Re-assessing the 50s Border Campaign
Re-assessing the 50s Border Campaign by John Murphy Irish Democrat IRISH HISTORIAN Ruan O'Donnell, who has written books on the 1798 rebellion and on Robert Emmet and is one of the country's most popular lecturers, is now researching contemporary history and events that have shaped Irish politics since the 1940s. In a recent public lecture at the home of Patrick and Willie Pearse in Dublin he outlined the subject of his current research: the 1950s IRA Border Campaign. The packed audience included Ruairi O Bradaigh, Tomas MacGiolla, Charlie Murphy, Tony Hayde, Noel Kavanagh, Tony Meade, Roy Johnston and many others. Republicans who were often divided by past events united in praise of how O'Donnell presented the 1950s campaign in a new historical context. The Border Campaign has usually been dismissed as a romantic reversion to physical force by hardline republicans during Ireland's bleak 1950s, without political justification or prospect of success. However, Ireland's unsolved national problem, the issue of the unity and independence, and attempts to solve it, has always followed a pattern of phases of constitutional and political action followed by physical force, followed by a return to constitutional action, and so on. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when De Valera's Fianna Fail had lost office after sixteen years, the anti-partition campaign was launched with the support of all the parties in Dail Eireann. In mass meetings throughout Ireland, Britain and America the constitutional politicians sought to highlight the injustices of partition and the discrimination which northern nationalists had to endure under the Stormont unionist regime. But when De Valera and Fianna Fail returned to power in 1951, they fell totally silent on the northern injustices they had previously been so vocal on, and Britain's responsibility for their continuance. The Fine Gael-led coalition which also held office in the 1950s said nothing about them either. The reason was the Cold War. If Ireland had sought to raise the misdeeds of the northern unionist regime at the United Nations or in other international forums at the time, the Russians would have supported it. America and Ireland's vocal Cold Warriors would in turn have been furious. O'Donnell's researches in the US archives have shown that even though Ireland was nominally a neutral state, it was fear of annoying the Americans and being supported by the Russians during those early Cold War years which led successive Irish governments to say nothing about the injustices and discrimnation their fellow-countrymen had to put up with north of the border. With the constitutional politicians failing in their duty to expose the abuses of partition, the way was open for a return to physical force by republicans who felt they had to "do something". The 1950s IRA campaign could thus be regarded as a kind of punishment for the sins of omission of Ireland's constitutional politicians. The Border Campaign failed in turn, but the release-the-prisoners movement which followed, in which the Connolly Association and the Irish Democrat played a key part, set the stage for the next constitutional-political phase, which was the 1960s northern civil rights movement. Dublin's silent indifference during the 1950s prefigured in turn how the Jack Lynch government in Dublin was caught totally off guard when the north exploded in 1969. The Irish government found itself unable to give any real political support to the civil rights movement - which in turn contributed to the Provisional IRA's launching its "armed struggle". O'Donnell's research on the Border Campaign should lead in time to a lengthy book with a thousand footnotes. It is already eagerly awaited and promises to revolutionise our views on the 1950s when it appears. That decade in turn calls for a follow-on for the 1960s and 1970s. Having already made a major contribution to our underestanding of the 1798-1803 period in Ireland, this remarkable young historian looks like becoming a worthy interpreter of our own times.

Any book on The Border Campaign will be an interesting read I'm sure. I think the most substantial pieces I've read on it would have been in Bell's book on the IRA and it gets a good bit of attention in the Ó'Brádaigh biography. Can anyone suggest further reading on the campaign?

Mairtin, I suggest you read 'Resistance' a publication, originally published by the Republican Movement during the Border Campaign and republished last year by Irish Freedom Press. It is about the campaign. I agree with the following essay by Sean O'Hegarty which analyses the ideology of the Movement at the time of the campaign. An Assessment of IRA ideology in the 1950s The late Sean O'Hegarty of Cork was a prisoner in Belfast Prison from 1954 to 1962. The following are his comments on IRA ideology, and was published in 'Irish Nationalism' by Sean Cronin. The philosophy that drew me into the ranks of Republicanism in the 1950s rested on the conviction that the majority of the Irish people wished for the unity and self-determination of the country, that such unity and self-determination were the essential conditions for the freedom and development of Ireland and that these could never be fully realised while Britain retained a presence in the country. Britain thwarted Irish aspirations in two ways. Her physical support of the regime in the Six Counties was a denial of the legitimate and absolute right of the Irish to national sovereignty. This, coupled with her neo-colonial influence throughout the rest of the country, prevented the growth of an Irish nation with its roots in its own history and culture - an Irish Ireland. I was forced to the conclusion that physical force offered the only avenue by which this situation might be changed. Britain was certainly not willing to withdraw voluntarily from Ireland or further the creation of a united Ireland. Further, it was clear from its record that the Dublin government would do nothing to undermine the hegemony of Britain in Ireland. Indeed, the years since 1921 saw continued and close co-operation between Dublin and Westminster, uninterrupted British dominance of the economy and the rapid decline of what remained of the Irish cultural heritage. One might very well paraphrase Trotsky and declare that the revolution had been betrayed by the so-called revolutionaries of this post 1916 period. This view of the situation in Ireland of the early fifties found its natural expression in the Republican doctrine of 'Break the connection with England'. The acceptance of Republicanism and physical force reflected, on my part, a sense of Irish history and nationhood (a sense of that 'shared experience' that Mill spoke of), an awareness of the continuing injustice of Britain's denial of legitimate Irish aspirations and, on a more emotional and idealistic level, the desire, noted by Pearse, to emulate the great men who had gone before. This last element in my outlook can be attributed to the schooling of the Christian Brothers who went to great lengths to instil in their students a fairly thorough knowledge and appreciation of Irish history and culture. In my opinion, the Republican Movement would fulfil a dual function. The Army would provide a military challenge to the British in the Six Counties. In addition, because of a more refined political and social consciousness, Republicans would furnish the leadership necessary to raise the level of awareness of the past to the need for creating a truly Irish nation state founded on the best in its own past. Unless this latter objective could be achieved, territorial unity would have only limited meaning for me. According to this interpretation, Republican doctrine was essentially an expression of political and cultural nationalism. The viability of the nation, internally and externally, hinged on control by the Irish of a State building on traditional Irish values and traditions. Anyone who contested this view would be denying the deepest aspirations of the Irish people and, in doing so, would have to be treated as a rebel. Needless to say, the Unionist majority in the Six Counties immediately fell into this category. The reasoning that led me to join the Army reflects fairly accurately, I think, the factors that motivated most Republicans of the time. Further, I believe that the principal elements of Republican philosophy continue to hold true today. Thus, British withdrawal from Ireland is essential to the realisation of Irish political aspirations. Again, I do not believe that this withdrawal can be effected without the use of force, or at the very least, the real and persistent threat of force. While these fundamental tenets of Republican thought remain valid, it is clear, in retrospect, that the interpretation and application of Republicanism to changing political conditions suffered from some serious shortcomings, in the past. The most serious of these was perhaps, the fact that the traditional teachings of Republicanism passed on from generation to generation were simplistic and specific to an era. Ireland has never received from Republicanism what it most needed, namely, a coherent, constantly developing social and political philosophy. We have never been blessed with those who could flesh out the basic premises of Republicanism to provide a rationale for consistent political as well as military action, through time. Such a process is one of continual reinterpretation and refinement of received doctrine in the light of constantly changing social and political reality. This failure of Republicanism to mature and develop as a political and social philosophy had serious consequences. It resulted in the neglect of political action as one means of promoting Irish unity, and an exclusive concentration on physical force. This neglect, in turn, prevented Republicans from assuming a position of leadership in social life from which the people could be organised and their political consciousness aroused. Since Republicans were wandering in a political wilderness, isolated from the daily life and concerns of the nation, they were unable to challenge or offer a viable alternative to the existing regimes in Ireland. This, in turn, weakened the appeal and credibility of the Movement as a whole. Republicans were caught in a vicious circle. Because they lacked a contemporary social and political philosophy, they were unable to think or act outside the military sphere and this, in turn, destroyed the possibility of welding the people together on a broad front of integrated military and political action. Consequently, Republicans have at all times been committed to rebellion rather than revolution. Its one vital element was physical force, and this inflexible ideology had to be applied in isolation, unsupported by organised political sentiment in the country at large. Republicans were thus placed in an untenable position, unable to manoeuvre ideologically or politically. A rigid philosophy made them incapable of observing and understanding political change, with the result that they were unable to respond to the political realities of the fifties. One of the foremost of these was that Britain, at that time, could not be described as 'the source of all our ills' except in a historic sense. Indeed, major problems such as economic dependence, excessive emigration and cultural malaise resulted far more from the moral cowardice and stupidity of the so-called Irish government that from British imperialism. In the North, Britain was not pursuing an active policy of traditional colonialism. On the contrary it could be argued that the North reaped considerable benefits from the British welfare state. Finally, little if any emphasis was placed on the fact that the majority of the population wished to remain under the Crown. The fact that this sentiment might be transformed into formidable armed opposition against a united Ireland, or that it could provide the single most significant stumbling block to national unity, was completely overlooked by the Movement. The opinions and attitudes of the northern Unionists never once prompted Republicans to examine the need to redefine church-state relations, accept constitutional change or conceive of modernisation in such vital areas as education and family law. None of these facts were worthy of recognition or discussion among Republicans bound by the simplistic concept of an Empire as hellishly evil in Ireland of the twentieth century as she had been at the time of Elizabeth or Cromwell. As in the past, there could be no compromise or any thought among Republicans on the different t policies and methods that might be applied, in conjunction with physical force, towards the objective of Irish unity. As one commentator noted, it never occurred to Republicans that, instead of trying to expel Britain to the end of uniting Irishmen, they ought to attempt to unite Irishmen with a view to expelling Britain. Unfortunately, Republican ideology recognised only one path to freedom. While the British presence in Ireland was at least reflected in the existence of the IRA and the preparations for a campaign, the power and existence of the Dublin government hardly warranted attention. Republican ideology could not easily grapple with such a concept. It should not exist. It arose from a treasonable treaty signed by renegades who sold their heritage for a mess of pottage. As a result, the practical significance of the Irish State was assumed away in a welter of moral posturing and sterile distinctions between de jure and de facto authority. Republicans had obviously never heard of Lenin's dictum that there is no morality in these terms, only expediency. Consequently, it never seemed to occur to anybody that a firm foothold and strong organisation in southern politics could be strategically and tactically vital to the success of a prolonged campaign in the North. As always, the Movement was blinkered. It could not see that military and political action was not antithetical but complementary factors in the same game. It could not understand that, while martyrdom might in times be a necessary condition of success, it is seldom in itself, a sufficient condition for victory. These thoughts sum it, for me, the substance and spirit of the Republican Movement of the fifties. Its few strengths, many weaknesses and crippling mistakes were not, of course, characteristic of that period alone; the weaknesses and flaws in an immature ideology made themselves felt time after time. And who can say that the weaknesses and flaws did not exact a heavy toll? The Movement certainly got its compliment of martyrs, but like the body counts in Vietnam, they did not indicate success or victory. The hard political realities won the day. The Army was ill prepared to undertake a prolonged struggle against a determined enemy on its own ground. In the absence of any real political opposition, the Dublin government was able to fulfil its role of aiding and abetting the enemy and, finally, the people in general made it clear that they no longer consider martyrdom a sufficient condition to win their overwhelming support. It is always easy, of course, to evaluate a situation after the event. The fact is that everybody connected with the Movement at that time was responsible for its shortcomings. I myself am not interested in the sterile exercise of allocating blame. I am far more interested in the assessment of the Movement's past, in the hope that the mistakes and shortcomings may be eliminated, for the future.