Joe McCann

Joe McCann (2 November 1947 – 15 April 1972) was an Irish Republican Army and later Official Irish Republican Army volunteer from Belfast. He was active in politics from the early 1960s and participated, as an Official IRA volunteer, in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was killed, aged 24, after being confronted by RUC Special Branch and British paratroopers in 1972.

He was born in the Lower Falls area of Belfast, and spent most of his life there and in the nearby Markets area of the city. His mother died when he was four years old leaving behind Joe and three other children. His father remarried having another three children with his second wife. He was educated in the Christian Brothers school on Barrack Street in Belfast, where he developed an interest in the Irish language. A bricklayer by trade, he joined the Fianna Éireann at age 14 and the IRA in the early 1960s.

In 1964 he was involved in a riot on Divis Street in Belfast in opposition to the threat from loyalist leader Ian Paisley to march on the area and remove an Irish tricolour flying over the election office of Billy McMillen. In 1965 he was arrested for the possession of bayonets with five other men. The five refused to answer questions in custody or to speak in court and were sentenced to a three years in prison. They served nine months in Crumlin Road jail. He had expressed an interest in the priesthood while a teenager and became more religiously committed in prison. He joined the third order of the Franciscans in his later teens.

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