Martin Meehan

Martin Meehan (1945 – 3 November 2007) was a Sinn Féin politician and volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Meehan was the first person to be convicted of membership of the Provisional IRA, and he spent eighteen years in prison during the Troubles.

Background and early IRA activity Meehan was born in 1945 in the Ardoyne area of Belfast in Northern Ireland. His father had been imprisoned for republican activities in the 1940s, but one of his grandfathers was killed fighting for the British Army in the Battle of the Somme in World War I. Meehan left school aged 15 and began working at Belfast's docks, and in 1966 he became a member of the Irish Republican Army.

He was sworn in by Billy McMillen, and described joining as "a big occasion, like joining the priesthood". and resigned as a result of the organisation's failure to adequately protect Catholic areas. Meehan was arrested on 22 August 1969 for riotous behaviour, and was badly beaten before being imprisoned. Meehan sided with the Provisional IRA following its split with the Official IRA in January 1970, and by mid-1970 was a senior IRA leader in the Ardoyne area. On 27 June 1970 rioting broke out across Belfast following a parade by the Orange Order, and a gun battle started in the Ardoyne area. In the six weeks following the beginning of Operation Demetrius in August 1971, six soldiers from the Green Howards regiment were killed by the IRA in north Belfast. Meehan was imprisoned without charge under the Special Powers Act in Crumlin Road Jail. The men covered themselves in butter to keep warm, then hid inside a manhole for six-and-a-half hours before scaling the prison walls using ropes made from knotted blankets and sheets.

Meehan escaped across the border to Dundalk in the Republic of Ireland, and on 27 January 1972 he was arrested by the Garda along with seven other IRA members following a four-hour cross-border gun battle between the IRA and soldiers from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. Meehan claimed to reporters at the time, "We pasted them. You could have heard them squealing for miles". He was charged with escaping from lawful custody, and at his trial successfully argued that under the Special Powers Act a British soldier had no power of arrest and as such he had the legal right to escape. He was awarded £800 in compensation for being illegally detained for twenty-three days, and the government were forced to amend the Special Powers Act to legalise the detention of others held under the Act. He was charged with membership of the Provisional IRA, and received a three-year sentence when he became the first person to be convicted of the offence. He was imprisoned in Long Kesh, and was released on 4 October 1974.

The Long War On 11 July 1979 the IRA kidnapped a seventeen-year-old youth suspected of being an informer from a club in the New Lodge area of Belfast. Over a four-day period he was moved between a number of safe houses where he was beaten and interrogated, and he confessed to working as an informer for the British Army. Meehan was convicted based largely on the evidence of the informer, whose evidence was described by the judge as of "poor quality". Meehan protested his innocence, and began a hunger strike which lasted sixty-six days culminating in a "thirst strike" where he also refused water.

In March 1988 Meehan was sentenced to a further fifteen years imprisonment after being convicted of the kidnapping and false imprisonment of a member of the Territorial Army. The soldier had been kidnapped on 12 July 1986 and imprisoned in a house in the Ardoyne area, before being freed in a rescue operation by the British Army. He was released from prison on 20 January 1994. In 1996 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Northern Ireland Forum election in East Antrim. Meehan stood in the 1998 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in South Antrim, receiving 3,226 votes. He also stood as a candidate for election to the British House of Commons in the South Antrim constituency in the by election of 2000 and the 2001 UK General election, being unsuccessful each time.

On 7 June 2001 he was elected a councillor for the Antrim North West constituency on Antrim Borough Council. Meehan did not stand in the 2007 Assembly election, being replaced in South Antrim by Mitchel McLaughlin, who won a seat.

Elections contested Date of election Constituency Party Votes % Northern Ireland Forum election, 1996 East Antrim Sinn Féin 619 1.9 Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2003 South Antrim Sinn Féin 4,295 11.5 Northern Ireland council election, 2005 Antrim Line Sinn Féin 670

Death Meehan died on 3 November 2007, after suffering a heart attack at his home. Sinn Féin member Gerry Kelly said he was "shocked and saddened", and that Meehan "gave his whole life to serve both his ideals in republicanism and also the people".