Long Kesh & Bloody Sunday

Forty years ago Ireland was convulsed by the British army murders of fourteen civil rights demonstrators on the streets of Derry on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The march was organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) which had originally been campaigning for reforms but whose campaign had been met with Unionist state violence and repression, the latest of which was the introduction of internment and the torture of detainees.

And so, on Sunday 30^th January 1972 people gathered at Creggan Shops to make their way to the Guildhall for a public meeting on what was, essentially, an anti-internment march, protesting against the imprisonment without charge or trial of civil rights activists, nationalists and republicans in Long Kesh, Magilligan and the Maidstone Prison Ship. However, the way was blocked by British paratroopers who deliberately opened fire, killing young and old alike. The British attempted to justify the massacre by claiming they were fired on by the IRA and were only responding. A few days later a massive crowd in Dublin burnt the British Embassy to the ground and across Ireland young people queued up to join the struggle.

One who witnessed the events of that day was Micky Devine who, nine years later was to die on hunger strike. He was on that fateful march with his brother-in-law, Frank, who recalls: “When the shooting started we ran, like everybody else, and when it was over we saw all the bodies being lifted.” The slaughter confirmed to Micky that it was more than time to start shooting back. “How,” he would ask, “can you sit back and watch while your own Derry men are shot down like dogs?”

Micky had written: “I will never forget standing in the Creggan chapel staring at the brown wooden boxes. We mourned, and Ireland mourned with us. That sight more than anything convinced me that there will never be peace in Ireland while Britain remains. When I looked at those coffins I developed a commitment to the republican cause that I have never lost.”

The significance of Bloody Sunday can never been underestimated. It has been written about and has been the subject of film, dramas, poetry and documentaries. The latest, to coincide with the fortieth anniversary, has been the publication this week on BBC’s History website of archive material which contains interviews with those there on the day and discusses the aftermath of Bloody Sunday and its influence on Ireland to this day.

 

Waged by the Brave

 

Former republican prisoner Jim Gibney here reviews and praises a new book about the struggle waged by Irish prisoners incarcerated in British jails throughout the recent conflict:

When the Balcombe Street men walked into the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, they were cheered from the rafters. They received a prolonged ovation, a homecoming from people representing republican Ireland for four ex-prisoners who had spent 23 years in English jails and were representative of a republican constituency of prisoners long, long admired.

The Ard Fheis was elated.

The British government buried the Balcombe Street men and many other republican prisoners in prison cells, under life sentences, never to be heard of again, never to be released. Throughout the long years of armed struggle, in this and other phases, Irish political prisoners have featured prominently. In jails in Ireland they were never too far away from the public’s mind and their treatment by the British and Irish governments very often placed them centre stage as happened during the prison protests for political status leading to the 1981 hunger strike when ten prisoners died.

It was not easy being an IRA activist in Ireland or being a political prisoner. It was infinitely more difficult being an IRA activist on the streets of Britain or being a republican prisoner in a British prison.

Many books, films and dramas have recorded the experiences of republican prisoners in Ireland. Little has been published recording in detail the experiences of republican prisoners behind bars in England.

Until now that is.

The historian and author Ruan O’Donnell, in his book ‘Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Volume 1: 1968-1978’, has produced a book that forensically records that decade of life inside English prisons for republicans, their families and their supporters. The book is replete with microscopic detail about the arrest in Britain – I would hazard a guess – of every single person connected to the political conflict in Ireland since 1968.

The attention to detail is incredible, reflecting the mind of the historian at work, as he weaves war-related events in Ireland into the narrative and the impact of those events, firstly on the Irish in Britain and then on the IRA in Ireland and its intentions to open up Britain as a theatre in its war of freedom.

For example, O’Donnell offers us this sad little vignette. Two days before he died Frank Stagg, on his second and now fatal hunger strike for repatriation, asked his visitor Frank Maguire MP (Fermanagh/South Tyrone) to sing for him the song ‘Help Me Make it Through the Night’.

The author estimates some 200 republicans, men and women, were held inside Britain’s maximum-security jails. The book records the day-to-day guerrilla warfare tactics adopted by prisoners who battled with the prison warders on the prison landings, in the cells and on prison rooftops to assert their right to be treated as prisoners of war.

Other tactics included hunger strikes, refusal to wear prison uniforms and blanket and towel protests. In many instances republican prisoners acted alone or in small groups to challenge the prison system. To do so required individual strength and bravery.

The book records the methods used by the prison authorities to demoralise republican prisoners: closed visits, moving prisoners (‘ghosting’) to another jail on the eve of a visit, strip-searching, isolation, solitary confinement, bread-and-water diets, brutality, denial of repatriation (available to British soldiers when they were rarely convicted in Ireland) and the refusal of parole.

Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg died on hunger strike in 1974 and 1976, respectively, campaigning to be moved to a jail in Ireland. Noel Jenkinson died in prison in 1976 because the authorities refused him urgent medical attention. Also recorded are the miscarriages of justice, such as the cases of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Giuseppe Conlon and the Maguire family.

While the prisoners battled on the inside there were very brave people who stood with them on the outside: Sister Sarah Clarke, Maureen Maguire, Jackie Kay, MPs Bernadette McAliskey and Frank Maguire and several left-wing Labour MPs, civil liberty organisations, an Cumann Cabhrac and left-wing groups.

This is a long-awaited, untold and riveting story about a group of republicans who lived and died in the lion’s den, like O’Donovan Rossa and Tom Clarke before them in the cause of Irish Freedom.

‘Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons Vol 1: 1968-1978’ by Ruán O’Donnell. Irish Academic Press, Dublin, hardback £45 / paperback £19.95

City Hall Unveiling

A print bearing a quote from Bobby Sands was unveiled in Belfast City Hall last Thursday, 8^th December, by the former IRA leader of the blanket men, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane. The print is a copy of a canvass painted by muralist and former republican POW Gerry ‘Mo Chara’ Kelly in New York and which hangs on the city-facing wall of the Falls Library. Among those present were Joe McDonnell’s sister, Maura, and Kieran Doherty’s brother, Michael.

Brendan described the families of the hunger strikers as amongst the most courageous people he had ever met, praising their steadfastness and commitment.

The leader of the Sinn Féin group on Belfast Council, Jim McVeigh, spoke of the pride and respect that republicans have for the H-Block martyrs and their families. He said that it was important that City Hall reflected the changing face of politics in Belfast by displaying republican imagery.

“The City Hall needs to reflect the aspirations and views of the nationalist electorate of the city and we will play our part by honouring the hunger strikers who are held in the highest of esteem by our people”. (Photos by Peadar Whelan)

Artist Hugh Doherty

Hugh Doherty is a former IRA POW who was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment after his and his comrades’ arrest in London in 1975. Now a successful artist, samples of Hugh’s works are currently being exhibited in the new Culturlann gallery on the Falls Road. In this feature, which appeared in the Irish News, Jim Gibney writes about the prisoner-turned-painter:

Hugh Doherty was 32-years-old when he lifted a paint brush to paint a landscape for the very first time. He was being held in the Special Secure Unit (SSU) in Parkhurst Prison in England. An SSU was a prison within a prison where the prisoner’s every waking movement was monitored and scrutinised. The SSUs were designed to crush the prisoner’s will.

Hugh Doherty’s baptism as a landscape and seascape painter began in an SSU. It was the backdrop against which Mr Doherty’s latent, and unknown to him, talent emerged. 

Hugh is well-known in republican circles. His brother Pat is the MP and MLA for West Tyrone. Hugh arrived on the public scene in very particular and dramatic circumstances in 1975 when he and a group of other republicans were besieged by London’s police in a flat in Balcombe Street.Those arrested became known in the tabloid press as the ‘Balcombe Street Gang’. At their trial the judge sentenced them to life in prison with a thirty-year recommendation.

In 1998 the British Home Secretary, not satisfied with the severity of this sentence, imposed his own, without due process, ‘never to be released’.

As he left the governor’s office in Whitemoor Prison after being informed of this decision, Hugh Doherty shrugged his shoulders and said, “Such is life”. He and his comrades believed they would ‘go home when the war was over.’

Less than a year later, as a result of the deal the British government made with Sinn Féin prior to the Good Friday Agreement, Hugh, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Joe O’Connell were back in Ireland, free men, at home with their families.

They spent nearly 24 years behind bars in English jails – the last year was spent in Portlaoise Prison in the south.

Hugh Doherty was born in the Gorbals in Glasgow into a Donegal Irish community of emigrants waiting to return home. And home for Mr. Doherty was Carrigart.

Back then his only interest in painting was to admire the work of great painters, especially Van Gogh, but his eyes were taken by the beauty of the Donegal land and seascapes, Mount Errigal, and the power of the sun as it shone over Sheephaven Bay.

He pays tribute to the man who was his first big influence and did so much to awaken his interest in painting. His name is Peter Leath, a renowned maritime and seascape painter who lives on the Isle of Wight.

Peter Leath supervised art classes in the prison every week and developed Hugh Doherty’s skill. He believes everyone has a talent waiting to be revealed. It very often depends on unforeseen circumstances and encounters before that talent is realised.

Ireland is the primary subject for Hugh’s paintings. He relied on his memory of the Donegal terrain and the postcards his brother Pat sent to him over a twenty-year period from Pat’s travels around Ireland as he ploughed the republican furrow.

He saw Pat and his son Daniel for the first time in 20 years in 1995 on a special visit when he, Gerry Kelly MLA and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD arrived to update republican prisoners on the IRA’s decision the previous year to call a ceasefire.

Over the years Hugh has used oils, water colours and acrylics to portray his mindscape. In 1986 he ventured into abstract painting which he said allowed him to comment on political issues such as the Irish Famine (an Gorta Mór), the protests at Drumcree, the exclusion of Sinn Féin from talks at Stormont in the late 1990s and Barack Obama’s election. 

In 1990 a debate raged in the British House of Commons because a painting of Hugh’s, which appeared in a public gallery in Birmingham, annoyed the local Tory MP – an example of the power of the paintbrush!

Hugh built a studio onto his family home at Carrigart where he paints most days. He currently has an exhibition in Belfast’s Cultúrlann and regularly travels around Ireland exhibiting his works.

Of his decades in prison and as a painter he said, “I went in a republican and came out a republican and a painter. We are what we are.” And Hugh is above all loyal to his beliefs and his flourishing craft. Hugh Doherty website here.

Smashing H-Block

Dozens of books have been written about the political fall-out from the 1981 H-Block hunger-strike and Margaret Thatcher’s criminalization policy that preceded it. Several have been written from the perspective of the prisoners and hunger-strikers themselves. A recently published book looks at the struggle on the outside in support of the prisoners and is reviewed here by veteran republican and ex-POW, Gerry O’Hare –

Until now, there’s been nothing to record the determination, the struggles, the agonizing decisions, the comradeship and the sheer hard work of the campaigners outside the jails.

That has now been put right in honorable fashion by F. Stuart Ross in a book for which republicans, future historians and other academics should be eternally grateful.

The so-far untold story of the men and women who fought the good fight, first against an uncaring world, and then in the glare of the world’s media, is both important for the future and fascinating in its own right.

Far, far outside the Blocks, people were gradually mobilised by various groups and the work led to thousands of street protests, not just in the 32-Counties, but in other countries all around the world.

Who were these groups? How did they come together in massive shows of support which seemed, on the face of it, to show it was possible to unite people in a way not seen before in Ireland? How did people from the left, centre and even the right - socialists, communists, the trade unions and even the business classes - find common cause that temporarily allowed them to forget their differences and ideals in order to support a single issue?

‘Smashing the H-Blocks’ by F. Stuart Ross endeavors to trace the campaign from its start to its unhappy end. Ross is a Derry-based activist and academic with a PhD from Queens University and has also studied at Syracuse University in the US and at the London School of Economics.

It would be impossible in this review to detail every group or individual who assisted the campaign and to be fair the author takes no sides between them, instead fairly giving an account of who they were and what they did. At the end of every chapter he has diligent footnotes to back every assertion - which is essential of course but which must have taken many hours of hard work.

One quibble, here: it would have made it easier if the notes had been at the bottom of every page to avoid having to flick back and forth. The notes are really essential to an understanding of who was saying what.

Ross’s book limits itself to a political history of the prisoners’ struggle against the British prison system from 1976 to 1982. The author does mention earlier hunger strikes led by Billy McKee in 1972 for political status and the first hunger strike in the blocks by Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes and six comrades.

It is the Bobby Sands-led hunger strike on which Ross centres this attempt to bring clarity, firstly on how the street campaigns were organised and then on the bringing of thousands of feet marching through hill and dale over Ireland. He tells us that unlike other accounts of this period he wants to focus on the popular movement outside the prisons, challenging republican orthodoxy and stressing the importance of broad-based, grassroots movements in effecting political and social change. He believes that what happened outside the prisons during the three years of protest led to the reshaping and revitalising of modern day republicanism.

Recently, there has been much controversy over whether or not a settlement was offered after Sands and three other hunger-strikers died. These arguments have been unedifying, to say the least, and do not do justice to the men’s heroism. The author leaves that issue to others.

But what did take place on the outside with demonstrations around the world has never been properly told or told in such detail. Trying to pinpoint the moment when someone decided that a broad front should be mobilised is not easy, bearing in mind the number of groups involved, for example, Peoples’ Democracy, Sinn Féin etc.

However, Ross tells us that a Bodenstown oration in 1977, given by Jimmy Drumm, a well-known and highly-respected republican leader from the 1940s onwards, might give us a clue.

Drumm said: “A successful war of liberation cannot be fought exclusively on the backs of the oppressed in the six counties, nor around the physical presence of the British Army”.

He went on to say, “Hatred and resentment of this army cannot sustain the war, and the isolation of socialist republicans around the armed struggle is dangerous and has produced the reformist notion that ‘Ulster’ is the issue, which can be somehow resolved without the mobilisation of the working-class in the 26 counties”.

This statement by Drumm was seized upon by many left-wing groups, as well as republicans - who were then bedding down for a long war.

But above all, he was now saying openly that it had to be acknowledged that the armed struggle could not succeed on its own - there was a crying need for politics. Prior to Drumm’s words, the Republican Movement was reluctant to work with other groups in any protests - but now, even before the hunger strike protests, it saw the need for a broad front.

This broad front came to fruition during the hunger strikes a few years later.

There is no doubt that, among the various committees, Sinn Féin always had the largest representation and it had no love, particularly for the SDLP.

Fr Piaras O Duill was the first elected chairman of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee and, from that moment on, the author takes us on a journey through the various permutations and forms the campaign took. All these groupings coincided with massive changes within the Republican Movement along the lines given earlier by Jimmy Drumm.

From here on, the author details how the committees were formed locally and their structures, the dominant role of Sinn Féin and how others reacted to their position. He informs us of the myriad of regional committees formed and the absolute need to have support from the South.

In his account of the contentious decision about ending the first hunger strike, the decision-maker being Darkie Hughes, he only states that he came under huge pressure because of the feared, imminent death of Sean McKenna. We already know why Bobby Sands activated the second hunger strike, its ghastly death toll and the demonstrations that took place worldwide.

As stated earlier, this book is a must. It’s a great read about a sad and tragic period. Stuart Ross is to be applauded for this worthy contribution to republican prison history.

Book available through Amazon, here.

Old Comrades Reunion

 

Jim Gibney writes about a unique reunion of former prisoners – those who took part in the protest for political status in Armagh Jail and the H-Blocks between 1976 and 1981:

There have been many episodes in the conflict over the last fifty years when republicans were called upon to perform feats of considerable human endurance.

Many of these episodes are linked to one kind of imprisonment or another. Sometimes the individual was pitted against interrogators and had to withstand the brutality and cruelty of a protracted interrogation as in the case of those republicans who became known as the ‘hooded men’, who were arrested after the introduction of internment in August 1971 and were especially selected for torture. Other times it was the feeling of isolation, the loneliness of a prison cell, surrounded by hostility as experienced by republicans who spent long years in jail in prisons in England, the US and Europe. Or the experience of those republicans who were forced to live in exile, away from their family and friends, and had to cope with all manner of loss, including family bereavement or missing out on joyous family occasions.

Of all of the challenges faced by republicans the period which demanded more from them in terms of commitment, endurance, single-mindedness and dedication was the period between 1976 and 1981. This was the period when the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set out to use all the resources at her command, and that the British state possessed, to try to crush the republican struggle by trying to criminalise republican prisoners. The struggle inside the prisons, the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s Prison, were epic in terms of their longevity, the personal cost to each of the prisoners involved and their families and the significant political changes that arose out of the prison protest.

The protracted clash between the republican political prisoners and the British government produced a David versus Goliath contest. In the words of Bobby Sands - what was won in the prison protest and what was lost was won and lost for ‘the republic’. That outlook was the defining psychological context for the prisoners. They were defending Ireland’s ancient claim to nationhood, to independence, to freedom, from occupation by our nearest neighbouring island – Britain. Bobby Sands’ remarks symbolised where the prisoners in the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s Prison stood. Margaret Thatcher symbolised the stance taken by the British government perhaps none more so than in her comments inside Stormont – then viewed as the seat of unionist one-party rule – when the hunger strike was at its peak. She said the IRA was playing its last card!

So it is hardly surprising that those who took part in that protest would be proud of themselves for doing so and for inflicting a defeat on Thatcher and the British government. On Saturday 8^th October several hundred people gathered in Belfast to honour the memory of the ten hunger strikers who died during the protest and Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg who died on hunger strike in English jails, and to acknowledge all those blanketmen and women protestors who spent years in cellular confinement and experienced appalling levels of deprivation and brutality by prison warders.

It was the rarest of rare nights. So rare in fact that it took over thirty years to organise the gathering. It was a special night. A night when men and women, now in their middle years, brought their children to witness a reunion of old comrades who formed enduring bonds of friendship and comradeship in the most extreme and personally challenging circumstances. They were joined by several of the hunger strikers’ relatives and women like Maura Mc Crory and Lily Fitsimmons whose sons were on the blanket protest and who led the popular protest movement on the outside in support of the prisoners. At the time they were joined by other mothers and stood in prominent public places clad only in a blanket on the streets of Belfast, Dublin, Paris and New York.

It was a night when all republicans on the protest were remembered. This was reflected in the imagery around the hall: on stage was a portrait of Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes, Mairead Farrell and Kieran Nugent, the first man to wear a blanket and refuse to wear a prison uniform.

A medal struck for the occasion was presented to the ex-prisoners by relatives of those who died on the 1981 hunger strike. It was received with pride and was shown to others as a badge of honour of recognition for participating in a gruelling yet worthy and noble self-sacrifice, the influence of which is still being played out politically to this day.

 

 

‘John Lennon’s Dead’

Veteran republican Gerry O’Hare reviews former POW Síle Darragh’s memoir of life for imprisoned women during the struggle for political status:

It is a grey hulk so familiar to us all.  Armagh Women’s Gaol.  The very name is redolent of another age. But, it has to be said, mystery still surrounds what it was like to be incarcerated behind its walls. No book has ever been written, to my knowledge, from the perspective of an actual republican woman prisoner. Several have been written by outsiders, albeit sympathetic outsiders, but none by a republican insider.

Until now.

Step up Síle Darragh from Belfast who served a sentence of five years for allegedly planting incendiary devices in a Belfast business. The title appears, at first sight, to be a strange one for a book about the women prisoners in Armagh. There is an explanation ­ but I won¹t spoil it for you. You will have to read on for yourselves.

The book is centered on the struggle of women in Armagh in parallel with the blanket protest and H-Block hunger strikes and focuses particularly on the women’s 1980 hunger strike ­ something that tends to be overlooked when considering the enormity of what was endured by Bobby Sands and his comrades.

Síle Darragh became the OC of the jail after Mairead Farrell, Mary Doyle and Margaret Nugent joined the hunger strike that had been begun by seven men some weeks earlier in the H-Blocks.

Síle’s story begins after she is, firstly, remanded and then sentenced to five years for membership of the IRA - the maximum possible sentence for that conviction at the time.

Brought to Armagh Gaol she quickly settles into the mundane and boring daily routine of life in prison. She explains how the prisoners followed IRA discipline within the jail walls and under the command of Mairead Farrell (later brutally assassinated by the SAS in Gibraltar).

The minds of mere males cannot even begin to imagine the tough conditions the women of Armagh suffered on the no wash protest. Whilst enduring awful conditions with their excrement on the walls, they also had to contend with the added problem of their monthly periods. I found it difficult to come to terms with what they endured.

Síle recalls vividly the brutal assaults carried out during the protest by the screws and the vicious attacks inflicted on them by the RUC. This all stands as no credit at all to an uncaring prison governor or to the prison doctor at the time. Their behaviour borders on criminal neglect.

The pattern in Armagh was, in many ways, similar to that endured by male prisoners in the Blocks and they suffered for the same number of  years, between 1976 and 1981.

Father Raymond Murray, the prison chaplain, emerges with integrity. He is referred to in the book with affection and his efforts to ease the women’s sufferings are well-documented.

Síle writes, as I presume she speaks, with descriptive brilliance. Her work will stand testament to all the women prisoners.

I read the book in one sitting; such is its simplicity and conviction. It is a tale told with compassion and pride. It is a miracle that they all came through it.

I have to say that, with every passing chapter, I was waiting for an explanation for the book¹s title. It comes near the book’s finale. Suffice to say, Síle cursed the late Mairead Farrell at the time the eponymous words were spoken in Armagh. And so did I!

On a separate note I once had the pleasure of meeting the late John Lennon during a trip to New York in 1972 to raise funds for internees. I found Lennon intensely interested in the conflict and the plight of prisoners and their families. The former Beatle was anxious to do whatever he could to help – although proposals for a special concert came to nothing (partially because the frantic onward rush of events at the time did not allow for a consistent follow-up process). At that time Lennon was reluctant to leave the USA, was fighting deportation and feared that if he did leave then the immigration authorities would refuse him re-entry.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted.  Republican women will not be alone in squirming at some of the details of the narrative but it is, nevertheless, a worthy testament to what they experienced and suffered and what they endured.

Books are available through the following: 
www.amazon.co.uk

‘Beyond The Pale’ in reception area,  5-7 Conway Street, Belfast and/or peter_btp@hotmail.co.uk Tel - 07770811042/02890329646
Republican Merchandising Belfast Ltd., 52/53 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12 4PD, Ireland. Tel [028] 90243371

North Belfast Sinn Féin Bookshop, Teach Carney, 291 Antrim Road, Belfast, BT15 2GZ. Tel [028] 90740817

Sinn Féin Bookshop, 44 Parnell Square Dublin 1, Ireland. Tel [353)] 1 8726100/8726932
An Ceathrú Póilí [Culturlann Bookshop] Belfast, Tel [028] 90322811

Read Ireland book distributors – 048 90438630 and website www.readireland.ie and email gregcarr@readireland.ie

 

 

 

 

BBC History of 1981

The BBC has produced a website dedicated to the story of the protest for political status, including the blanket protest and the two hunger strikes, involving footage that has been rarely seen. Five short videos are used to illustrate the atmosphere between 1976 and 1981 and can be viewed here.

Hold No Fear For Us

Former hunger striker Laurence McKeown, in a powerful analysis of 1981, writes of the legacy of that historic period, how it informs today’s struggle for freedom and independence and how republicans and unionists can attempt to come to terms with the past. Laurence also pays tribute to the nationalist community for its unswerving support for the hunger strikers throughout the battle for political status.

In this, the 30th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike, writes Laurence, there will be many talks, debates, exhibitions, and discussions in local communities, nationally and internationally. I always regard such events as an opportunity to thank those who did so much for us at the time; those in the Republican Movement, in the Relatives Action Committees, the National Anti-H-Block/Armagh Jail Committee, and most importantly, the ordinary men and women from our communities who came out time and time again in support of our demands. It was only in later years I fully realised the enormity of what they did; the extent of the courage they showed; going out onto the streets with nothing more in their hands than a placard to face the might, open hostility, and frequent brutality of the RUC.

In most cases these people were not republicans, not staunch IRA supporters. My family wasn’t republican; the overwhelming majority of those I met in the IRA did not come from republican families. We were of a generation that responded to the circumstances and conditions we grew up in rather than being steeped in a republican tradition. Some of those who rallied to our support were totally opposed to the armed struggle and no doubt felt uneasy standing shoulder to shoulder with those they knew or suspected of being IRA volunteers. What would their (Protestant) neighbours think? How would the state intelligence and security services now regard them? What implications would it have for their careers and family life? But they came out nevertheless because they believed it was wrong that people should have to die on hunger strike.

I felt that sense of unease myself the other week as I stood in a rally outside the city hall in Belfast’s city centre. It was a rally called by the Trade Unions to protest against the killing by a republican military faction of PSNI officer, Ronan Kerr. I attended because I felt it was the right thing to do. But it felt uncomfortable. I was standing alongside people who had often been condemnatory of the IRA. I wondered if they now felt vindicated, or morally righteous, that republicans now joined them to condemn the actions of other republicans. But actually that’s okay; because it’s always been okay for republicans to condemn or criticise the actions of other republicans. In fact that has been the strength of the Republican Movement down through recent decades. Such criticisms were rarely voiced openly, people not wanting to give a hostile media yet another opportunity to condemn those from their own community, but they were voiced nonetheless, and more importantly, taken on board.

That’s how the Movement kept in step with the community from which it came and from which it got its strength. We are in different times now and such matters need to be more open and public. That’s why republicans were at the rally.

Directly after the gathering I went to the site of the former prison, Maze/Long Kesh. I went there as part of a delegation from Healing Through Remembering, a very diverse organisation of people from a range of backgrounds looking at how we deal with the legacy of the past, or how the past lives on in the present. We were going to Long Kesh to learn how plans to develop the site, including the construction of an iconic peace building and conflict transformation centre, are advancing. As we walked around the prison I spoke about my experiences there; the site was familiar to me but strange territory to the others. And it meant different things to us. For me, it was the prison first opened as an internment camp in the early 1970s because that’s how the Unionist one-party state dealt with demands for reforms and civil rights. It comes as some surprise to people today living in England (and elsewhere) that Britain operated an internment camp here for over 4 years at the latter part of the twentieth century. That was meant to be something that happened in Stalin’s Soviet Union or China but not in Europe.  However it was normal for us as internment had been used in every decade since the setting up of the Northern Ireland state. It was but one element of an extensive range of powers, forces, and institutions that held the Orange state intact. And when internment became too much of an embarrassment it was phased out and replaced by the H Blocks, a more brutal regime but with the same intention - to deny and distort the reality of what was going on in the North and to crush republican resistance. Five years of protest by republican prisoners and ten deaths on hunger strike in 1981 thwarted those attempts.

Others who accompanied me into the prison that day would have had different opinions and perspectives about what the site meant to them. It wasn’t uncomfortable for me to be there, far from it, other than for the emotions that being there always stir up for me. But I’m sure it was uncomfortable, to say the least, for others. For one man in particular it was the prison that held the IRA man who killed his wife in a bomb explosion. How did he feel walking alongside someone who had previously been in the IRA and spoke proudly of his time in prison? For another it was the prison that held those republicans who had fought against him and his comrades in the British Army. Same place, different interpretations, different meanings, but people trying to think their way through it all and trying to accept that all those contradictory understandings and truths exist alongside one another. And that is uncomfortable, and painful.

As I drove home from the prison that evening I thought of two of the families who showed great support for me and were a comfort to my family while I was in prison and on hunger strike; the Heffron and Totten families, two very well respected and extended families. John Heffron, a member of the Irish Independence Party, spoke at rallies organised in the area. Peggy Totten lived just across the road from my parents and was always there for them – especially for my father when my mother passed away suddenly, less than two years following the end of the hunger strike.

Last year I had cause to visit two particular members of the Heffron and Totten families, husband and wife, parents of Peadar Heffron, the PSNI officer seriously injured in a booby-trap explosion. I went to offer my sympathy and support. I’d never met Peadar but, given his family background and upbringing, I know he never joined the PSNI to ‘crack Fenian skulls’. In fact everything I’ve heard about him since, privately and publicly, is that he was proud of his roots, his community, his Irish culture - both games and language, and that he proudly took those into the PSNI with him, organising a GAA football team and conducting Irish language classes. I’m sure that wasn’t easy for him. The PSNI is not the RUC but it’s still not an organisation you immediately think of as being ‘republican-friendly’. But that’s the task today, to make it so, just as republicans have taken their culture and politics into the council chambers and into Stormont and transformed those institutions. Former IRA volunteers, former prisoners, former hunger strikers, and a whole new generation of republicans who thankfully will never hold an assault rifle or see the inside of a prison cell, comfortably, proudly, and confidently tread the corridors of all government institutions now in the North. They’re not there because they’ve abandoned the struggle; they’re there to continue it, and what guides them is their collective experience and lessons learned from the past. Likewise other institutions of the state have to be transformed and that will not happen unless republicans and nationalists are in them and engage with them.

The hunger strike was a significant battle in a long struggle. It changed the course of that struggle in many ways, both inside and outside the jails. But it is critically important to recall that it did not get us our five demands, nor did the blanket protest, or the no-wash protest. They all contributed to us ultimately achieving those demands many years later but on the 3rd October, 1981 when the hunger strike ended ten men were dead and we only had one of our five demands; the right to wear our own clothes. It was a long struggle after that and a very much different one - because it had to be different. We were never again going to be able to wage the type of protest we had carried out between 1976-1981, nor would we have wished to. Those days were over. That form of struggle was gone. Likewise today; the war is over, the armed struggle is over. It took us a long way but not to our final objective. It has still to be built upon but the struggle today is of a different form because it has to be different. The political, cultural, legal, social, psychological, and material conditions dictate that it must be different. It’s not 1969, nor 1981, nor any other date from history. It’s 2011 and things have changed; changed utterly.

Some years ago I took my young daughters into Long Kesh. They knew I had spent many years there and one of them was fearful that I might end up there again. So I took them to show that buildings with open doors and grilles, with rust forming on the locks and plants growing up through the tarmac do not make a prison and should hold no fear for anyone. The past should hold no fear for us. In the yard of the prison hospital I asked them to run to the far end of it. They did so and as they ran they laughed, as I expected they would, in competition with one another. Bobby (Sands) had written, “Let our revenge be the laughter of our children.” I heard their laughter that day; I hope Bobby heard it too.

The hunger strikers were selfless. They died that others might live with dignity, if still imprisoned. They died because there were no options available to us other than surrender and total capitulation to the system, or hunger strike. If there had been an alternative course of action we would have taken it. We would have been right to take it. That’s the difference between today and 30 years ago - having another option. It may be less dramatic but it is no less challenging and requires the same courage and commitment. It takes us into strange company in unfamiliar streets where we hear challenging words and often want to shout out, “No, that’s not how it was; here’s how it was,” but then remember that no, that’s not how it was for the other. Not right or wrong; just different. And that’s where we are today in the North; tentatively sharing experiences, exploring how the war looked and felt to others and what it has left in its wake. But the war is well and truly over.

The struggle begins where you are and in the conditions that exist – not in conditions you would ideally like to exist, nor in some period from the past. You either engage with that or disengage, and attacks on young Catholics will not stop the ongoing transformation of the PSNI or any of the other institutions north or south. The role of the revolutionary and successful leadership is to identify the tide of historical development, tap into the psyche of the people, and to help channel both in new directions; it is not to try and get the people to support a position, strategy, and tactic a miniscule number of people have devised and which history and material circumstances tell us has long since had its day.

And it’s ok to feel uncomfortable or uneasy at times because that way you know you’re being challenged. It makes you more thoughtful, more reflexive, self-critical of your deeply-held opinions and assumptions. Feeling uncomfortable or uneasy is much better than someone else feeling grief.

IRA O/C’s Armagh Memoir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Síle Darragh was the IRA O/C in Armagh Gaol during the hunger strike in 1980 and until her release in 1981. Earlier this month her book about her time in jail during the protest for political status was launched during Féile an Phobail in West Belfast. The launch was chaired by Danny Morrison and the guest speaker was Gerry Adams TD. Below are details of where the book can be purchased and here we print Gerry Adams’s introduction to ‘John Lennon’s Dead’.

It is an uncomfortable fact, and unfair, that the four-year protest for political status by republican women in Armagh Gaol, despite being honoured in song, documentary film and some individual accounts and summaries, has long been overshadowed by the literature and focus on the same protest in the H-Blocks, largely because there ten men died on hunger strike in 1981.

Síle Darragh’s quite personal and powerful story goes a long way towards rectifying and redressing that imbalance with this, her inside account, which is the best description yet of the atmosphere, the emotions and the suffering which the women of Armagh Gaol experienced and endured between 1976 and 1981.

Bhí stádas polaitiúil ag na Poblachtaigh mhná a chuir am isteach i bPríosún Ard Mhacha roimh 1976,, cosúil lena gcomrádaithe sna cásanna sa Cheis Fhada agus i gCampa Príosúin Magilligan. Baineadh agus ghéill rialtas na Breataine an stádas seo (nó stádas catagóra speisialta mar a thug na Briotanaigh air) i ndiaidh stailce ocrais poblachtaí i bPríosún Bhóthar na Cromghlinne in 1972. Ar an ábhar sin, ní raibh ar chimí sa dá áit éidí príosúin a chaitheamh nó obair sclábhaíochta a dhéanamh agus ba bheag coimhlint a bhí ann idir cimí agus an lucht riaracháin. D’athraigh sé seo áfach in 1976 nuair a tharraing rialtas na Breataine stádas polaitiúil siar agus nuair a rinne siad iarracht cimí poblachtacha a chóiriúlú, rud ar theip air arís agus arís eile roimhe seo.

Those female republicans serving their time in Armagh prior to 1976 had political status, just like their comrades in the cages of Long Kesh and in Magilligan Prison Camp. This status (special category status, as the British called it) was won and conceded by the British government after a republican hunger strike in Crumlin Road Prison in 1972. Consequently, neither set of prisoners had to wear prison uniforms or carry out menial prison work, and conflict between inmates and the administration was at a minimum. All this was to change in 1976 when the British withdrew political status and attempted to criminalise republican prisoners – something which in the past had failed time and time again.

But there is no accounting for British stupidity or for its ruthlessness.

As a result of a successful campaign by republican women in the early 1970s women in northern Irish jails had not been required to wear a prison uniform – whereas it was a major issue in the H-Block confrontation. There, the British demanded that prisoners wear a uniform signifying criminality, which they refused to do, which is why in that jail there was a ‘blanket protest’.

 In Armagh the protest was one of disobedience – refusal to work or to take orders, maintaining a POW command structure, refusing to be divided and conquered. The administration responded punitively with a rising scale of punishments, mean and petty, and ultimately brutal.

Yet, still they failed to break the spirit or the resolve of the women.

Reading Síle’s descriptions we get a glimpse of the dark and depressing world they inhabited, particularly after the no wash protest is forced on them and their natural revulsion to filth and squalor has to be overcome. Síle jokes that they must all have been slightly insane at that stage!

Perhaps, the most moving descriptions are around events in late 1980 and throughout 1981. Mairéad Farrell stood down as OC to hand over the leadership to Síle as Mairéad, Mary Doyle and Margaret Nugent embarked on hunger strike. Through no fault of the republican leadership they learnt by radio that the H-Block hunger strike had ended, and had ended without resolution, leaving them then to agonise over participation in the second hunger strike.

D’éirigh leis na mná i bPríosún Ard Mhacha agus leis na fir sna H-Bhlocanna sa deireadh – ach ar chostas mhór i saolta cimí, oifigeach príosúin, agus fear, ban agus páistí ar shráideanna an Tuaiscirt. Chuir Mairéad Farrell a cuid ama isteach sa phríosún agus ghlac sí páirt sa choimhlint arís go dtí gur mharaigh an SAS í agus a comrádaithe Dan McCann agus Sean Savage in 1988.

The women in Armagh and the men in the H-Blocks were eventually successful - but at a heavy cost in the lives of prisoners, prison officials and men, women and children on the streets of the North. Mairéad Farrell served out her sentence and rejoined the struggle only to be executed by the SAS in 1988 along with her comrades Dan McCann and Sean Savage.

It is fitting that this book is dedicated to Mairéad and the late Rose McAllister and Christine Beattie.

What kept these young women of Armagh Gaol together were solidarity and comradeship and their loyalty to one another – and, of course, their humour which must have baffled their jailers!

Síle, like many other republican women, has given great service to the struggle for freedom in Ireland, This important account of a part of that history was inspired by her going through old letters and comms from comrades and from digging deep in memory. But even after she wrote it she was still hesitant about showing it to anyone.

“You must be joking! Catch yourself on! Who would read it, it’s not good enough!” were her comments when it was discovered that she had written a personal account of life in jail.

In fact, ‘John Lennon is Dead’ would not have been published if Síle had not been coaxed, cajoled and persuaded that this was a story that needed to be told and read.

It is our history which is recorded here and women, not before their time, are being written into the record.

So, we thank Síle for that, and we acknowledge and pay homage to all the women and their sisters who were incarcerated in other prisons on this island and other places.

Those who inflicted the most and thought that they could win have lost.

It is the republican spirit which has triumphed in the end.

Gerry Adams, Dublin, August 2011

Books are available through the following: 
www.amazon.co.uk

‘Beyond The Pale’ in reception area,  5-7 Conway Street, Belfast and/or peter_btp@hotmail.co.uk Tel - 07770811042/02890329646
Republican Merchandising Belfast Ltd., 52/53 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12 4PD, Ireland. Tel [028] 90243371

North Belfast Sinn Féin Bookshop, Teach Carney, 291 Antrim Road, Belfast, BT15 2GZ. Tel [028] 90740817

Sinn Féin Bookshop, 44 Parnell Square Dublin 1, Ireland. Tel [353)] 1 8726100/8726932
An Ceathrú Póilí [Culturlann Bookshop] Belfast, Tel [028] 90322811
Read Ireland book distributors – 048 90438630 and website www.readireland.ie and email gregcarr@readireland.ie

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