Written By James McFadden
One of the strangest stories of The Troubles is about, perhaps, one of the strangest men involved in the conflict. Joe Lynskey, commonly referred to as “the mad monk” because he was very close to choosing a life in a monastery to be his vocation, was an early leader of the Provisional IRA. His story is an interesting one that brought him from the holy path to a life of violence punctuated by a bizarre love triangle that resulted in his early death.
Lynskey is an interesting character in the setting of The Troubles as he represents several contradictions that can be related to the Provisional IRA as a whole. Joe entered the monastery as a young adult to try and join the Cistercian order. As a young man in the 1950’s, Joe had studied to join the order at Bethlehem Abbey in Portglenone, County Antrim. However, he found that a life in service to God was not his calling and went on to become one of the founding members of the Provisional IRA in the early 1970’s. It is funny that a man who once seriously considered taking the cloth and spending his life in service of God would end up in an early leadership role in what would grow to become one of the most feared organizations in the United Kingdom, but it is almost not surprising. A man like Lynskey, who was already a middle-aged bachelor at the time of The Troubles, gives the impression of a man who needs to dedicate themselves in some capacity to something profound, whether it be the Cistercian Order or the Provisional IRA. Lynskey was widely considered an “oddball” by the rest of his Provisional peers, but he still commanded respect and authority as an older man from his primarily younger compatriots. Because of his important role in the early days of the Provisionals no one questioned his order when commanded that another IRA man be shot. His men would have been totally unaware that the order came with no authorization from the organization, or that Joe had only personal reasons for the man in question to be shot. Joe’s reasons for contracting out the murder to his unsuspecting underlings were that he was involved in an affair with a woman who was married to another member of the Provisional IRA. The man who was shot survived, but the resulting confusion, and an unnecessary rise in tensions between the Official and Provisional IRA prompted the court-martial and subsequent disappearance of the mad monk.
What happened following the attempted murder of the rival in Lynskey’s love triangle was great confusion and a flaring up of tensions between the two main branches of the IRA. The Provisionals initially believed that the Official IRA was behind the attempted murder and at least one innocent man paid for the confusion with his life. The tensions caused by Lynskey boiled over when a group of Provincials armed with machine guns stormed into a makeshift pub frequented by Official IRA men. The pub in the Lower Falls area, called the Cracked Cup because it was once a pottery shop, was the sight of a terrible misunderstanding where one Desmond Mackin was killed. The story of what happened at the Cracked Cup is as goes: “Eyewitnesses said Mr Mackin grappled with one of the gunmen after the gang manhandled his mother. He was shot at close range by a burst of fire from a machine gun. The witnesses said the Provisionals continued to keep the patrons of the club at gunpoint and refused to allow them to call an ambulance. Mr Mackin bled to death at the scene” (independent.ie). This incident was very close to provoking a war between the two factions, indicative of the level of tension involved between even inter-factional factions during The Troubles. Even boundaries within what could ostensibly be seen as the same overall faction, were potently charged. However, war was avoided, as an internal investigation by the Provisional IRA turned up Joe Lynskey as the man responsible for the shooting. What Joe did was unacceptable behavior and warranted for him to be “disappeared” without a trace, one of the first times the Provisionals had deemed it necessary to execute someone and have them disappear entirely. According to fellow Provisional and friend, Dolours Price, she was tasked with driving Lynskey out to Monaghan County where he was to be executed and buried in an unmarked grave. What’s interesting is Price’s testimony that he knew he was going to be executed and calmly sat and awaited death. One can speculate that as a man who was once devoutly religious, that Lynskey realized he was wrong and accepted this reprisal and his fate. His execution and acceptance thereof is almost a poetic ending for his contradictory life of devotion to two polarizing ideals.
Works Cited
Cusack, Jim. “Disappeared IRA Victim and Provo ‘Love Triangle’.” Independent, Independent.ie, 7 Dec. 2014, http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/disappeared-ira-victim-and-provo-love-triangle-30804919.html.
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