Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Brendan Behan – playwright, novelist, terrorist”, Weekend, September 6th) refers to Brendan Behan, rather disparagingly, as a “child soldier” when he was involved in and imprisoned for taking part in an IRA bombing campaign in Britain in 1939. At that time, and for years afterwards, the majority of Irish boys had to leave school at 14. Jobs were few and far between and many had to emigrate to make a living.
I remember that during the 1950s young men wishing to join the FCA would falsely declare their age as 17, although they were only 14 or 15. Indeed, I knew one such who was a corporal by the time he was of the correct minimum age to join. These young men were not “child soldiers”. They knew what they were doing and were inspired by a desire to fight and, if necessary, die for their country. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN P Ó CINNÉIDE,
Essenwood Road,
Durban,
South Africa.
A chara, – Brendan Behan was nearly 17 years of age when he was arrested in Liverpool with his bomb-making equipment in December 1939. His self-authorised mission had elements of farce. The ill-advised bombing campaign had come to an end. Stephen Hayes had replaced Sean Russell as chief of staff of the IRA. The fact that Behan’s 77-year-old “granny” had received a three-year jail sentence in July 1939 for possession of explosives in Birmingham may well have impelled his solo run.
His trial judge lamented that he would have to sentence him to borstal detention because of his age – had he been two months older he would been eligible for a maximum of 14 years of penal servitude. Behan was lucky. He was even luckier to be assigned to a new-style borstal in Hollesley Bay under the enlightened governor, Cyril Joyce.
Fintan refers to Behan as “a child soldier” but he was far removed from the unfortunate children in, say, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. He was that same age as Sean Lemass in the GPO and a year younger than Kevin Barry.
The enlightened regime in Hollesley Bay owed everything to penal reform and nothing to an inspired plan to rehabilitate aspiring bombers. Behan was the only politically motivated inmate there. – Yours, etc,
PEADAR
Mac MAGHNAIS,
Bóthar Bhinn Éadair,
Baile Atha Cliath 5.