Seamus Costello - Early Life: IRA Border Campaign

Early Life: IRA Border Campaign

Born into a middle class family in Bray, County Wicklow, he was educated at Christian Brothers College, Monkstown. He left school at 15 and became a mechanic and later car salesman in Dublin.

At the age of 16 he joined Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army. Within a year, he was commanding an active service unit of the IRA in south County Londonderry during the Border Campaign, where his leadership skills and his burning down of the courthouse in Magherafelt earned him the nickname of "the Boy General". The most publicised actions of his unit included the destruction of bridges and the burning of Magherafelt courthouse. He was arrested in Glencree, County Wicklow, in 1957 and sentenced to six months in Mountjoy Prison. On his release, he was immediately interned in the Curragh prison camp for two years.

He spent his time in prison studying. He was particularly inspired by his studies of the Vietnamese struggle for independence. He became a member of the escape committee which engineered the successful escapes of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill, among others. Costello would later refer to this time as his "university days".