Anthony McIntyre remembers a veteran republican who died in June.

Billy McKee
He might not have been its Omega but Billy McKee was certainly the Alpha of the Provisional IRA. Probably more crucial than any other individual to its formation it was largely through his efforts that the organisation spread throughout the North, in many places displacing the followers of Cathal Goulding in the process. He was the first commander of the Provisional IRA in a city with a rebellious nationalist population which the Stormont government felt was the deciding factor in the existence of the organisation.

Billy McKee was an old school Northern republican. He believed in a united Ireland but the heartbeat that sustained him was the daily reminder of just how vulnerable nationalists were in the city of his birth. His philosophical motivation of Irish unity was a more abstract concern than the exigencies of defence that preoccupied his mind and finetuned his sense of duty to vulnerable nationalists.

By 1969 he had given up on the Goulding leadership which was instructing the Belfast IRA to just talk with attacking loyalists on the grounds of a supposed common cause between workers with petrol bombs and the workers they were trying to burn out of their homes.

He achieved legendary status amongst Belfast nationalists when he was shot leading the defence of St Matthews in June 1970. A comrade died at the scene. He was humble enough to admit that he never got to fire a shot in what became known as the battle of St Matthews, having sustained a bullet wound himself in the early stages. Although approaching his 50s, he had raced to the East of the city in response of a developing situation that arose due to the Orange marching season. Writing 15 years ago I described the dire situation confronting him:

The British Army had cut off the two main bridges from the city centre leading into the Short Strand. They had orders not to go in. The IRA leader, a seasoned volunteer with over thirty years experience, had managed to get in ahead of them, in time to coordinate a defence effort, which he led from the front. The IRA's own blood on the 27th of June 1970 marked the line across which the murderous mobs of sectarian hatred would not pass.

The battle proved crucial for another reason. In its aftermath the Provisional IRA was viewed within wider Belfast circles as having successfully defended a nationalist enclave. In his own words nobody said IRA meant I Ran Away after that. When the British imposed a curfew in the Falls a week later and carried out house to house searches, killing four innocent people in the process, the move was seen as the British trying to seize the type of weaponry without which the Short Strand would have been overrun. Working class nationalist opinion was incensed. The British had taken the second step in conjuring into being an insurrectionary force against itself, The first had been their failure to prorogue Stormont  on the day they sent their troops into the North in the wake of serious and violent disturbances. In the view of Billy McKee had they done that the Provisional IRA would never have been formed. It was a crucial insight, homing in on British behaviour as distinct from British presence as the vital energy that breathed life into the Provisional IRA. When Stormont was eventually usurped by Direct Rule, it was much too late. Those who now ruled directly had two months earlier allowed their army to massacre an unarmed civilian population in Derry. The die was cast, the turning point long since past.

Arrested in 1971 and jailed for five years on a trumped up charge, he led the 1972 hunger strike which secured political status for all conflict prisoners in the North. He was no stranger to unionism's jails, having previously been both sentenced and interned. He led the IRA first in Crumlin Road Prison and then Long Kesh from which he was released in the autumn of 1974.

A later Belfast commander, Brendan Hughes, would speak of him with something approaching reverence. The Dark had not always been such an admirer but later conceded that the negativity he displayed towards Billy was largely the result of being influenced by Gerry Adams who needed the integrity of the McKee school undermined as part of his own power play. Rubbishing him for being central to the truce of 75 was considered par for the course.

In addition to commanding the Belfast Brigade he went on to become the President of the IRA Army Council but by the mid 1970s had left the organisation after a dispute with Brian Keenan over the latter's advocacy of bombing trains. His own critics were quick to point out that the balance sheet had to include his leading the IRA into a sectarian war over a two year period and initiating a deadly feud with the Official IRA. His view of the IRA's sectarian campaign was that it was driven by demands from the community who felt at the mercy of loyalist death squads: a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of view.

Life wasn't easy for him from that point on as he had to fend for himself in a world not favourably disposed to his view of it. He persevered and never abandoned his republican outlook, on occasion speaking at republican events or endorsing the various causes they promoted. A focused man, he was an apple that never fell far from the brace of trees that gave him sustenance throughout his life, republicanism and the Catholic faith. In both areas he was devout.

The last time I spoke to him I asked him if he was glad his days of imprisonment were long in the past. By this point although 90, he laughed, telling me that if they were to jail him again in the morning, it would not cause him a thought. I knew immediately it was no idle boast. He had been there, done that and was more than willing to wear the Unrepentant Fenian Bastard T-Shirt again. 

I was introduced to him by Brendan Hughes while studying at Queens and he agreed to be interviewed for a thesis I was writing on condition that I was a republican and had done time. Our first conversation took place over whiskey in the Laurel Leaf pub on the Falls Road. I got to know him quite well, finding him affable, but someone who did not suffer fools gladly and not one to mince his words. Once while interviewing Sean MacStiofain, the erstwhile chief of staff told me to pass on his regards to Billy and tell him that he would be at Sean's funeral as Sean would not survive long enough to be at his. McStiofain was exhibiting the limiting after-effects of a stroke when he and I shared soup in a Navan pub. Upon conveying his thoughts to Billy, his words were tell that man I will never be at his funeral. He was not a man for half measures or false bonhomie. I never did tell MacStiofain.

He did not have a high opinion of the Provisional IRA's frst chief of staff, feeling that his distance from Belfast left him out of touch with facts on the ground. When MacStiofain instructed the Belfast leadership to prepare for an Easter Rising style event in Belfast in 1970, it was Billy who gave him short shrift.

When I would call to see him I would bring a bottle of whiskey. He would pour a glass for each of us, dilute his own and hand one to me saying, with a twinkle in his eye, that there were two things a man must never do: kiss another man's wife or water another man's whiskey.

Unlike those who stepped into his shoes and found they never fitted them, he was not a dishonest man nor a people manipulator. In his eyes republicanism was a Via Dolorosa not a career path. He was a product of his times and the circumstances of the community he hailed from. Had he not have broken the will of the British in 1972 there is no doubt he would have lain in the plot now occupied by Bobby Sands.


Billy McKee

Anthony McIntyre remembers a veteran republican who died in June.

Billy McKee
He might not have been its Omega but Billy McKee was certainly the Alpha of the Provisional IRA. Probably more crucial than any other individual to its formation it was largely through his efforts that the organisation spread throughout the North, in many places displacing the followers of Cathal Goulding in the process. He was the first commander of the Provisional IRA in a city with a rebellious nationalist population which the Stormont government felt was the deciding factor in the existence of the organisation.

Billy McKee was an old school Northern republican. He believed in a united Ireland but the heartbeat that sustained him was the daily reminder of just how vulnerable nationalists were in the city of his birth. His philosophical motivation of Irish unity was a more abstract concern than the exigencies of defence that preoccupied his mind and finetuned his sense of duty to vulnerable nationalists.

By 1969 he had given up on the Goulding leadership which was instructing the Belfast IRA to just talk with attacking loyalists on the grounds of a supposed common cause between workers with petrol bombs and the workers they were trying to burn out of their homes.

He achieved legendary status amongst Belfast nationalists when he was shot leading the defence of St Matthews in June 1970. A comrade died at the scene. He was humble enough to admit that he never got to fire a shot in what became known as the battle of St Matthews, having sustained a bullet wound himself in the early stages. Although approaching his 50s, he had raced to the East of the city in response of a developing situation that arose due to the Orange marching season. Writing 15 years ago I described the dire situation confronting him:

The British Army had cut off the two main bridges from the city centre leading into the Short Strand. They had orders not to go in. The IRA leader, a seasoned volunteer with over thirty years experience, had managed to get in ahead of them, in time to coordinate a defence effort, which he led from the front. The IRA's own blood on the 27th of June 1970 marked the line across which the murderous mobs of sectarian hatred would not pass.

The battle proved crucial for another reason. In its aftermath the Provisional IRA was viewed within wider Belfast circles as having successfully defended a nationalist enclave. In his own words nobody said IRA meant I Ran Away after that. When the British imposed a curfew in the Falls a week later and carried out house to house searches, killing four innocent people in the process, the move was seen as the British trying to seize the type of weaponry without which the Short Strand would have been overrun. Working class nationalist opinion was incensed. The British had taken the second step in conjuring into being an insurrectionary force against itself, The first had been their failure to prorogue Stormont  on the day they sent their troops into the North in the wake of serious and violent disturbances. In the view of Billy McKee had they done that the Provisional IRA would never have been formed. It was a crucial insight, homing in on British behaviour as distinct from British presence as the vital energy that breathed life into the Provisional IRA. When Stormont was eventually usurped by Direct Rule, it was much too late. Those who now ruled directly had two months earlier allowed their army to massacre an unarmed civilian population in Derry. The die was cast, the turning point long since past.

Arrested in 1971 and jailed for five years on a trumped up charge, he led the 1972 hunger strike which secured political status for all conflict prisoners in the North. He was no stranger to unionism's jails, having previously been both sentenced and interned. He led the IRA first in Crumlin Road Prison and then Long Kesh from which he was released in the autumn of 1974.

A later Belfast commander, Brendan Hughes, would speak of him with something approaching reverence. The Dark had not always been such an admirer but later conceded that the negativity he displayed towards Billy was largely the result of being influenced by Gerry Adams who needed the integrity of the McKee school undermined as part of his own power play. Rubbishing him for being central to the truce of 75 was considered par for the course.

In addition to commanding the Belfast Brigade he went on to become the President of the IRA Army Council but by the mid 1970s had left the organisation after a dispute with Brian Keenan over the latter's advocacy of bombing trains. His own critics were quick to point out that the balance sheet had to include his leading the IRA into a sectarian war over a two year period and initiating a deadly feud with the Official IRA. His view of the IRA's sectarian campaign was that it was driven by demands from the community who felt at the mercy of loyalist death squads: a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of view.

Life wasn't easy for him from that point on as he had to fend for himself in a world not favourably disposed to his view of it. He persevered and never abandoned his republican outlook, on occasion speaking at republican events or endorsing the various causes they promoted. A focused man, he was an apple that never fell far from the brace of trees that gave him sustenance throughout his life, republicanism and the Catholic faith. In both areas he was devout.

The last time I spoke to him I asked him if he was glad his days of imprisonment were long in the past. By this point although 90, he laughed, telling me that if they were to jail him again in the morning, it would not cause him a thought. I knew immediately it was no idle boast. He had been there, done that and was more than willing to wear the Unrepentant Fenian Bastard T-Shirt again. 

I was introduced to him by Brendan Hughes while studying at Queens and he agreed to be interviewed for a thesis I was writing on condition that I was a republican and had done time. Our first conversation took place over whiskey in the Laurel Leaf pub on the Falls Road. I got to know him quite well, finding him affable, but someone who did not suffer fools gladly and not one to mince his words. Once while interviewing Sean MacStiofain, the erstwhile chief of staff told me to pass on his regards to Billy and tell him that he would be at Sean's funeral as Sean would not survive long enough to be at his. McStiofain was exhibiting the limiting after-effects of a stroke when he and I shared soup in a Navan pub. Upon conveying his thoughts to Billy, his words were tell that man I will never be at his funeral. He was not a man for half measures or false bonhomie. I never did tell MacStiofain.

He did not have a high opinion of the Provisional IRA's frst chief of staff, feeling that his distance from Belfast left him out of touch with facts on the ground. When MacStiofain instructed the Belfast leadership to prepare for an Easter Rising style event in Belfast in 1970, it was Billy who gave him short shrift.

When I would call to see him I would bring a bottle of whiskey. He would pour a glass for each of us, dilute his own and hand one to me saying, with a twinkle in his eye, that there were two things a man must never do: kiss another man's wife or water another man's whiskey.

Unlike those who stepped into his shoes and found they never fitted them, he was not a dishonest man nor a people manipulator. In his eyes republicanism was a Via Dolorosa not a career path. He was a product of his times and the circumstances of the community he hailed from. Had he not have broken the will of the British in 1972 there is no doubt he would have lain in the plot now occupied by Bobby Sands.


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