This is in no sense a 'review' of this book, most of which is taken up with his adventures when in the lead of the Provisional campaign from 1970 to 1972. I abstract and comment on those topics which relate to my own narrative, and which illuminate gaps in what I knew at the time.

As a first-generation emigrant in Britain, with no direct experience of Ireland during his formative years, SMacS picked up his early ideas from various Irish-originating friends and contacts, and by reading. He aspired to live in Ireland, and 1944 when there was talk in the press of the 'neutral' territory of the Free State being occupied, he would go back and join the Free State Army to resist (p22). At the time he was about 17. The narrative continues, referring to the various counter-insurgent roles of the British Army in the post-war situation, as in Greece, Indonesia or Palestine; he decides to volunteer for the RAF in order to minimise the probability of being involved in such repressive activity.

In the RAF he managed to get a 'cushy posting' in Jamaica, where he picked up a feel for the colonial scene, with its unwritten quasi-apartheid rules, and some insights into its insurrectionary history. Towards the end of his stint he got in on a 'defence course', into which he managed to get himself recruited, for the purpose of improving on his military training (p29). He therefore gave total priority from an early age to a militaristic approach to the national liberation process.

Back in England he learned Irish via the Gaelic League, despite their bad teaching. He came across the Anti-Partition League and their paper United Ireland. He supported this actively for a while, and found himself rapidly in a leading position, largely because the membership was mostly on paper. He encountered Belfast Protestants, who turned out to be Communist Party members, including one Bob Armstrong who was the editor of the paper. However he rapidly became disillusioned with the APL when he encountered the Dublin politicians who were supporting it, and observed how the money was spent on empty propaganda instead of organisation and expansion (p35).

His evaluation of the APL was not dissimilar to that of Greaves and the Connolly Association. It is to be regretted that while this political window of opportunity was open he did not encounter the latter in a positive mode; he might have been diverted towards a creative political activist path.

When he did encounter the CA, he was working as a shunter on the railways; he joined the Union and got on well with his workmates. The issue came up of paying the political levy with the Union dues. He refused, on the grounds that the Labour Party was supporting Partition. Encountering the CA and the Irish Democrat he discovered that their policy was that people should pay the political levy. I quote: 'it was then the policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain not to attack the Labour Party. Consistent with this policy, the Connolly Association was in effect urging Irish workers to subsidise a party that perpetuated partition.... the CA criticised the IRA and condemned the use of physical force against the British occupation forces in Ireland. At the same time it was supporting... revolutionary force in Malaya, where it hadn't a hope. I wondered if they thought the Russian revolution they admired so much had been achieved without physical force... the party line was whatever Stalin said it was from one week to the next. There was no way of balancing these double loyalties to ensure that Irish freedom would be put first..'(p51).

We can see why the window of opportunity was closed. Greaves in his attempts to decouple the CA from the CP, and give it an independent Irish-oriented policy development procedure, had in 1949 not yet managed to do this at its grass-roots. The dead hand of Stalinism helped push SMacS away from political methods and towards militarism, at a critical juncture in his career, when he was an active trade unionist working in England.

SMacS goes on to give a critical analysis (p52) of the roles of the European CPs, with which the present writer would have been substantially in agreement at the time; this in fact fuelled the latter's movement towards attempting to politicise the republican movement, which began in the late 50s.

'Any revolutionary who expected Ireland to accept a Russian-type society would be wasting his time. The social system the Republican movement preached in those days was... distributive ownership or co-operativism, with some nationalisation of certain key resources...'.

This indeed sums up well what the present writer attempted to do in the 1960s, and it is a great pity that SMacS's obsession with weapons and militarism helped to undermine it.

Being switched off politics first by the APL and then by the CA, he decides to form an IRA unit in London; along with Cathal Goulding he gets involved in a raid for arms in support of the 1950s campaign, gets caught and goes to jail. Goulding and he are separated, so he does not participate in Goulding's political evolution, such as it was.

On pp75-79 he gives an account of his interaction with the EOKA people from Cyprus, when in prison. This aspect has been treated also by Justin O'Brien. The 'armed struggle' supporters of Grivas want enosis with Greece, while the so-called independent Cyprus under Makarios would remain under British influence. He picked up many ideas for guerrilla tactics, in a situation which he identified as analogous to Northern Ireland (Cyprus being 'British-occupied Greece'). He makes no mention however of the complexities arising from the existence of a Turkish population.

On release from prison he and his family (his wife Mary and two daughters) return to Ireland, first to Cappoquin and then in Cork, where he joins the Cork unit of the IRA and ends up in command in 1960; he attempts to instill some sense of 'idealism and discipline' in what he regards as a 'revolutionary volunteer force'(p89).

Once arms are involved, they dominate the thinking and the procedures, and edge out any aspirational politics, however well-intentioned and visionary.

On p92 SMacS refers to welcoming Goulding's taking on the leadership, but rapidly becomes aware of the politicising trend, which is as expressed in the 1965 documentation reproduced elsewhere, the famous 'nine proposals'. These proposals were before the present writer's time of active association with the movement; they represented basically Goulding's politicising agenda, supported by Costello, Mitchell and others. He is elected to the Army Council at the next Convention, which was in early 1965. He claims to know where the policies are coming from, blaming '...a Marxist whom I knew to be Moscow-oriented, and who had been in the CPGB and the Connolly Association...'. He proposed that this person be expelled, under the anti-communist rule. Goulding however stood over the membership of the person concerned, saying that if this person went, he would go too.

This must represent SMacS's perception of the present writer, whose motivation he had misinterpreted; I was fed up with the CP/IWL narrow sectishness, and wanted to distance myself from their Rome-like worship of Moscow. But at this time I had never encountered him. How did he know? Someone must have primed him and given him a particular 'spin' on my political position.

On the next page he goes into the Midleton affair, where he organises the Cork republicans into support of local peoples' committees against the sale of their leases to speculators. This was seen as an intervention of the movement politically in the public interest. What he does not say is that this type of action was along the lines of what Goulding and I were promoting, but that he, SMacS, had to be restrained from 'taking out' exemplary landlords and speculators. He was fundamentally a militarist in all situations.

Shortly afterwards occurred the episode of the 'rosaries'. I had written a letter to the United Irishman critical of the custom of reciting the rosary at commemorations, holding that these were political and not religious events, and that they gave the movement a religious-sectarian flavour. I stand over this; they are part of the 'catholic-nationalist' overlay and are foreign to the basic inclusive Enlightenment political republican tradition.

On p96 SMacS records how the Cork movement refused to sell this copy of the UI, and that he was suspended as a result. He does credit me with holding that the letters written in reply to mine should have been published.

Shortly afterwards he set up the 'verbal ambush' where I had the abrasive session with Gearoid Mac Carthaigh, referenced elsewhere. Subsequently however we remained on relatively civil terms, and I recollect one occasion, in '68 or even '69, when we exchanged ideas about Pasolini's film 'Gospel According to St Matthew', he being surprised by my positive evaluation of it in Marxist terms.

Director of Military Intelligence in NI

I had no inkling of this at the time. It is not surprising, in hindsight, that our attempts to get the Republican Clubs into open activity on the political front in support of the NICRA were in many cases being only half-heartedly supported. SMacS was setting the agenda, with an insurrectionary response to pogroms in mind, long before any were on the horizon, and before even the first NICRA demonstration had taken place.

Civil Rights

This of course was a consequence of our politicising work with the Clubs. But in the aftermath he increasingly envisioned a 'dangerous situation' calling for a military response, and grew increasingly impatient with the leadership's insistence that the objective was support of a non-violent civil rights movement within the North, and that a military response would be counter-productive.

The August 1969 Crisis

According to Ruairi O Bradaigh, whom I met on 20/09/01, this intelligence was simply a result of recognition of patterns of activity, rather than any leaks or moles.

The Dublin leadership for some reason did not wake up to this and act on it, which they could have done. The political alternative to an armed response was to ensure that the British were made aware of what the RUC and the B-Specials were up to. There is evidence, via Crossman as referenced by Peter Rose, that Wilson was aware, but was unable to pull his Cabinet with him. They could have intervened to disband the B-Specials and reform the RUC, under Article 75 of the Government of Ireland Act. After all it is not normal in a civilised European democracy to have a police force which actively attacks civilians in their houses. I am convinced that the RUC and B-Specials were consciously acting to provoke the IRA into its military role, which they knew how to deal with, and get rid of all this civil rights nonsense once and for all. Mac Stiofain however looked forward to and relished the military role.

When August 1969 came around, on his own initiative SMacS moved stuff north from such arms dumps as there were, and set up training procedures. A statement, of which the origin seemed questionable, had been issued to the effect that IRA units had been active in the Bogside and that units were in readiness on the border. MacStiofain has it that this was issued by 'certain people not members of the movement' whom the 'revisionist leadership had involved in the decision-making'. His perception was was that this was to 'strengthen Chichester-Clark's hand when he met Wilson, enabling him to attribute the pogrom and the RUC attacks to the activities of the IRA'. He goes on to link this with some perceived 'western communist party line' about the masses not being ready for revolution, and to claim that the 'abolition of Stormont would be a major step forward in the national revolution in Ireland.. the revisionists... decided Stormont should be preserved... the civil rights movement restored...'.

This indeed shows up the general level of confusion that there was at that time, but I can try to clarify as follows. The statement as summarised by Mac Stiofain in no way corresponded to anything remotely resembling HQ policy; on the face of it, it would seem at first sight to have been bogus and issued by someone who wanted to defend the Unionist position. Yet according to O Bradaigh (20/09/01) Goulding stood over it. HQ policy would have wanted to put pressure on the British to intervene and reform Stormont, disband the B-Specials and reform the RUC. An explicit role for the IRA in the situation would have made this more difficult. Anthony Coughlan certainly was around at the time, and Goulding was listening to him, much more than to me. The foregoing apparently contradictory sequence of events I find to be in need of further analysis. Study of the statement as it actually appeared in the September United Irishman however suggests that it was a move by Goulding to give the IRA a political role in the current 'defence committee' situation. RJ 21/09/01.

The HQ politicisers certainly regarded the abolition of Stormont and the introduction of direct rule as a retrograde step; they were supportive of the NICRA demands for Stormont to be democratised. The demand for the abolition of Stormont came originally from the Peoples Democracy, and this helped confuse Civil Rights activists. SMacS's attribution of the foregoing confusion to 'western communist' thinking was pure paranoia.

On p129 SMacS records contacting business people who had promised money, and he asked them to hold back for the present; he would tap them again, which he did later on behalf of the Provisionals. He claims that they were not connected with Fianna Fail or with Taca the dubious property-based fund-raising group on which the party depended.

This is contested by Justin O'Brien; I have abstracted his book elsewhere. I personally recollect seeing Jerry Jones, of the Jones Group, floating round the Provisional fringes of the Jurys Hotel Ard Fheis, where the political split took place. There is no doubt that FF had been shaken to the core by the housing action agitations in Dublin, which had exposed some of the roots of its funding by property-development interests, and they were motivated to curb left-republican political activity by all possible means. Supporting the Provisional process was one such means; they could also expect to profit from it politically, as they had done earlier in the 'anti-partition league' days, and with equally bogus credentials.

On p134ff SMacS gives his perception of the Convention which took place in December 1969, at which the split took place. He gives five reasons for the split: the ideological alliance with the left, abstentionism, military policy, internal discipline, and the attitude to the abolition of Stormont.

SMacS's opposition to the 'national liberation front' concept, which he dismissed as a 'political fantasy', was based on anti-communist paranoia. He was dismissive of the roles of the CPNI, the IWL and the CA, regarding them all as 'foot-dragging on the national question'. Granted European orthodox Marxism was overlaid with Stalinist pathologies, and these had kept Irish Marxists isolated and impotent, but there were opportunities for independent thought and action within the Irish left, and the opportunity for the latter to participate in a broad-based movement for national liberation, which included the political republicans, would have enabled their combined forces to build electoral support, and to develop a principled Marxist democratic movement with control over its elected representatives. This was the theoretical concept, and it was valid at the time, as far as it went. It was nowhere near a 'Marxist dictatorship' model. However as a theoretical concept it was perhaps premature, seen with hindsight.

On p139ff SMacS attacks the UI's exposure of the Fianna Fail actions which led to the 'Voice of the North' and the emergence of the 'arms trial' group in the Fianna Fail leadership. He holds that this had no relationship with the split, and that FF never financed the Provisionals; the split was on the principles listed above. He blames the 'Marxists' for fabricating the case which blamed the split on collaboration with outside interests.

Mac Stiofain. O Bradaigh and the Provisional Split

On p147 SMacS records that in the North the local defence committees got weapons from Protestant arms dealers, who however raised their prices. This for me perhaps constitutes additional support for the hypothesis that the Unionist Establishment actively wanted to provoke an 'armed resistance' that would justify the maintenance of their repressive apparatus. Some profiteering in the context no doubt was a welcome bonus!

What follows in the book is SMacS's account of how the military campaign developed during 1970 and in the following years when he was in charge. The analysis of this is not relevant to the current study. Overall I think we can sum up Mac Stiofain as a competent military technician, without a political thought in his head, whose presence in the movement was totally inconsistent with the politicisation process, and whose destructive role I must admit I grossly underestimated at the time.

I should however add that Ruairi O Bradaigh in our 20/09/01 discussion attributed his break with the Movement to the ditching by the latter of the 'Eire Nua' design of an all-Ireland Constitution, with strong devolved regional and local government within a 4-province federal structure, in favour of a centralised unitary State concept. He had discussed the Eire Nua approach with Unionist politicians and concluded that they would be reasonably comfortable with it, if the British were gone. He attributed Fianna Fail-like attributes to the Movement as it had evolved under Gerry Adams, with a triumphalist aspiration to 'vote down' the Protestants.

O Bradaigh and the 'Republican Sinn Fein' (RSF) group however remain adamantly opposed to participation in any existing partitionist assemblies, and aspire to work for a situation where an all-Ireland assembly could legislate for the whole country under an Eire Nua type constitution, basically a 'sea-green incorruptable' position, remote from political reality. He accepts that the original Eire Nua draft was in fact mine; it dated from the mid-sixties period, but was never formally adopted by the then Movement.

I can conclude by remarking that Greaves always attributed the strength of the abstentionist tradition in republicanism to the fact that they felt that if they were in the Dail they would be indistinguishable from Fianna Fail. It is ironical that O Bradaigh recognises this in Adams. While his own Eire Nua 'devolved government' position however places him places him politically close to the Green Party, this politics, while superficially constructive, has no chance of acceptance while RSF persists in maintaining the traditional linkage with its shadowy armed wing the 'continuity IRA', and depends on supporters who revere the memory of Sean Mac Stiofain, as is apparent from the letters page of their paper 'Saoirse'.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999