When
the Daily Telegraph journalist Toby Harnden,
was reported to be writing a book on the IRA in South
Armagh a number of years ago, the general expectation
within the republican community was that the end product
would be a rabid right wing tirade the only purpose
of which would be to excoriate the IRA. What else
do Daily Telegraph journalists do was the consensus.
So it was with some surprise that Bandit Country
was greeted so favourably on the streets.
Whatever,
the view of the republican leadership, it did not
deter people from reading the book. Not that those
who read it always bought it. My own copy, a birthday
present from a life long friend, is literally falling
to pieces it has been thumbed through so many times
by numerous people. Brand new when I first read it,
there is now barely a page attached to the spine.
All those who read it were republicans. And each commented
on it favourably. Like all works there are faults
with it which are best dealt with in a proper review.
But these pale compared against its strengths. And
Harnden is to be commended for striking the balance
that he did. Of course there is a integrity to Toby
Harden that is brought all the more into focus in
a week when a man - despicable and subservient creature
that Clifford McKeown is to have killed a Catholic
taxi driver as a birthday present to some leader -
is convicted on the word of the journalist Nick Martin
Clarke who previously counted him amongst his sources.
Harnden, at some considerable risk to himself, has
recently defied our legal 'masters' on these matters
by refusing to disclose the identities of his sources.
The
reason so many republicans wanted to read Bandit Country
was because of their respect for the IRA volunteers
of South Armagh who in the republican psyche occupied
a sacred pantheon. What made them tick, how they could
maintain such a record of outstanding success, why
their opponents - the cream of the British forces
- failed to combat them in any effective fashion were
the type of thoughts that had ran through our minds
for years.
Those
of us who populated the ranks of the IRA in the earlier
days of its existence can remember the exasperated
Merlyn Rees of the British Government complain that
the IRA ceasefire of 1975 had no standing in South
Armagh. He had a point - in August of that year its
volunteers killed four soldiers in a landmine explosion
allegedly in retaliation for the British having killed
a local IRA leader, Francie Jordan. In December they
surrounded a British observation post and killed three
more who had declined the offer from the volunteers
to surrender.
British
troops, in terms of proximity, even when somewhat
removed from the area had an intense dislike of the
IRA there. Travelling from the remand cage in Long
Kesh to court one morning in 1976, we were detained
for 'the count' at the prison tally lodge. From inside
our holding van we could hear a British soldier on
guard duty complain that the Alsatian dog he had with
him was stupid - it was 'an Irish dog' he informed
the screws who accompanied him. 'Pressing my mouth
to the gap at the rear of the van we were encased
in, I commented, 'it's a Crossmaglen dog - it eats
soldiers.' His fury was undisguised. He banged and
kicked the side of the van while using language he
hardly learned from the vicar, while we sat inside
laughing.
In
1979 at the height of the Blanket protest the South
Armagh IRA provided us with one of our greatest morale
boosts by wiping out 18 British soldiers in an operation
which has gone unparalleled throughout this conflict.
We thought our fellow protestors in H5 were hallucinating
as they shouted the news to us in H4. It started with
four soldiers dead and then proceeded upward until
we stopped listening to them, thinking that some prison
orderly was feeding them bum sceal.
In
1981 when the Belfast and Derry IRAs failed lamentably
to hit the British in response to their policy of
allowing the hunger strikers to die, South Armagh
waded in and killed five soldiers in one operation.
Years later the most senior ranking RUC members to
die as a result of the armed struggle met their maker
on the country roads of South Armagh. Resilient, ingenious,
determined, ruthless and clinically efficient, their
efforts throughout the war against the British won
for them the unalloyed admiration of friends and the
grudging respect of opponents. The region's military
prowess and ability to operate as a skilled army in
the field ridiculed the British attempt to criminalise
the republican struggle.
Republicans
of every hue who came through the struggle look back
with admiration upon South Armagh. It occupies an
elevated plateau in republican iconography. The circumstances
pertaining to the recent death of IRA volunteer Keith
Rodgers now threatens to collapse that plateau. Partisan
newspaper reporting that the death resulted from a
clash between 'the IRA and a gang' does nothing to
dilute the major indictment of the republican struggle
that would result from its most cherished military
battleground becoming the site for bloodletting over
property disputes or some other activity not remotely
associated with republicanism. Whatever the republican
struggle was waged for it most certainly was not for
this.
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