Gun runners and the QE2

Julie Gilbert • Published 14 Apr 2010 13:00

Details of how the Clydebank-built QE2 was used as a gun running ship for the IRA have been revealed from beyond the grave.

Brendan Hughes was a member of the paramilitary organisation and before his death he recorded secret interviews about IRA operations at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s, with academics at Boston College in the United States.

A book called Voices From The Grave has just been published - based on Hughes' interviews, which were not released until after his death in 2008, as were his conditions of being interviewed.

The book's author Ed Moloney, 61, told the Post how Hughes shed light on the way in which the QE2 was used by the IRA and how it brought some of the most "iconic" and feared weapons of the Troubles into Northern Ireland.

He said: "What makes the QE2 operation particularly significant for the Troubles is it brought armalite rifles into Belfast - they were the weapon being used by the American army and became the M16 carbine that was used in Vietnam.

"It's a very effective weapon for guerilla warfare.

"The IRA wanted to get hold of that weapon because it would make them better armed than the British.

"The armalite became the iconic weapon of the IRA.

"The smuggling would have been continuous - the first shipment in 1971 brought twenty-seven armalites."

Although the gun running had no connection to Clydebank the use of the QE2 by the IRA will still disappoint many Bankies for whom the ship remains a beacon of Clyde-built engineering and a symbol of pride.

Ed added: "Hughes is saying that IRA members who worked in the Merchant Navy on the ships were co-operating with him and the IRA in Belfast and smuggling weapons from the United States of America into Belfast.

"Seamen would bring the guns on board, five or six at a time and put them away in their lockers.

"When they arrived at Southampton the IRA people would meet them.

"They then hid guns in panels of cars and drove the cars back to Belfast.

"We're talking about when the IRA campaign started to step up after internment in August 1971 and through most of the 1970s.

"Thousands of guns got smuggled on board the QE2.

"It was a small number of crew members involved.

"There would have been a lot of people from Belfast involved with the ships at that time and a handful of those were involved with this.

"The captain and the other crew members wouldn't have known anything about it.

"The IRA was very secretive - the passengers certainly wouldn't have known about it because British intelligence didn't even know about it.

"It has been known that the QE2 was used in this way - what we didn't know before were the details."

Voices From the Grave is available in mainstream book shops and at Amazon.co.uk.

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This article appeared in Clydebank Post 14 Apr 10

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