Clann na hÉireann was a support organisation among Irish emigrants in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...
for
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( ; ; ) is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The History of Sinn Féin, original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffit ...
during the 1960s and its successor organisation the
Workers' Party
Workers' Party is a name used by several political parties throughout the world. The name has been used by both organisations on the left and right of the political spectrum. It is currently used by followers of Marxism, Marxism–Leninism, Maoism ...
in the 1970s and the 1980s.
History
Consisting mainly of Irish emigrants, the Clann (as it was referred to by sympathisers) was set up in 1964 by the merger of Sinn Féin Birmingham branch and Sinn Féin London branch. Party President
Tomás Mac Giolla came over and organised the merger with Seamus Collins from Birmingham who was the Clann Chairperson for most of its existence.
Seán Ó Cionnaith became Clann organiser. Clann organized political meetings and protest marches and collected funds to support the movement's activities in Ireland. It was busiest in Birmingham and Glasgow, while their HQ was in
Fulham
Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies in a loop on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...
. It supported the
IRA, while the IRA recruited from the Clann's membership and maintained its own structure in Britain.
Clann established contact with Irish organisations in Britain and also with left-wing organisations such as the
Connolly Association and the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...
. However, it kept a certain distance from these groups, as when it disassociated itself from leftists who became involved in a clash outside the Irish Embassy in London in April 1965.
[
Attempts were made in the mid-1960s to amalgamate Clann na hÉireann with the Connolly Association (which in turn shared some members with the Communist Party of Great Britain). However, despite the efforts of the Dublin leadership, this proposal was not accepted at the relevant Clann na hÉireann Ard Fheis.
After the split in the republican movement at the onset of ]the Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
in 1969–1970, the leadership of Clann na hÉireann sided with Official Sinn Féin and the Official IRA
The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA (OIRA; ) was an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a " workers' republic" encompassing all of Ireland. It emerg ...
.
The Clann published a monthly newspaper called ''Rosc Catha'' ( Irish for "battle-cry"), starting in October 1972. They also organised CRAIC, a Birmingham Irish festival week which ran throughout the 1970s and 1980s. One of the CRAIC festivals brought the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, over for a reading.
The BBC documentary, ''Birmingham Irish I am'', which aired in February 2020, details part of the history and activities of Clann, and interviews two main members, Seamus Collins and Padraig Yeats.
Prominent members
* Michael Gaughan from Mayo joined Clann na hÉireann in London before becoming an IRA volunteer in a London-based Active Service Unit
An active service unit (ASU; ) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) Clandestine cell system, cell of four to ten members, tasked with carrying out armed attacks. In 2002, the IRA had about 1,000 active members of which about 300 were i ...
. In December 1971, he was sentenced at the Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The s ...
to seven years imprisonment for his part in an IRA fundraising mission to rob a bank in Hornsey, North London. He joined the Provisional IRA while in prison. He died in 1974 in Parkhurst Prison during a hunger-strike.
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* Senior Official IRA member Jim Flynn was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in the UK for eighteen days before being deported back to Ireland in 1975. He was allegedly responsible for the death of INLA leader Seamus Costello
Seamus Costello (, 1939 – 5 October 1977) was an Irish politician. He was a leader of Official Sinn Féin and the Official Irish Republican Army and latterly of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army ...
in 1977 and was shot dead by the INLA in 1982.[
*Seamus Collins kept Clann active until the early 1990s. The creation of the Democratic Left party in 1992, had a devastating effect on the party, splitting the membership and support base.
]
Publications
* ''The Littlejohn Memorandum'' (1975)
References
External links
BBC: Paramilitaries - Official IRA''Rosc Catha'' Vol. 1 No. 1
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clann Na hEireann
Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)
Irish republican organisations
Official Irish Republican Army
Sinn Féin
Political parties and organisations of the Irish diaspora