Born: October 9th, 1951
Died: February 21st, 2025
Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, who has died aged 73, was a former seminarian who as an IRA member participated in a sectarian massacre on the Shankill, allegedly was involved in the kidnapping of Don Tidey and the killing of a Garda and Irish soldier, played a central role in the H-Block hunger strikes and was one of the leaders of the mass escape of IRA prisoners from the Maze prison in 1983.
In paying tribute, senior Sinn Féin and former IRA members majored on the hunger strikes and the Maze escape, while several others concentrated on the Shankill killings and the Tidey kidnapping.
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The clash of opinion was well illustrated in an exchange on X following his death where Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald described McFarlane as “a great patriot who lived his life for the freedom and unity of Ireland”, with chancellor of the University of Limerick Prof Brigid Laffan responding that such praise was “stomach churning”.
There was a large attendance of republican figures at his funeral in west Belfast on Tuesday, February 25th.
McFarlane was born in 1951 and raised in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. He took his nickname “Bik” from a Scottish brand of biscuits, McFarlane, Lang and Co. In 1968, he decided to study for the priesthood, attending St David’s Catholic seminary in Wales, but abandoned his vocation two years later to return to Belfast, where he joined the IRA.
Several years ago he told the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, that he saw no contradiction in engaging in armed violence. “We were studying liberation theology. I’d have turned up somewhere like South America with a bible in one hand and an AK47 in the other,” he said.
He was convicted of the IRA gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill in August 1975 in which five Protestants, three men and two women, were killed and some 60 injured. As it made its getaway, the IRA unit also opened fire on a group of women and children standing at a taxi rank.
McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders. As David Beresford wrote in Ten Men Dead, McFarlane was not chosen as one of the 1981 hunger strikers because of the Bayardo attack, which potentially would have labelled him a “one-man public relations disaster”.
But against his wishes, he ended up as the IRA commanding officer in the prison during the strikes. The obvious candidate for the role was another leading republican, Seanna Walsh. But Bobby Sands, the first to begin the hunger strike and the first of the 10 to die, insisted that McFarlane must take on the role. “Seanna Walsh is my best mate,” said Sands. “When a crisis develops, Seanna Walsh will not let me die. You will. You have to.” McFarlane took it as a dubious compliment.
Over fairly recent years McFarlane was involved in a dispute with another former H-Block prisoner Richard O’Rawe, who was the IRA press officer in the prison during the hunger strikes. O’Rawe said he and McFarlane had agreed to accept a deal on offer that would have ended the strike after four deaths, but that it was overruled by the outside republican leadership. Others such as the late Monsignor Denis Faul made a similar assertion, but McFarlane insisted “there was no such deal”.
He tried to escape from the Maze Prison in 1978 dressed as a priest but was caught. He was more successful in 1983, when he led the Maze prison breakout in which 38 republican prisoners escaped.
He quickly resumed his IRA activities. There was strong evidence that he was involved in the 1983 kidnap of supermarket executive Don Tidey. The IRA gang was traced to Derrada Wood near Ballinamore in Co Leitrim, where Patrick Kelly and trainee Garda Gary Sheehan were shot dead. Tidey was freed while the kidnappers escaped.
McFarlane was arrested, along with fellow escapee and current Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly, in Amsterdam in 1986. He was extradited to Northern Ireland and returned to prison. He was released on parole 11 years later.
He was arrested in the Republic in 1998 and charged in connection with the Don Tidey kidnapping. That trial collapsed, however, after gardaí lost items recovered from Derrada Wood that were said to have his fingerprints on them. He faced a retrial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin 10 years later but that case also collapsed after Garda evidence and an alleged admission he had made that he was in Derrada Wood were ruled inadmissible.
In 2010, the Irish government had to pay McFarlane €5,400 in damages and €10,000 in legal costs after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that proceedings against him were “unreasonably long”. The court cited how over 10 years, McFarlane made 40 round-trips each of 320km to the court from his home in Belfast.
McFarlane was a firm supporter of the peace process and of the former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. He also was a singer and played at republican events. He wrote a number of songs including one about Sands called A Song for Marcella. This was a pseudonym, the name of one of his sisters, that Sands used in articles he wrote for An Phoblacht.
McFarlane married young but, according to Beresford, that relationship broke up early under the strain of his IRA activities. He met his Danish wife Lene in a jazz club in Paris while he was on the run in 1984. He is survived by Lene and their children, Thomas, Emma and Tina.
