Provisionals formed in home of Protestant IRA man

THE grandson of a one-time Protestant IRA man has spoken about how the Provisional IRA was formed in his grandfather’s living room.

Victor Fagg lived in Athlone and played host to a significant meeting at which the Provisional IRA was founded on December 23, 1969, according to the BBC NI documentary Spotlight On The Troubles, which was shown last night.

The house was built as a farmhouse in 1949 in Co Westmeath, and Mr Fagg’s grandson Morgan told the Irish Times its historical significance was hidden in the family for nearly 50 years.

Des Long, who was a senior figure in Republican Sinn Fein, told the first episode of the BBC series on the Troubles that he attended the meeting. It was claimed about 24 republicans were present.

Mr Long described Mr Fagg as “a Protestant IRA man”.

He was born in July 1906 near Belmullet, Co Mayo, and as a 14-year-old witnessed the assassination of Major-General Thomas Stanton Lambert by IRA members in Athlone during the War of Independence in 1921.

Mr Fagg saw a staff car depart with the general’s body after the ambush, but he refused to answer questions put by British troops even when they threatened to shoot and kill him over what he had seen.

The troops retaliated by burning down a number of farmhouses in the area.

Mr Fagg joined the IRA a few years later.

He went on to be one of 12 nominated for the IRA executive council at its general convention in 1938.

All 12 men were later interned in the Curragh during the Second World War and two of them, Sean McNeela and Tony D’Arcy, died on hunger strike in 1940.

Mr Fagg later went on to convert to Catholicism in 1943 when he married Una Daly, who was herself a captain in a women’s paramilitary organisation.

Mr Fagg died on March 6, 1988, aged 81 and received a republican funeral at which Ruairi O Bradaigh, the then president of Republican Sinn Fein, gave an impassioned eulogy.

He described Mr Fagg as a quiet and unassuming Irishman whose “family background was one of service in the British forces, but he was brought face to face with the realities of British rule in Ireland at the early age of 14 years”.

The farmhouse was inherited by Morgan Fagg’s mother, Mary,