The Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA was the largest of the organisation's brigades, based in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The nucleus of the Belfast Brigade emerged in the divisions within Belfast republicans in the closing months of 1969, and was formally established in January 1970 as the structures of the new dissident group were created after splitting from the Official IRA.
The brigade was organised along geographical lines into three battalions: The first battalion covered the Upper Falls, Ballymurphy and Andersonstown The second battalion covered the Lower Falls, Clonard and the Divis Flats And the third battalion covered The Bone and the Short Strand.
Formation The Belfast Brigade was one of the first active units of the Provisional IRA, after the split in the IRA in late 1969. In the aftermath of the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, many republicans in Belfast felt that the IRA had let down the city's Catholic and nationalist community by failing to prevent the assault and burning of Catholic streets by loyalists. Billy McKee denounced Billy McMillen, the IRA's Belfast commander, and the Dublin-based IRA leadership, for having failed to provide arms, planning or manpower to defend Catholic streets.Bishop, Mallie, The Provisional IRA p125
On 22 September, McKee and a number of other armed, IRA men, arrived at a meeting called by McMillen and tried to oust him as head of the Belfast IRA. They did not succeed, but announced that they would no longer be taking orders from the IRA leadership in Dublin. In December of that year, the IRA split into the Provisional IRA, which was composed of traditional militarists like McKee—and the Official IRA, which was composed of the pre-split Marxist leadership and their followers.(However, the Provisionals never referred to themselves as anything other than the IRA: the term "provisional" originates from a speech given by then IRA Director of Intelligence Seán Mac Stiofáin at the contentious Sinn Féin Árd Fheis that resulted in the split of that party, whereby Mac Stiofáin 'pledged allegiance to the provisional i.e. temporary Army Council of the IRA, which of course meant himself.) McKee sided with the Provisionals and sat on the first Provisional Army Council in September 1970.Provos The IRA & Sinn Féin, pp. 65-66 Nine out of thirteen IRA units in Belfast sided with the Provisionals in 1969, roughly 120 activists and 500 supporters.Eamon Mallie, Patrick Bishop, the Provisional IRA, p141.
History The start of the armed campaign McKee became the first Officer Commanding (OC) of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. From the start, there was intermittent feuding between McKee's men and his former comrades in the Official IRA, as they vied for control of nationalist areas. The Provisionals, however, rapidly gained the upper hand, due to their projection of themselves as the most reliable defenders of the Catholic community.Provos The IRA & Sinn Féin, pp. 77-78
McKee himself contributed greatly to this image by an action he undertook on 27 June 1970. Rioting broke out in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast after an Orange Order parade, and three Protestants were killed in gun battles between the Provisional IRA and loyalists. In response, loyalists prepared to attack the vulnerable Catholic enclave of Short Strand in east Belfast. When McKee heard about this, he drove to Short Strand with some men and weapons and took up position at St Matthew's Church. In the ensuing five-hour gun battle, McKee was wounded and one of his men was killed, along with at least four Protestants.English, pp. 134-135
The leadership of the Provisional IRA had always planned to broaden their activities from defensive operations to an offensive campaign aimed at removing British rule from Northern Ireland. This only became practicable, however, after the Catholic community's relationship with the British Army deteriorated rapidly over the course of 1970. This deterioration was due to the British Army's heavy-handed treatment of Catholics and nationalists in their efforts to combat republican paramilitaries. For example, on 5–7 July 1970, up to 3,000 troops sealed off the lower Falls area and conducted an aggressive search for arms - an episode known as the Falls Curfew. Five civilians were killed and over 60 injured in gun battles between the troops and the Official IRA (who at that time were the dominant IRA faction in that part of Belfast). Over 300 people were arrested and the area was flooded with CS gas.
After this point, the Belfast Brigade's strategy shifted from 'defence' to 'retaliation' and in January 1971, they began seeking out and attacking British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) patrols. On 5 February 1971, the Belfast Provisionals killed their first soldier, Robert Curtis, who was killed by Billy Reid in a gun battle in the New Lodge area. In other confrontations around the city in the same night, one IRA man and two Catholic civilians were also killed in exchanges of fire with the British Army Mallie, Bishop, the Provisional IRA, p.175-176 Thereafter, gun battles between the IRA in Belfast and the security forces became a regular occurrence. By July 1971, ten soldiers had died at the hands of the IRA in the city Mallie, Bishop, p.182
On 15 April 1971, McKee, along with Proinsias MacAirt, was arrested by the British Army when found in possession of a hand gun. He was charged and convicted for possession of the weapon and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol, and Joe Cahill took over as OC of the Belfast Brigade.
In the early years of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA in Belfast expanded rapidly. In August 1969, the Brigade had just 50 active members. By the end of 1971, it had 1,200 members, giving it a large but loosely controlled structure.Moloney, p103
It was during this period that the IRA campaign got off the ground in the city. Joe Cahill authorised the beginning of the IRA's bombing operations as well as attacks on troops and the RUC. He based himself in a house in Andersonstown and toured the city, coordinating IRA operations.
Internment and the escalation of violence On 9 August 1971, the Army mounted Operation Demetrius, introducing internment in an effort to arrest the IRA's leaders. The following day, Joe Cahill held a press conference in a school in Ballymurphy and stated that the operation had been a failure. He said, "we have lost one brigade officer, one battalion officer and the rest are volunteers, or as they say in the British Army, privates". Cahill himself, however, had to flee to the Republic of Ireland to avoid arrest, thus relinquishing his command of the Belfast Brigade. Seamus Twomey took over Cahill's position as OC.
In the three days that followed the introduction of internment, there was fierce rioting and gun battles in nationalist areas of Belfast, as troops sought to enter these areas to arrest paramilitary suspects. In all, 17 people were killed in the clashes, among them two Provisional IRA members and three soldiers.Mallie, Bishop, p.188 In the remainder of 1971, 37 soldiers and 97 civilians were killed. In 1972, the death toll increased still further. The period was also costly for the IRA. In the Belfast Brigade's Second Battalion alone, for example, twenty IRA volunteers were killed in the twelve months after August 1971.
From 26 June to 10 July 1972 the Provisional IRA leadership declared a ceasefire and held talks with the British government. This truce broke down, however, in part due to a confrontation between the IRA's Belfast Brigade and the British Army in Lenadoon in west Belfast. The local IRA insisted that Catholic families who had been forced from Protestant areas be housed in homes vacated by Protestant families who had fled the predominantly nationalist Lenadoon area. The loyalist Ulster Defence Association in turn threatened to burn the houses if they were occupied by Catholics. When the Catholic families attempted to move in, the British Army stopped them, provoking a riot with the local Catholic population. Seamus Twomey, commander of the Belfast Brigade, declared that the British had violated the truce and shortly afterwards, his men opened fire on the troops. Sean MacStiofain, the IRA chief of staff, formally announced the end of the ceasefire that night, in response to events in Belfast.Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 396-397.
In addition to attacks on the Army, a central part of the Belfast Brigade's campaign was the bombing of commercial targets such as shops and businesses. The most devastating example of the Provisionals' commercial bombing campaign was Bloody Friday on 21 July 1972 in Belfast city centre, where 22 bombs were exploded, killing nine people and injuring 130.Moloney, p. 116 While most of the IRA's attacks on commercial targets were not designed to cause casualties, on many occasions they killed civilian bystanders. Other examples include the Abercorn Restaurant bombing in Belfast in 1972, where two people were killed and 130 wounded.Mallie Bishop, p. 215.
Setbacks: Operation Motorman and arrests Up to 1972, the IRA in Belfast effectively controlled many nationalist areas of the city, manning permanent checkpoints and barricades. These 'no-go areas', however, were re-taken by the British Army in response to the Bloody Friday bombings of 1972, in a major operation named Operation Motorman. The British Army proceeded to build fortified posts in republican west Belfast, thus hampering the IRA's freedom of movement. After this setback, Seamus Twomey, who had authorised the Bloody Friday operation, was replaced as Belfast Brigade commander by Gerry Adams, with Ivor Bell as his second-in-command.Moloney, Secret History of the IRA, p. 118 Adams held the post for ten months, before he was arrested and interned in July 1973. The security forces managed to capture the next three commanders of the Belfast Brigade over the next year: Ivor Bell, who held the post from July 1973 to January 1974, Sean Convey, who lasted just two months before being arrested in March 1974, and Brendan Hughes, who was arrested in May 1974. These setbacks were indicative of the pressure being put on the IRA in Belfast, which was hard-hit by arrests in this period.
After 1972, the numbers of soldiers killed by the IRA in Belfast fell consistently. In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed 145 members of the security forces, most of them in Belfast. By 1974, this figure had fallen to 40.Bishop, Mallie, Provisional IRA, p.247 Moreover, the Belfast Brigade changed its tactics in an effort to avoid the heavy losses in killed and captured they had suffered up to that point. According to journalists Patrick Bishop and Eamon Mallie's book, The Provisional IRA, "As a result of the many arrests and increased Army presence, prolonged engagements with the Army faded out and were replaced with single shot sniping." In addition, "the revulsion caused by Bloody Friday persuaded the Provisionals to gradually abandon the car bomb."
1975 ceasefire Partly as a result of the losses they suffered through arrests in this period, and partly as a result of secret negotiations between the IRA leadership and the British government, the Provisional IRA called a ceasefire from January 1975 to January 1976. The Belfast Brigade in general welcomed this respite. Under the terms of the ceasefire it ceased offensive operations against the security forces. In return, the British government funded 'incident centres', or offices for Sinn Féin in nationalist parts of Belfast, hoping to encourage the development of the Provisional republican movement's political wing over its military wing. In practice, however, the ceasefire brought little diminution of the violence in Belfast.