John SS Graham – international golfer and IRA commander, 1938-1951

Presented at Sports History Ireland’s annual conference, February 2008

To some extent, this paper continues a theme introduced at last year’s Sports History Ireland conference by Dr Jim Shanahan of TCD, who examined the experience of former IRA volunteer John Burke at the 1932 Walker Cup match. While John Graham, the subject of this paper, was perhaps a more prominent member of the IRA, he has much less of a legacy in Irish golfing circles. However, his golfing career is worthy of attention for a number of reasons. Firstly, Graham was a prominent member of the Northern Command of the IRA during the short but notable northern campaign of the late 1930s and early 1940s. As one of a number volunteers who came from a Church of Ireland background, Graham and his fellow members of the ‘prod squad’ disappeared off the radar following their capture in 1942. Little is known of what became of any of them – even on an individual basis – after a general amnesty granted their release. However, Graham’s golfing exploits, which were largely noteworthy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, provide a sequel of sorts to his prominent activities for the IRA at the time, answering – at least in part – the question of what the future held for him after his release. Secondly, despite the similarity in their political outlooks, there were notable differences between the social background of Graham and Burke that help further tease out the exclusivity of the game in the early decades of the twentieth century. Thirdly, Graham’s flight south to Sligo after his release from Crumlin Road prison in late 1948, and his choice of the relatively obscure Strandhill Golf Club, rather than the more recognised and established County Sligo club in Rosses Point, provides a telling illustration of the different political roots of both clubs. Finally, away from the socio-political glare, Graham is worthy of attention in a sporting sense, as focusing on his career provides an insight into one of the lesser-known members of the Irish international team during what might have been considered the golden era of Irish amateur golf. During Graham’s tenure as an international player, Jimmy Bruen became the first Irish golfer to win the British Amateur Championship – the most prestigious competition in the world of amateur golf. Only in 1985 would an Irish player repeat the feat, when Garth McGimpsey won the event at Royal Dornock. Also during this period, Fred Daly captured the Open Championship, the equivalent in the professional ranks. It would not be until Padraig Harrington’s victory last year in Carnoustie that another Irish player would follow in his footsteps. Furthermore, five of Graham’s international team-mates earned Walker Cup caps in the 1940s, representing Britain and Ireland against the United States in the biennial match. In addition to the aforementioned Burke and Bruen, these included Cecil Ewing, Joe Car and Max McCready. Indeed, in 1947, Ewing, Carr, Bruen and McCready were all selected for the team – the only time in the history of that event that four Irish players would play in the Walker Cup.

Leader of the ‘Prod squad’

John Graham’s family were Church of Ireland, and indeed he himself was studying to be a clergyman when the influence of Denis Ireland was brought to bear on the young Graham. Ireland, a Presbyterian, had fought in the First World War with the Royal Irish Fusiliers in France and Macedonia. By the late 1930s, he was gaining some notoriety for his founding of an Irish Union Movement, a constitutional organisation that attracted considerable liberal Protestant support due to its stressing of better relations with the south, something that harked back to Wolfe Tone’s writings. However, for Graham and several other liberal Protestants, there was only a small step from this constitutional agitation and physical force. Having studied centuries of Irish-English conflict, this group had decided that the aim of reunification through peaceful means was unattainable, and that an armed struggle was necessary. As Tim Pat Coogan put it, Graham and his associates

had joined the Union, not for the purposes of infiltration, but through the same tradition that brought them into the IRA: an interest in socialism, Wolfe Tone’s writings, the Irish language and the Gaelic League.

Unofficially, this group was known as the ‘Prod Squad’, and Graham quickly emerged as one of the most valuable assets in the Belfast Command structure. Jim Bowyer Bell described him as ‘one of the IRA’s best finds [….] He supplied what the Belfast IRA had consistently lacked since the exit of the radicals and professional people in the 30s – a keen, urbane mind and an acid pen’. These skills led to his appointment as director of publicity and the management of the IRA newspaper, Republican News. In addition, his sheer resourcefulness, combined with the rash of arrests of leading republicans in the early 1940s, led him to be promoted to officer commanding, Belfast Battalion. The involvement of Graham and his liberal Protestant associates in the IRA at this time did not come to light until a gun battle at the Northern Command’s publicity HQ in Crumlin Road, Belfast, on 10 September 1942. Graham and a number of others were captured, and after their involvement came to light, Ireland’s Irish Union Movement, already on tenuous ground as their all-Ireland outlook had not endeared them to the majority of their Protestant brethren, completely collapsed.

Graham was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and ended up in Crumlin Road prison’s A wing, where Joe Cahill was also interned. In Brendan Anderson’s 2002 monograph on Cahill’s career in the IRA, there is an account of a friendship the two struck up while in Crumlin Road:

John Graham was a man I got to know extra well, because he came into jail while I was there. He was a member of the Church of Ireland. Most of the special unit were Church of Ireland. John always maintained that his was the true Christian church in Ireland…. We had fierce arguments in jail, but he was very convincing in his claims that his was the true church…. It was the Catholic church, John maintained, that had left the true church. When he was in the Crumlin Road jail, the Church of Ireland chaplain, Pastor Buchanan, was appointed pastor of St Mary’s… the church John attended when he was free. During one visit, John’s mother and sister told him of the new pastor – what a great man he was, and the changes he was making to the church. They told John about a beautiful picture which the new pastor had mounted in the porch of the church. John asked what that picture was and was told it was the Virgin Mary. John, a Church of Ireland elder, was furious and, from his prison cell, attempted to call a meeting of the elders to have Buchanan removed because he had erected symbols of ‘papish idolatry’ in the church.

One other notable incident from Graham’s time in the A wing of Crumlin Road was the famous successful escape of Hugh McAteer and his associates in 1943. A bookkeeper by profession, McAteer served as IRA chief of staff for a year before his capture by the RUC in October 1942, but from the moment he arrived in the Crumlin Road prison, he had been planning his escape. On 15 January 1943, he and three other senior IRA men, Paddy Donnelly, Ned Maguire and Jimmy Steele, all escaped over the prison wall. The methods used to effect the escape, detailed in Cahill’s book, demonstrated considerable ingenuity. Rope ladders and grappling tools were fashioned from bed materials, while the escape itself was well enough choreographed that it seamlessly exploited the daily prison routine. However, Cahill maintains that a second team of escapees had also been organised that day, providing the first escape had not been noticed. The second team would go at nine o’clock, half an hour after McAteer’s team, while they were making their way to the workshops. This team included Graham, along with Cahill, David Fleming. However, the first team were spotted by a prison officer’s son on his way to school as they traversed the wall, and while the first team got away without much delay, there would be no further escape, as the cells remained locked until well after nine o’clock and workshop duty was delayed. The subsequent tightening of prison security included random cell-searches and bread-and-water diets, and conditions became so harsh that a hunger strike was entertained. However, Graham was among those who argued against this, as it either weakened prisons irrevocably or had to be carried through to death. A more effective protest, he felt, was a ‘strip strike’, which received much support from the other inmates. From mid-June 1943, 22 prisoners, including Graham, took off their prison clothes, with the wardens retaliating by removing every item from the cells until returning the bedding and blankets at 8.30pm each evening. The strike persisted for three months, until it was halted to allow Graham to get treatment for a badly swollen knee.

‘The grand striker’

Graham would get his release from Crumlin Road prison in 1949, but Belfast had little appeal for him by then. With the recapture of McAteer in late 1943, the IRA had diminished as a serious fighting force in Belfast, and the northern campaign, such as it was, had come to an end. The immediate future would see Graham return to his sport of choice – golf – not as a means to forget the previous years, but as a continuation of what had been, before his incarceration, a fairly promising golfing career. Graham learned to play golf in Balmoral, and was a member at Belvoir Park Golf Club in the mid-1930s. In 1935, he attained some notoriety by reaching the quarter-final of the South of Ireland championship in Lahinch, while he also contributed to Belvoir Park’s victory in the 1936 Belfast and District Cup. According to recollections obtained from some of the club’s surviving members, he appeared on the golf scene in the early 1930s ‘out of the blue as a very accomplished player’. The Belfast and District Cup was a seven-man inter-club matchplay competition, which Belvoir Park also won in 1938 thanks in part to Graham’s involvement, although his success within the club was also notable considering Belvoir Park was among the foremost clubs in Ulster at the time. Graham also won the Belvoir Park club championship in 1938, an achievement which helped propel him to the Irish international team for the first time in his career, where he played in the Home International matches at Porthcawl in Wales under the captaincy of Cork’s Redmond Simcox. The team lost their matches with England and Scotland, but beat Wales to avoid the wooden spoon. Although there would be no international matches again until after the Second World War, Graham’s career as a golfer was far from over. However, following his release from Crumlin Road prison, his ‘fly-by-night’ activities, as they were somewhat covertly referred to in Belvoir Park, were now well-known. He would look elsewhere for a club affiliation.

Graham came to Sligo in the summer of 1949, probably looking to affiliate to County Sligo Golf Club, where his international team-mates Cecil Ewing and Joe Mahon were members. County Sligo, indeed, had a long history and was very much at the heart of the Golfing Union of Ireland’s upper echelons, as by the late 1940s Ewing was already transitioning from playing for Ireland to becoming a selector. Moreover, the West of Ireland championship, held every Easter at County Sligo, was one of the most important events in determining the composition of the international team. Graham struck up a friendship with the Wehrly brothers – Eddie and Fred – who ran a jeweller and watchmaker business on O’Connell Street, Sligo’s main business thoroughfare. The brothers were both members of County Sligo Golf Club, but were more actively involved in another, smaller golf club across Sligo bay in Strandhill. It was without doubt in their best interests to entice Graham to Strandhill to play, but there was little doubt that given the historical context within which both clubs came into existence, it made sense that he would become a member of Strandhill and not County Sligo.

County Sligo Golf Club had been founded in 1894. At the time, golf in Sligo was more or less a conservative pursuit, especially as the Sligo Champion, under the direction of Irish Party MP P.A. McHugh, were actively and zealously promoting the virtues of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The Sligo Independent, the unionist newspaper in Sligo, and subsequently the like-minded Sligo Times, carried a significant amount of golf coverage from time to time. Indeed, in 1910, when County Sligo GC’s Amy Ormsbie won the Irish Ladies Golf Championship, the Times gave considerable space to the victory, as well as a large amount of copy on her homecoming celebrations. The Champion were much less prominent in their coverage, although they did acknowledge it. However, by the 1920s, golf was becoming more interesting to the nationalists of Sligo, and by the end of the decade there were calls for the nationalist working men of Sligo to form a golf club. In 1931, the result would be seen in Strandhill Golf Club. Among the early prominent members of the club was Robert George Bradshaw, who had been a prominent figure in the IRA in the previous two decades. Bradshaw also had the distinction of operating one of the last surviving anti-treaty newspapers in the wake of the Civil War (his An Connachtach finally collapsed in 1925, ostensibly signalling the end of the advanced nationalist press).

The similarities between Bradshaw and Graham are, indeed, striking. Bradshaw had come from a mixed marriage, and despite being identified as a Protestant and a unionist in his early days on the political scene in Sligo, he proclaimed nationality as before all other considerations. Graham, likewise, had placed his nationalism before religion when he joined the IRA. The Wehrly brothers definitely knew of his past activities with the organisation, and advised him that County Sligo may not have admitted him with such knowledge. Strandhill Golf Club, they promised, would have no such discrimination, and – indeed – on 14 June 1949 ‘J.S.S. Graham, esq, of Belfast’ was elected a member of the club. Graham was Strandhill’s one and only international player in the club’s first 75 years, yet little as recorded of his activities at the club. At some stage in his first year as a member, it has been recalled that he participated in an exhibition match that also included the club’s two best players at the time – Ned Power and Wally Maloney, both of whom regularly played championship golf. However, even with the 75th anniversary of Strandhill Golf Club in 2006, little has come to light about his tenure as a member of the club. Newspaper articles and personal interviews bridge the gap to some extent, although further study could prove interesting.

Graham first played under the Strandhill Golf Club banner at the 1950 West of Ireland championship in Rosses Point. While participating in the championship, he stayed at the Wehrly family home in Larkhill. The normal procedure at the time for members of the club who wished to play in such championships was to apply in writing to the club for permission to enter. Graham afforded the club this courtesy, as recorded in the minutes of the March committee meeting, and he, along with Joe Doherty, Ned Power and Wally Maloney, were entered into the 1950 championship. Setting out to regain his place on the international team, he reached the quarter-final stage before losing out to the eventual runner-up, Lahinch’s Brud Slattery (Cecil Ewing won the chammpionship). The whole experience was a positive one for Graham, who would build on that performance in what was perhaps one of his best years as a golfer, but also for Strandhill GC, who attained a profile they had not previously enjoyed. While players like Power, Maloney and Doherty had represented the club in previous years in these championships, they seldom got past the second round. Later that year, with the Irish Close Championships also being held in County Sligo, hopes were high that Graham could pull off an even bigger performance. He once again quickly gained the notice of the local and national press by easily coming through the early rounds, and a thrilling victory at the final hole in the quarter-final against Killarney’s W.M. O’Sullivan, the defending Irish champion, ensured he was installed as one of the tournament favourites. This was a key victory for Graham in another way also – O’Sullivan was a veteran international player, having made his debut for Ireland sixteen years previously and holding down his place comfortably ever since. However, in his semi-final match against Ewing, Graham was badly out of sorts, going behind early and losing out on the 16th green. All the same, his performances in both the West of Ireland and Irish championships were enough to reinstate him on the international team, some twelve years after his debut. At the annual general meeting of Strandhill Golf Club, the honorary secretary Sean Carroll reflected on his achievements and what they meant to his new club. ‘The success achieved by John Graham in the Irish Open, his selection on the Irish team, and his gallant bid last Easter for the West of Ireland championship,’ he stated, ‘has redounded to the merit of the club and put Strandhill on the golfing map’. It was a particularly good year to return to international duty, as Ireland came close to winning the Triple Crown – only a drawn match with Scotland prevented them from achieving that feat. Graham made a substantial contribution, partnering Woodbrook’s Brennie Scannell with some success in the foursomes and frequently being placed in the anchor position in the singles.

Graham continued to impress the following year at the West of Ireland championship. Ironically, Graham met Ned Power, his club mate, in the first round, in what the County Sligo GC notes on the event called ‘an unfortunate draw from the hat’. Graham won by 4 and 3, and advanced further with victories over Mick Breen (Ballinamore), David Ryan (Hermitage), and – most impressively – over Tramore’s J.C. Brown, another veteran international who was on the verge of winning his twelfth Ireland cap. Even more notable was the fact that Graham had outlasted local hero Ewing, who had suffered a bout of the putting yips in his loss to Dundalk’s Michael Ferguson. He would meet Joe Carr, the overwhelming championship favourite, in the semi-final, but succumbed by 3 and 2, with Carr going on to win the championship after dispatching Ferguson in the final by the same margin. Although described as shy and retired, Graham made an eloquent speech at the presentation, in which he thanked the captain and committee ‘for the manner in which the competition was managed’. Graham would once again meet Ewing in the semi-final of the Irish Close championship that year, by which time his celebrity status among golfing enthusiasts was assured when he appeared with Ewing at the first tee in Portmarnock in a large photograph printed on the Irish Times’ sports page. In the Times’ first report from the championship, they referred to Graham as ‘that grand striker’, and paid particular attention when he once again defeated Tramore’s Brown in another thrilling match, coming back from three down with seven to play to win on the 18th green. Despite Ewing holding his previous victory over Graham in the semi-final of the West of Ireland, Graham gave a far better account of himself this time round. He took an early two-hole lead, but Ewing made four birdies to be two up after eight before Graham clawed back the deficit. They stood all-square on the 18th tee, but Graham hooked his drive and could not recover to make par, the score which Ewing posted to win the match. Nonetheless, it was another notable performance, and proved enough for Graham to once again make the Irish team, which was again only one game away from a triple crown before defeat to Wales ended their challenge.

Conclusions

Graham would enter the West of Ireland the following April, reaching the quarter-final, but he did not manage to hold his international place, and he never again represented Strandhill at the championships. Just as he had previously faded into political obscurity, so now did he fade into golfing obscurity; he rarely entered championships after 1952. On the 50th anniversary of Strandhill Golf Club, one of the club’s committee members, Donnie Mannix, went to Belfast and tracked Graham down. He was working as the night porter in the Regency Hotel. Mannix had offered to host him in Sligo while the club celebrated the 50th anniversary, during which time some sort of appropriate celebration of Graham’s achievements could be made. He decided not to take up the invitation, and no further commemoration of his achievement was undertaken. The only official acknowledgement in Strandhill Golf Club of Graham’s legacy is a small note in the middle of a commemorative frame of the 50th anniversary that hangs in the wall of the clubhouse. It reads ‘John Graham had represented the club at international level on many occasions’.

So what is the significance of John Graham’s time as a member of Strandhill Golf Club? Unlike ‘the lion of Lahinch’ John Burke, Graham never made the Walker Cup team. As a result, he was never subjected to the same level of ostracism at the highest levels of the amateur game. However, the taboo of his past involvement with the IRA made Strandhill Golf Club, rather than the more established County Sligo, a more suitable club for him to affiliate to. Furthermore, the way in which Graham slipped so seamlessly back into the Irish golfing scene following his release from Crumlin Road prison indicated that the press and the sport’s organisers in Ireland were either unwilling to acknowledge or willing to forget the previous life he had led. Never once was there a mention in the newspaper’s golfing columns – even in the Irish Times – of Graham’s past IRA involvement. In fact, while researching this paper, the impression was almost given that this J.S.S. Graham, and the John S.S. Graham mentioned in most of the works on the IRA in the 1940s, were two completely different people.

However, the principal purpose of this paper is admittedly somewhat conceited. Most of the names that appear alongside Graham’s in the list of international players are celebrated in their clubs at the very least. Graham, on the other hand, has remained more or less anonymous until now. In 2007, Strandhill Golf Club returned to national prominence for two reasons. For the first time in its history, a member of the club, Tommie Basquille, was elected president of the Golfing Union of Ireland. Furthermore, fifty-six years after Graham’s exploits, 17-year-old Tommy McGowan reached the semi-final of the West of Ireland championship, the first member of the club to get that far since Graham in 1951. McGowan gained an international cap at youths level, prompting much debate as to whether or not he was the first true Strandhill player to gain international honours. This, in some part, answers that question by assigning Graham his place as a key contributor to the history and status of Strandhill Golf Club. But outside of this, there are two reasons why the golfing career of John Graham is important. Firstly, what has only partially been uncovered in this paper provides a better understanding of one of the more enigmatic and obscure figures who was extremely involved at the highest level of Irish amateur golf during the era of the so-called ‘famous five’. Graham’s contribution to the Irish team over three Home International series during this period is worthy of attention in that regard. However, his golfing career helps to answer the question ‘what happened next’? The IRA in the 1950s and 1960s held a very different outlook to the IRA of the 1940s, in which a large Church of Ireland tinge provided the organisation with a wider intellectual and socio-political framework. By the 1960s, many of the survivors of the Northern Campaign had for the most part disappeared from the radar, and tended not to have involvement with the renewed activity of the border campaigns and subsequently. At a recent lecture at the research seminar of the Department of History in the Natioanal University of Ireland, Maynooth, Brian Hanley pointed out that there are few, if any, accounts of what happened the so-called ‘Prod Squad’ in the new regime – even on an individual level. At the very least, John Graham proved that there was life after the northern campaign for such individuals, even if it was to be a relatively quiet one.