Eamonn Boyce

Eamonn Boyce (8 August 1925 – 5 February 2020) was an Irish volunteer of the Irish Republican Army. He was considered among the leading young activists in the organisation in the early 1950s along with Charlie Murphy, Robert Russell, Tom Mitchell, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Joe Christle. He and Murphy were responsible for a successful raid on a British military barracks in Armagh in the summer of 1954.

Boyce was later captured leading an IRA arms raid on the military barracks in Omagh, County Tyrone, on 17 October 1954, for which he was sentenced to twelve years' penal servitude in Belfast Gaol. Despite the raid's failure, the resulting publicity surrounding Boyce's trial brought considerable recruits and funding for the organisation. Forty years following his release, Boyce's prison diaries were published as The Insider: The Belfast Prison Diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956–1962 detailing daily life inside the infamous prison during the Border Campaign.

Biography

Early life and IRA activity Eamonn Boyce was born on North William Street, Dublin, on 8 August 1925, the eldest son of Edward Boyce and Mary Josephine Boyce (née Dunne). He was working as a CIÉ Bus Conductor when he was first recruited by the Irish Republican Army in 1952. His father had joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914 to fight for the Independence of Ireland, but he followed John Redmond’s call for Irishmen to join in the ‘Great War’ with the promise of Home Rule as the reward. Edward Boyce fought for the British Army in France during World War I.

Raid on Armagh (June 1954) A year later, Boyce, now Intelligence Officer, and Charlie Murphy began developing a plan to raid a British military barracks in Northern Ireland for weapons and other supplies. They enlisted a fellow Dubliner and IRA man to infiltrate the barracks by joining the British Army.

The man was posted to Armagh, and while there, kept in contact with Murphy and Boyce at soldiers' dances. The two men would leave the hall, appearing to court the various girls they brought with them to the dance, but, in actuality, were meeting their informants and doing scouting the area outside the installation, gathering substantial information on troop movements and weapons storage. This information was backed up with detailed maps and photographs taken with a Minix spy camera. The eventually felt confident enough to plan the raid for 12 June 1954.

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The raiders split up at this point, and in the confusion, Boyce was left behind with the lorry driving without him. He was not yet concerned about being pursued and was walking to the lorry, keeping a lookout for stragglers, when it suddenly took off when he was 50 yards away. He ran after the lorry but was unable to catch up. He then unsuccessfully tried to break into an RUC car parked nearby before resigning to walk the 20 miles back to the border. Boyce got as far as the Clogher Valley area, and while taking off his boilersuit in a ditch,

Release and later years Boyce was released from prison after serving eight years of his twelve-year sentence. He was in poor health at the time, having trouble with his nerves, preventing him from "any of the normal things prison keeps a man from doing" such as crossing a street unaided, walking into a shop or applying to a labour exchange. This, he put down to the severe restrictions imposed on Category A Republican Prisoners & the 'Institutionalisation' of many years imprisonment. Boyce was a Sinn Féin candidate in absentia at the 1955 general election in Belfast West, where he placed last out of three candidates. The Ulster Unionist Patricia McLaughlin won the seat, defeating the then-incumbent Jack Beattie of Irish Labour.

He learned that his mother had also suffered during his incarceration, not only because of the emotional stress, but through the loss of Boyce's income and reportedly unknowingly aiding his accomplices; for months, several hundredweights of gelignite had been hidden under her bed. He was eventually able to get his job back as a bus conductor and later married Dympna McConnell, a grand-niece of Michael Mallin, Chief of Staff of the Irish Citizen Army, executed on 8 May 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising. According to author Tim Pat Coogan, Boyce was a typical "example of what IRA men were like at the time and of what they encountered". Like of his contemporaries of the 1950s, he dropped out of the movement entirely.