Northern Campaign (Irish Republican Army) - Context of The Campaign

Context of The Campaign

February 1941 saw non-interned members of the IRA Northern Command meeting at an Army Conference in Belfast. The IRA Northern Command controlled IRA operations and issued orders to IRA volunteers in Counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Derry, along with major population centres such as Derry and Belfast. The chairman of the meeting was Hugh McAteer, then Commanding Officer (CO) of the IRA in Belfast. McAteer presided over a meeting involving more than thirty men, with the most notable figures of IRA Northern Command being:

• Sean Dolan Adjutant to Hugh McAteer,
• Intelligence officer (IO) Gerald O'Reilly,
• Patsy Hicks Commanding Officer (CO) of the ARP raid,
• Dan McAllister and,
• Tom Williams Acting CO of Belfast IRA C Company.

At this meeting, McAteer took over as CO of Northern Command with O'Reilly assuming the role of his Adjutant and John Graham becoming IO and Director of Publicity. Discussions at the meeting focused on a campaign against the government of Northern Ireland and forces acting under its control including the British Army. It was hoped that the promise of a new IRA campaign to end partition would help galvanise a weakened IRA throughout the entire island.

The meeting saw a decision whereby IRA Northern Command was to elect a new IRA Army Executive to oversee this campaign. It was felt that since the 1938 IRA Army Executive had largely been interned, imprisoned upon conviction, or died, between the period 1938–1941, new leadership was needed—a leadership that would carry on what they understood to be the "struggle against occupation" in Ireland.

The Northern Command and IRA volunteers based in Northern Ireland had been largely more successful in evading detention and arrest than their counterparts in Éire, (the region formerly known as the Irish Free State). IRA volunteers in Northern Ireland had never enjoyed the freedom of movement and association enjoyed by IRA volunteers in the Irish Free State between 1922 and 1936. It is also worth mentioning that these men had not felt contaminated by the actions of disgraced former IRA Chief of Staff (CS) Stephen Hayes, the "Hayes Affair" being an episode widely seen as damaging morale within the IRA. Hayes was believed at the time to have been an informer on, and traitor to, the IRA. The IRA Northern Command and units acting under it had also suffered from detection, arrest and internment during the period but had not suffered the problems of enemy infiltration now endemic to the IRA south of the border.