Joe CahillJoe Cahill, who has died aged 84, was a former chief-of-staff of the IRA. His activities led to prison sentences in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, and he was twice deported from the US.
In old age, his approval of the twists and turns of republican policy proved invaluable to the Sinn Féin leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. President Clinton in 1994 personally sanctioned a visa for his visit to the US to garner Irish-American support for the IRA ceasefire.
A physical-force republican, he never publicly voiced any misgivings about the IRA's use of violence. He described the car bomb, which was first developed by the IRA, as a "useful weapon". Of Bloody Friday in 1972, when 11 people were killed and 130 others injured by IRA bombs in Belfast, he said: "That's the way it's got to be."
He was born on May 19th, 1920, at 60 Divis Street, Belfast, one of 11 children of Joseph Cahill and his wife, Josephine. He attended St Mary's CBS, Barrack Street, after which he worked with his father, a jobbing printer; he later became an apprentice joiner.
At the age of 17 he joined Fianna Éireann, and a year later was sworn into the IRA. He was one of a number of IRA members ordered to infiltrate the Air Raids Precautions warden service. The idea of "republicans walking around nationalist areas wearing official British uniform" greatly amused him.
There was nothing amusing about the murder of RUC Constable Patrick Murphy on Easter Sunday 1942. Cahill and five others were convicted of the killing and sentenced to death. However, the sentence was carried out only in the case of Tom Williams. Cahill and the others were reprieved, their sentences commuted to penal servitude for life.
In prison he made the acquaintance of Jimmy Steele, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. Released in 1949, he eventually found work as a joiner in the Harland and Wolff shipyards. (There he contracted asbestosis for which last year he was awarded £30,000 compensation.)
In the early 1950s he took part in several IRA raids on arms depots, including Gough Barracks, Armagh. He became leader of the Belfast IRA in 1956 as the Border campaign was about to be launched. Arrested in 1957, he was interned for four years.
On his release in 1961 he was appalled to discover that the IRA under Cathal Goulding had embraced Marxism and was turning its back on armed struggle. The leadership made no secret of its desire to end abstentionism, whereby republicans elected in parliamentary elections did not take their seats.
"There was a complete drift towards the political side of things," he complained, "and the military end was being run down."
He left the IRA. At Steele's suggestion, he worked for the National Graves Association, the organisation devoted to honouring the republican dead. In the late 1960s he associated himself with Steele and other traditionalists as the IRA split loomed.
Cahill was elected to the Provisional Army Council led by Seán Mac Stiofáin. In November 1970 he made a fund-raising visit to the US and was present at the launch of Noraid. Following his visit, small arms began to arrive in Ireland from the US; later, more lethal consignments, including Armalites.
When internment was introduced in August 1971 he escaped arrest and, with British troops patrolling nearby, told a press conference that the IRA remained intact. It was a propaganda coup, and he was sent to the US to capitalise on it. But he was arrested on his arrival at Kennedy airport and deported. In the course of a subsequent recruiting drive in the Republic he met Neil Blaney who, he said, "was delighted to associate himself with me" and expressed support for the IRA.
He was in December 1972 confirmed as IRA chief-of-staff to succeed Mac Stiofáin. In 1973 contacts initiated by the Irish-based Breton nationalist, Yann Goulet, came to fruition when Cahill visited Libya as the guest of Colonel Gadafy. He was deeply impressed by the Libyan leader, and returned to Ireland on board the Claudia, with a cargo of over five tons of arms and explosives.
But the ship was intercepted by the Irish Naval Service off the Waterford coast and he was arrested. Sentenced to three years' penal servitude, he denounced as "national treachery" the seizure of the arms shipment.
He was elected to the Sinn Féin ardchomhairle in 1976 and appointed party treasurer. He regularly travelled to the US on a false passport, raising funds for arms and ammunition for the IRA. During a visit in 1984 he was arrested, charged with violating a previous exclusion order and deported.
By the mid-1980s his operational IRA career was over. At the Sinn Féin Ardfheis in 1986 he spoke in favour of dropping abstentionism in the Republic, while proclaiming his loyalty to the ideals that had brought him in 1942 "to the foot of the gallows". Martin McGuinness acknowledged his role in clearing the way for Sinn Féin's entry to the Dáil. "If he had decided to walk away, it would have seriously undermined the strategy we were attempting to put in place."
Cahill again advanced the Adams-McGuinness strategy when, at an army council meeting in August 1994, his vote swung the ceasefire decision. As a guest at the IRA convention in 1997, he expressed support for "tactical acceptance" of the Mitchell Principles.
And at the Sinn Féin special Ardfheis in 1998 he urged delegates to accept the Belfast Agreement, saying: "It could and should be a stepping stone to a 32-county republic."
That year he stood down as SF treasurer and was made honorary vice-president for life. He stood unsuccessfully in the Northern Ireland Assembly election for North Antrim.
His wife, Annie (née Magee), and their seven children survive him.
Joe Cahill: born May 19th, 1920; died July 23rd, 2004