Eamonn Boyce

Who is Eamonn Boyce?

Eamonn Boyce was an Irish volunteer of the Irish Republican Army. He was considered among the leading young activists in the organization in the early 1950s along with Charlie Murphy, Robert Russell, Tom Mitchell, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Joe Christie. He and Murphy were responsible for the successful raid on a British military barracks in Armagh in the summer of 1954.

He was later captured leading an IRA arms raid on the military barracks in Omagh, County Tyrone, on October 17, 1954, for which he was sentenced to twelve years penal servitude in Belfast Gaol. In spite of the raid's failure, the resulting publicity surrounding Boyce’s trial brought considerable recruits and funding for the organization. Forty years following his release, Boyce's prison diaries were published as The Insider: The Belfast Prison Diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956-1962 detailing daily life inside the infamous prison during the Border Campaign.