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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Rebel Heart
Kevin Toolis
Picador £14.99
Kevin Toolis’s book is a graphic description of the lives of those who have become ‘involved’ in the IRA. It details the persecution of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. The media like to portray an evil IRA terrorist who is simply bloodthirsty and callous. The book leaves you in little doubt that these are highly dedicated individuals – the risks of imprisonment and death are high, but for any working class Catholic growing up in Belfast or Derry in the early 1970s or after there was little alternative.
One chapter describes the lives of the Finucane brothers, three of whom joined the IRA and one who became a successful solicitor. Having been forced out of their home and subjected to regular raids by the army and RUC, they joined in nightly rioting after Bloody Sunday in 1972 when 13 innocent people were murdered by the army at a civil rights demonstration.
The introduction of internment (imprisonment without trial) fuelled recruitment to the IRA. This led to the imprisonment of three of the Finucane brothers. During this time, Dermot Finucane took part in the ‘blanket protest’ and was one of those who escaped in the mass breakout from Long Kesh.
The prisoners come across as highly organised and disciplined. In a statement to the prison officers held hostage during the breakout, they promised that no one would get hurt as long as they complied with the wishes of the escapees. This must have taken some discipline since the prison officers regularly abused and humiliated the prisoners.
Patrick Finucane, the brother who became a solicitor, turned his talents to exposing abuses of civil rights, winning cases and making inroads into repressive laws. He was not a member of the IRA, but the authorities made no distinction between those who were and those who defended them. It was a horrible inevitability that Patrick Finucane was murdered in his home by Loyalist gunmen just days after Douglas Hogg MP made a speech denouncing solicitors who defended Republicans.
In the chapter entitled Informers the sorry tale of Paddy Flood is told. It is obvious that the RUC’s chief weapon in its war against the IRA is the intelligence gleaned from informers.
Yet considering the blackmail tactics employed by them it is remarkable that more IRA members did not feel forced into informing.
Whatever the reason for Flood informing, the impact of it on his friends and family was devastating – no greater shame could be inflicted than to be the brother or wife of a ‘tout’.
Kevin Toolis is writing from the point of view of a second generation Irish person whose family was driven from the fertile Ulster farmlands by English colonisers in the 17th century to a barren bit of the west coast which could not sustain its inhabitants. The majority were forced to emigrate and the Toolis family found themselves in Scotland.
Toolis lays the blame for the troubles in Ireland where it belongs – with British imperialism – regards himself as having, like the IRA volunteer in this book, a ‘rebel heart’, but not so much so that he would take up arms to get the British out of Ireland. Maybe if he had grown up in the Republican strongholds of Shantallow, or Waterside and had to endure the relentless oppression that those who live there have to put up with, he would feel differently.
This is an interesting and enjoyable book. It is also timely with negotiations between Sinn Fein and the British government soon to start and the framework document up for discussion. It remains to be seen if those who have fought so hard and sacrificed so much will be satisfied with what is on offer.
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