Brian Keenan (Irish republican)

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For other people with the same name, see Brian Keenan (disambiguation).

Brian Keenan
Chief of Staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Preceded byThomas "Slab" Murphy
Succeeded byUnknown
Personal details
Born1942
Swatragh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Died21 May 2008 (Aged 66)
Cullyhanna, South Armagh
Cause of deathCancer
NationalityIrish
Military service
Branch/serviceProvisional Irish Republican Army
Battles/warsThe Troubles

Brian Keenan (1942[1][2] – 21 May 2008[3]) was a member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who received an 18-year prison sentence in 1980 for conspiring to cause explosions, and played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process.[4][5]

Early life

The son of a member of the Royal Air Force, Keenan was brought up in Swatragh, County Londonderry, before his family moved to Belfast.[2] As a teenager, Keenan moved 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 came to the attention of the police when he damaged a cigarette machine, which led to police having his fingerprints on file.[1] Keenan returned to Northern Ireland when the Troubles began, and started working at the Grundig factory in the Finaghy area of Belfast where he acquired a reputation as a radical due to his involvement in factory trade union activities.[1]

IRA activity

Despite his family having no history of

arms smuggling, acquiring contacts in East Germany, Libya, Lebanon and Syria.[1][6] In 1972, Keenan travelled to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in order to acquire arms and finance from his government.[1] In early 1973 Keenan took over responsibility for control of the IRA's bombing campaign in England and also became IRA Quartermaster General.[7][8] In late 1973 Keenan was the linchpin of the kidnap of his former employer at Grundig, director Thomas Niedermayer.[9]

In early 1974, Keenan planned to break

South Armagh Brigade, with one IRA member saying "Keenan was really the John the Baptist to Adams' Christ".[14]

In December 1975, members of an IRA unit based in London were arrested following the six-day

Balcombe Street Siege.[15] 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 visited the unit in Crouch Hill, London, to give it further instructions.[11] In follow-up raids after the siege, police discovered crossword puzzles in his handwriting and his fingerprints on a list of bomb parts. A warrant was issued for his arrest.[5][16]

sectarian Kingsmill massacre occurred, when ten Protestant men returning home from their work were ordered out of a minibus they were travelling in, and executed en masse with a machine gun on 5 January 1976.[17]

Arrest and imprisonment

Keenan was arrested on the basis of the 1975 warrant near

Gordon Hamilton-Fairley. Keenan was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment after being found guilty on 25 June 1980.[5]

Keenan continued to support Gerry Adams while in prison. In August 1982 Adams was granted permission by the IRA's Army Council to stand in a forthcoming election to the

Leicester Prison
Keenan wrote that he "emphatically" supported the move and endorsed the Army Council's decision, saying:

It is not enough for Republicans to say, with reference to the Army [IRA], actions speak louder than words. We must never forsake action but the final war to win will be the savage war of peace. To those of us who have struggled for years in a purely military capacity, it must be obvious that if we do not provide honest, recognisable political leadership on the ground, we will lose that war for peace.[20]

Peace process

Keenan was released from prison in June 1993 and by 1996 was one of seven members of the IRA's Army Council. Following the events after the IRA's ceasefire of August 1994 he had been openly critical of Gerry Adams and the "tactical use of armed struggle", or TUAS, strategy employed by the republican movement.

Docklands bombing which killed two people and marked the end of the IRA's eighteen-month ceasefire in February 1996.[17]

Keenan outlined the IRA's public position in May 1996 at a ceremony in memory of hunger striker Seán McCaughey at Milltown Cemetery, where he stated "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".[23] In the same speech he accused the British of "double-dealing" and denounced the Irish government as "spineless".[24]

In November 1998 Keenan addressed a republican rally in Cullyhanna, County Armagh to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of IRA member Michael McVerry.[25] He stated:

I can categorically state the only time the IRA will decommission, we will decommission in agreement with a government of national democracy, a government that derives from the first Dáil. That's when we will decommission—never, ever before...Everybody's saying: 'The prisoners are being released, what's your problem?' Well there's no prisoner was ever in jail to be let out to sell out the struggle and I'm sure none of them would want to be let out if this struggle wasn't going the whole way.[25]

Keenan continued by saying that if republican demands were not met then British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be responsible for the consequences,[25] and went on to say:

So in the future maybe the jails are going to be full again...If our enemies don't want peace, there can only be one conclusion: they must want war. We don't want to go back to that. But let there be no mistake: if we don't get equality and if the reasons for conflict are still there...then the waiting time will soon draw to a close and republicans will once again have to do anything that is necessary to get a Republic, because that's the goal.[25]

On 25 February 2001 Keenan addressed a republican rally in

Real IRA.[26]

Keenan played a key role in the peace process, acting as the IRA's go-between with the

IRA East Tyrone Brigade killed by the Special Air Service in 1987.[29]

Provisional IRA Chief of Staff

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.[30][31]

Death

Keenan died of cancer on 21 May 2008 in Cullyhanna, South Armagh.[3]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-552-13337-X
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-14-101041-X
    .
  3. ^ a b "The Daily Telegraph". The Daily Telegraph. London. 21 May 2008. Retrieved 21 May 2008.
  4. ^ a b c "Sinn Féin defends IRA comments". BBC. 27 February 2001. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-88738-406-6
    .
  6. ISBN 0-330-49388-4
    .
  7. ^ The Provisional IRA, p. 254.
  8. ^ A Secret History of the IRA, p. 137.
  9. ^ Those in office must admit their part in our dirty war
  10. ^ The Provisional IRA, p. 345.
  11. ^ a b The Provisional IRA, p. 256.
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7165-3142-5
    .
  13. ^ a b A Secret History of the IRA, pp. 156-157.
  14. ^ A Secret History of the IRA, p. 159.
  15. ^ "1975: Balcombe Street siege ends". BBC. 12 December 1975. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  16. ^ a b c "Irish Nationalist Terrorism Outside Ireland: Out-of-Theatre Operations 1972-1993". Canadian Security Intelligence Service. February 1994. Archived from the original on 28 October 2005. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  17. ^
    ISBN 0-340-71736-X
    .
  18. CAIN
    . Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  19. ^
    ISBN 1-56000-901-2
    .
  20. ^ a b A Secret History of the IRA, pp. 215-216.
  21. ^ A Secret History of the IRA, p. 446.
  22. ^ Jamie Dettmer (18 March 2006). "Unmasking the IRA's leaders - Provisional Irish Republican Army - Cover Story". Insight on the News. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  23. ISBN 0-00-653155-5
    .
  24. ^ Jack Holland (16 December 1998). "IRA puts on a hard face". The Irish Echo. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  25. ^ a b c d Bandit Country, pp. 448-449.
  26. ^
    ISBN 0-7475-5806-X
    .
  27. ^ Rosie Cowan (14 June 2002). "IRA 'approved weapons tests in Colombia'". The Observer. London. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  28. ^ Suzanne Breen (24 September 2006). "Veteran IRA man resigns from Army Council". Sunday Tribune. Archived from the original on 16 November 2007. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  29. ^ Louise Jefferson (17 May 2007). "Loughgall: 20 years on". Irish Democrat. Retrieved 23 September 2007.
  30. ^ Cusack, Jim (30 November 2014). "The Provos and its 'loony chief' who still dictate to SF". Irish Independent. Retrieved 12 November 2019. It is said he was brought onto the Army Council in the 1990s by Brian Keenan, the hard-line IRA Chief of Staff among whose policies was the genocide of Protestants living in Border areas
  31. ^ "Mastermind of IRA bombing campaigns who became the organisation's negotiator over decommissioning". The Telegraph. 21 May 2008. Retrieved 12 November 2019. After the IRA resumed its truce in 1997, Sinn Fein helped negotiate a 1998 peace accord that proposed the total disarmament of the IRA by mid-2000. Keenan, who replaced Thomas "Slab" Murphy as the IRA's chief of staff in 1998, quickly ruled out this prospect, arguing that the group would disarm only in co-operation with a future all-Ireland government...the onset of cancer which forced (Keenan) to step down from the Army Council in 2002.
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