Dáithí Ó Conaill
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Dáithí Ó Conaill (1938 – 1 January 1991) was an Irish republican, a member of the IRA Army Council, vice-president of Provisional Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin. He was also the first chief of staff of the Continuity IRA.
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[edit] Joins IRA
Ó Conaill was born in Cork in 1938. His uncle Michael O'Sullivan, a member of the 1st Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army, was bayoneted to death by British forces in 1921. After his vocational school education, he trained as a woodwork teacher in a college in County Wexford.
He joined the Republican Movement at 17 years of age and took part in the IRA Border Campaign. On 1 January 1957 he was second-in-command of the Pearse Column which carried out the raid on Brookeborough Royal Ulster Constabulary Barracks in County Fermanagh, in which Seán South and Fergal O'Hanlon were killed. He was arrested by the Garda Síochána and imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison for six months. Upon release, he was interned in the Curragh. On 27 September 1958 he escaped along with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and went on the run.
With most of the IRA leadership under arrest or interned, Ó Brádaigh became IRA chief of staff and Ó Conaill became IRA Director of Operations.
During an engagement with the British army at Lough Neagh in 1959, he was shot and badly injured and later captured by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. On recovery he received an eight-year sentence and remained in Belfast Jail until he was released unconditionally in September 1963.
In the October 1961 Irish general election, Ó Conaill ran as a Sinn Féin candidate in the Cork Borough constituency. Winning 1,956 fist preference votes (a share of 5.24 percent), he just missed taking the fifth and final seat. [1]
Upon release, Ó Conaill took up residence in Glencolumcille, Co Donegal, where he taught. He worked closely with Fr James McDyer who was active in rural development. During the late 1960s, Ó Conaill played little part in the activities of the IRA or Sinn Féin.
With the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, Ó Conaill was initially reluctant to reactivate his interest in the IRA, despite approaches from prominent republicans. He eventually returned to the IRA and was appointed Officer in Command (OC) of the organisation in Co Donegal by the then IRA chief of staff Cathal Goulding.
Ó Conaill was approached by elements from within the Irish government and the Fianna Fáil party with an offer to provide arms and training in Irish Army barracks or ranges. [2]
[edit] Sides with Provisional IRA
Ó Conaill went with the Provisional IRA after the 1969 IRA split and served on the first Provisional IRA Army Council. In 1970 he travelled to New York and was instrumental in establishing Irish Northern Aid or NORAID, which raised funds for the Provisionals.
In 1971, he travelled to Prague and purchased 4.5 tons of small arms from the Czechoslavakia state arms marketing company, Omnipol. The consignment was later seized in the Netherlands.
Despite his belief in the armed campaign, Ó Conaill was not solely a militarist. He was deeply involved in the drafting of the Éire Nua policy, launched by Sinn Féin in June 1972. He also played a leading role in the truce negotiations between the IRA and the British government on two occasions between 1972 and 1975.
On 13 June 1972, he appeared at an IRA press conference in Derry, along with Seán Mac Stiofáin, Seamus Twomey and Martin McGuinness, which announced an IRA cease-fire proposal, and gave William Whitelaw forty-eight hours to make a decision.
On 20 June 1972, he represented the IRA along with Gerry Adams at secret talks at the home of Colonel MW McCorkell, Ballyarnett, County Londonderry. The British representatives were Frank Steele, who presented himself as a government official but was an MI6 agent, and Philip John Woodfield of the Northern Ireland Office. The meeting lasted four hours and the British side informed the IRA representatives that while Whitelaw refused to offer political status, he was prepared to suspend arrests of republicans and searches of homes. Both sides then agreed to call a ten-day ceasefire.
In a report, Woodfield noted that “There is no doubt whatever that these two at least genuinely want a ceasefire and a permanent end to violence," and that the appearance of Ó Conaill and Adams was “appearance and manner of the men was "respectable and respectful". "Their response to every argument was reasonable and moderate. (…) Their behaviour and attitude appeared to bear no relation to the indiscriminate campaigns of bombing and shooting in which they have both been prominent leaders." [3]
On 26 June, the IRA called a "bilateral truce". On 7 July 1972, he was part of the IRA delegation which met with representatives of the British government in London (see article on Seán Mac Stiofáin for more details).
After the collapse of the IRA-British government contacts, Ó Conaill maintained informal contacts with Sir John Hackett, by then retired and principal of Kings College, University of London, and who had been the commanding officer of British forces in Northern Ireland. In September 1973, Hackett reported to Woodfield of the Northern Ireland Office that Ó Conaill was "losing ground to younger and more impatient operators. To arrest him and remove him from the scene would loosen restraint on those and open the way for more irresponsible action." [4]
In 1974, Ó Conaill met with UVF leader Billy Mitchell at a secret meeting at Lough Sheelin, County Cavan. The meeting lasted four hours. Mitchell later recalled that "We just wanted to get to know one another. And we thought we could find a way to call an end to everything." "I really liked David. And neither of us accused the other of anything" [5]
In an interview with Mary Holland on London Weekend Television’s Weekend World on 17 November 1974, Ó Conaill claimed there would be an escalation of IRA violence. Four days later, on 21 November, IRA detonated bombs in two pubs in Birmingham, killing 21 civilians. The interview and the attacks led to the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the United Kingdom. [www.bfi.org.uk/collections/ catalogues/troubles/troubles.pdf]. The interview prompted hostile questions in the Westminster parliament.
Although Ó Conaill was on the run for much of the early 1970s, he managed to make some public appearances. In 1973, he gave the oration at the Easter Rising commemoration in Belfast, and the following year, he spoke at the funeral of IRA hunger striker Michael Gaughan in Ballina.
While on the run he was prominent in arranging the Feakle talks with Protestant clergymen in December 1974.
Ó Conaill was officer commanding (OC) of the IRA Southern Command for much of the early 1970s until his arrest, in July 1975. (He was replaced by Pat Doherty). Found guilty of IRA membership, and imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison, where in 1977 he was one of 20 men who took part in a 47-day hunger strike in protest at conditions in the jail.
[edit] Involvement in Sinn Féin electoral campaigns
Upon his release from prison, he was active in the National H-Block/Armagh Committee. Contrary to popular opinion, it was Ó Conaill and not Gerry Adams who proposed that Bobby Sands contest the Westminster by-election for Fermanagh/South Tyrone during the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. This decision was made at the March 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle meeting.
He was the director of elections in the June 1981 Irish general election in which two prisoners elected to Dáil Éireann: hunger striker Kieran Doherty in the Cavan/Monaghan constituency and prison protester Paddy Agnew (TD) in the Louth constituency.
In 1983, along with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, he resigned from the position of vice-president of Sinn Féin in opposition to the dropping of the Éire Nua policy.
[edit] Joins Republican Sinn Féin
At the 1986 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, he opposed the decision to drop abstentionism. He joined in the walk out led by Ó Brádaigh and was chairman of Republican Sinn Féin from 1986 to 1987 and subsequently a vice-president of the party.
Shortly before his death, he wrote his a document entitled Towards a Peaceful Ireland, which offered a traditionalist republican solution to Irish partition.
[edit] External links
- Towards a Peaceful Ireland Document drafted by Dáithí Ó Conaill shortly before his death.
