Irish Republican Army member
Sean Mac Stiofain
(born
John Edward Drayton Stephenson
; 17 February 1928 ? 18 May 2001) was an English-born
chief of staff
of the
Provisional IRA
, a position he held between 1969 and 1972.
Childhood
[
edit
]
Although he used the
Gaelicised
version of name in later life, Mac Stiofain 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 Stiofain was 10. Mac Stiofain attended Catholic schools, where he came into contact with pro-
Sinn Fein
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 Fein in London, and eventually in 1949 helped to organise a unit of the IRA. He first met his wife, Maire, who was from
Castletownroche
, County Cork. Mac Stiofain then began work for
British Rail
.
Joining the IRA
[
edit
]
On 25 July 1953, Mac Stiofain took part in an
IRA
arms raid on the armoury of the
Officers' Training Corps
at
Felsted School
in
Essex
. The IRA obtained over 108 rifles, ten Bren and eight Sten guns, two mortars and dummy mortar bombs in the raid. The police seized the van carrying the stolen weapons some hours later, due to it being so overloaded that it was going at about 20 mph on the
Braintree
bypass with a queue of traffic behind it. On 19 August 1953, he was sentenced, along with
Cathal Goulding
and
Manus Canning
, to eight years' imprisonment by a court in
Bishop's Stortford
, Hertfordshire. It was in the run-up to the raid that Mac Stiofain learned his first few words of
Irish
from Cathal Goulding. He later became fluent in the language.
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 Stiofain went to the
Republic of Ireland
with his wife and young family and settled in Dublin, and later
Navan
, and became known under the Irish version of his name. This was not his first visit to the country, and he had been to Ireland a month before the Felsted raid in 1953.
[5]
He worked as a salesman for an Irish-language organisation. He remained active in the IRA and gave the
Bodenstown
oration in 1959. He was uneasy with the
left-wing
political direction ? under way from 1964 ? his erstwhile friend and IRA chief of staff, Cathal Goulding, was bringing to the IRA. Appointed IRA director of intelligence in 1966, Mac Stiofain continued to voice his opposition to the Goulding line and was gaining support among members. Despite his hostility to the left-wing direction, he was prominent in agitations in
Midleton
against ground-rent landlordism, the
Dublin Housing Action Committee
and against foreign buy-outs of Irish farmland in
County Meath
, where he moved with his family in 1966.
A tall, well-built man, Mac Stiofain 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
[
edit
]
When an IRA special army convention voted to drop the principle of
abstentionism
in December 1969, a troika comprising Mac Stiofain,
Daithi O Conaill
and
Seamus Twomey
together with others established themselves as a "Provisional Army Council" in anticipation of a contentious 1970 Sinn Fein
Ard Fheis
. At this, the
Marxist
leadership of Sinn Fein 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 Fein, 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 Fein 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 Stiofain was subsequently appointed the chief of staff of the Provisional Army Council. At the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in Dublin on 10 January 1970, Mac Stiofain 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
Provisional Sinn Fein
. The split also ended Mac Stiofain's friendship with Cathal Goulding, who went on to serve as chief of staff of the rival
Official IRA
. Although both had been good personal friends before the split, Goulding was later scathing about "that English Irishman".
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 Stiofain's men soon came to be known as the
Provisional IRA
.
Nicknamed "Mac the Knife", Mac Stiofain was a dedicated
"physical-force" republican
who believed that violence was the only means to bring about an end to
Northern Ireland
's status as part of the
United Kingdom
. In his autobiography, he set out the aims of the Provisional IRA as moving from "area defence" to "combined defence and retaliation" and then a "third phase of launching an all-out offensive action against the British occupation system". He also gave a detailed account of his development of the tactic of the "one-shot sniper".
[5]
He is said to have taken part in an unsuccessful attack on
Crossmaglen
RUC
station in August 1969.
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
British soldiers
and lost 90 of their own members.
On 7 July 1972, Mac Stiofain 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
Daithi O Conaill
,
Martin McGuinness
,
Gerry Adams
, Seamus Twomey and Ivor Bell. Leading the delegation, Mac Stiofain 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 Stiofain very unpleasant". Mac Stiofain 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 Stiofain 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 Stiofain 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 Stiofain 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 Stiofain was broadcast on the
RTE
This Week
radio programme. He was arrested in Dublin on the same day and the interview was later used as evidence against him on a trial of IRA membership, and on 25 November he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment by the
Special Criminal Court
in Dublin. Political fallout arising from the interview was considerable and some days later,
Fianna Fail
minister
Gerry Collins
sacked the entire RTE authority.
Jailed in the
Curragh prison
, Mac Stiofain 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
Ruairi O Bradaigh
and
Daithi O Conaill
ordered him off the strike. However, O Bradaigh, by this time, had also been arrested. In fact, when he was transferred into the Glasshouse of the Curragh, O Bradaigh welcomed him.
[9]
[10]
[11]
Following standard procedures, Mac Stiofain 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
[
edit
]
Afterwards he was sidelined, and was given a job of distribution manager and part-time columnist with the Sinn Fein 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
Eire 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 Stiofain appealed to the IRA to declare a ceasefire.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mac Stiofain became active in the Irish-language organisation
Conradh na Gaeilge
. At that organisation's centenary celebration held in Dublin's
O'Connell Street
in 1993, he was a guest of honour on the platform. He remained a member of the standing committee (
Coiste Gno
) of Conradh na Gaeilge until his death. He lived in the
Meath Gaeltacht
. Visitors to his home were greeted at the front door with a mat saying
Labhair Gaeilge Anseo
("Speak Irish here").
Death
[
edit
]
In 1993, Mac Stiofain 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.
Ruairi O Bradaigh
, who attended the funeral, issued a glowing tribute, referring to Mac Stiofain 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 Ni Chionnaigh of Conradh na Gaeilge, whose flag draped the coffin, lambasted Mac Stiofain'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
[
edit
]
- ^
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
.
- ^
Second- and third-generation Irish joining the republican movement is not uncommon ? see the October 2004
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 Stiofain claimed it lasted fifty-three days.
- ^
Robert W. White,
Ruairi O Bradaigh, 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
[
edit
]
Mac Stiofain, Sean,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
, London (Gordon Cremonesi), 1975. Also published as
Revolutionary in Ireland
ISBN
0-86033-031-1
Sources
[
edit
]
- 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]
- RTE
This Week
radio interview:
[3]
[
permanent dead link
]
- "
Outstanding IRA leader and giant of a man in the Republican Movement
", Saoirse, June 2001.
- O Bradaigh, Ruairi. "
Sean Mac Stiofain ? a tribute
",
Saoirse
, June 2001.
- Interview with Mac Stiofain (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.
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