Seán Mac Stíofáin
Seán Mac Stíofáin | |
---|---|
Birth name | John Edward Drayton Stephenson |
Born | 17 February 1928 Leytonstone, London, United Kingdom |
Died | 18 May 2001 (aged 73) Navan, County Meath, Ireland |
Allegiance | Royal Air Force Irish Republican Army Provisional Irish Republican Army |
Years of service | 1945–1973 |
Rank | Chief of staff (1969–1972) (Provisional Irish Republican Army) |
Battles/wars | The Troubles |
Other work | Journalist |
Seán Mac Stíofáin (born John Edward Drayton Stephenson; 17 February 1928 – 18 May 2001) was an English-born
Childhood
Although he used the Gaelicised version of name in later life, Mac Stíofáin was born John Edward Drayton Stephenson in Leytonstone, London, in 1928. An only child, his father was an English solicitor's clerk and his mother a Londoner of Ulster Protestant east Belfast descent.[1][2] He stated his mother had left an impression on him at the age of seven with her instruction:
"I'm Irish, therefore you're Irish… Don't forget it."[3]
His childhood was marred by his alcoholic father. His mother, who doted over her son, died when Mac Stíofáin was 10. Mac Stíofáin attended Catholic schools, where he came into contact with pro-Sinn Féin Irish students.[citation needed]
He left school in 1944 at the age of 16 and worked in the building trade, before being conscripted into the Royal Air Force in 1945. He attained the rank of corporal. After leaving the RAF, he returned to London where he became increasingly involved with Irish organisations in Britain. He first joined Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League), then the Irish Anti-Partition League, bought (and later sold) the United Irishman, joined Sinn Féin in London, and eventually in 1949 helped to organise a unit of the IRA. He first met his wife, Máire, who was from Castletownroche, County Cork. Mac Stíofáin then began work for British Rail.
Joining the IRA
On 25 July 1953, Mac Stíofáin took part in an
While incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton prisons, he learned not only a smattering of Greek from the Cypriot EOKA prisoners (he befriended Nikos Sampson) but also "the realities of an anti-British rule guerrilla campaign".[4]
Upon being granted parole in 1959, Mac Stíofáin went to the
A tall, well-built man, Mac Stíofáin was regarded as a rather stoic personality who did not drink or smoke.[citation needed] He was a devout Catholic, and was infuriated by an article in the United Irishman, by Roy Johnston, condemning the reciting of the Rosary at republican commemorations as "sectarian". For refusing to distribute the newspaper, he was suspended from the IRA for six months.[5]
Leading the Provisional IRA
When an IRA special army convention voted to drop the principle of abstentionism in December 1969, a troika comprising Mac Stiofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill and Seamus Twomey together with others established themselves as a "Provisional Army Council" in anticipation of a contentious 1970 Sinn Féin Árd Fheis. At this, the Marxist leadership of Sinn Féin failed to attain the prerequisite two-thirds majority necessary to overturn the party's constitutional opposition to "partitionist" assemblies. This was despite the disbandment of pro-abstentionist branches and district committees, such as the 1966 dissolution of the entire North Kerry Comhairle Ceantair of Sinn Féin, embracing 13 cumainn (branches) and 250 members and including three local councillors and expulsion of leading figures such as May Daly (sister of Charlie Daly, executed at Drumboe, Donegal, in 1923), John Joe Rice, Sinn Féin TD from 1957 to 1961 and John Joe Sheehy, veteran republican and Kerry footballer. Many others were similarly ousted from the organisation. The underlying issue was the uncompromising stand of Kerry in refusing recognition to Westminster, Leinster House and Stormont.
Mac Stiofáin was subsequently appointed the chief of staff of the Provisional Army Council. At the Sinn Féin Árd Fheis in Dublin on 10 January 1970, Mac Stíofáin declared from the podium that he pledged his "allegiance to the Provisional Army Council" before leading the walkout of disgruntled members to form what would become
The "Provisional Army Council" in the coming months commanded the loyalty of the IRA national organisation, save for a few isolated instances (that of the IRA Company of the Lower Falls Road, Belfast, under the command of Billy McMillen, and other small units in Derry, Newry, Dublin and Wicklow). Mac Stiofáin's men soon came to be known as the Provisional IRA.
Nicknamed "Mac the Knife", Mac Stíofáin was a dedicated
His military strategy was summed up in his own words by "escalate, escalate, escalate", and in 1972, by far the bloodiest year of the conflict, the IRA killed around 100
On 7 July 1972, Mac Stíofáin led an IRA delegation to a secret meeting with members of the British government, led by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw, at Cheyne Walk in London. Other IRA leaders in attendance were Dáithí Ó Conaill, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Seamus Twomey and Ivor Bell. Leading the delegation, Mac Stíofáin spelled out the three basic demands of the Provisionals: (1) The future of Ireland to be decided by the people of Ireland acting as a unit; (2) a declaration of intent by the British government to withdraw from Northern Ireland by January 1975; and (3) the unconditional release of all political prisoners.[6]
The British claimed this was impossible owing to the commitment it had given to unionists. The talks ended in failure, and as a briefing for prime minister Edward Heath later noted, Whitelaw "found the experience of meeting and talking to Mr Mac Stíofáin very unpleasant". Mac Stíofáin said that Whitelaw put up his bluff exterior at first, but after a couple of minutes let it drop and showed himself to be a shrewd political operator; he also noted that Whitelaw was one of the few Englishmen to pronounce his name correctly.[5]
Following the unsuccessful talks, Mac Stíofáin ordered an intensification of the IRA campaign which peaked on 21 July 1972, or Bloody Friday, when the IRA detonated 22 car bombs in less than two hours across Belfast, killing nine people and injuring 130. In his memoirs, Mac Stíofáin described the operation as "a concerted sabotage offensive" intended to demonstrate the IRA was capable of planting a large number of bombs at once.
At a meeting between Heath and Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch in Munich on 4 September 1972, the former asked the latter if Mac Stíofáin could be arrested. In reply, Lynch said that he couldn't as the evidence against him was flimsy and he had a high degree of public support.
On 19 November 1972, a controversial interview with Mac Stíofáin was broadcast on the
Jailed in the Curragh prison, Mac Stíofáin immediately embarked on a hunger and thirst strike. He was taken to the Dublin Mater Hospital, from where an IRA unit, including two members disguised as priests, unsuccessfully tried to free him on 26 November 1972. After this, he was transferred to the Military Hospital of the Curragh, in County Kildare. He ended his thirst strike on 28 November.[7] His hunger strike led to tumultuous scenes in Dublin and protests outside the Mater Hospital, where he was visited by the then Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan, and his predecessor, John Charles McQuaid.
After 57 days,[8] he was ordered off his protest by the IRA Army Council for "bringing the IRA into disrepute"[citation needed]. Some have reported that council members Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill ordered him off the strike. However, Ó Brádaigh, by this time, had also been arrested. In fact, when he was transferred into the Glasshouse of the Curragh, Ó Brádaigh welcomed him.[9][10][11]
Following standard procedures, Mac Stíofáin lost his rank upon arrest and he never again regained his influence within the IRA after his release in April 1973.[citation needed]
Later life
Afterwards he was sidelined, and was given a job of distribution manager and part-time columnist with the Sinn Féin newspaper, An Phoblacht, in the late 1970s. He resigned from the party in 1982 after a disagreement about strategy at the Ard Fheis, when a majority opposed the Éire Nua policy, which envisaged the setting up of regional governments in each of the traditional four Provinces of Ireland.
In the late 1970s he met with representatives from the Army Council of the Irish National Liberation Army who were interested in him becoming Chief of Staff of that movement, but nothing ever came from the meetings.[12]
In March 1983 Mac Stíofáin appealed to the IRA to declare a ceasefire.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mac Stíofáin became active in the Irish-language organisation
Death
In 1993, Mac Stíofáin suffered a stroke. On 18 May 2001, he died in Our Lady's Hospital in Navan, County Meath, after a long illness at the age of 73. He is buried in St Mary's Cemetery, Navan.
Despite his controversial career in the IRA, many of his former comrades (and rivals) paid tribute to him after his death. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who attended the funeral, issued a glowing tribute, referring to Mac Stíofáin as an "outstanding IRA leader during a crucial period in Irish history" and as the "man for the job" as first Provisional IRA chief of staff. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness also attended. In her oration, Ita Ní Chionnaigh of Conradh na Gaeilge, whose flag draped the coffin, lambasted Mac Stíofáin's "character assassination" by the "gutter press" and praised him as a man who had been "interested in the rights of men and women and people anywhere in the world who were oppressed, including Irish speakers in Ireland, who are also oppressed".[citation needed]
Notes and references
- ^ Hunter, John (20 May 2001). "Death of the Englishman who led the Provisionals". The Observer. Archived from the original on 10 April 2021. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- Fortnight Magazine book review of "Choosing The Green? Second Generation Irish and the Cause of Ireland" by Brian Dooley here Archived 30 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "Sean MacStiofain: Londoner who led the IRA". BBC News. 18 May 2001. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
- ^ "Outstanding IRA leader and giant of a man in the Republican Movement" Archived 16 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine, in: Saoirse, June 2001
- ^ a b c d Mac Stiofain, Sean Memoirs of a Revolutionary
- ^ Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (New York:Palgrave, 2002), 392-395.
- ^ Interim Report on the Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin Bombings of 1972 and 1973 Archived 4 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine, 2004
- ^ There is a discrepancy in the sources concerning the duration of his hunger strike. In an interview Archived 2 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Mac Stíofáin claimed it lasted fifty-three days.
- ^ Robert W. White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Indiana University Press, 2006).
- ^ Ruth Dudley Edwards, "A funeral can't kill off Adams's hypocrisy", Sunday Independent, 27 May 2001. Archived 24 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ See "Outstanding IRA leader and giant of a man in the Republican Movement" Archived 29 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine, Saoirse, June 2001.
- ^ Jack Holland & Henry McDonald – INLA: Deadly Divisions p.148
Writings
Mac Stíofáin, Seán, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, London (Gordon Cremonesi), 1975. Also published as Revolutionary in Ireland
Sources
- Hunter, John (20 May 2001). "Death of the Englishman who led the Provisionals", The Observer. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
- "Sean MacStiofain dead, founded Provisional IRA", Irish Echo Online, 23–29 May 2001 [1] Archived 28 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- "Adams and IRA's secret Whitehall talks", BBC News, 1 January 2003, [2]
- RTÉ This Week radio interview: [3][permanent dead link]
- "Outstanding IRA leader and giant of a man in the Republican Movement", Saoirse, June 2001.
- Ó Brádaigh, Ruairí. "Seán Mac Stíofáin – a tribute", Saoirse, June 2001.
- Interview with Mac Stíofáin (likely taken from Peter Taylor's Provos series). Contains details on Cheyne Walk talks here.
- Hanley, Brian, and Millar, Scott (2009). The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.