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(by Stephen King, Sunday Tribune)
The desire of Tom Williams' family to re-inter his remains was perfectly understandable; the Republican Movement's desire to commemorate this period in its history, less so. The resonances are hardly noble.On 12th November 1939, eight months before Neville Chamberlain announced that the UK was at war with Hitler's Germany, the IRA under the leadership of Sean Russell issued an ultimatum to the British Government demanding a statement of intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland within four days. When no response was forthcoming, the IRA - the supposed inheritors of the true Republic - declared war on England. By July, 127 explosions had been recorded in Great Britain. Seven innocent civilians died in a campaign almost certainly planned with Nazi connivance, five in one outrage in Coventry.
In 1940 Russell travelled to Germany to try to interest the Reich in a bizarre plan to jointly invade Northern Ireland, codenamed 'Operation Kathleen'. The Germans were not impressed with the IRA, one intelligence officer in Ireland regarding them as "worthless". Russell died of a perforated ulcer on board a German U-boat.
Most Northern Catholics were indifferent to the war. Many served with distinction in the home defence forces. Though almost all resisted conscription, only a minority, including several in the IRA, were openly sympathetic to Nazism, revelling in Hitler's early successes. In the Falls district of Belfast, though, the police and army were regularly taunted with pro-Nazi slogans and graffiti and Celtic supporters gave Nazi salutes to Linfield fans.
In August 1940 Senator McLaughlin with two colleagues met Edouard Hempel, the German Minister in Dublin, placing the nationalist minority under Axis protection. The IRA meanwhile, as then Volunteer Paddy Devlin recounts, gathered information about ground defences and passed it on to the Germans. It was to be the great regret of Devlin's life.
It was against this background that the IRA attempted to commemorate the 1916 Rising at Milltown cemetery in 1942, in defiance of a government ban. The IRA's 'C' Company were ordered to create a diversion and took up positions on the Kashmir Road. They shot at a policecar and in the ensuing gun battle Constable Paddy Murphy, a father of nine, was killed.
Murphy was, according to Devlin, "well known to the entire community in the Falls and it was unusual for him to be in a motor vehicle. More often, he was out on foot around the area, where he was very popular with the kids, always joking with them or pulling their legs". Murphy would have been by no means unusual as a Catholic RUC man in Belfast at the time.
Tom Williams and five others were convicted of Murphy's murder and sentenced to death. Williams was the only one of the six to hang, the others having their sentences commuted. According to the evidence of an RUC witness, Williams almost certainly did not fire the fatal shots but he alone admitted it in court. Joe Cahill, one of the six and later IRA Chief of Staff, should know who did murder Murphy.
Williams, sentenced under wartime legislation, was the only person ever to be executed during the Stormont era. In the 1920s Sir James Craig decided the death penalty would be too controversial a punishment in a divided society like Northern Ireland, highlighting the regime's liberality. By contrast, of course, the Cumann na nGaedheal and de Valera governments executed IRA men with impunity.
Williams' death generated "mass hysteria" in the North according to Inspector General Wickham of the RUC. Four policemen were murdered in reprisal. The execution was glorified in the South, shops shutting on IRA instructions during the hour of execution while thousands prayed in the streets. This compares with the complete indifference shown to the execution of eight IRA men in the South during the war.
Whether it was intended or not, the protests played straight into the Nazis hands. "The picture of the Irish capital in mourning constitutes a moving protest against the execution of the young nationalist," reported Radio Paris. The German Home Service reported battles between "Irish freedom fighters and British police" in Belfast as a result of the execution of "the young hero".
What all this has to do with Irish freedom is unclear. Why does a party which seeks a representative police force glorify the killer of a Catholic community policeman? Why does a party which pretends to be left-wing and progressive seek to remind us of its collaborationist heritage? Above all, why do Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brun maintain the illusion that they are inheritors of Sean Russell's Irish Republic rather than Ministers of the British Crown?