Volunteer James (Junior)  McDaid remembered

The 50th Anniversary of Volunteer James (Junior) McDaid (January 29, 1940 to December 29, 1972) has been marked by a ceremony at the Republican Monument in Derry’s Shantallow.

The commemoration took place at 1.00pm on Thursday (December 29, 2022) and was organised by the Shantallow Monument committee. 

In his oration to those assembled, Mitchel McLaughlin of Derry Sinn Féin said the event was an “important and fitting tribute to a remarkable Republican leader, who was taken from us too soon.”

Mr McLaughlin added: “50 years is a lifetime for many people but in our struggle, in our demands for civil rights and for national rights, we have realised over all those years of struggle, many people didn’t get a chance to enjoy a life with their family, in security and in contentment. Many people lost their lives in the process of fighting for Civil Rights and for equal rights. 

“Staff Captain Junior McDaid of the 3rd Battalion of the Derry IRA, the Derry Brigade, had grown up in Creggan at the same time as I did. I knew Junior and Patsy, his brother, best of the family. 

“Creggan was a new community. I was chatting to Patsy, Junior’s widow, just before this commemoration and I was saying people went to similar schools, went to the same chapel, played football on the Bishop’s Field, using our coats a goalposts, went to dances in Borderland, and sneaked off the the Donkey Field and the Reservoir to learn how to drink, but all of that was before the War.

“Junior, by December 1972, was a senior and an experienced IRA Volunteer and had become a marked man because of his activism. As we have heard, he had only recently been released from serving a sentence in the Curragh and he immediately reported back to the Derry Brigade staff. 

“People may or may not fully understand the circumstances. Junior, while he was on the streets of Derry, had already seen the deadly intentions of the British army. Bloody Sunday was the start of what turned out to be the worst year of the Troubles and eight other Volunteers had already lost their lives in that year. Junior came out knowing all those facts.

“Yet, the first thing he did on his release was report back for duty, that gives you some indication both of his leadership ability and of his commitment to Republican struggle. 

“I think it is also appropriate to remember our Derry comrades who also made the supreme sacrifice during that year.

“Eugene McGillan and Colm Keenan on March 14, unarmed, shot down when the British army made an incursion into Free Derry, possibly with the intention of attacking the Cottage, then known as the headquarters of the IRA.

“John Starrs on May 13, moving with his unit into position in readiness for an attack on the British army, shot dead.

“Seamus Bradley on July 31, shot during Operation Motorman, arrested by the British army, refused medical assistance and left to bleed out and die. 

“Michael Quigley, shot dead on the upper part of Fanad Drive when he ran into a covert British army patrol. 

“John Brady and Jimmy Carr died in a premature bomb explosion at the corner of Westland Street and Cable Street.

“And James Junior McDaid, unarmed, shot dead on December 29. 

“That is the litany of the violence that was developing as a result of British policy in Ireland and it is important to remember that, especially in these days when we are having discussions, starting a growing conversation, about uniting Ireland, and also having discussions about small, micro Republican organisations, who seem to believe that they can do more or do better than the IRA did in all those years of struggle. 

“What people need to address is that at the start of the Troubles, British policy was set in stone. It would never be in Britain’s interest to leave Ireland, never in their strategic interests. They regarded Ireland as the back door for the enemies of Britain to use to attack their country. 

“So, the people of Ireland have no rights to National Self Determination, no rights to their own political and social systems and economies. It was an island that had to be dominated and it was dominated in the most brutal fashion. The British army, which arrived after the Battle of the Bogside when the RUC were defeated, came with that policy directive as the keystone of all of their operations. 

“And that has to be understood in the context of what was the SAS, sometimes using the cover name of the Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF), shooting up Nationalist vigilantes who were guarding the No Go Areas across the North, on the basis it would be blamed on the Loyalists. 

“That is the collusion that went on between the Loyalist organisations, who were being supplied with information, provided cover, during the same period of Internment when only Nationalists and Republicans were being arrested. 

“All of that we have to understand in the context of British policy in Ireland. The IRA understood that policy. Sinn Féin understood that policy. And their strategy over those years was not to defeat the British army because that would have been an impossible goal, a very uneven battle. But, they sustained struggle to the extent that they convinced the British Government that it could never defeat the IRA and that was their victory. 

“Their victory was reflected in the fact that Maggie Thatcher, of all the British Prime Ministers, authorised Peter Brooke to issue a statement that Britain no longer had any strategic or economic interest in Ireland. 

“And that was a signal that they were suing for peace. That statement was amplified in the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 and that is what kickstarted the serious negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. In that statement, John Major, on behalf of the British Government stated that the people of Ireland had the right to self determine their own destinies. 

“The reasons for the conflict, the reasons for British oppression, the reasons for IRA resistance, were being addressed because the British could not impose their will militarily and they were seeking a negotiated settlement. 

“That is the background to the engagement and to the negotiations and to the very clear statement that is in the Good Friday Agreement, which is now legally binding as an international agreement, that the people of Ireland have a right to self determination.

“The conversation and the discussion about what type of agreed united Ireland we are all going to live in and what kind of rights and entitlements, constitutional rights, what type of economy, health service, pensions schemes can we agree, all of those questions now have to be addressed is a very sustained and dignified way. 

“It has to be a process where people are given answers and reasons why they should vote for a united Ireland. 

“The obvious question is ‘Would it convince Unionists?’ However, Republicans have to be conscious as well that many people within the Nationalist tradition also want answers to those questions. We have to take that task and that challenge very, very seriously, if we want to succeed in getting referendums and if we want to win those referendums. 

“That is what Junior McDaid died for. He understood that you had to resist British policy and you had to break it and you had to change it. 

“He and his comrades who died in that terrible year of 1972 and all of those who died since, all understood the direction of travel and it has to end in a political settlement, one where Republicans and Nationalists, confident in who they are and what they are, will ensure that those of the British tradition in Ireland will never be treated the way in which the northern statlet treated Nationalists. 

“They could not make us British. We are not going to attempt to make them Irish if they don’t want to be. 

“But they will have the same rights, no more, no advantage, no vetoes. They will have the same rights as the rest of us. Sin é. Go raibh míle maith agaibh,” concluded Mitchel McLaughlin.

In Tírghrá, the book written in memory of the 364 men and women whose names are on the Republican Roll of Honour, Junior McDaid was remembered as a hard working family man.

The entry said: “He and his wife Patsy had two children, both of whom died very young with cystic fibrosis. They lived in the Shantallow area of Derry.

“Junior had many hobbies. He loved singing, playing football, and was instrumental in forming a Glasgow Celtic Supporters’ Club in Derry.

“He joined the Republican struggle early on and was active in the Brandywell area. He later moved to Shantallow to become a member of the 3rd Battalion, Derry Brigade. He was also very active in Sinn Féin.

“Junior was reputed to be the best, if not one of the best bricklayers in the city. Two of his finest works were the electricity substation near Craigavon Bridge at Foyle Road and the Parochial House in Creggan, which he had just completed at the time of his arrest in Donegal on arms charges on May 8, 1972. 

“He subsequently spent time in Mountjoy gaol and the Curragh Military Camp and was Adjutant of the Republican POWs. He undertook a successful hunger strike with other comrades for political status. Junior sustained an ulcer and was hospitalised for months.

“On his release, he reported back to Ógaligh na hÉireann the next day December 9, 1972. He was active until his untimely death on December 29, 1972, just three weeks after his release.

On the day of the ambush, Junior McDaid, who was a Staff Captain in the IRA at the time, and two comrades crossed the border at Ballynagard and on their way to Donegal they were confronted by undercover British forces who shot him dead. His comrades escaped.”