Brothers in arms? How the IRA and EOKA insurgencies transcended the local and became transnational

ABSTRACT

Throughout the 1950s Britain faced unprecedented challenges to its imperial rule. Civil disobedience, insurgency and terrorism gripped its colonies as the flames of nationalism and anti-colonialism burned brightly across the world. In two of Britain’s most important Cold War strategic outposts, Northern Ireland and Cyprus, insurgents belonging to the IRA and EOKA launched armed campaigns to undermine British rule. This article examines the insurgencies on both islands in the period 1955–59, comparing the respective approaches taken by the IRA and EOKA to guerrilla warfare. Drawing on original English and Greek language sources, as well as other empirical evidence, the article argues that the IRA and EOKA interpreted their struggles in complementary ways as part of a broader national liberation struggle, which, above all, suggests a shared understanding of British imperialism. Admittedly, beyond a mutually perceived ‘brotherly bond’, IRA leaders did not apply specific military lessons they had learned from members of EOKA while in English prisons in the 1950s until the much later Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. Nevertheless, we argue that it is important to look at the genealogy of ideas for it reveals broader patterns regarding the organisational learning of militant groups engaged in campaigns against a common enemy.

KEYWORDS:

• Northern Ireland
• Cyprus
• insurgency
• counter-insurgency
• IRA
• EOKA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For detailed studies of the IRA and EOKA in the 1950s see Coogan, The IRA; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution; and Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt; French, Fighting EOKA.

2. Rekawek, “The Last of the Mohicans,” 436.

3. Selth, “Ireland Insurgency,” 316.

4. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, 13; Rekawek, “The Last of the Mohicans,” 441. See also Bell, The IRA; English, Armed Struggle; Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA; and Guelke, “Irish Republican Terrorism,” 569.

5. Kettle and Mumford, “Terrorist Learning,” 523.

6. McGarry and O’Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, 135.

7. Halliday, “Irish Questions in International Perspective,” 123–4.

8. Ibid., 124.

9. Paul et al, Paths to Victory, 145.

10. Jackson et al, Aptitude for Destruction, 9; Kettle and Mumford, “Terrorist Learning,” 526.

11. For more on terrorist innovation see Dolnik, Understanding Terrorist Innovation.

12. Guelke, “Irish Republican Terrorism,” 559.

13. Ibid., 558.

14. Selth, “Ireland Insurgency,” 311.

15. Ibid., 561.

16. Asal et al, “With Friends Like These,” 21–22.

17. O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, 118; and Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 17.

18. Papageorgiou, Κυπριακή Θύελλα, 1955–1959, 75–85.

19. Ibid., 85.

20. Grivas, The Memoirs of General Grivas, 16.

21. Taber, The War of the Flea, 114.

22. Ibid.

23. French, Fighting EOKA, 73.

24. Ibid., 103.

25. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954–1959, 197.

26. The UK National Archives (TNA), FO 371/123885, L.C. Glass note to Harding, dated 1 April 1956; for more on Leslie Glass and his role in the British emergency propaganda effort in Cyprus see Hadjiathanasiou, Propaganda and the Cyprus Revolt, 76.

27. French, Fighting EOKA, 185–186.

28. The Spectator, 24 August 1956. For a selection of EOKA’s leaflets see Alexandrou, Propaganda- Counterpropaganda.

29. Karyos, ““Χ”“ during the Axis Occupation, 1941–1944,” Περιοδικό Ιστορία Εικονογραφημένη, 46–36.

30. Grivas, Memoirs, 46.

31. The house and underground bunker has been preserved and is now home to the Tomb of George Grivas.

32. Grivas, Memoirs, 106.

33. French, Fighting EOKA, 151.

34. TNA, CO 926/670, Reports by the Cyprus Intelligence Committee (Fortnightly Reviews), Cyprus Intelligence Committee Intelligence Review for the First Half of February 1957, dated 21 February 1957.

35. Grivas, Memoirs, 107.

36. TNA, HO 291/1626, Harding to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 24 January 1957.

37. TNA, CO 926/671, Special Branch Fortnightly Intelligence Report, Vol. 4, No. 4/57, Second Half of February 1957.

38. ‘Memorial Mass held for journalist and former IRA leader’. At his funeral in 2011, Cronin was described as ‘a soldier’ and leader who ‘led from the front’ with an ability to inspire all around him. The then President of Sinn Féin Gerry Adams said of him that he was ‘pivotal’ to the development of post-war Irish republicanism.

39. IRA, Handbook on Guerrilla Warfare. Copy in authors’ possession.

40. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, 13.

41. IRA, A Handbook on Guerrilla Warfare.

42. Ibid.

43. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, 13.

44. Treacy, The IRA, 1956–69, 11.

45. ‘It seemed to me that EOKA was composed to a greater or lesser extent of every Greek in Cyprus. It seemed to our weary hearts that we were once more up against the disastrous and childish and utterly hopeless theory that Force could overcome Ideas’ in Foot, Emergency Exit, 107.

46. For more on this point see Smith, “Guerrillas in the Mist,” 19–37.

47. Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 7.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., 8.

51. Ibid., 10.

52. Ryan, My Life in the IRA, 51–52.

53. Ibid., 52–53.

54. Ibid., 58–59.

55. TNA, WO 32/17577, Oglaigh Na h-Eireann General Army Convention 1956.

56. TNA, WO 32/17577, RUC Special Branch report on the IRA, dated April 1957. The RUC Special Branch estimated that the IRA had received $16,600 from their supporters in the United States between 1944 and 1955.

57. See above 55.

58. See, for instance, Ryan, My Life in the IRA, 70–72.

59. Coogan, The IRA, 302.

60. Moloney, Secret History, 50.

61. TNA, WO32/17577, Director of Military Intelligence to Headquarters Northern Ireland District, 8 March 1957.

62. MacDonncha, “Border campaign.

63. Coogan, The IRA, 303.

64. Ibid. See also Moloney, Secret History, 50.

65. See above 61.

66. Livadas, Κύπριοι και Ιρλανδοί Πολιτικοί Κατάδικοι στις Φυλακές της Αγγλίας, 1956–1959, 11. All translations from the original Greek to English by Maria Hadjiathanasiou.

67. Ibid., 13.

68. Particularly helpful in the initial steps of this research was Kaoullas’s 2016 article published in a Cypriot magazine in the Greek language, and which in fact goes beyond the Greek-Irish interaction in the English prisons, and focuses on their joint escape plans. Kaoullas, ‘Όταν η ‘ΕΟΚΑ συνάντησε τον IRA: Κύπριοι και Ιρλανδοί στις Αγγλικές Φυλακές και η Κοινή Επιχείρηση Απόδρασης’, 112–127. Another forthcoming publication that intends shedding more light on the EOKA-IRA relationship is a forthcoming book by the same author, co-authored with Michalis Stavri, titled Deported in the Name of Freedom: EOKA Guerrillas Incarcerated in the United Kingdom & the Cypriot-Irish Collaboration (working title).

69. Vias Livadas quoted in Panayiotis Papademetris Online Archive [http://www.papademetris.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1825:s-1269&catid=174:1955-1958-14&Itemid=119], last accessed 28 October 2020.

70. Ibid.

71. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 7.

72. Kyriakidis, “Our fraternal Irish friends,” 212; and “Cypriot solidarity recalled”.

73. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 8.

74. Ibid., 8.

75. Ibid., 13.

76. Ibid., 9.

77. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 78.

78. Ibid., 78.

79. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 13.

80. The three Labour MPs who took most interest in Cyprus were Francis Noel Baker, Fenner Brockway, and Jennie Lee.

81. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 12.

82. Ibid., 13.

83. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 10, 13; Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 78.

84. Mac Stiofáin, Οι κατάδικοι: Συνέντευξη από τους Ιρλανδούς Σιών Μακστήβεν και Σαϊμους Μέρφυ στις κεντρικές φυλακές Αγγλίας [The Convicts: Interview with the Irish Sean Mac Stiofáin and Seamus Murphy].

85. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 14.

86. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 75.

87. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 14.

88. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 75.

89. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 14.

90. Ibid., 14.

91. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners Held in British Prisons, 52.

92. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 79.

93. Bell, The Secret Army, 439.

94. Ibid., 378

95. Livadas in Πενήντα Χρόνια Μετά την Έναρξη του Απελευθερωτικού Αγώνα της ΕΟΚΑ: Μια Ιστορική Αποτίμηση: Επιστημονικό – Ιστορικό Συνέδριο [Fifty Years After the Start of EOKA’s Liberation Struggle: A Historical Evaluations: Scientific-Historical Conference], 217–218.

96. Ibid., 218.

97. In two of the best-known cases in the 1970s, Cypriot-registered ships were intercepted off the coast of Ireland by the Irish Navy and by the Belgium Navy near Antwerp. Both ships were carrying considerable numbers of weapons and explosives and were destined for the hands of the IRA. “Ireland’s Navy Seizes Vessel with Arms for I.R.A.”; see also Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA.

98. Ibid., 16.

99. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners Held in British Prisons, 218. There is evidence in the prison records to substantiate this. For example, a Special Branch report drawing on informer intelligence informed the prison authorities at Wormwood Scrubs how, ‘An additional piece of information, which on the face of it is plausible enough, is that I.R.A. prisoners who are known to be friendly to the Cypriots are ready to stage a diversion and to engage officers during the break … Special Branch felt strongly that the prisoners should be dispersed throughout a number of prisons’. TNA, HO 291/1800, Secret Report, dated 11 November 1957.

100. In Wakefield Prison: Nikos Sampson; Gregoris Gregoras (Davelis); Giorgos Th. Ioannou; Renos Kyriakides; Vias Livadas; Andreas Savva (Mappis); Giorgos (Coco) Skoteinos; Nicos Sophocleous; Nicos Tsardellis; Nicolas Loizou as found in O’ Shea, Ireland and the End of the British Empire, 96. Twenty EOKA members were held originally in Wormwood Scrubs before being split up and sent to Wakefield and Kent prisons. Others, previously in Wormwood Scrubs, were transferred to HMP Maidstone in Kent: Demetris Filiastides; Loizos Hadjiloizou; Petros Stylianou as found in Stylianou, p.7; Gregoris Gregoras (Davelis) in Yiorgos Eliades, Πολύκαρπος Γιωρκάτζης 1955–1959, 317.

101. Stylianou, Seán Mac Stíofáin, 16.

102. Murphy, Having it Away, 242.

103. Murphy, “The Convicts”; Murphy, Having it Away, 245.

104. Murphy, Having it Away, 243.

105. Kyriakides, O Romanos tis Pitsilias, 239.

106. Sampson, Republished interview ‘Cyprus 1974’.

107. Murphy, Having it Away, 244.

108. Ibid., 245.

109. Interview discussion between Vias Livadas, Seán Mac Stiofain, Seamus Murphy, Donald Murphy, Charlie Murphy, 1996.

110. Ibid.

111. Murphy, “The convicts”.

112. Seamus Murphy and Vias Livadas, 1996, Συμβούλιο Ιστορικής Μνήμης αγώνα ΕΟΚΑ 1955–59 [Archive of the Council for the Historical Memory of the Struggle].

113. Murphy, “The Convicts”.

114. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners Held in British Prisons, 63–64.

115. Mac Stíofáin quoted in Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners Held in British Prisons, 63.

116. Ibid.

117. Ibid. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 120.

118. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 119.

119. TNA, WO 32/17577, RUC Special Branch report on the IRA, dated April 1957.

120. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 89.

121. “Obituary: Ruairí Ó Brádaigh”.

122. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 90.

123. Moloney, Secret History, 51.

124. Mac Stíofáin, Revolutionary in Ireland, 91–94.

125. “Obituary of Seán Garland”.

126. Moloney, Secret History, 278.

127. Goulding, “The New Strategy of the IRA,” 52.

128. Interview with a former RUC officer, 29 July 2020.

129. Livadas, “Fifty Years After the Start of EOKA’s Liberation Struggle Conference,” 218.

130. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 12–13.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History, Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He obtained his PhD in Politics and International Studies from Queen’s University Belfast in 2006 and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2012. Aaron is the author of Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the End of Empire (Transworld Books, 2014) and UVF: Behind the Mask (Merrion Press, 2017), amongst other publications. His new book, Agents of Influence: Britain’s Secret Intelligence War Against the IRA, is forthcoming with Merrion Press in 2021. His main research interests are in political identity, Cold War history, terrorism and counter-insurgency.

Maria Hadjiathanasiou

Maria Hadjiathanasiou is a Horizon 2020 Research Fellow (European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) at the Department of Politics and Governance, and a Research Fellow at GNOSIS | Mediterranean Institute for Management Science at the University of Nicosia (Cyprus). She currently works on the project ‘Power through Attraction: British, Greek and Turkish Cultural Diplomacy in Cyprus, 1945-1974’. Maria is author of Propaganda and the Cyprus Revolt: Rebellion, Counter-Insurgency, and the Media, 1955-1959 (I.B. Tauris, 2020). Her main research interests are in cultural diplomacy and policy, insurgency/counterinsurgency studies, and cultural history.