"I was born in a united Ireland, I want to die in a united Ireland". Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man motivated by this ambition all his life. IRA activists rarely speak about their lives or their organisation, but here Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint, his experiences - from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s, on a death sentence, to Washington when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated. He tells of the visit he made to Colonel Gaddafi to arrange for arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the Claudia; Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin; the catastrophic bombing of Claudy, Germany; the high-drama helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Portlaoise Jail. This is the story of an extraordinary journey, Cahill's own life mirroring the growth, changes and development of the republican movement as a whole through more than 60 years of intense involvement.

BRENDAN ANDERSON became senior reporter and security writer for the Irish News in 1991. He has covered all the big stories of the Irish troubles, and is frequently consulted as a security analyst on Irish and British television and radio, and by British newspapers. He is a lecturer in Journalism at the University of Ulster, Belfast, and a freelance writer for a United States weekly newspaper. He is a father of three, and grandfather of ten, and lives in Belfast.

The cold metal of a gun muzzle pressed against his temple and the words, ?Don?t move,? were the first indications that Joe Cahill, chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, had of the presence of intruders in the ship?s galley.
These two words, spoken by a young Irish navy officer armed with a Browning automatic pistol, spelled the end of one of the IRA?s most audacious gun-smuggling operations. Below their feet in the hold of the Claudia, five tons of weapons -- a gift from Libya?s Colonel Gaddafi -- lay waiting to be unloaded at a tiny harbour a few hundred yards away on southern Ireland?s Waterford coast.

Then a fit fifty-two-year-old, the Belfast republican and two colleagues had travelled back to Ireland on the 289-ton Cypriot-registered coaster after it had been loaded by Libyan security forces at Tripoli. A carefully laid plan involving the local IRA unit was set to move into gear as soon as the Claudia?s cargo of assault rifles, explosives, automatic pistols and ammunition was taken ashore at Helvick Head. The drivers of a small fleet of vehicles, including four or five lorries, had been tasked with whisking the weapons away from the coast to specially prepared dumps across the country.

It was March 1973, and the republican movement was in the process of bouncing back from a series of setbacks, including the arrests of several members of the leadership, north and south of the border. The Claudia?s cargo -- with the promise of more to come from Libya -- was eagerly awaited in the North.

A man who had fought against the British presence in Ireland since he was a teenager, Cahill had been arrested many times and was philosophical about the prospect of spending another term in prison. After his reprieve from the gallows at the age of twenty-two, he was, after all, living on borrowed time.

2006-01-09 The grandfather of modern republicanism

This book is the story of the incredible life of a remarkable and selfless man. Whenever the press talk about republicans they always set great store on someone who comes from a 'traditional' republican background or one whose family is steeped in that tradition. I have to admit that this irks me somewhat in that its reinforces the view that those people who come from a 'traditional' republican background are somehow more worthy than those of us whose republican credentials do not extend back to the days of Wolfe Tone. Denis Donaldson has demonstrated that it matters not a jot whether you come from a traditional background or not, it is how you conduct your own life that counts. However Joe Cahill came from a traditional republican background and, unlike Donaldson, lived up to the ideals that this tradition engendered. The scale of Mr. Cahills involvement is almost unbelievable and his biography is almost a pocket history of Irish nationalism over the last eighty years. A man of the upmost integrity, this book not only provides an insight into the man himself, but into the events that shaped the modern peace process. For that alone it is worth a good read. Mr Cahill's reluctace to tell the whole story behind some of these events or to name some of the individuals involved did not detract from the book, but I have to admit to feeling a bit sad that these were details which will now probably never be known.

The republican cause dominated Mr Cahill's life and to this end I had to feel sorry for his wife and their six children who, in their own way lost much of their fathers presence to the cause of Irish nationalism. Mrs Cahill must herself be a truly remarkable woman.

Should you buy this book - absolutely! If you are interested in the modern histroy of the IRA and Irish republicanism in general, then this book is an absolute must.