Revealed: Maria Gatland's life with the IRA in her own words
by Dave Burke
dave.burke@essnmedia.co.uk
In September 1971 Maria McGuire was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
Armed with a .38 automatic weapon and carrying £20,000 in cash, she was being pursued by security forces from several countries over her role in a huge arms deal.
More than 160 crates containing bazookas, rocket launchers and hand-grenades had been seized at an airport in Amsterdam, and a warrant had been issued for her arrest.
McGuire found herself on the run with a member of the Provisional IRA's ruling council – with whom she was having an affair.
In Ireland, plans were afoot to kidnap the Dutch ambassador if she and David O'Connell were arrested.
But despite a massive media frenzy, she and O'Connell were able to escape the Netherlands through Belgium and France before returning to Ireland to a hero's welcome.
Even though their mission had failed, the pair became - for a brief period - the golden couple of the Irish Republican movement.
In her book To Take Arms: My Year With The IRA Provisionals, published in 1973, McGuire wrote candidly: "The press had made great play of the fact that we had escaped the British secret service; we had achieved another glorious failure.
"It was better even than if we had been successful, because then the public would have had to confront reality.
"Why did we want the guns? To kill people."
She learnt two months later that she faced three years in prison if she re-entered Switzerland, where she had exchanged currency.
In the space of just one year, McGuire became a close confidante of many of the Provisional IRA's top leaders, before disillusionment set in over the group's methods.
She had signed up after seeing the Provisionals' publicity officer, Sean O Bradaigh, on Irish television.
So keen was McGuire to talk to him that she rang the TV studio straight away and left a message.
Within weeks she was put forward to the British press as an example of the new middle-class membership the movement was attracting.
But as violence escalated in Belfast following a failed ceasefire in July 1972, McGuire decided she could not support the sectarian killing, and fled to England.
There she gave extensive interviews in the British press and published her book hoping to lift the lid on IRA brutality.
Her defection prompted the Provisional IRA's chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain - who she described as "narrow minded" - to warn that if she ever returned to Ireland she would face a court martial and possibly execution.
Her book - which caused a storm on its publication - revealed her thoughts on one of the most intensive bombing campaigns ever carried out.
Following an IRA bomb in Donegall Street, Belfast, which killed six men and injured 146 in March 1972, she wrote: "I admit that at the time I did not connect with the people who were killed or injured in such explosions.
"I always judged such deaths in terms of the effect they would have on our support – and I felt that this in turn depended on how many people accepted our explanation."
*Maria McGuire on her affair with Provisional IRA ruling council member David O'Connell, which started in Amsterdam...
"It just happened, and seemed perfectly natural, even though our situation was very unnatural.
We were under considerable stress together, and became very close, depended on one another, because of that.
Possibly it meant more to Dave than it did to me; but when we managed not to worry about the outcome of our mission and our own chances of escaping, we were very happy."
*Maria McGuire on meeting the Provisional IRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain...
"He seemed short and squat, and lacked Dave's physical presence: only later did I realise he was in fact over six feet tall.
He appeared a little taken aback by me too; I knew he had heard about me, but possibly he wasn't expecting someone wearing hot pants to be interested in the Provisional IRA."
*Maria McGuire on the IRA's bombing campaign in Northern Ireland....
"The intention behind the bombing campaign was to cause confusion and terror.
In 1971 bomb explosions averaged three a day throughout the six counties, and it was very easy to create confusion in the centre of Belfast ....
Sometimes the Belfast Provisionals would give a succession of false alarms, and then just as the city was enjoying the lull, plant half a dozen bombs on the same day.
We believed that the bombing campaign had a greater psychological effect in this way.
By causing such terror we demonstrated that whatever steps the army took, the Provisionals could continue the military campaign; half a million people in Belfast would be kept wondering where the Provisionals would strike next, and would be forced to tell the British to make peace with us."
*Maria McGuire on killing British soldiers....
"I agreed with the shooting of British soldiers and believed that the more who were killed the better.
I remember occasions where we heard late at night that a British soldier had been shot and seriously wounded in Belfast or Derry - and we would hope that by the morning he would be dead."
*Maria McGuire on killing civilians...
"I accepted too the bombing of Belfast, and when civilians were accidentally blown to pieces dismissed this as one of the unfortunate hazards of urban guerrilla war."
*Maria McGuire on being banned from entering Switzerland...
"I happened to hear a television news item that two Irish citizens had been excluded from Switzerland - Dave O'Connell and myself.
We had done nothing illegal in Switzerland that I could recall...
Then the Swiss Embassy in Dublin telephoned Dave and asked us to call at the embassy to collect our exclusion orders.
We naturally refused."
*Maria McGuire on becoming disillusioned in the face of escalating violence....
"I could not avoid the conclusion that the probability of civilian casualties had been accepted, and perhaps even planned.
Whenever such casualties had occurred before, there had always been the pressure of events to take my mind off them.
But now, almost for the first time, I wondered about the crippled and the widowed and the lives that had been changed forever."
10 Comments
by Croybanned, Croydon
Sunday, December 07 2008, 8:19AM
“To Jim Lynch.
Re your reference to "sectarian bigots", the problems in Northern Ireland have only ever been magnified by our American "cousins" and the help that some of them - perhaps people like you - gave. This had the effect of pouring petrol (Ooops! ..."gasoline" - Sorry!) on the flames in the form of money, guns, ammunition, military training, support, and at some levels political encouragement by your "Irishmen" - most of whom had never been to that country and only had some hazy, rose-coloured, Hollywood-generated image in their (probably alcohol-clouded!) minds. So how many of those "sectarian bigots" live in the Land of the Freebee and Home of the Depraved, Jim?
Oh, yes, and didn't your lot change their mind about terrorists double-quick when people were maimed and killed in your back yard (9/11)? Don't forget, it had been going on here for years.
Hypocrites!”
by Leveller on the Liffey, Dublin
Saturday, December 06 2008, 6:25PM
“Stephen (Ulster) talks about a majority wanting to remain British while glossing over an electoral stroke that Robert Mugabe would be proud of.
Gerrymandering created the 'Northern Ireland' state.
When Britain undemocratically partitioned Ireland in 1921 (under the threat of further violence) 'Northern Ireland' was carved out of the nine counties of Ulster purely on a sectarian headcount. Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan were ceded to the Irish Free State to ensure a unionist/pro-British majority.
That's not democracy - that's gerrymandering.”
by sean de clare, Surrey U.K.
Saturday, December 06 2008, 2:16PM
“It seems very strange that from the USA Jim Lynch refers to sectarian bigotry.
It is a fact that the IRA allegedly reflected the views of the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland and the UDA reflected the views of the Presbyterians in Northern Ireland. It is also a fact that the Brtish Army was increased in Northern Irleand at the request of Stormnt to protect Catholics from terrorist attachs by the U.D.R.
This kind of long term animosity goes back to the Battle of The Boyne when Catholic King James of Scotland fought Presybyterian William of Orange from Holland, on Irish soil for the throne of England.
King James could not find enough Catholics in England to fight his cause, because they had been oppressed in England since the time of Henry VIIIth.
It is also the ultimate irony that today December 6th. 2008 David Cameron is in Northern Ireland at an Ulster Unionist conference trying to resurrect the aliance between Protestant Conservative and Protestant Ulster Unionists to promote his own party chances in the European elections in June 2009.
The term "Tory" for the Conservative and Unionist Party comes from the 19th.Century, when the Conservative and Unionist Party was first formed in Northern Ireland
In Gaelic the word "Toraidge" is pronounced "Tory" and was used in the 17th.Century for a cattlle rustler or a thief in the night. Sadly in the time of the plantations that is precisely what the new English land owners did to the Irish not only in the North but all over the Island of Ireland.
It is also the case of why people like Mr. Lynch who are descended from those Irish people driven out of Ireland by the potato famine of the 1830's have their knowledge of Irish History blurred by politiicians and religious prejudice..
In all the romance about President Elect Barack Obama, In Southern Ireland they spell his name O'Bama because his is in fact half Irish on his mother's side despite his skin colour.”
by Jim Lynch, U.S.A
Saturday, December 06 2008, 12:04AM
“stephen, wrong as usual I was born and raised in the United States.
I guess the terminology bothers you.
"The North of Ireland."
Deal with it Stephen.
By the way the IRA would not have existed if sectarian bigots like you didn't exist.”
by seandeclare, Surrey UK.
Friday, December 05 2008, 10:20PM
“Maria Gatland joined a UK political party which in 1982 ordered the invasion of The Malvinas to protect Sovereginty of a far flung outpost of the Brtish Empire. She also joined a Tory party which voted for the unlawful invasion of Iraq in 2002. As a self cofessed gun runner she shloud feel right at home with her new poltical friends.
As far as The comments from the USA are concerned they should note that whilst Europe was engaged in World war I in 1917 the German Embassy in Washington DC published a warning that shipping would be sunk approaching England.
One month later the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine and the USA entered world war one.
From 1939 until 1941 Europe was again at war and it was only after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and a decalration of war on the US by Germany that America involved itself in Europe.
Americans should also remember that most of the funding for the guns and bombs used by the I.,R.A. came from America.
Forgive yes but never forget the cuases of war are greed avarice and envy. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the earth.”
by Paul in Croytown, Croytown
Friday, December 05 2008, 3:35PM
“My namesake Paul;
- the majority in the British Isles are loyal to the Crown.
the majority in 'Yerp' are, or so we are told, loyal to an unaccountable and terminally corrupt entity, which has been fostered onto its denizens by a fraud - sorry 'The Treaties of Rome, Brussels, etc.'.
The majority in the world are in poverty.
Let us try and agree what natural divisions are.
For myself, based on what littel I know of her, I have no problem with Maria Gatland - she has, it seems, repented.
Isn't there a parable about that?
And we're mostly Peoples of the Book.
Aren't we?”
by Oldgoat, Croydon
Friday, December 05 2008, 2:12PM
“Jim, as an American I think you ought to examine your own countrie's record. I understand that your country does not have a long memory when it comes to it's own war crimes, but you should know that others do.”
by paul, london
Friday, December 05 2008, 12:05PM
“Stephen - your only referring to a majority in one tiny corner of the island. Any majority decisions should be based on the full 32 counties of the island, not 6.”
by stephen, ulster
Friday, December 05 2008, 11:57AM
“what rubbish lynch. Thats why you ran away to the usa, with the rest of the them with your tail between your legs.
The problem was the ira couldnt accept the majority want to remain british, and also, the republic dont want us.
We accept your surrender, now, move on and help ulster thrive within the UK.”
by Jim Lynch, U.S.A
Friday, December 05 2008, 11:49AM
“The British and unionists where perpetrator and catalyst of the trouble, in the north of Ireland. And the British should have acknowledged that the British state where protagonists in the conflict and not innocent onlookers. That is the main reason ordinary people like Maria did extraordinary things.
What a waste.”