Forty five years years after his death on hunger strike, republicans in Camlough, South Armagh, held a commemoration for Raymond McCreesh at his graveside on Sunday, 17th May. The guest speaker was former prisoner Jim Gibney who had liased with the hunger strikers in 1981, including the first to die, Bobby Sands. This is his speech:
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I would like to thank the McCreesh family for inviting me to speak here today, on this very solemn occasion and at this hallowed place which is so dear to them and to the republican family, the Republican Movement.
It is an honour and a privilege for me to participate in marking the 45th anniversary of Raymond’s death on May 21st 1981, after 61 days on hunger strike.
I dedicate my remarks to Raymond’s late parents, James and Susan, to the McCreesh family, but also to the family of Patsy O’Hara, who passed away within hours of Raymond in a cell within feet of Raymond’s, in the prison hospital of the H-Blocks.
We also remember the families of Michal Gaughan, Frank Stagg, Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Tom McElwee and Mickey Devine.
Indeed, the families of all those republicans who died for freedom are always in our thoughts when we reflect upon the price of freedom and the price of justice.
Jim Gibney
As we recall those long, heart-breaking days in the summer of 1981—for the families of the hunger strikers, their comrades, friends and communities—let us also remember the relatives of those people, almost seventy in number, who died on the streets, seven of them children, innocents, killed by plastic bullets, to satisfy the warped egomania of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a fool, like all her predecessors and successors, who thought she could defeat the Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army. She described the hunger strike as “the IRA’s last card” and was she ever wrong.
A few weeks ago, on May 5th I met Seanna Walsh, a close friend of Bobby Sands, at Bobby’s grave at the Republican Plot in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery.
We were there to pay tribute to Bobby on his 45th anniversary.
Seanna met Bobby in prison when they were teenagers in the early ’70’s and formed an enduring friendship as comrades outside and inside gaol.
We were joined by Michael McCreesh who had travelled from Camlough to visit Bobby’s grave. Indeed, it is a tribute to the devotion, loyalty and steadfastness of the McCreesh family that you will always find some brother of Raymond, regardless if it is in Ballina or Belfast or Bellaghy, by the graves of Raymond’s comrades on such occasions.
At the republican plot, speaking to Michael, I shared jail memories from fifty years ago: of Art McAlinden, who rests here; of Dickey Glenholmes, a very close friend of mine who was interned with Joe McElhaw.
In Cage 3, Long Kesh, Art had told me that when he was in prison as a young man in the 1940s he was in the company of Volunteers who had fought in 1916. Dickey’ Glenholmes’s own father, also called Dickey, had fought the British before and after partition in the Short Strand of Belfast. And Jack McElhaw, Joe’s father who is buried here, had been active in the Tan War and the Civil War.
Connection and continuity of struggle was the context of our discussion. Michael also helped me in my preparation for today’s speech. At my home, he handed me a few pages on which he had written his memories of the hunger strike period.
And what precious memories they are. Recalled with remarkable accuracy. Timeless, in fact. Memories still fresh and raw forty-five years after the event.
So, go raibh mile mile maith agat, Michael.
At the top of one of the pages Michael wrote:
“Jim. Some memories.
Sunday February 15th, 1981
Raymond informs his family of his decision to join the second hunger strike.
Raymond had been on the first hunger strike, in its later stages, which started on 27th October 1980 and ended on December 18th. Three women in Armagh Women’s prison, Mairead Farrell, Mary Doyle and Mairead Nugent, were also on this hunger strike.
Michael’s note continues:
Friday May 1st
“Myself and our aunt May Quigley (who had lived in Madrid Street in the Short Strand) had a visit with Raymond in the hospital.
You were also on the visit, Jim.
I saw all the four lads for the first time that day with you, Jim. Quick glances, anyway.
I smuggled Mrs Sands out past the media posse that Friday and left her home.”
Michael here is referring to Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Patsy O’Hara and, of course, his brother Raymond. They were on hunger strike in their prison cells beside each other in the hospital wing. I was visiting some of the lads as part of the communication system between the outside and inside leaderships.
As I left Raymond’s cell on the way out of the hospital wing, I had called in to see Bobby, Francis and Patsy and Michael came with me.
Bobby was a few days away from dying.
Francis died on May 12th, the following week; and Raymond and Patsy died on May 21st, a few hours apart.
Michael’s note continues:
Sunday May 10th 1981
Raymond’s two sisters Bridey and Teresa landed home from Australia.
On Saturday, May 16th, the family had an afternoon visit with Raymond but got a telephone call that evening which led to the family returning to the prison. Raymond’s mother Susan, his sister Bridie and his two brothers, Fr Brian and Malachy, were at Raymond’s bedside. Raymond had been anointed and was slipping in and out of consciousness, yet the prison authorities claimed when he was offered milk to drink his response was not sure whether to take it or not. The family believe the prison authorities were trying to put pressure on Raymond and the family into ending the hunger strike.
Michael writes that on Sunday May 17th Our Marie just got home from England and fainted in the front garden of our home, Number 33, before facing a media interview that morning.
In the afternoon there was a march from Camlough to Newry led by Joe McElhaw in his ‘Red Saab – Staff Car’.
The parade headed over the Savoy/Monaghan Street Bridge, instead of going around by Sugar Island and the Cenotaph into Hill Street, where you, Jim, spoke from the steps of Luke Curran solicitors’ office in Marcus Square.
Tuesday May 19th
Five British soldiers are killed in a bomb at Corrinshego.
Wednesday May 20th
Tommy Lynch is elected as an Anti-H Block/ Armagh candidate in the council elections. My father, says Michael, won the seat in a by-election later that year.
After the Saturday night milk fiasco, the family were allowed daily time in the hospital with Raymond.
I, Malachy and Fr Brian spent that Sunday night with Raymond.
Then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when Raymond died at 2.11am on Thursday, the 21st May
As I said, we had marched to Newry the previous Sunday; then spent four days and nights at Raymond’s bedside. Then we walked from Daisy Hill mortuary, with his Tricolour-draped coffin carried on people’s shoulders, for the three-mile journey to Number 33 on Thursday afternoon. His final homecoming after five years away.
Michael’s words from that sad time, those dark days, when our hearts were broken.
On Friday May 22nd Kieran Doherty replaced Raymond on the hunger strike.
Raymond’s funeral was on Saturday, May 23rd. Fr Tom Woolsey said the mass. Here, Joe Mc Elhaw chaired the graveside proceedings. The then President of Sinn Féin, Ruairi O Bradaigh, gave the oration.
On the twentieth anniversary of the hunger strike the Camloch ’81 Committee produced an excellent booklet, Memories of Raymond McCreesh. And the Hunger Strike of 1981, written by Tommy Lynch and Pat McGinn.
Between Michael’s memories and those contained in the booklet we get a sense of the McCreesh family and the harrowing experience Raymond and they went through – indeed what all the hunger strikers and their families went through, in 1974, 1976 and that fateful and heroic summer of 1981.
Through Michael’s memories and the booklet, we get an insight into Raymond.
Family and comrades speak of Raymond as being quiet, shy, good-natured, respectful, with a mischievous sense of humour, a young man who enjoyed the craic, spoke firmly and acted decisively, when he needed to, both outside and inside prison. On remand in Crumlin Road Jail he earned himself the nickname ‘The Squire’, because he was very well dressed in his suit and fancy boots!
He had an inner strength and a distinguished, remarkable smile, which was often seen and which people to this day still recall.
I saw that charming smile myself when I visited Raymond during the hunger strike.
Raymond’s inner strength can be seen in his refusal to take prison visits for four years because he refused to wear the prison uniform.
He took a visit to tell his parents he was joining the second hunger strike in February 1981.
His strength of conviction can be seen in the smuggled letter he wrote in Irish to his comrade Paddy Quinn, who was also on the hunger strike: “Tá seans ann go mbeidh me abhaile romhat, a chara.”
“There’s a possibility that I may be home before you, my friend.”
It can be seen in what he said to me on a visit on his 54th day on hunger strike, “Keep on marching, don’t give up.”
It can be seen in his comments to Fr. Brian a few days before he passed. He raised his hand and said in Irish, “Beidh an bua againn go foill”.
“We Will Win Yet.”
And those words are inscribed on Raymond’s headstone.
Raymond’s brother, Michael
Raymond’s family are devout Catholics, as was Raymond.
He was also a devout republican and spoke Irish fluently.
All a source of great strength to Raymond.
He joined Na Fianna Éireann when he was 16 and progressed into the ranks of the IRA when he was 17.
He was arrested on active service with his close and life-long friend Dan McGuinness and Paddy Quinn.
The hunger strike of 1981 has been rightly described as this generation’s 1916.
I heard the historian Uinseann MacEoin say that nowhere in the annals of Irish history was such bravery seen as that shown by the hunger strikers.
For the families, their lives were fundamentally changed for ever. The great loss of a son, a brother, a soldier, a political prisoner who with his comrades broke Thatcher, broke the British and through their sacrifice bequeathed to us the seeds of freedom.
The struggle for a united Ireland fundamentally changed forever as well.
The Sinn Féin organisation we know today took shape in the hospital wing in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh when Bobby Sands, in the company of his solicitor Pat Finucane, signed his nomination papers to stand in the by-election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. That alone destroyed Thatcher’s claim that the prisoners had no support.
Bobby’s victory was followed up with the election of Kieran Doherty TD in Cavan/Monaghan; blanket man Paddy Agnew’s victory in Louth; and the election of Owen Carron as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
It can clearly be seen in the election of Michelle O’Neill, herself the daughter of a former political prisoner, as First Minister; and in Mary Lou McDonald as leader of the opposition in Leinster House.
It can also be seen in the public debate about constitutional change and the need for a referendum on a new Ireland and the reality that non-unionist parties are a majority force in the north, at council level, in the assembly and executive and in the number of Westminster MPs.
It can also be seen in the number of people from a unionist and Protestant background who are increasingly taking part in discussions about Ireland’s future.
It can be seen in the benefits of the peace and political processes and the changes arising from the Good Friday Agreement.
Republicans, through struggle, inside and outside prison, have created with others the opportunity to imagine a new Ireland, a different Ireland, and we welcome the essential participation of unionists and Protestants in shaping that new, inclusive Ireland.
As we leave here today to continue the struggle for which Raymond and the other eleven hunger strikers and all our republican martyrs died, let us remember Raymond’s words: “Keep on marching. Don’t give up.”
And “Beidh an bua againn go foil.”
“We Will Win Yet.”
“Beidh an bua againn go foil!”
Go raibh mile maith agaibh.
