Paul Merton’s Who Do You Think You Are episode uncovers grandfather’s IRA past
James Power, left, joined the IRA and Paul Merton, right, says that he can understand why
Kaya Burgess - August 20 2019, The Times
When the British Army sent troops into Dublin to suppress the Easter Rising more than a century ago, one of those soldiers was an Irishman who later joined the IRA after being forced to fire on his countrymen.
Paul Merton has discovered that his grandfather quit the British Army, handed back his medals and joined the IRA after what was a turning point on the road to Irish independence.
The comedian said he could completely understand why his ancestor hated the British at the time.
The Have I Got News for You panellist learnt about his grandfather’s actions during an appearance on the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are?
Merton, 62, said it was important to draw a distinction between the IRA in its early days and the organisation it grew into during the Troubles decades later.
During the programme he discovered that James Power, from Co Waterford, left his job as a farm labourer to sign up for the British Army in the First World War. He was training in Dublin when he was ordered to help put down the rebellion of 1916.
Power went on to serve in North Africa and the Middle East, but then left the army, returned his service medals and signed up for the IRA, serving as a first lieutenant in the East Waterford Brigade between 1920 and 1921 in the Irish War of Independence, where he was involved in procuring lorries.
He died in 1927, when Merton’s mother, Mary Ann, was very young. Her mother, who was pregnant with another child, died days later and lost the baby.
Mary Ann was raised by foster parents and in children’s homes. She kept a photograph of her father all her life, but seemed reluctant to know more about him, Merton said.
He had been invited on Who Do You Think You Are in 2004, but his parents had not been keen for researchers to delve into the family’s past, he said. Both died six years ago and he now felt free to accept the invitation. The episode will be shown on August 28.
Merton told the Radio Times. “I think my mum would have taken the attitude that it was a long time ago and [the IRA] was a different organisation then, and it was about getting away from British rule. They were an occupied country fighting for independence. Having gone through the experiences he’s gone through, I can completely understand why my grandfather would have been anti-British. It was very plausible, very understandable.
“As an Irishman in British uniform, James is ordered to shoot fellow Irishmen on the streets of the capital city of Ireland. That sort of thing could, to use a modern phrase, radicalise you, I could imagine. You think you’re going to France to fight the Germans, and then you’re in Dublin and ordered to shoot at your mates.”
He said his extended family in Ireland had been moved by the episode. “This was the old IRA. Some of my Irish relatives were very firm on the distinction between what it used to be and what it became 50-odd years afterwards,” he said. “The thing with the IRA is that people will think, ‘Oh, the Birmingham bombings’ and all that. But this was a different time. It needs to be put into context.”