Joe Cahill; A Life in the IRA

Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 2002. Reprinted 2002. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 383, [1] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. List of Sources. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Signed by author and by Joe Cahill on title page. Brendan Anderson was born in Belfast in December 1945. He has worked in print for thirty-five years - first as a compositor, then as a proofreader, a typesetter and page make-up artist. Selected by an enlightened editor at the Irish News to be trained as a journalist in 1989, he became senior reporter and security writer for that paper within two years. He has covered all the big stories of the Irish troubles, and interviewed and questioned all of the major players. He has had unrivaled contacts with republicans and loyalists, and is frequently interviewed as a security analyst on Irish and British television and radio, and consulted by British newspapers. Seconded to the University of Ulster, Belfast, to lecture in Practical Newspaper Journalism in 1998, he joined the staff of the university as an associate lecturer in Journalism in 1999. He is a freelance writer for a United States weekly newspaper. Joe Cahill (19 May 1920 - 23 July 2004) was a prominent figure in the Irish Republican movement in Northern Ireland and former chief of staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He joined a junior-republican movement, Na Fianna Eireann, in 1937 and the following year, joined the Irish Republican Army. In 1969, Cahill was a key figure in the founding of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. During his time in the Provisional IRA, Cahill helped import weapons and raise financial support. He served at the Chief of Staff in 1972, but was arrested the following year whenever a ship importing weapons was intercepted. After his release, he continued to serve on the IRA Army Council and lead all financial dealings for Sinn Fein. In the 1990s, the IRA and Sinn Fein began to work on seeking peace. Cahill served on the council that called a cessation on July 21, 1996. Cahill attended several of the talks that finally lead to the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998. Shortly after the agreement was made, Cahill resigned as treasurer of Sinn Fein. To honor his service, he was made honorary Sinn Fein Vice President for life. Cahill served as the Republican movement in Ireland his entire life. He is regarded as a strong leader and one of the longest-serving political activists in Ireland of any political party. In April 1971, after the arrest and imprisonment of Billy McKee, Cahill became the commander of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. He held this post until the introduction of internment in August of that year. It was during this period that the Provisional IRA campaign got off the ground in the city. Cahill authorized the beginning of the IRA's bombing campaign as well as attacks on British troops and the RUC. He based himself in a house in Andersonstown and toured the city, co-ordinating IRA activity. The day after the British Army mounted Operation Demetrius, designed to arrest the IRA's leaders, Cahill held a press conference in a school in Ballymurphy and stated that the operation had been a failure. He said, "we have lost one brigade officer, one battalion officer and the rest are volunteers, or as they say in the British Army, privates". To avoid the propaganda defeat that his capture would then have entailed, Cahill fled to the Republic of Ireland, temporarily relinquishing his command of the Belfast Brigade. In March 1972, Cahill was part of an IRA delegation that held direct talks with the British Labour Party leader Harold Wilson.[3] However, although the IRA called a three-day ceasefire for the talks, no permanent end to violence was agreed upon. Upon his return to Ireland, Cahill was arrested in Dublin by Gardaí and charged with IRA membership. He went on hunger strike for twenty-three days and was subsequently released due to lack of evidence. In November 1972, Cahill became the IRA's chief of staff and held this position until his arrest the following year. Cahill was then put in charge of importing arms for the IRA. He liaised with the NORAID group in America and with the Libyan dictatorship of Muammar al-Gaddafi to this end. In March 1973 he was arrested by the Irish Navy in Waterford, aboard the Claudia, a ship from Libya loaded with five tons of weapons. Cahill was sentenced to three years imprisonment by the Irish Special Criminal Court. Cahill stated at his trial that, "If I am guilty of any crime, it is that I did not succeed in getting the contents of the Claudia into the hands of the freedom fighters in this country". Upon his release, Cahill again was put in charge of arms importation and to this end went to the United States. He was deported from the United States in 1984 for illegal entry (see Provisional IRA arms importation). He served on the IRA Army Council as late as the 1990s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he argued against proposals for Sinn Féin to stand in elections. However, in 1985, he spoke at the party's Ard Fheis in favor of republicans contesting elections and taking seats in the Dublin parliament, the Dáil. In his later years as honorary life vice-president of Sinn Féin, Cahill was a strong supporter of Gerry Adams and the Good Friday Agreement. In 1994, a controversial but central aspect of the IRA's ceasefire was the granting of a limited visa by then United States President Bill Clinton to Cahill, in the face of opposition by John Major's government, for the purpose of trying to win support for the new Sinn Féin peace strategy from Irish American IRA supporters.