Several hundred people turned out at a Sinn Féin event in Scotstown in County Monaghan last Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of IRA legend, Óglach Séamus McElwain. The event celebrated a life dedicated to his community and to the achievement of a free, independent, and united Ireland. The following is a biography of his life, by Jim Doyle.
Séamus was born on April 1st 1960, the oldest of eight children in the townland of Knockacullion, beside the hamlet and townland of Knockatallon, near the village of Scotstown in the north of County Monaghan.
At the age of 14, he took his first steps towards becoming involved in Republicanism when he joined Na Fianna Éireann. Two years later, he turned down an opportunity to study in the United States and joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA), stating, “no one will ever be able to accuse me of running away.”
He became Officer Commanding of the IRA in County Fermanagh by the age of 19.
On February 5th 1980, off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) corporal Aubrey Abercrombieb was killed as he drove a tractor in the townland of Drumacabranagher, near Florencecourt.
Later that year, on September 23, off-duty Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Reserve Constable Ernest Johnston was killed outside his home in Rosslea.
On March 14th 1981, a detachment of the British Army surrounded a farmhouse near Roslea, containing Séamus and three other IRA members. Despite being armed with four rifles, including an Armalite, the IRA members surrendered and were arrested.
While on remand in Crumlin Road, he stood as a Republican candidate in the 1982 Free State General Election for the Cavan/Monaghan constituency, contesting a seat which had formerly been held by hunger strike martyr Kieran Doherty.
He was not elected but received 3,974 votes (6.84% of the vote).
In May 1982, he was convicted of murdering the RUC and UDR members, with the judge recommending he spend at least 30 years in prison.
On September 25th 1983, Séamus was involved in the Maze Prison escape, the largest break-out of prisoners in Europe since World War II and in British prison history.
Thirty-eight Republican prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijacked a prison meals lorry and smashed their way out of the prison.
After the escape, Seamus joined an IRA Active Service Unit operating in the border area between Counties Monaghan and Fermanagh.
The unit targeted police and military patrols with gun and bomb attacks while sleeping rough in barns and outhouses to avoid capture.
Séamus held a meeting with Pádraig McKearney and Jim Lynagh, members of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade, in which they discussed forming a flying column aimed at destroying police stations to create IRA-controlled zones within the six counties.
This plan had been used to great effect during the War of Independence, especially in Cork with Tom Barry’s Flying Column.
However, this plan never materialised.
McKearney and Lynagh were later themselves killed in the Loughgall ambush.
On April 26, 1986, Séamus and another IRA member, Seán Lynch, were preparing to ambush a British Army patrol near Rosslea, County Fermanagh when they were ambushed themselves by a detachment from the Special Air Service Regiment. Both were wounded, but Lynch managed to crawl away.
A January 1993 inquest jury returned a verdict that Séamus had been unlawfully killed. The jury ruled that the soldiers had opened fire without giving him a chance to surrender, and that he was shot dead five minutes after being wounded.
The Director of Public Prosecutions requested a full report on the inquest from the RUC, but no one was prosecuted for Séamus’s death.
Séamus McElwain was buried in Scotstown, with his funeral attended by an estimated 3,000 people.
Your ancestors knelt in open fields to pray. Not because they had no church. Because someone had decided that practicing their faith was a criminal act. And they went anyway.
Under the Penal Laws of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Catholic worship was effectively banned in Ireland. Catholic churches were seized or destroyed. Catholic clergy faced imprisonment, transportation, or execution. The institutional structure of Irish Catholic life was systematically dismantled by a government that understood, correctly, that faith was the thing holding the Irish people together and that breaking it would break them.
It did not break them.
Mass rocks appeared across the Irish countryside. Flat stones on hillsides, in fields, at the edges of bogs, that became altars. Priests who had been trained in secret on the continent returned to Ireland and moved from townland to townland, saying Mass in the open air with lookouts posted to watch for soldiers. Entire communities gathered in wind and rain and cold to participate in something they had been told they were not permitted to do.
The punishment for attending was severe. The attendance was extraordinary.
Your ancestors were among those people. They knelt in a field in the rain because the alternative was letting someone else decide what they were allowed to believe, and that was not a concession the Irish were willing to make. Not then. Not ever.
The faith that runs in your family did not come from compliance. It came from defiance. From people who chose it when choosing it had consequences and kept choosing it every Sunday in every field for as long as the law said they couldn’t.
That is not religion. That is your bloodline refusing to be told who it is.
The Nobel Prize winning poet made his position unmistakably clear in 1983, responding to being labeled a British writer. Through his poem Open Letter, Heaney asserted his Irish identity with words that still resonate today:
“Be advised my passport’s green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.”
More than a line of poetry, it was a cultural statement. A reminder of Ireland’s distinct voice, history, and pride on the world stage.
Over 40 years later, those words continue to echo across generations
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The Irish American connection also comes through in the way the brand is used as a gift. IrishCentral has featured Hanna Hats in its St. Patrick’s Day and Irish gift guides, underscoring how the company has become a familiar name for shoppers seeking something proudly Irish, useful and longstanding. That makes the brand especially meaningful for milestones, holiday giving and family occasions, where a cap can function as both a wardrobe staple and a keepsake.
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The family of murdered GAA official Sean Brown believe he was identified as a target at local level before his abduction and killing in 1997, according to remarks made during a recent meeting with an Irish-American delegation visiting the north of Ireland.
Clare Loughran, Mr Brown’s daughter, revealed her family’s suspicions during a briefing with a delegation from the US branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians on Monday.
Speaking at a briefing in Bellaghy, County Derry, Ms Loughran said the family suspect local involvement in the circumstances that led to her father (pictured, inset) being singled out.
Members of the US branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), on a 10-day fact-finding mission, met the Brown family alongside relatives including Mr Brown’s widow Bridie, now in her late 80s, and other family members (pictured).
Mr Brown, a former Bellaghy GAA chairman and a prominent local nationalist, was attacked as he locked the club gates. He was abducted by a Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) gang acting in evident collusion with the Crown forces. He was later shot dead near Randalstown, Co Antrim, on 12 May 1997. He was a father of six.
Intelligence linked to the case has indicated more than 25 individuals may have been associated with the murder, including several state agents.
His family have heavily criticised the British government for appealing court rulings that declared its refusal to hold a public inquiry into the killing unlawful.
During the AOH delegation visit, Ms Loughran said the rural community context made it difficult to understand how the gang had identified her father without local assistance. Her sister Siobhan Brown also accompanied delegates along what is believed to be the route used by the killers after the abduction.
The delegation was also told that material disclosed during an abandoned 2024 inquest contained heavily redacted documents, with one file including 58 completely blanked-out pages.
AOH spokesman Martin Galvin told the meeting that if a basic “gist of the truth” could not be provided in Sean Brown’s case, it raised wider questions about legacy justice for all families affected by the conflict. He said the group intended to raise the issue in the United States and in Congress as part of their advocacy.
Alongside the Brown family meeting, the delegation also heard from representatives involved in other legacy cases, including the Springhill-Westrock inquest, where families of victims of a British massacre have recently secured a date for a verdict following a long-running legal process.
The visit has drawn political criticism. DUP MP Gregory Campbell described the AOH delegation as a “deeply one-sided exercise.
Responding to the DUP MP’s criticism, Mr Galvin said: “Given Gregory Campbell’s attitude to Bloody Sunday victims murdered in his own city, it’s no surprise that he would be hostile to our delegation, which is here to support those families and the families of Sean Brown and the Springhill-Westrock massacre.”
The AOH delegation is expected to continue meetings with campaigners, legal representatives and political figures throughout their visit.
Your ancestors knelt in open fields to pray. Not because they had no church. Because someone had decided that practicing their faith was a criminal act. And they went anyway.
A powerful stand for identity from Seamus Heaney
