IRA supporting writer deemed 'too drunk and unstable' to be dangerous

MI5 considered Irish playwright Brendan Behan to be "too unstable and too drunken" to be dangerous, previously secret files show.

Behan, best known for his play The Quare Fellow and his book Borstal Boy, spent eight years in prison for IRA activities, including the attempted murders of two Dublin detectives.

He was also a supporter of the Communist Party, although his legendary drinking bouts in later life meant that he ceased to be taken seriously as a threat to Britain's national security.

His MI5 file, newly released by the National Archives, includes several curt asides by agents commenting on his dissolute state.

One report, dated June 1956, states: "Source considers that as an individual he is too unstable and too drunken to be particularly dangerous."

Another document summarises a telephone call between Behan and Communist Party organiser Barbara Niven in August 1957 in which the playwright said he was "where he always was – he was not an English man, he was a communist; the comrades did not always agree with him".

The MI5 officer noted: "I assumed from the above conversation that Brendan was either a little mad or drunk."

The file also recounts the time in October 1952 when Dublin-born Behan was arrested at Newhaven, East Sussex, for contravening an expulsion order.

Behan was fined 15 and placed on a ship heading for Dieppe in northern France on 5 November, 1952.