern Ireland.

Nelson’s father Robert comes from Larne, County Antrim, where he was raised. However, the early years of his mother Grace are quite eventful. She is born in the Belgian Congo on account of her father’s placement there as a missionary in the latter years of the 19th century (his family hail from Tobermore, County Londonderry). She is eventually sent home at an early age, due to the threat of malaria, and is raised in Belfast by an aunt and uncle who have no family of their own. It appears that Nelson inherits his musical genes from both parents. Although his father is trained as a chartered accountant, he is a capable baritone singer who studies in the early 1900s with C. J. Brennan, later to become the organist and choirmaster at St. Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast). Meanwhile, his mother shows talent as a pianist during her upbringing in her adopted city and by her early 20s is offering her services as an accompanist.

By chance, this is how his parents meet. They marry in 1916, shortly before their arrival in Cork where Robert takes up his first accountancy job. Within a month of Nelson’s birth, the family moves to Dublin where his father has secured a better post, eventually settling near Dún Laoghaire, just south of the capital city. From the age of five, now the eldest of four brothers born a year apart, he starts piano lessons and makes such rapid progress that, by the age of ten, he is able to play in a piano trio and to accompany his father in informal concerts. By the age of twelve, he wins a scholarship to the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, giving him the opportunity to study piano and theory and helping him to establish his core musical skills. Soon he adds conducting and organ lessons to his study programme.

As far as Nelson’s general education is concerned, this is completed at St. Andrew’s College, Dublin, where he excels in English, history and the sciences. By his late teens, he is determined to pursue a professional career as a musician. His father, however, exercises caution in this regard, advising him to take a science degree in the first instance. Consequently, he gains entry to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1935 to read Natural Science, then makes a decision the following year to change to Medical Science. By 1939, he completes his primary degree in Medical Science, leading to doctoral research in bacteriology. At the same time, he begins a 4-year music degree at TCD while remaining musically active outside the university in relation to his piano studies, and also co-founds and conducts the Dublin Orchestral Players, a body that continues to provide an invaluable platform for amateur performers. He completes his university studies in 1943, graduating with a PhD in Medical Science and a primary Music degree. Seven years later he also completes a doctorate in Music from the same university.

His university career now behind him, like many fellow Irishmen, Nelson feels a desire to contribute to the World War II effort and applies for a commission in the medical branch of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1944. Eventually, he is called up and located at RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire, where he remains until after the end of the War, only returning to Dublin for his marriage in 1945. By nature, an outgoing, sociable person, he wastes no time in immersing himself in music-making activities when off duty, both inside and outside his RAF base. It is during this immediate post-war period that he becomes convinced that he wants to pursue a career in music. By chance, his attention is drawn to a BBC advertisement regarding a number of regional posts for staff accompanists, including Northern Ireland. His application is successful, and he reports for duty at BBC Northern Ireland in March 1947, where he remains for the next 30 years. In his new post, his main role is to play and accompany on the piano. To this end, he becomes involved in a number of new radio programmes, notably Children’s Hour. Elsewhere, he composes and arranges music for adult dramas and serials, the best known being The McCooeys. Another responsibility is to assist in auditioning local musicians for broadcasting opportunities, a process that uncovers much local talent, including a young James Galway. While his activities revolve around radio work in the 1950s, the next 20 years embrace opportunities arising from the new medium of television, including the popular Songs of Praise which involve him as conductor.

Nelson’s decision to retire from the BBC in 1977 enables him to focus fully on his free-lance career which had been running parallel, up until then, with his broadcasting work. In this capacity he is able to give full rein to his diverse range of musical skills as choral and orchestral conductor, chamber musician, music-festival adjudicator, composer and arranger. One should not overlook his role as animateur in founding the Studio Symphony Orchestra (1947) and the Studio Opera Group (1950). Both became integral parts of the local cultural scene during Nelson’s lifetime. His contribution as a festival adjudicator is an important activity, notably when undertaking tours abroad, including to Canada and the Caribbean. His visits to the latter area lead him to form the Trinidad and Tobago Opera Company shortly after his BBC retirement. In his busy lifestyle, he makes time to satisfy his creative energy as a composer and arranger. In total he publishes over 100 pieces, many inspired by his love of Irish traditional song and are of short duration and scored for a variety of vocal combinations. His enjoyment of his reputation as a piano accompanist of international standing is confirmed by his association with some of the leading Irish and British professional singers of the period, including Bernadette Greevy (soprano), Margaret Marshall (soprano), Peter Pears (tenor) and Ian Wallace (bass-baritone).

During his lifetime, Nelson’s outstanding services to music, both inside and outside the province, are recognised by a number of awards. The first of these is an OBE in 1966, followed in the latter part of his life by four honorary doctorates, three from local universities. A gifted and versatile musician, his personality is described by one colleague as “magnetic”- he has the unique ability to reach out to everybody irrespective of their age, status and position in life in whatever role he performs. In his best-known role as a conductor, a critic says of him that, “Dr. Nelson has a remarkable touch in getting people to do what he wants in the pleasantest way possible.” His vision and determination help to establish a vibrant music culture throughout Northern Ireland, an achievement that will remain his lasting legacy.

Nelson is survived by his three children and eight grandchildren; his wife Hazel having predeceased him in 1983.

(From: “John Havelock Nelson (1917-1996),” Dictionary of Ulster Biography, http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk)


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Birth of Guitarist Henry Cluney

Henry Cluney, guitarist and former member of the band Stiff Little Fingers, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on August 4, 1957. He remains with the group until lead singer Jake Burns disbands them in 1983.

Cluney tours briefly with the band Dark Lady supporting Jake Burns and the Big Wheel, notably at the Marquee Club in Wardour Street, Soho, City of Westminster, London, but then spends five years back in Belfast teaching guitar until Stiff Little Fingers is reformed. He is a regular songwriting contributor for the group’s first four albums, taking over lead vocal duties on his own compositions. He leaves the group amid some acrimony in 1993.

Cluney moves to Rochester, Minnesota, in 1997, keeping up his involvement in music, playing guitar with several regional rock bands.

Cluney completes a feature-length film in 2009 and tours the United Kingdom for the first time in fifteen years, as the opening for The Damned and The Alarm on their 341 tour. He subsequently tours the next two years, as a solo artist, and in 2013 forms XSLF with former bandmate Jim Reilly, and friend, Ave Tsarion.

Cluney currently lives in Rochester with his wife, Carol, while touring frequently throughout the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland), Ireland and Europe with his nephew David Cluney who also plays the guitar.


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Birth of David Ervine, Northern Ireland Unionist Politician

David Ervine, Northern Irish Unionist politician, is born into a Protestant working-class family in east Belfast on July 21, 1953. He serves as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 2002 to 2007 and is also a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East from 1998 to 2007. As a leading PUP figure, he helps to deliver the loyalist ceasefire of 1994.

Ervine leaves Orangefield High School at age 14 and joins the Orange Order at age 18, however his membership does not last long. The following year he joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), believing this to be the only way to ensure the defence of the Protestant community after the events of Bloody Friday.

Ervine is arrested in November 1974, while an active member of the UVF. He is driving a stolen car containing five pounds of commercial explosives, a detonator and fuse wire. After seven months on remand in Crumlin Road Gaol he is found guilty of possession of explosives with intent to endanger life. He is sentenced to 11 years and imprisoned at The Maze.

While in prison, Ervine comes under the influence of Gusty Spence who makes him question what his struggle is about and unquestionably changes Ervine’s direction. After much study and self-analysis, he emerges with the view that change through politics is the only option. He also becomes friends with Billy Hutchinson while in prison.

Ervine is released from prison in 1980 and takes up full-time politics several years later. He stands in local council elections as a Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) candidate in 1985 Northern Ireland local elections. In 1996, he is elected to the Northern Ireland Forum from the regional list, having been an unsuccessful candidate in the Belfast East constituency. In 1998, he is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly to represent Belfast East and is re-elected in 2003. He is also a member of Belfast City Council from 1997.

Ervine plays a pivotal role in bringing about the loyalist ceasefire of October 1994. He is part of a delegation to Downing Street in June 1996 that meets then British Prime Minister John Major to discuss the loyalist ceasefire.

Ervine suffers a massive heart attack, a stroke and brain hemorrhage after attending a football match between Glentoran F.C. and Armagh City F.C. at The Oval in Belfast on Saturday January 6, 2007. He is taken to the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald and is later admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, where he dies on Monday, January 8, 2007. His body is cremated at Roselawn Crematorium after a funeral service on January 12 in East Belfast attended by Mark Durkan, Gerry Adams, Peter Hain, Dermot Ahern, Hugh Orde and David Trimble among others.


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The July 2001 Belfast Riots

Major rioting and civil disorder break out in Ardoyne, north Belfast, Northern Ireland, on July 12, 2001. In some of the worst rioting in years, 113 police officers are injured in clashes which follow a July 12 parade. Police are attacked when trying clear the path for about 100 Orangemen returning from the parade to go along a main road passing the Catholic Ardoyne area.

In the seven-hour riot which involves about 250 nationalist youth, two blast bombs and 263 petrol bombs are exploded, while a dozen vehicles are hijacked, and 48 plastic bullets are shot by the police. Riot police also use water cannons. There are also incidents in east Belfast, Derry and Ballycastle, but the clashes in Ardoyne are by far the most serious.

The rioting comes just weeks after loyalist rioting in the area during the Holy Cross dispute.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) says the riots are orchestrated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a claim denied by Sinn Féin, who believe the RUC’s heavy response escalates tensions. The incident also intensifies a row over the use of plastic bullets. Forty-eight of them are fired by the RUC in Ardoyne, and Sinn Féin claims fifty of them hit civilians, ten of which are badly injured. Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan strongly rejects calls from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) to halt its use in riots. Nationalist politicians see the ban on plastic bullets as a vital reform to make Catholics trust the police force more. Gerry Kelly from Sinn Féin says that the RUC “started the riot in Ardoyne. They are a sectarian force, using a very lethal weapon predominantly against nationalists and they should not be allowed to do so.”

A few days later another riot breaks out involving petrol bombs and acid being thrown by loyalists at police in north and west Belfast. Loyalists claim shots are fired at them from the Catholic Short Strand. A buffer zone is created by riot police in North Queen Street. Well-known Ulster Defence Association (UDA) members are spotted. From September 2001 the area sees fresh violence during the Holy Cross dispute and on the 23rd, with rioting also occurring in October and November.


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Birth of Uinseann MacEoin, Architect & Republican Campaigner

Uinseann Ó Rathaille MacEoin, Irish architect, journalist, republican campaigner and historian, is born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, on July 4, 1920.

MacEoin is born Vincent O’Rahilly McGuone to Malachy McGuone, owner of the Central Hotel in Pomeroy and a wine and spirit merchant, and Catherine (née Fox). He has three siblings. Both of his parents are nationalists, and name all their children after leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Under the First Dáil in 1918, his father is appointed a judge. This results in him being interned on the prison ship Argenta on Larne Lough from 1922 to 1923. The family moves to Dublin after his release. His father dies in 1933, which leads to his wife running a workingmen’s café in East Essex Street. The family later lives on Marlborough Road, Donnybrook.

MacEoin attends boarding school at Blackrock College and is then articled to the architectural practice of Vincent Kelly in Merrion Square. As an active republican, he lives in a house on Northumberland Road from late 1939 to May 1940 where he helps in the production and distribution of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) weekly newspaper, War News. The IRA is banned by the Irish government in 1936, and its bombing campaign in Britain in 1939 is viewed by the government as a threat to Irish neutrality. MacEoin is among a group of republicans arrested in June 1940 and imprisoned in Arbour Hill Prison for a year. Once released, he is rearrested and interned at the Curragh for three years. He is sentenced to 3-months imprisonment in October 1943 for possession of incriminating documents. He is also charged with possession of ammunition, but testifies he was given the rounds against his will and never appears to have engaged in any violence. During his internment, he is taught the Irish language by Máirtín Ó Cadhain and is exposed to the socialist views of his fellow inmates. It is at this time that he adopts the Irish form of his name, Uinseann MacEoin.

While imprisoned in the 1940s, MacEoin continues his studies by correspondence and qualifies as an architect in 1945 at University College Dublin (UCD). His designs for a memorial garden in 1946 to those who died during the Irish War of Independence are commended. In 1959, he designs the site in Ballyseedy, County Kerry, for a monument by Yann Goulet commemorating those killed in the Irish Civil War and members of the IRA from Kerry who died. In 1948, he qualifies in town planning and takes up a position with Michael Scott‘s architectural practice. He works for a short time with Dublin Corporation, with their housing department, before establishing his own practice in 1955.

During the 1950s, MacEoin is a contributing editor on interior design in Hugh McLaughlin‘s magazine Creation, becoming editor of Irish Architect and Contractor in 1955. He enters into a partnership with Aidan Kelly in 1969 as MacEoin Kelly and Associates. In the early 1970s, he designs a shopping and housing development outside Dundalk, called Ard Easmuinn. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he continues as an influential architectural journalist, founding and editing Build from 1965 to 1969, and later Plan. His company, Pomeroy Press, publishes Plan along with other serials such as Stream and Field. He writes a large proportion of the copy in these periodicals, much under his own name, but he also uses pseudonyms, in particular in Plan as “Michael O’Brien.” He writes about his strong views on social housing, national infrastructure, and foreign and slum landlords, often libelously.

Despite his republican and socialist views, MacEoin is a staunch advocate for the preservation of Georgian Dublin, and campaigns for their preservation. On this topic, he writes letters to newspapers, takes part in television and radio discussions, writes comment pieces and editorials, speaks at public hearings, and takes part in direct protests such as sit-ins in buildings including those on Baggot Street, Pembroke Street, Hume Street, and Molesworth Street. He is also an active member of the Irish Georgian Society, and he campaigns actively against the road widening schemes in Dublin the 1970s and 1980s.

MacEoin and his wife purchase five Georgian houses on Mountjoy Square and three on Henrietta Street in the 1960s, all almost derelict. They refurbish them and lease them out, under the company name Luke Gardiner Ltd. He renames the 5 Henrietta Street property James Bryson House. His architectural practice moves into one of the Mountjoy Square houses. Along with fellow campaigners, Mariga Guinness and Deirdre Kelly, this demonstrates that these buildings can be salvaged and are not the dangerous structures other architects and developers claim them to be. He also purchases and saves Heath House, near Portlaoise, County Laois, living there toward the end of his life. He offers free conservation and architectural advice to community groups and is a volunteer on the renovation works on projects including Tailors’ Hall.

MacEoin remains politically active, joining Clann na Poblachta, the Wolfe Tone Societies (WTS), the Dublin Civic Group, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. To what extent he is involved in republican or IRA activities after 1945 is not clear. However, in March 1963, he is called a witness to a case in Scotland involving a Glasgow bookmaker by the name of Samuel Docherty and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Docherty claims the bank owes him £50,000. MacEoin testifies that in February 1962 he had travelled with £50,000 in cash from Dublin to lodge to Docherty’s account in the Royal Bank of Scotland in Belfast, as a loan. When asked about the origin of this large sum of money, he states it was supplied by another person but does not divulge that person’s name. This immediately triggers the court’s suspicions, and the judge warns MacEoin he will be contempt of court if he does not name the supplier of the money. He is placed in police custody for the day, and eventually he agrees to give the name in writing in confidence to the judge. The judge ultimately rules that Docherty is guilty of attempted fraud and perjury and that MacEoin’s involvement reeks of criminality. However, no further action is ever brought forward against Docherty or MacEoin.

In Sinn Féin‘s 1971 Éire Nua social and economic programme, MacEoin writes the chapter on “Planning,” and attends meetings in Monaghan in the early 1970s on the Dáil Uladh, a parliament for the 9-county Ulster province. In 1981, during the republican hunger strikes, one of his Mountyjoy Square houses is used as the national headquarters of the National H-Block Committee. Following the 1986 Sinn Féin split, he supports Republican Sinn Féin. He is a founding member of the Constitutional Rights Campaign in 1987, a group which aims to protect the rights of Irish citizens in the European Economic Community (EEC), having campaigned against Ireland joining the EEC in the early 1970s. In 1978, he is sentenced to two weeks in Mountjoy Prison for non-payment of a fine issued for not having a television licence. He had refused to buy one to protest the lack of Irish language programming.

As an environmentalist, MacEoin opposes private car ownership, and advocates for cycleways and the redevelopment of the railway lines. He writes about the “greenhouse effect” as early as 1969. As a hill walker and mountaineer, he claims to be the first Irishman to register successful climbs of all 284 Scottish peaks, known as the Munros, in 1987. He also climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees.

MacEoin writes three books on his memories, and those of his former comrades: Survivors (1980), on the lives of leading Irish republicans, Harry (1986), a part biography part autobiography of Harry White, and The IRA in the twilight years 1923–48 (1997). He also publishes a novel, Sybil: a tale of innocence (1992) with his publishing house, Argenta, under the name Eoin O’Rahilly. He also interviews and records dozens of Republicans as part of his research for his books. These recordings are later converted into a digital oral history archive held in trust by the Irish Defence Forces.

MacEoin marries Margaret Russell in 1956 in Navan, County Meath. They have a daughter and two sons.

MacEoin dies in a nursing home in Shankill, Dublin, on December 21, 2007. His estate at the time of his death is valued at over €3 million. His son, Nuada, takes over his father’s architectural practice.


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Death of John Daly, Leading Member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

John Daly, Irish republican and a leading member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), dies in Limerick, County Limerick, on June 30, 1916. He is uncle to Kathleen Clarke, wife of Tom Clarke who is executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising and who is a leading member of the IRB, and her brother Edward “Ned” Daly who is also executed in 1916. Daly briefly serves as a member of the British Parliament but is resented for having previously been convicted for treason against the British state. He also serves as Mayor of Limerick for three years at the turn of the century.

Daly is born in Limerick on October 18, 1845. His father works in James Harvey & Son’s Timber Yard. At the age of sixteen, he joins his father working as a lath splitter. At eighteen he is sworn in as a member of the IRB, also known as the Fenians, and becomes fully involved in Republican activities. When he is refused absolution in confession because he admits to being a Fenian, he decides that from then on, his loyalty will no longer be to “faith and Fatherland” but to “God and Fatherland.”

On November 22, 1866, Daly and his brother Edward are arrested at their family home having been betrayed by an informer, for running a munitions factory in the Pennywell district close to their home. He is released on bail in February 1867 toughened and more dedicated by the experience.

On March 5, 1867, the ill-prepared Fenian Rising takes place. Daly takes charge of the Limerick detachment of the IRB. Limerick is one of the few areas where the Fenians are able to make some show of force, however weak. Through lack of numbers, they fail to make a significant impact on the vastly superior forces arrayed against them. Moving out of the city, he moves his men into the country and joins up with other Fenians in an attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks at Kilmallock. The attack is repelled, and Daly disperse his men.

After this Daly flees the country by stowing away first on a boat, the Hollywood, to England, and from London then on board the Cornelius Grenfel to the United States.

Life in America for working class immigrants is particularly tough and Daly’s first job on leaving the ship is digging a cellar. He then obtains work in a white lead factory and works for a while as a mason’s helper before getting a reasonably good job as a brakeman on a tram system. He is to recall these experiences in his Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism.

In 1869, Daly return to Ireland and takes up his old job in the timber yard, and also his Republican activities. He begins to help reorganise the IRB and takes part in a number of agitations to keep the IRB agenda in the public view. He becomes a leading voice in the Amnesty Association to help in the release of those Fenians still in jail.

In November 1869, a major tenants’ right meeting takes place in the city. The IRB objects to the meeting because the issue of the prisoners is not on the agenda. In what comes to be known as “The Battle of the Markets,” the IRB charges the platform and succeeds in dismantling it. Though the organisers of the meeting attempt to hold some form of gathering, Daly and the IRB refuse to relent. It is Daly’s opinion that “it was one of the greatest moral victories ever achieved.” The issue of the political prisoners is to keep him occupied for much of the 1870s. In 1876, he is again arrested for disturbing another home rule gathering, though on being brought before the court he is acquitted.

During the Land War Daly is a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB and becomes organiser for Connacht and Ulster.

In the summer of 1883, Daly moved to Birmingham, England, and settles in the home of James Egan, an old friend from Limerick and a generally inactive IRB man. E.G. Jenkinson, head of Special Branch, is informed that Daly is on his way to Britain from the United States. He has been asked by the Supreme Council to deliver the graveside oration at the funeral of Charles J. Kickham while in the United States. When he arrives, a plain-clothes detective is assigned to follow him at all times. As a result of this, Special Branch are alerted to the importance of John Torley in Glasgow, Robert Johnston in Belfast and Mark Ryan in London of the IRB.

Jenkinson uses agent provocateurs in his attempts to convict Republicans. One such recruit is a publican and local IRB man named Dan O’Neill. Both Jenkinson and a Major Nicholas Gosselin persuade O’Neill to betray Daly. O’Neill then asks Daly to deliver sealed cases to some associates in London, and on April 11, he is arrested as he is about to board the train for London, and explosives are found in the case he is carrying. The police then raid the home of James Egan where explosives are “allegedly found buried” in Egan’s garden in addition to some documents.

In Chatham prison Daly becomes friends with Tom Clarke, who would later marry his niece Kathleen and who was a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. While in prison he claims that he is being poisoned with belladonna which causes an investigation by a commission of inquiry in 1890. It is admitted by prison officials as an error by a warder. A series of articles in the Daily Chronicle in 1894 analyse prison methods. Daly gives an interview to the Chronicle which appears on September 12, 1896.

Daly is elected unopposed as a member of parliament (MP) for Limerick City at the 1895 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, as a member of the Parnellite Irish National League (INL). However, he is disqualified on August 19, 1895, as a treason-felon. In August 1896, he goes on a lecture tour of England with Maud Gonne and in 1897 on a tour of the United States which is organised by John Devoy. He later founds a prosperous bakery business in Limerick and goes on to become Mayor of his native city.

Daly is elected three times as Mayor of Limerick City, from 1899 to 1901. He jointly finances with Patrick McCartan the IRB newspaper Irish Freedom in 1910.

Daly dies on June 30, 1916, at his home, 15 Barrington Street, Limerick. He never marries. A tall, energetic, and gregarious man, he is a simple but often effective propagandist for the separatist cause.

In 1928, Madge Daly, a niece of Daly, presents the Daly cup to William P. Clifford, the then-chairman of the Limerick GAA county board. Since then, the Daly cup is presented to the winners of the Limerick Senior Hurling Championship.

(Pictured: Irish Republican and Fenian John Daly in the ceremonial garb of the Mayor of Limerick, circa 1900)


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Birth of Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Journalist, Writer & Presenter

Proinsias Mac Aonghusa (English: Francis McGuinness), Irish journalist, writer, television presenter and campaigner, is born into an Irish-speaking household on June 23, 1933, in Salthill, Galway, County Galway. He becomes one of the most noted Irish language broadcasters and journalists of the 20th century.

Mac Aonghusa is the son of Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, a writer and Irish language activist, and Mairéad Ní Lupain, a nurse and native Irish speaker. The eldest of four siblings, he grows up speaking Irish as his first language and allegedly does not learn English until the age of eleven. His parents are left-wing Irish republicans who support Fianna Fáil and associate with the like-minded Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Peadar O’Donnell. His parents split when he is ten years of age. His mother takes his siblings away to Dublin while he and his father remain in Rosmuc, a remote village and part of the Galway Gaeltacht. As a teenager he is educated at Coláiste Iognáid (also known as St. Ignatius College), a bilingual school in Galway.

Upon leaving school, Mac Aonghusa first works as an actor at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, performing in Irish language productions. In 1952, he becomes involved in Radio Éireann, first as an actor but later as a reader of short stories before advancing to becoming a newsreader, presenter and interviewer. As he advances his career, he works for RTÉ, UTV and BBC television from the 1960s. In 1962, he begins presenting An Fear agus An Sceal (The Man & his Story) on RTÉ television, an Irish language show which sees him interviewing a different guest of note about their life each episode. That same year he wins a Jacob’s Award for An Fear agus an Sceal, which he continues to host until 1964.

As well as attracting awards, An Fear agus an Sceal also brings controversy. Two interviews, one with Máirtín Ó Cadhain, one with Con Lehane, both criticise the measures practised by the Fianna Fáil government during World War II to suppress and imprison Irish republicans. In response, the Fianna Fáil government intervenes with RTÉ, and those episodes are not aired. This is not to be Mac Aonghusa’s only run-in with the Fianna Fáil government. After he recorded a programme in which he questioned the effectiveness of Ireland’s civil defence measures in the face of nuclear war, then Minister for Defence Kevin Boland has the episode suppressed. He once again runs afoul of the Fianna Fáil government when, after criticising the party in his anonymous weekly political gossip column in the Sunday Independent, then Minister for Agriculture Neil Blaney sees to it that the column is dropped. He is not deterred and returns anonymously as “Gulliver” in The Sunday Press and a gossip column on the back page of The Hibernia Magazine.

The latter half of Mac Aonghusa’s 1960s/70s broadcasting career is primarily associated with the Irish language current events show Féach, which he both presents and edits. He resigns from Féach in 1972 following a bitter dispute with the broadcaster and commentator Eoghan Harris.

Influenced by O’Donnell and Ó Cadhain in his youth, Mac Aonghusa also pursues left-wing republican politics as an adult. In 1958, he becomes, alongside David Thornley, Noël Browne, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington and Desmond Ryan, a member of the “1913 Club,” a group which seeks to ideologically reconcile Irish nationalism and socialism.

In 1959, Mac Aonghusa writes a series of six articles for The Irish Times in which he vehemently opposes the Fianna Fáil government’s proposal to abolish single transferable vote in Ireland in favour of first-past-the-post voting. He contends that first-past-the-post voting gives too much influence to party bosses, while proportional representation gives even small minorities representation, preventing them from feeling excluded by the state such as nationalists in Northern Ireland. In the referendum held on the matter on June 17, 1959, voters reject first past the vote by a margin of 2%. Fianna Fáil attempts to repeal proportional representation again in the late 60s, at which point Mac Aonghusa once again throws himself into the fight, leading a group called “Citizens for PR.” In the referendum of 1968, voters reject the first past the post system by over 20%. He later recalls that his defence of proportional representation his greatest achievement in politics.

In the 1960s, both Mac Aonghusa and his wife, Catherine, join the Sean Connolly branch of the Labour Party in Dublin. The branch had established a reputation as a haven for intellectuals who want a branch to themselves away from the many other Labour branches dominated by trade unionists. The branch comes to advocate for expressly socialist policies combined with on-the-ground grass-roots campaigning. Through the Sean Connolly Branch, both he and his wife begin to develop significant influence over the leader of the Labour party Brendan Corish.

In the 1965 Irish general election, Mac Aonghusa stands on behalf of the Labour party in the Louth constituency but is not elected. In 1966, he publishes a book of speeches by Corish, the speeches themselves mostly having been ghostwritten by his wife Catherine. The introduction of the book proclaims that Corish had developed a “brand of democratic republican socialism … broadened by experience and built firmly on Irish‐Ireland roots” and had rid the party of “do‐nothing backwoodsmen”, thereby becoming the “first plausible and respected Labour leader in Ireland”. It is at this same time that he is elevated to vice-chairman of the party. As vice-chair, he tries to convince Corish to stand in the 1966 Irish presidential election. When he fails to do so, he supports Fine Gael‘s Tom O’Higgins in his bid for the presidency. O’Higgins comes within 0.5% of beating the incumbent, an ageing Éamon de Valera.

It was around this same time that Mac Aonghusa becomes active in the Wolfe Tone Societies, a republican organisation linked almost directly to Sinn Féin. He suggests that republicans with “progressive views” should join the Labour party. In 1966, alongside Máirtín Ó Cadhain and other Gaeilgeoirí, he counter-protests and disrupts the Language Freedom Movement, an organisation seeking the abolition of compulsory Irish in the education system. For this, he and his allies are criticised as acting illiberally, while he maintains that those who oppose the Irish language are “slaves” unworthy of tolerance.

Mac Aonghusa’s open disdain for the conservative and trade union wings of the Labour, as well as his open embrace of republican sensibilities and tendency to make pronouncements on Labour policy without first consulting the party’s structures, bring him many internal enemies. An attempt is made to censure him for backing breakaway trade unions, but he is able to survive this. In 1966, he encourages the formation of the Young Labour League, an unofficial youth wing of the party led by Brian Og O’Higgins, son of former Sinn Féin president Brian O’Higgins. Mirroring his own position, the Youth League are Corish loyalists that openly rebel against the views of Labour’s conservative deputy leader James Tully. When the youth league begins publishing their own weekly newsletter, Labour’s administrative council condemns it after discovering material which is “violently” critical of Tully and other Labour conservatives. An ensuing investigation into the newsletter leads to Mac Aonghusa admitting that he had financed it and written some of the content, but not the anti-Tully material. After he refuses to co-operate with further investigations into the matter, he is expelled on January 12, 1967 for “activities injurious” to the party. In the aftermath, he portrays himself a left-wing martyr purged by a right-wing “Star chamber,” a tactic that garners him sympathy. Nevertheless, his expulsion is confirmed at the October 1967 party conference, despite one last appeal. His wife leaves the party alongside him.

In the aftermath of his expulsion from Labour, Mac Aonghusa expresses an interest in the social democratic wing of Fine Gael, which had been developing under Declan Costello since the mid-1960s. However, he does not join the party and instead runs as an independent candidate in the 1969 Irish general election in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. When he is not elected, he begins to refocus on the revival of the Irish language and with nationalist politics rather than being elected himself.

Upon the onset of the Troubles, Mac Aonghusa is initially supportive of Official Sinn Féin, however by 1972 he comes to resent them and, through the Ned Stapleton Cumann, their secret influence over RTÉ. During the Arms Crisis in 1970, he supports Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, who stand accused of arranging to supply weapons to the Provisional IRA, in the pages of the New Statesman and other left‐wing journals. In this time period, he warns editors not to reprint his material in the Republic of Ireland as there is a de facto ban on him, and indeed, official attempts are made to block the transmission of his telexed reports.

Despite his earlier famed stark criticism of Fianna Fáil, Mac Aonghusa’s defence of Haughey leads to a friendship between the two men which results in him becoming one of Haughey’s loudest defenders throughout the rest of his career. His columns in The Sunday Press and Irish language paper Anois are accused of descending into self-parody in their stringent defences of Haughey.

During the 1970s, Mac Aonghusa writes a number of books covering significant figures in Irish republicanism. In order, he releases books on James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Wolfe Tone and Éamon de Valera. In his work on De Valera, he emphasises what he perceives as the more radical aspects of the Fianna Fáil founder. During 1974 and 1975, he works as a United Nations Special Representative to the Southern Africa region with Seán MacBride, where they involve themselves in the South African Border War, and during which time Mac Aonghusa becomes involved in setting up a radio station in Namibia, linked to the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) nationalist party.

In the 1980s, Haughey twice appoints Mac Aonghusa to the Arts Council as well as naming him president of Bord na Gaeilge (1989-93). This is an issue as Mac Aonghusa is already president of Conradh na Gaeilge. Being head of the main Irish language lobbying body as well as the state body responsible for the Irish language has an obvious conflict of interest. In 1991, following the announcement by Haughey that the government is to fund the creation of an Irish-language television station (launched in 1996 as Teilifís na Gaeilge), an elated Mac Aonghusa suggests that Haughey would be “remembered among the families of the Gael as long as the Gaelic nation shall survive.”

In 1992 there are calls for Mac Aonghusa to step down from Bord na Gaeilge after he pronounces that “every respectable nationalist” in West Belfast should vote for Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams over the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) candidate Joe Hendron in the 1992 United Kingdom general election as he considers a defeat for Adams “a victory for British imperialism.” Nevertheless, he simultaneously advises voters in South Down to vote for the SDLP’s Eddie McGrady over Sinn Féin. He rails against his detractors at the Conradh na Gaeilge ardfheis that year, declaring that “The mind of the slave, of the slíomadóir, of the hireling and the vagabond is still fairly dominant in Ireland.”

As of 1995, Mac Aonghusa continues to label himself a socialist. In the foreword to the book, he writes about James Connolly that is released that year, he declares that “the abolition of capitalism is essential if the great mass of the people in all parts of the globe are to be emancipated.”

However, with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union in mind, Mac Aonghusa declares that the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe have not been socialist and argues that the social democracies of Scandinavia are what James Connolly had envisioned as the desired socialist society. In the same text, he accuses the Irish education system as well as Ireland’s media of obfuscating Connolly’s views on socialism and nationalism.

Mac Aonghusa battles through ill health in his final years but remains able to continue writing a number of books. His last publication, Súil Tharam (2001), comes just two years before his death in Dublin on September 28, 2003.

In 1955, Mac Aonghusa marries Catherine Ellis, a member of the Church of Ireland from Belfast. For her married name, she chooses to use “McGuinness,” the English language equivalent of Mac Aonghusa. Catherine McGuinness goes on to become a Senator and a Judge of the Circuit Court, High Court and Supreme Court over the course of her legal career. Together they have three children together.


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Birth of Brendan Smyth, Priest & Convicted Sex Offender

Brendan Smyth, O.Praem, a Catholic priest and convicted sex offender, is born on June 8, 1927, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He becomes notorious as a child molester, using his position in the Catholic Church to obtain access to his victims. During a period of over 40 years, he sexually abuses and indecently assaults at least 143 children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. His actions are frequently hidden from police and the public by Roman Catholic officials. Controversy surrounding his case contributes to the downfall of the government of the Republic of Ireland in December 1994.

Born John Gerard Smyth, upon joining the Norbertine Roman Catholic religious order in 1945, he changes his name to Brendan. The Norbertines, also known as the “Premonstratensians,” are aware of Smyth’s crimes as early as the late 1970s, yet they do not report him to either the Garda Síochána or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). He is moved from parish to parish and between dioceses and countries whenever allegations are made. In some cases, the order does not inform the diocesan bishop that Smyth has a history of sexual abuse and should be kept away from children. He abuses children in parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota and at one time works in Boston and is suspected of similar actions while on pastoral work in Wales and Italy. Norbertine Father Bruno Mulvihill makes several attempts to alert church authorities about the abuse committed by Smyth.

Smyth’s first conviction follows the reporting to police of his abuse of four siblings in Belfast’s Falls Road. After his arrest in 1991, he flees to the Republic of Ireland, where he spends the next three years on the run, staying mostly at Kilnacrott Abbey. This leads to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party coalition government in December 1994 when the poor handling of an extradition request from the RUC by the Irish Attorney General‘s office leads to a further delay of Smyth’s trial. An award-winning UTV Counterpoint programme on the scandal by journalist Chris Moore, followed by a book, accuses the head of the Norbertines and the Archbishop of Armagh of mishandling the case, and the Norbertines of negligence and a failure to tell others of Smyth’s crimes, enabling him to sexually abuse large numbers of children for 40 years.

Smyth dies in prison of a heart attack at the age of 70 on August 22, 1997, after collapsing in the exercise yard, one month into a 12-year prison sentence. The Norbertines hold his funeral before dawn and cover his grave with concrete to deter vandalism. He is buried in Kilnacrott Abbey, which is later put up for sale with 44 acres of land, including the grave.

On October 27, 2005, the title “Reverend” is removed from his gravestone following a campaign by one of Smyth’s victims.

Reviewers of the case differ as to whether there is a deliberate plot to conceal Smyth’s behaviour, incompetence by his superiors at Kilnacrott Abbey, or some combination of factors. Cahal Daly, both as Bishop of Down and Connor, a diocese where some of the abuse takes place, and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, is recorded as having been privately furious at the Norbertine “incompetence.” Smyth’s activities are investigated by the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, finding that: “…despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children…”

In 2010, Daly’s successor as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Seán Brady, faces “huge pressure to resign” after he admits that in 1975, he witnessed two teenage boys sign oaths of silence after testifying in a Church inquiry against Smyth. Survivor groups see this as evidence of collusion, but Brady says he “did not have the authority” to turn Smyth in. On March 17, 2010, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, calls for Brady to resign.

In 2013, some of Smyth’s alleged Rhode Island victims between 1965 and 1968, both male and female, call for the Diocese of Providence to investigate Smyth. As of 2019, he is among those listed by the Diocese of Providence as being “credibly accused” of committing sex abuse.

Module 6 of the 2014-2016 Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is dedicated to Smyth’s crimes in Northern Ireland.

A two-part dramatisation of the Smyth case, Brendan Smyth: Betrayal of Trust, is broadcast by the BBC on March 13, 2011, with Ian Beattie in the title role and Richard Dormer as Chris Moore.

(Pictured: Father Brendan Smyth, Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, USA, c. 1965)


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Birth of Cathal O’Byrne, Antiquarian, Writer & Entertainer

Cathal O’Byrne, an antiquarian, writer, and entertainer, is born on June 1, 1876, in Kilkeel, County Down.

O’Byrne is the son of James Burns, a farmer, and his wife Isabella (née Arnett). His biographer states that his parents came from County Wicklow, which would imply that their name had been anglicised from the form “O’Byrne,” which their son readopts. He never marries and spends most of his life living with his unmarried sister Teresa. He has other siblings, as he is survived by four nieces and two nephews.

O’Byrne’s childhood is spent in the Balmoral district of south Belfast in a comfortable but slightly precarious middle-class Catholic environment. Although sparse in direct autobiographical references, his writings contain references to excursions around the Malone and Stranmillis areas, with particular reference to the Botanic Gardens. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College. After leaving school, he manages a spirit grocery on the Beersbridge Road in east Belfast and is active in the Sexton Debating Society, named after Thomas Sexton, then home rule MP for Belfast West, and led by Joseph Devlin, who remains a lifelong friend despite their later political differences. He also studiess music with Carl Hardebeck, acquiring an extensive knowledge of Irish folk music and becoming an accomplished singer of Irish tunes in Hardebeck’s arrangements.

O’Byrne subsequently joins the Belfast Gaelic League, becoming a leading member, though he never masters the Irish language. He moves in the literary and antiquarian circles around Francis Joseph Bigger, whose friendship becomes central to his career and self-definition. He is a regular participant in Bigger’s soirées and establishes friendships with many prominent political and cultural figures, among them Roger Casement and Alice Milligan. Although he is usually seen as a specifically northern writer, he draws extensively on a wider Irish tradition of defensively self-glorifying Catholic-nationalist antiquarianism, including the works of W. H. Grattan Flood and Archbishop of Tuam, John Healy, a major source for his later pamphlet on Saint Patrick and for the descriptions of Ulster monasteries in As I Roved Out: A Book of the North (1946).

In 1900, O’Byrne publishes a collection of verses, A Jug of Punch, of which no copies are known to survive, and in 1905 collaborates with Cahir Healy on another collection, The Lane of the Thrushes, which applies Celtic revival imagery to rural Ulster. He publishes another collection, The Grey Feet of the Wind, in 1917. The manuscript of his unpublished Collected Poems (1951) is in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

In 1902, O’Byrne gives up the spirit grocery to work full time as a journalist, singer, and storyteller. He appears at a wide variety of concerts, where he cuts a striking figure in Gaelic dress with saffron kilt. He provides musical interludes at productions by the Ulster Literary Theatre, and his recitation of Eleanor Alexander’s humorous piece on the battle of Scarva inspires Harry Morrow’s celebrated satirical play Thompson in Tir-na-nOg (1912). In 1913, he founds and manages the Celtic Players, a theatre company which stages some plays of his own composition, including The Dream of Bredyeen Dara, possibly a nativity story incorporating Saint Brigid of Kildare.

During World War I O’Byrne achieves immense cross-community success with a weekly dialect column in the Unionist paper Ireland’s Saturday Night, describing the domestic activities of “Mrs. Twigglety” and her working-class friends. At the same time, he has abandoned his earlier support for Devlin’s home rule politics to embrace physical-force republicanism under the influence of Denis McCullough. During Casement’s imprisonment and trial, he carries on an intense correspondence with him, comforting him, urging him to convert to Catholicism, and sending him religious icons. Some commentators have detected homoerotic undertones in their exchanges, though this is a matter of opinion.

After the Easter Rising of 1916, O’Byrne is active in the reconstituted Irish Republican Army (IRA), and in 1919–20 he smuggles arms from Belfast to Dublin. In August 1920, he emigrates to the United States, where he goes on a six-month lecture tour to raise funds for victims of the Belfast pogroms. He allegedly raises $100,000 and funds the construction of Amcomri Street in west Belfast. He spends the next eight years in the United States as a speaker and entertainer, contributing to American Catholic publications. He develops an abiding fondness for Chicago and considers applying for American citizenship. At one point he corresponds with the film star Rudolph Valentino, who admires his verses on Italian themes.

O’Byrne returns to Belfast in September 1928 with the intention of opening a bookshop in Dublin, but this has to be abandoned after the loss of his savings in the Wall Street crash of October 1929. He settles into respectable semi-poverty in Cavendish Street, off the Falls Road, and remains a presence on the fringes of Belfast literary life. In 1930, he founds the Cathal O’Byrne Comedy Company, which performs plays of his own composition, notably the slight comedies The Returned Swank and The Burden, drawing on The Drone, by Samuel Waddell. In 1932, he sings at a concert in the Dublin Mansion House held to mark the Eucharistic Congress. He writes extensively for Catholic publications in Ireland and elsewhere, in particular the Capuchin Annual, Irish Monthly, and Irish Rosary, and publishes several pamphlets with the Catholic Truth Society (CTS). The sensibility displayed in these writings has much in common with that of Brian O’Higgins, Aodh de Blácam, Daniel Corkery and Gearoid Ó Cuinneagáin.

O’Byrne also publishes The Gaelic Source of the Brontë Genius (1932), Pilgrim in Italy (1930), and the story collection From Far Green Hills (1935), which retells gospel episodes in the style of an Irish storyteller with elements of Wildean orientalist exoticism. Pilgrim in Italy is published by the Three Candles Press of Colm Ó Lochlainn, an old friend through the Bigger circle, as is his last story collection, Ashes on the Hearth (1948), a series of slight reveries in which the narrator, wandering the back streets of Dublin, relives such resonant moments as the last days of James Clarence Mangan.

O’Byrne is best remembered, however, for As I Roved Out (1946), a collection of 128 articles on Belfast history originally published from the late 1930s in the Belfast Irish News. It displays considerable knowledge of Belfast history, drawn from lifelong reading and from conversations with Bigger, and can be seen as at once the summation of and a lament for the northern branch of the Irish revival associated with such figures as Bigger and Alice Milligan. The pieces, moving out from central Belfast to surrounding rural districts are held together by the storyteller surveying the landscape. Surveys of Belfast by journalistic flâneurs are not unprecedented, O’Byrne dismisses the mercantile and unionist establishment of Belfast as hopelessly materialistic and oppressive, casting himself and, by implication, his Catholic/nationalist readers as internal exiles forced into the side streets of history, treasuring a martyred religious faith and gazing back wistfully to the bright and fleeting hope represented by the Society of United Irishmen and the cultural revival. The book is punctuated by expressions of anger against the whole heritage of the Ulster plantation. The economic success of the planters is attributed solely to their plunder of the natives. The textile industry is discussed solely in terms of exploitation and starvation wages. Shipbuilding is dismissed with a remark that ships were built in Ulster long before the planters arrived. Finally, the history of Belfast is summed up in the confrontation between the Belfast merchant, ancestor of the unionist “establishment,” and would-be slave-trader Waddell Cunningham and the United Irishman and self-declared “Irish slave” William Putnam McCabe.

There are numerous contemptuous references to the Sabbatarianism and respectable dullness of late Victorian Belfast, contrasted with the lively artistic activities of the volunteer period. The book is reprinted three times in O’Byrne’s lifetime and is seen by nationalists as an underground classic. Its image of Belfast layered with fragmentary and hidden memories has been drawn on by authors as diverse as Ciaran Carson and Gerry Adams, and in the early twenty-first century O’Byrne is commemorated as one of the city’s significant writers. A plaque is placed on his Cavendish Street house in 2004. It is ironic that his reputation should rest on his memorialisation of Belfast, for he denounced it as “interminable miles of mean streets . . . one of the ugliest cities in the world.”

O’Byrne is believed by some, though not all, of his acquaintances to be homosexual. This view is supported by references to the descriptions of male beauty (based on Gaelic saga models) which recur in his writings and by the expressions of longing which permeate his work (which might also reflect a wider sense of loneliness or cultural displacement). His last years, 1954–57, are spent in the Nazareth Nursing Home in Ormeau Road, Belfast, where he dies on August 1, 1957, a month after suffering a stroke. His funeral is crowded, and his gravestone describes him as “singer, poet and writer who brought joy into the lives of others.”

(From: “O’Byrne, Cathal” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Brian Keenan, Member of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA

Brian Keenan, a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on May 21, 2008, at Cullyhanna, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, following a battle with colorectal cancer. He receives an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions and plays a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The son of a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Keenan is born on July 17, 1941, in Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, before his family moves to Belfast. As a teenager, he moves to England to find work, for a time working as a television repairman in partnership with his brother in Corby, Northamptonshire. During this time, he comes to the attention of the police when he damages a cigarette machine, which leads to police having his fingerprints on file. He returns to Northern Ireland when the Troubles begin and starts working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquires a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.

Despite his family having no history of republicanism, Keenan joins the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1970 or 1971, and by August 1971 is the quartermaster of the Belfast Brigade. He is an active IRA member, planning bombings in Belfast and travelling abroad to make political contacts and arrange arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. In 1972, he travels to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government. In early 1973 he takes over responsibility for control of the IRA’s bombing campaign in England and also becomes IRA Quartermaster General. In late 1973, he is the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.

In early 1974, Keenan plans to break Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell out of Long Kesh using a helicopter, in a method similar to Seamus Twomey‘s escape from Mountjoy Prison in October 1973, but the plan is vetoed by Billy McKee. He is arrested in the Republic of Ireland in mid-1974 and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for IRA membership. On March 17, 1975, he is shot and wounded while attempting to lead a mass escape from Portlaoise Prison. While being held in Long Kesh, Gerry Adams helps to devise a blueprint for the reorganisation of the IRA, which includes the use of covert cells and the establishment of a Southern Command and Northern Command. As the architects of the blueprint, Adams, Bell and Brendan Hughes, are still imprisoned, Martin McGuinness and Keenan tour the country trying to convince the IRA Army Council and middle leadership of the benefits of the restructuring plan, with one IRA member remarking “Keenan was a roving ambassador for Adams.” The proposal is accepted after Keenan wins support from the South Derry Brigade, East Tyrone Brigade and South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying, “Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams’ Christ.”

In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London are arrested following the six-day Balcombe Street siege. The IRA unit had been active in England since late 1974 carrying out a series of bombings, and a few months after his release from prison Keenan visits the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions. In follow-up raids after the siege, police discover crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

Garda Síochána informer Sean O’Callaghan claims that Keenan recommended IRA Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey to authorise an attack on Ulster Protestants in retaliation to an increase in sectarian attacks on Catholic civilians by Protestant loyalist paramilitaries, such as the killing of three Catholics in a gun and bomb attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh on December 19, 1975. According to O’Callaghan “Keenan believed that the only way, in his words, to put the nonsense out of the Prods [Protestants] was to just hit back much harder and more savagely than them.” Soon after the sectarian Kingsmill massacre occurs, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work are ordered out of a minibus they are travelling in and executed en masse with a machine gun on January 5, 1976.

Keenan is arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near Banbridge on March 20, 1979, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stopped two cars travelling north on the main road from Dublin to Belfast and is extradited to England to face charges relating to the Balcombe Street Gang‘s campaign in England. His capture is a blow to the IRA, in particular as he was carrying an address book listing his contacts including Palestinian activists in the United Kingdom. The IRA responds by dispatching Bobby Storey and three other members to break Keenan out of prison using a helicopter, but all four are arrested and remanded to Brixton Prison. Keenan stands trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 defended by Michael Mansfield and is accused of organising the IRA’s bombings in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter and Gordon Hamilton Fairley. He is sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on June 25, 1980.

Keenan continues to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams is granted permission by the IRA’s Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, having been refused permission at a meeting the previous month. In a letter sent from Leicester Prison, Keenan writes that he “emphatically” supports the move and endorses the Army Council’s decision.

Keenan is released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 is one of seven members of the IRA’s Army Council. Following the events after the IRA’s ceasefire of August 1994, he is openly critical of Gerry Adams and the “tactical use of armed struggle,” or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement. After the Northern Ireland peace process becomes deadlocked over the issue of the IRA decommissiong its arms, he and the other members of the Army Council authorise the Docklands bombing which kills two people and marks the end of the IRA’s eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.

Keenan outlines the IRA’s public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he states, “The IRA will not be defeated…Republicans will have our victory…Do not be confused about decommissioning. The only thing the Republican movement will accept is the decommissioning of the British state in this country.” In the same speech he accuses the British of “double-dealing” and denounces the Irish government as “spineless.”

On February 25, 2001, Keenan addresses a republican rally in Creggan, County Armagh, saying that republicans should not fear “this phase” of “the revolution” collapsing should the Good Friday Agreement fail. He confirms his continued commitment to the Armalite and ballot box strategy, saying that both political negotiations and violence are “legitimate forms of revolution” and that both “have to be prosecuted to the utmost.” He goes on to say, “The revolution can never be over until we have British imperialism where it belongs—in the dustbin of history,” a message aimed at preventing rank-and-file IRA activists defecting to the dissident Real IRA.

Keenan plays a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA’s go-between with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Gerry Adams remarks, “There wouldn’t be a peace process if it wasn’t for Brian Keenan.” Keenan resigns from his position on the Army Council in 2005 due to ill-health, and is replaced by Bernard Fox, who had taken part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. On May 6, 2007, he is guest speaker at a rally in Cappagh, County Tyrone, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deaths of the so-called “Loughgall Martyrs,” eight members of the IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987.

In July 2002, Keenan is diagnosed as suffering from terminal colorectal cancer. It is alleged by the Irish Independent and The Daily Telegraph that Keenan succeeded Thomas “Slab” Murphy as Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA at some point between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s before he relinquished the role to deal with his poor health caused by cancer.

Keenan’s last years are spent living with his wife in Cullyhanna, County Armagh, where he dies of cancer on May 21, 2008. He is an atheist and receives a secular funeral, representing a major republican show of strength.