HONOURING FRANK STAGG

There was a huge turnout from republicans across Ireland to Leigue Cemetery, Ballina, Mayo, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Frank Stagg on hunger strike on 12 February 1976. At the same time, the Terence MacSwiney Committee based in London, travelled to Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire where Frank died and held a vigil in his honour.

To mark the anniversary there were other events, centred around the Stagg family home in Hollymount, about fifty miles south of Ballina, which included a Mass, a walk to the proposed memorial garden in the dead martyr’s name, and a visit to the family home of Pake Vahey, a first cousin of Frank Stagg who died in an ambush at Tourmakeady in 1920 when he was just seventeen. And at Hollymount handball alley young people played with the very handballs used by Frank who was a keen player.

Gerry Kelly, who was on hunger strike in England in 1974, a strike which Frank and Michael Gaughan had also joined, was the main speaker. Frank’s brother George also spoke in very emotional tones to a hushed crowd about what Frank and the family had to endure while he was ‘ghosted’ from prison to prison, but also by the cruelty of a Fine Gael/Labour coalition government which hijacked his body and buried it in an unmarked grave to deny him being interred with his comrade Michael Gaughan who had predeceased him on hunger strike by twenty months. The incredible story of how republicans, including George, carried out the dead man’s wishes can found here.

Also speaking at the graveside in Leigue Cemetery was Rose Conway-Walsh TD. Proceedings were chaired by Sinn Féin Councillor Gerry Murray.

A video of the commemoration can be watched here, including the speech by Gerry Kelly MLA.

Gerry Kelly Speech

Is onóir mór domh labhairt faoi ar gcomrádaí Frank Stagg a fuair bás ar son Saoirse na héireann caoga bliain o shin.

Frank Stagg was a proud Co Mayo man born in Robeen in 1942. He came seventh in a family of 13 children. His family had a strong Republican history, which included his father and uncle having fought in the Tan and Civil Wars. He loved playing football and handball, which he had a talent for. As well as enjoying music, he loved to sing and write songs.

Like so many of his generation he emigrated to England in search of work aged eighteen. Things in the North of Ireland were deteriorating with every week that passed in the late 1960s and early 70s. Frank joined the IRA in 1972 to play his part in the resistance to British military occupation and oppression. He was not prepared to stand idly by.

In March 1973 a number of IRA Volunteers including Dolours and Marian Price, Hugh Feeney and myself, were convicted in England, on conspiracy charges and were given life sentences at our trial in November.

We immediately demanded that we serve our sentences as political prisoners, in the North of Ireland and embarked on a hunger-strike to that end.

In April 1973, Frank, who was the OC of the IRA in Coventry was arrested. with a number of other activists, including Fr Patrick Fell. Four of them were convicted and Frank was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.

Frank was sent to Albany Jail where he was joined by fellow Mayo man, Michael Gaughan and Belfast republican Paul Holmes. All three political prisoners joined us on hunger-strike on March 31^st 1974. They were then moved to Parkhurst Prison on the 10^th of April

The British Government had been forcibly feeding us for months, in other jails. On the 23^rd day of their hunger-strike the prison authorities proceeded to force-feed our comrades in Parkhurst prison. Force-feeding is a particularly barbaric, terrifying and savage practice and is self-evidently inhumane.

During a visit with his brother George, Frank told him that it felt as though his most inner core was being attacked and pulled apart.

He said the experience always left him exhausted because republican instinct insisted that you resist it, with every ounce of strength you had.

As well as being inhuman and degrading, force-feeding was, of course, also an extremely dangerous procedure, done as it was by the use of extreme force to subdue the prisoner. On occasions Frank and the rest of us were left with cuts and lacerations to our mouths, lips, gums, throats and damage to teeth.

And of course, with force feeding there was always a constant danger of inflicting serious or fatal injury on the hunger-strikers.

I spent 205 days on hunger-strike and was force-fed on 167 of those days. Those brutal assaults were a daily experience for Frank and our other comrades on hunger strike in English prisons at that time.

It took me many years to write or talk publicly of those experiences. I did however finally finish a poem in 2016, in memory of Frank and Michael and I would like to share an extract from it with you.

Twelve-handed they entered,
In angry flood,
Frothing hospital-white
On incriminating blue

Under doctor’s orders
Trailed up the bed
With jack-knifed body
To the high end

Hair-pulled head forced back,
Steel, cold to his neck
For a throat to stomach line
That would be die straight

Fear fought dedication
In the rebel’s heart
As his breath battled
Through gated teeth

‘Open your mouth!’
Ordered the doctor
And so it began
In clenched mute refusal

Forearm-anchored forehead,
Knuckles boring into jaw-joints,
Forceps scraping gums,
Ryle’s Tube searing nostrils

The soft membrane
Hot with pain and blood,
Doctor turned jailer
In prison’s privacy

Jaw muscles are strong
But not strong enough,
Gasping with pain
A clamp kills the cry

No time for self-pity
As the clamp is adjusted
To force a tube
Down famine throat

Motionless dread
Fills the pinioned body,
Movement is rebellion
And clinically suppressed

No speech is possible
Nor motion of limbs,
Protest undiluted
In dilated eyes

On June 2nd 1974 Michael Gaughan was fatally injured during force feeding and died the next day, after being on hunger-strike for 64 days. He died at 24 years of age.

Frank Stagg, who was brought to Michael’s cell shortly before he died, later confirmed that Michael told him he was dying because they had forced the gruel into his lungs.

He must have been grief-stricken   as he watched and listened to his friend and comrade knowing that he was so close  to death. The bond of brotherhood was already there in their shared experience of suffering and pain.

The death of Michael caused an international outcry over the welfare of the prisoners and pressure was heaped on the British to concede the prisoners’ demands before there were any more deaths.

Within a few days, the British Government agreed to transfer the remaining hunger-strikers to prisons in the North of Ireland. So, the hunger-strike ended. However, as always with the British there was a sting in the tail.

Frank Stagg was sent to Long Lartin Prison in the British Midlands, where, after a short recuperation he was denied all the concessions he had been promised and he was back to square one.

Another consequence of the hunger-strike was that the World Medical Council now outlawed the practice of force-feeding, declaring it to be inhumane and unethical for doctors to participate in. This forced the British government to ban the practice of force feeding in British jails.

Frank was now totally isolated and to make matters even worse the prison authorities started to strip-search all his visitors, including his 73-year-old mother when she visited from Mayo. He was also denied access to educational or recreational facilities and was held in solitary confinement and on a punishment diet. He felt he was left with no choice but to use the only avenue of protest left to him – he embarked on another hunger-strike.

Still suffering from the effects of the previous strike, he was, after 35 days into this hunger-strike, in a much weakened state. At that stage he received a visit from the prison governor. The governor confirmed that Frank’s demands for an end of his solitary confinement, no prison work and a reasonable date for a transfer to the North, were being met.

And so, Frank ended his hunger-strike.

A few weeks later he was transferred to Wakefield Prison.

The governor in Wakefield immediately denied knowing anything about the guarantees Frank had been given in Long Lartin Prison. He ordered that Frank be put in solitary confinement, with no visits, for refusing to do prison work.

The segregation unit in Wakefield was situated in the cells beneath ground level, with no windows or natural light and with an investation of rats.

Again Frank was left with no choice but to protest in the only way open to him. He was forced, once again, to go on hunger-strike for a third time. His demands were simple:
An end to his solitary confinement
No prison work and
Repatriation to a prison in Ireland

But this time he declared that his protest would not end until he had arrived at a prison in Ireland.

His reasonable demands were not met and after sixty-two days on hunger-strike he died on 12th February, 1976. He was 32 years of age.

In response to the death of Óglach Frank Stagg, The Belfast Brigade of Óglaigh Na hÉireann went on the offensive, as did many other areas. Three Volunteers died in the ensuing events in Belfast. Óglach Sean Bailey, whom I knew, died from injuries sustained in a premature explosion. Later in the evening, Fian James O Neill died on active service-I spoke at his commemorative event in Belfast two days ago. A third Volunteer, Óglach James Mc Grillen lost his life on 15^th February. All were attached to the Belfast Brigade. All acted out of comradeship, solidarity and respect for their comrade Óglach Frank Stagg.

While the British government caused his death, it was the Dublin government, who reserved a last litany of insults for Frank and his grieving family.

They hijacked his body from his family and denied his dying wish to be buried alongside his comrade Michael Gaughan in the Republican Plot in Ballina’s Leigue Cemetery.

The plane taking the coffin bearing Frank’s body to Dublin from Leeds Airport was diverted in mid-air away from Dublin, where his family were waiting to receive it. It was instead forced to land at Shannon.

The Southern Special Branch then seized the coffin and locked it away in Shannon Airport refusing to allow anyone, including his mother, to visit it or be near it. It was loaded onto a military helicopter by uniformed Gardai and flown to Mayo, for what can only be described as a sacrilegious funeral.

There were no private cars permitted to join the cortege by the then Irish government. Instead, shamefully, approximately 20 armoured, military vehicles and about 50 Garda personnel carriers replaced mourners. There were army and garda scout vehicles up ahead clearing the route, and road-blocks set up as this pseudo cortege passed, to prevent anyone following.

On arrival at Leigue Cemetery the coffin was put in an outlying plot about 100 yards from the nearest grave. A guard-hut was then set up, where Gardai overlooked the grave, 24 hours a day. All visitors to the grave, including Frank’s mother, were recorded, questioned and photographed.

After 18 months of this, one day in July 1977, a concrete lorry entered the cemetery and poured three to four feet of concrete into Frank’s grave. This was supposedly to prevent his family or comrades, from carrying out their promise, at the earliest opportunity, to remove Frank’s body from this Free State prison grave and re-inter him with his comrades in the Republican Plot.

The permanent Garda presence was then withdrawn. Apparently they were secure in their belief that it would be impossible using only manual labour to get through the concrete to the coffin.

But they reckoned without taking Frank’s family and friends, and Mrs Ginty into account. She was a lifelong republican and the caretaker of the cemetery!

Shortly after Frank had been buried, his brother George asked Mrs Ginty, ‘Who owns the grave where Frank is buried?’ ‘No one’ she answered. George enquired could he purchase it and how much would it cost. ‘Three punts’ she answered and added, ‘but you can have two for five punts’. When he asked why, she simply said, “You never know”. And finished with, “Say nothing to no one”.

George bought Frank’s grave and the vacant one next to it – all for the princely sum of five old Irish punts.

Mrs Ginty’s words of wisdom became clear. It was now possible to dig down into the vacant plot alongside and then under the deep mass of concrete to release the coffin from its prison grave.

George and a friend hatched a plan. Having discussed it with the Republican Movement, they organised a unit of six relatives and friends.

On a dark, cold, wet November night in 1977, and after eight hours of hard digging, they had the coffin bearing Frank’s body removed from its concrete tomb and re-interred safely beside his brother-in-arms Michael Gaughan and the other Mayo martyrs in the Republican Plot.

George describes sleeping easy that night and he felt certain that Frank and his comrades slept easy too…

During Frank’s Hunger-strike, a huge amount of pressure, from the British and unfortunately, the Irish Authorities, was directed at Frank’s mother to try to get him to abandon his principles. She was in her mid-70s and was a staunch Catholic and certain politicians and clergy apparently thought that she was ripe for persuasion.

She had visits from at least one bishop who advised her of the deadly sin of suicide and the sins of those who encourage it, or failed to discourage it.

Likewise she had to contend with politicians, local and national, asking her to intervene and stop the protest.

Understandably, there were members of his own family, who wished Frank would come off the hunger-strike for the simple reason that they could not bear for him to die.

But others explained that only he knew what he was going though and what he would have to endure in an English prison if he came off his protest.

Frank’s mother was unshakable in her love and support for her son. She believed that it was the family’s duty to support Frank in whatever decision he made and she resisted all attempts to use her against the wishes of her son, despite the enormous heartache she felt.

Frank Stagg’s message to his comrades as he lay dying, was:

‘We are a risen people. This time we must not be driven into the gutter, even if this should mean dying for justice. The fight must go on. I want my memorial to be “Peace with Justice”.

Frank’s legacy, as with Michael and their ten comrades who died on hunger-strike in 1981 is that he led from the front in standing up for ordinary people whether in prison or outside with integrity, passion and selfless dedication.

He was truly inspirational and I am proud to have been his comrade.

D’imigh Frank uainn ró-luath. Ach d’fhág sé an dea-shampla dúinn agus d’fhág sé an dushlán dúinn. Tá sé de dhualgas orainn fís agus aisling s’aige a chomhlíonadh.