This article first appeared in Unity, the weekly print publication of the Irish Communist Party.
AS others mark VE Day with pride, I’ll be remembering something very different.
My father, an Irish republican, was interned without charge by the British in 1938, before they had even declared war! He spent the entire 8 years of the Second World War in captivity, first on the prison ship Al Rawdah in Strangford Lough (sitting ducks for the Germans), then in Derry Gaol. No trial, no justice just the long reach of empire silencing dissent.
His story is not unique. Throughout the war, many Irish republicans were rounded up and interned, treated as enemies for daring to believe in a free and united Ireland. Alongside them were communists, anti-fascists, and others who posed no threat to ordinary people but a political threat to British rule. They were held in appalling conditions, vilified, and forgotten in the history books.
VE Day is often spoken of as a triumph of freedom over tyranny but for those of us from a colonised nation, it is a reminder of the British Empire’s double standard. While fighting WWII abroad, it suppressed the right to self-determination at home and in its colonies.
Irish republicans like my father were imprisoned not because they supported fascism, but because they opposed imperialism. So today, please remember not only theirs who lost their lives on battlefields during World War II, but also those who resisted empire and paid the price in silence, exile, and prison.
Their struggle for Irish freedom and anti-imperialism is part of the historical record too, whether Britain chooses to acknowledge it or not. I’ll be raising a glass on VE Day to the memory of my father Frank McGlade – my WWII hero.
We in Unity have Dympne McGlade to thank for this memory of her father Frank and her mother Rebecca in the photograph below, they became great friends of comrades in the Communist Party through their activity in the Civil Right Movement.
Their image appears on the Civil Rights booklet We Shall Overcome.
Not only that but Frank joined many protests including the one when The Mothers of Belfast opposed the cutting of school milk in 1971 under Maggie Thatcher. He joined in with the women on the marches and protests that took place.
Of course it also reminds us that Sean Morrissey was imprisoned in Derry and on the prison ship MS A1 Rawdah for his republican beliefs. Patrick Smylie writes about this in Left Lives, “In 1938, Morrissey was arrested for wearing an Easter Lily and received a six months’ sentence. This, he recalled humorously, made him believe ‘I was a real Irish martyr’. He was interned by the Unionist Government in 1940 and remained imprisoned for most of the Second World War. This was firstly in Derry Gaol where the internees received ’brutal treatment’. Morrissey and 200 other republicans were then moved to the prison ship HMS Al Rawdah, moored off Killyleagh in Strangford Lough. Conditions were tough, and Morrissey remembered one older republican died after falling from a hammock. After eight months on board, the internees were moved to Belfast Jail, where Morrissey’s real politicisation began.” (2020, Irish Labour History Society.)
Not to forget Michael O’Riordan who was interned in the Curragh during the war. And also Betty Sinclair who was given a prison sentence during the war because she was a party to publishing an article by Sinn Féin (SF) in the Communist paper Red Hand. The SF article suggested that a victory by Hitler would be a victory for Irish independence. In a following article the Communist Party refuted this political view and criticised SF.
However, it did not stop the powers that be taking Betty Sinclair to court, where she was asked “would you accept the support of the Soviet Union,” she replied “yes and so would Mr Churchill.” She speaks about this time in prison in an interview that she did with Lynda Walker in 1981. The “victory” over Hitler will only truly be worth celebrating when the genocide has gone from Palestine and when the human race is able to live in peace.