The Gunmen

Tommy (fiercely): I'm bloody well tired o' waitin' -- we're all tired o' waitin'.

Why isn't every man in Ireland out with the I.R.A.?

-- The Shadow of a Gunman,

by Sean O'Casey

In 34 years of waiting for a peaceful end to the partition of their country, the Irish from time to time turn to thoughts of violence. When they do, they think of the Irish Republican Army, an outgrowth of the Sinn Fein movement, which has a romantic place in the Irish imagination. Last week, after the I.R.A.'s audacious raid on a British army barracks just 40 miles west of London, the thoughts grew bolder. "This will bring recruits by the dozen," predicted one Irish observer.

They would form a third generation of fighters whose appeal to the romantics has often kept the serious from taking them seriously. During the "Troubles"--the insurrections against British rule in 1918-21--I.R.A. gunmen so skillfully harassed the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British "Black and Tans" that Britain finally settled with the Irish Republican leaders for an independent government of the 26 southern counties (Irish Free State), retaining its hold only on the six counties of the north.* The I.R.A. never accepted this partition. Its continued agitation so embarrassed government leaders that President Cosgrave outlawed it in 1931, and President De Valera (himself a onetime I.R.A. leader) in 1936 declared it an illegal organization. The I.R.A. went underground again.

Thirsting for Guns. In 1939, taking advantage of Britain's preoccupation with the coming World War II, the I.R.A. sought to revive the issue of partition by launching hundreds of terrorist bombings in Manchester and London. Britain protested vigorously to Eire, and a year later, following a pitched battle in the streets of Dublin, the Irish Republican government clamped down on the I.R.A., imprisoned several hundred of its leaders and executed two for murder.

Little was heard of the I.R.A. until last year, when a new generation of young Irishmen joined its secret ranks, thirsting for adventure and impatient of their political leaders' repeated assurances that partition can be abolished "by statesmanship, not force." Their first exploit was to raid the barracks of the Royal Irish Fusiliers in Armagh, Northern Ireland, where they seized 300 guns. Shortly afterwards I.R.A. men broke into the projection rooms of two cinemas in Southern Ireland and forced the operators to flash slides on the screens proclaiming: "Join the I.R.A. We have the guns now." Hundreds joined, but the I.R.A. was still short of arms. Last October the I.R.A. raided a British army depot at Omagh, Northern Ireland, but twelve of their number were captured by the British. The raid on the British army barracks at Aborfield, England (TIME, Aug. 22) was the I.R.A.'s third daring attempt to get guns for its gunmen.

Informer's Tip. All England was alerted in the search for the recovery of the stolen arms. A few hours after the raid, three I.R.A. men were picked up but the truck they were driving contained only a portion of the 80,000 rounds of stolen ammunition. Scotland Yard got its second, break when an informer phoned from a tenement district in north London called the "Irish Channel'' because of the number of Irish immigrants resident there.

His tip was confirmed by two twelve-year-old boys who had seen strange men carrying heavy cases into a vacant building. Detectives quietly swooped on the building and in a cobweb-hung cellar found 45 ammunition boxes and twelve larger cases containing Bren and Sten guns. Atop one case lay a loaded .38 revolver, its owner evidently having recently fled. In the city of Dublin next day, newspaper editors received an official communique from the I.R.A.'s "Adjutant General" Diarmid Macdiarmada reporting "a successful raid by a party of ten volunteers, all [of whom] have now been accounted for."*

The I.R.A. had lost its loot, but it had gained worldwide publicity for its cause. It had made a fool of the British Army, which sheepishly admitted that at Aborfield barracks "the only weapon the guards had between them was one pick handle and a four-foot piece of wood, [because] no arms were issued for guard duty." In London, Prime Minister Eden had a 45-minute special session with Field Marshal Sir John Harding, Chief of the Imperial Staff. The British were more worried than they cared to admit by the resurgence of the I.R.A.

The I.R.A.'s estimated strength is 5,000 men. Its units drill openly, sometimes within sight of Northern Ireland. Its declared intention is to terrorize Northern Ireland until authority crumbles. Last May, to demonstrate that it had support inside Northern Ireland, it contested every North Ireland constituency in the British general election, polled 150,000 votes out of 650,000 cast. Two of its candidates, both prisoners of the Omagh raid and now in British jails, were elected, and the House of Commons (which does not admit felons) was later forced to unseat them. The jailed Sinn Feiner, who recontested his seat, was returned with a tripled majority. Irish societies everywhere are once again raising funds for the I.R.A., e.g., the United Irish Counties Association in New York last week unanimously voted $25,000 for the defense of the three men arrested in the Aborfield raid.

Opposition in the North. To curb I.R.A. terrorism, Northern Ireland has a Royal Constabulary of 3,000 regulars and a Special Constabulary of 11,000 volunteers, mostly farmers and shopkeepers. More perhaps than at any time previously, Northern Ireland seems determined to resist union by force. The country's 500,000 Protestants cite the Republic's 1937 Constitution, which gives the Roman Catholic Church "a special position . . . as the guardian of the faith," as evidence that in a united Ireland they would be a religious minority, and subject to pressure, if not persecution. They are supported by the British who feel, on the basis of Eire's determined neutralist record in World War II, that a united Republican Ireland would constitute a serious hindrance to British security in any future war.

Last week the British government made strong representation to the Republic's Prime Minister John Costello to crush the I.R.A. before its gunmen trigger real trouble in Northern Ireland. But it was doubtful whether Costello, who presides over a coalition government, is strong enough to do what De Valera had done. In Costello's Cabinet there are men who agree with ex-Foreign Minister Sean MacBride (son of the late famed Patriot Maud Gonne, and himself an old I.R.A. man) who said: "While the I.R.A. voices the national sentiment of the people, no Irish government would place itself in the position of fighting it."

*Four of the six counties in Northern Ireland (Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry and Down) have Protestant majorities, but in the two west-border counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone, Catholics form about 55% of the population.

*His communiques are grudgingly admired by the British for their scrupulous accuracy. He did not claim credit for a raid on a North Wales army camp two days later by masked men with what sounded like Irish accents. At week's end four young British army officers admitted staging the raid as a hoax.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.