THE last surviving IRA woman from a group of 14 republican internees imprisoned in Armagh jail in the 1940s has died.
Bernadette Loughran (95) from west Belfast was one of 14 Cumann na mBan prisoners who went on hunger strike for almost three weeks in protest at the governor’s failure to segregate republicans from criminal inmates.
She died on Halloween night.
The mother-of-seven, whom her children described as a “quiet family-centred woman”, became politically aware during the depression-hit 1930s and began campaigning against the discrimination of the poverty-hit working classes – both Catholic and Protestant – in the ‘Outdoor Relief Riots’.
Born in Co Fermanagh on June 9 1923, ‘Bernie’ grew up in Vulcan Street in the impoverished Short Strand area of east Belfast where she said there was a “grim struggle” for survival during the “hungry thirties”.
Influenced by republican socialist ‘Red Jack Brady’, she became involved in the female wing of the IRA as a teenager.
The republican campaign of the 1940s preceded the border campaign of the following decade and was a turbulent period which saw the north’s only execution of an IRA member when 19-year-old Tom Williams was hanged for the
murder of an RUC officer in 1942.
In the same year 19-year-old Bernie became caught up in a republican riot in Peel Street that ended in her arrest for throwing a ‘kidney paver’ – a large cobble stone – at police.
She refused to recognise the court and was sentenced to three months in jail. Shortly after her release she was interned for three years.
She forged close relationships with her ‘OC’ (officer commanding), well-known republican Cassie O’Hara, as well as fellow prisoners Sheila Moore and Bridie O’Hare.
Her family say her recollection of the period was ‘remarkable’.
“She said that internment was worse than being sentenced because she never knew when it would end,” her son Seamus said.
“Imagine going on hunger strike in the 1940s in Armagh gaol – there wouldn’t have been many food parcels. She was our inspiration and source identity.
“She was an incredibly brave woman but she was so quiet and dedicated to her family.”
Following her release she worked in Greaves’ Mill and married Seamus Loughran. The couple moved to a house in Theodore Street in the city where she raised her family and retreated from political activism.
She died at Kilwee Nursing Home. Her funeral will take place today, with Requiem Mass at St Agnes’ Church at 9.30am.
The National Graves Association, the organisation that looks after republican graves, will be involved in today’s burial at the City Cemetery on the Falls Road.
