Early Life
He was born in the Lower Falls area of Belfast, and spent most of his life there and in the nearby Markets area of the city. His mother died when he was four years old leaving behind Joe and three other children. His father remarried having another three children with his second wife. He was educated in the Christian Brothers school on Barrack Street in Belfast, where he developed an interest in the Irish language. A bricklayer by trade, he joined the Fianna at age 14 and the IRA in the early 1960s.
In 1964 he was involved in a riot on Divis Street in Belfast in opposition to the threat of loyalist leader Ian Paisley to march on the area to remove an Irish tricolour flying over the election office of Billy McMillen. In 1965 he was arrested for the possession of bayonets with five other men. The five refused to answer questions in custody or to speak in court and were sentenced to a three years in prison. They served nine months in Crumlin Rd jail. McCann had had expressed an interest in the priesthood while a teenager and became more religiously committed in prison. He joined the third order of the Franciscans in his later teens.
McCann was active in the IRA's involvement in the civil rights agitation; protesting against the development of the Divis flats which were being built to replace the old tenement slums in the Lower Falls. McCann became Officer in Command (O.C.) of the IRA in the Markets, involved in housing issues and any matters which related to local government.
In 1969, after sectarian rioting in Belfast, the IRA split into two factions; the newly created Provisional Irish Republican Army, traditionalist militarists, and the existing organisation, which became known as the Official IRA, Marxist-oriented socialists. McCann sided with the Officials as he felt they had a better political analysis. His brothers Dennis, Patrick and Brian also joined the OIRA.
In the rioting of August 1969, McCann participated in armed defence of the Lower Falls area.
McCann married Anne McKnight who hailed from a strong republican family in the Markets area in Belfast. Anne's older brother Bobby McKnight was part of the 1956-62 border campaign and was arrested and jailed as well as being interned. Bobby was command staff in Belfast played a key role in the arms deals that went on between the IRA and the Irish government of 1969. Anne's brother Seán sided with the Provisionals after the 1969 split. He went on to represent South Belfast for Sinn Féin
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