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Showing posts with label Obituary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obituary. Show all posts
The Fenian Way 🏴remembers a Dublin republican.

Andy O’Rourke

By its very definition struggle is not easy. It is an onerous decision on anyone’s behalf to engage with the republican struggle wherein death, imprisonment and financial destitution are the regular fruits harvested for those who are not diverted from its core objectives.

When you add debilitating illness into the mix the weight of struggle increases tenfold. It is a particularly difficult and personal burden because at its heart is an unwanted restriction on a republican’s ability to prosecute the struggle to their utmost ability.

I didn’t know Andy outside of his illness; but his illness didn’t define him to me in my first impressions, as I was unaware of it. He had an odd but patient manner which took getting used to, but it would prove highly effective on the particular journey we both undertook together.

Republicanism was in chaos, a comprehensive British victory. What was fundamental in addressing this crisis was a core position, or event, around which Irish republicans could coalesce to at least in part get republicans to recognise how dire our position was.

This wasn’t an easy task as the republican propensity to shout ‘sell out’ as a panacea to culpable gullibility gave short thrift to reasoned debate. This is where Andy’s patience, a lot of it, came into its own.

The centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising was fast approaching. The Good Friday Agreement was nearing its second decade anniversary. The obvious clash between the goals of Easter Week and the terms of that settlement were ripe for exploration. But any hopes for a receptive audience to the republican analysis was dependent on rational discourse and not green sloganizing.

This potential was not lost on the State who developed the so-called Decade of Centenaries in a bid to dilute the revolutionary objectives and achievements of that time. It was a group hug for political and historical revisionists.

And so began an intellectual journey to discover and formulate new republican ideas set against the historical ideas who made republicans like Andy who they are, body and mind.

Meetings after meetings we delved into the soul of Irish republicanism, a very curious journey. The physicality of it was a definite strain on Andy but the intellectual stimulus he derived from it was the challenge he needed to overcome the increasing limitations of his illness. He stopped driving, a relief to many!

Out of this paradox emerged what we believed Irish republicanism needed, not an answer, but a challenge. We met together on numerous occasions, outside of the formal meetings throughout the country, to digest what we had heard and ascertain what, if any, common ground could be had.

We settled on two salient points. Firstly, the vast majority of Irish republicans were not in republican groups and secondly, the vast majority of republican groups had grave difficulties in explaining the basic premise of their very existence. And as Andy remarked, in his own unique and attention provoking way, ‘it’s not for us to explain it for them’.

Organising for the centenary of 1916 gave a lot of republicans a much-needed focus for their activism. What was considered a no-brainer, a one day in a hundred years show of republican unity and strength, was actually a very frustrating process.

A lot of groups saw it as an opportunity to promote themselves, to go it alone as some form of badge of distinction little realising, or caring, that the common bond amongst the groups was one of failure. It proved to be an eye-opener for Andy and others and demonstrated in real time the scale of the problems we faced.

And so the centenary was marked with thousands of republicans taking to the streets of our capital in the largest non-state commemoration held on that Easter Monday 2016. It was loud, bright and colourful but completely devoid of any semblance of solution or message to make Irish republicanism relevant in its current environment. The following day, and in all the days hence, the two salient points alluded to earlier continue to prevail.

Our paths drifted somewhat afterwards. When Covid arrived Andy’s illness made him particularly susceptible to its ravages which imposed an almost solitary confinement regime on him. But with his usual fortitude and resilience he came through it, yet his illness relentlessly pursued him.

A couple of days before his passing, when his family were summoned to his side, he continued with his wit and humour. Some say it was the morphine but those who knew him recognised that it was his true self, an optimistic character positive to the end.

Andy was a true Fenian; what he did publicly for Ireland the entire world can see, what he did in the shadows for Ireland the British establishment felt.

As he was carried on his final journey his coffin was flanked by his comrades and draped in the very tricolour behind which thousands marched in 2016. As is fitting for his family Irish republicans presented them with an Irish tricolour in appreciation of his service to his country.

And as is fitting for his legacy the National Flag, flown on that memorable day, will continue to do so. For every time we march behind it, we know that our friend and comrade Andy is marching with us, relentlessly reminding us that the mantle of Irish republicanism can only be inherited by those who have ideas to advance it.

⏩ The Fenian Way was a full time activist during the IRA's war against the British. 

Andy O’Rourke

Alon Mizrahi 🏴A man feeling such overpowering shame that it becomes too much, and he needs to fight it back with whatever means necessary, to not let it eat him alive.

Aaron Bushnell
 
A man suffocated and crushed under the unbearable weight of a broken conscience and broken dreams saw a horrible death as the less painful experience.

A man who could not go on living when his government and his people murder thousands of children with absolute indifference. 

Such a man made the ultimate sacrifice yesterday, to give his country, that he must have loved dearly, one last warning, as it, too, was setting fire to its very existence.

 "I will no longer be complicit in genocide", his final message, was, and forever will be, his legacy. 

In honor and eternal memory of Aaron Bushnell, US Air Force serviceman who took his own life, by fire, outside the Israeli embassy in DC yesterday, in protest of the Gaza genocide

Alon Mizrahi is an Arab Jew, author, blogger, public speaker
and anti-Zionist.

Aaron Bushnell

Caoimhin O’Muraile ⚑ Franz Anton Beckenbauer was born in the post WWII ruins of Munch, West Germany on 11th September 1945 and died on 7th January 2024. 
Franz Beckenbauer 

He would become one of the all-time greats of world football nicknamed “Der Kaiser” (The Emperor) spending most of his club career at Bayern Munich. He also played for, later in life, New York Cosmos and Hamburg SV. He was an international playing for the then West German national side collecting 103 caps and scoring 14 goals. He went on to manage the West German national side becoming one of only three players to win the trophy as both a player and manager, winning the World Cup as a player in 1974 and manager in 1990, the last German national side not to contain players from the former East Germany, GDR.

The other players to achieve this were Brazil’s Zagallo, winning the World Cup as a player in 1958 and 1962 and as a manager with Brazil in 1970, France’s Didier Deschamps won it as a player in 1998 and manager in 2018. As a young man he supported 1860 Munich then the premier side in the city but went on to sign for rivals Bayern in 1959, Bayern Munich becoming the better of the two sides after 1860 faded. He was one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the European Cup and the Ballon d Or, Bobby Charlton of Man Utd being another player to collect all three.

My own memories of Beckenbauer go back, vaguely to 1966 when he made his World Cup debut for West Germany, man for man marking Bobby Charlton in the final of that year’s competition losing 4-2 to England, the host nation at Wembley Stadium. Beckenbauer once said “England were only able to beat us in 1966 because Bobby Charlton was a little bit better than me”, a tribute from one great player to another. In the 1970 World Cup in Mexico West Germany got their revenge on England beating them 3-2 with Beckenbauer scoring their opening goal. being 2-0 down at the time. Some people argue that game cost British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, his premiership in that year’s General Election? The West German side of that year was full of class with Beckenbauer playing alongside Berti Vogts, Gerd Muller, Paul Breitner with Sepp Mair in goal. It was a close game and I can remember watching it on TV, black and white, eating a packet of Quavers.

Beckenbauer is often credited with being the originator of the ‘Sweeper’ position in defence sometimes becoming an attacking defender. His 14 goals for West Germany bear testimony to his ability to occasionally go on the attack, though it was in defence he was famed. He made his debut for Bayern Munich on 6th June 1964 against St. Pauli in a Bundesliga promotion play off, he played then on the left wing, later switching to defence, and went on to become the first player to win three European Cups consecutively between 1974 and 1976, when Bayern then kept the trophy due to these three successive wins in the competition. Beckenbauer was appointed Bayern Munich team captain in 1967-68 season, a position he maintained throughout his career with the German giants. During his tenure at Bayern the club won three Bundesliga titles in a row between 1972 and 1974. In 1977 he accepted a lucrative contract to play for New York Cosmos alongside Pele. In 1980 he returned to Germany to play for SV Hamburg helping them to win the Bundesliga.

Franz Beckenbauer was one of the all-time greats, along with Pele, Bobby Charlton, Eusebio, George Best, Denis Law, Ferenc Puskas, Alfredo Di Stefano of Real Madrid, Maradona, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. He represented an era when it was great to be a football fan, a time when the game was played as it should be played, hard but fair. In those days full of fond memories for me there was none of the nonsense of today’s farce like VAR and penalties given for tripping over a blade of grass. As the years pass all the greats of bygone days are passing, Bobby Charlton died in October 2023, Pele went in 2022, George Best died at an early age, 59, in 2005 and Beckenbauer’s compatriot, Gerd Muller, died on 15th August 2021. Of the England team which won the FIFA World Cup in 1966 only Geoff Hurst is left. England’s answer to Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore who captained the 1966 side died in 1993. Great memories of great days. Franz Beckenbauer died on 7th January 2024 in Saltzburg, Austria. 

Thanks a million for the memories Franz - you were a true great never to be forgotten. The likes of such players are unlikely to be seen gracing what passes these days for a football field ever again and for those of us lucky enough to have seen such greats thanks for the privilege and memories.

Franz Beckenbauer – 11th September 1945 7th January 2024


Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Franz Beckenbauer

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Eight Hundred And Forty One

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ Her sudden death on Christmas Eve resulted in a strange flip - it brought her brother back to life as images of both together bounded through my mind.

Moya Hughes

Moya was the younger and only sister of the late Brendan Hughes. She was devoted to him and he idolised her in the way that big brothers often do their younger sisters. He introduced me to her in the visiting room of Crumlin Road jail 50 years ago when we were both on remand. She was in to see him whereas I no longer remember who was visiting me.

During our conversations in the H Blocks Brendan would often mention his family, in particular his children, his father and Moya. As the only girl, Moya was pretty much the baby of the family and remained as such throughout Brendan's life. Although truth to be told, she acted more like his mother, fussing over him, making sure he kept his appointments, and insisting on him taking whatever medication he was prescribed. In short, she spoiled him.

A former O/C of Cage 11 where Brendan spent a number of years during his imprisonment, Jim McCann, said of Moya:

I think she was the only person the Dark was afraid of. Anybody who doesn't have a sister wouldn't understand. Sisters are different.

On the occasions when he was admitted to hospital, as grew more frequent with his vulnerability to chest infections increasing at an alarming rate, Moya would ring. I'd make my way down to the hospital, to be greeted by a tired smile from Brendan, asking if it was Moya who told me he was laid up. I would invariably reply that when he goes into hospital the whole republican world knows. But he knew how I found out. Moya didn't want me to tell him she was the bringer of bad news. But we all played along smilingly.

She worried a lot about him and when Voices From The Grave was published, in which he was the central character, she was alarmed at some of the negative comment and vitriol hurled his way. The smear campaign orchestrated by a probable British agent of influence designed to label everybody involved in the project as a Boston College tout caused her no end of grief. Her beloved brother, an icon of republican struggle, armed resistance and prison protest, was now being maligned with the most egregious term in the republican lexicon. I reassured her by explaining that to be labeled a tout by the man who set up six of the hunger strikers for certain death was just like being labelled an informer by Scap, something to be worn as a badge of honour, not shame. I told her that no one would ever say of Brendan that he knew about the British military's top agent in the IRA and covered for him. 

Brendan's daughter Josephine was very close to Moya, always speaking glowingly of her. On her final birthday Josephine first greeted and then hailed her as 'the most amazing woman in my life, my aunt Moya.' Her other great friend was Oonagh. In the words of Josephine on 'all special occasions she was there for Oonagh and her kids.' 

This kindness and caring for others was captured in a statement by Republican Network For Unity:

Her selflessness extended beyond her immediate family, as she dedicated herself to being a source of support for friends and community members alike. Moya’s warm smile and ability to listen deeply brought solace to those who needed it most.

Moya was buried form her home, 9 Burnaby Place. It is an address etched on my mind given the number of times I was there with Brendan, the last time to begin his final journey in February 2008. Sister and brother, both now at peace.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Moya Hughes

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ There were many teenagers on the blanket, people who in today's terms would be officially acknowledged as children. 

Matt Lundy

The tenderness of their age did not spare them the violent wrath of the state. People prepared to murder children on the streets would have few qualms about beating them in prison. 

Matt Lundy - who died in September - hailed from West Belfast's Turf Lodge. It was a working class community that on top of the deprivation it endured was also subject to British state violence. Names of teenagers like Brian Stewart and Leo Norney were already inscribed on tombstones in local cemeteries where they were buried after being murdered by the British army. They were also etched into the minds of their own generation. So when people wonder why teenagers like Matt Lundy should join the IRA, the answer is not too hard to find. The violence of the state gives rise to the violence of the street.

Matt first heard a cell door clang shut behind him at sixteen years of age when he was imprisoned in 1977. He eventually completed a life sentence.

I came across him in 1978 during the blanket protest. We were never on the same protest wing but spent about two years in the same block, H4, before our wing was moved out to H6 in November 1980.

For years I only ever saw him at the weekly Sunday mass, and say hello prior to moving onto people we both knew better. Sunday mass was like a form of socialising and often the prisoners from the same area outside would congregate together, picking up the latest scéal’, or scandal from their own localities. The gravitational pull of one's own community extended into the canteens of the H Block protest.

A number of years would pass before I got to know Matt reasonably well in the jail. We would have long lasting political discussions about the type of movement we would like to see, the strategic possibilities and limitations of armed struggle, how we should deal with the Life Sentence Review Board,  potential differences between Trotskyism and Leninism, as well as the United Front versus the Broad Front. We discussed at length The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci by Perry Anderson, our eagerness fortified by a critique of neo Marxist thinkers by Norman Geras. Given how things turned out, we might well wonder today what was the point in any of it but that is how we got through our time in jail.  The loyalists did religion and republicans did Marxism, both schools of thought left far behind once the gates opened. 

Matt was by no means a doctrinaire Marxist, but he was quite capable of conversing about Marxism, fuelled by a restless curiosity about political strategy. He was very interested in how republicanism should respond to Left wing critiques, of which there were quite a few in the jail. Matt despite his youth had a wisdom beyond his years. I tended to regard him as a wise young owl. Rarely impulsive, everything he said was considered. Like a chess player he thought moves ahead.

The violence that Matt's community in Turf Lodge had been subjected to did not take a rest once Turf Lodge republican activists had been removed from the streets.  He was no stranger to prison staff brutality. During my time in H4 there was a week known as the Seachtain dona - the bad week. Seamus Kearney gives a chapter of his searing memoir No Greater Love over to it:

all hell broke loose as these quasi criminals ran amok within H4 with over 150 incidents of violent assault on prisoners being reported. We cowered in our cells as we listened to the far wing being mercilessly beaten by rampaging screws and the groans from the men as baton hit flesh with a dull thud.

Matt was amongst those attacked but there was no chance of him being dissuaded from the protest by screw thuggery.

After release I would call in on him and his wonderful partner Margaret in their home in Gortnamona. At two crisis points he proved the most valuable of friends. And while I had not met him for many years I have always brimmed with gratitude each time I reflect back on his steadying hand, his comforting advice.

During his time in prison he mastered the Irish language and would go on to both promote and teach it in his community once released. He was also heavily involved in community activism. Seamus Kearney referred to him as a 'warm, genuine and selfless Irish Republican who suffered and endured, but never lost his sense of humour or his humility.'

So it was with heavy heart that I sat down when my friend Leanne rang from Dublin one evening in September to tell me that yet another blanket had been drawn over the face of a Blanketman.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.



Matt Lundy

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ For around a year from the end of 1980 to the end of 1981, he was my next door neighbour in H6 and H3.

Rab Kerr

Then we talked more than we ever saw each other. Every day out the back window some conversation would pass between us. 

Rab Kerr came onto the blanket protest in 1979, having been convicted for his part in an IRA operation the previous year that became known as the Rag Day killings. A number of IRA volunteers dressed as Arabs and mingling with Rag Day students approached a British army search point in Belfast city centre. Once in place, they killed a soldier and a civilian searcher. The audacity of the operation was a fillip for IRA morale while infuriating the NIO and unionism. The human tragedy involved in it all was lost on us at the time. 

When Rab arrived on the blanket he came in for more attention than most new arrivals. Word quickly spread that the civilian searcher was a relative of one of the blanket screws, giving rise to a vendetta  against Rab. It might just have been that the high profile nature of the case made him a magnet for abuse. Not that it mattered in the overall scheme of things as he frustrated the efforts to break him, retaining the stamina to see the protest through to the end.

Years later he would wreak revenge on prison management even if that was not his intention. Many people credit Bobby Storey with salvaging the 1983 escape, once the operation came off the rails on the wrong side of the wall. There is a lot of truth in that as Storey's on-feet thinking charted a way through. But it was all made possible by Rab Kerr who forewent his own chance of making it to freedom and held the tactically crucial tally lodge. He not only gave up his chance of freedom but risked his life. Badly beaten once he was overpowered by the sheer number of screws he was trying to contain, he held the fort long enough for the others to make good their dash. An imprisoned friend of Rab described events of the day:

Whenever the escape started to go awry at the Tally Lodge and the lads had to make a run for it Big Rab did not hesitate for one second when he was asked to stay behind and guard a room full of screws to give the rest of the lads a few extra minutes to get away. Not only did he agree to this knowing he wouldn't get away but he also knew that once the screws realised they had the greater numbers they would attack him and give him the beating of his life. However Rab was an ex-blanket man and he was used to beatings and he knew what comradery and self-sacrifice was.

During the blanket protest the men would sometimes wind him up by calling him Abdul or A-Rab, an allusion to the operation he was convicted for. An intelligent man he had a strong interest in other struggles, was an avid news follower and loved to read. Often, he would land in my cell with some book he thought had an interesting twist to it. He could also influence people to listen to music different from the norm. Today, two of my favourite albums remain Mind Bomb by The The and The Trinity Session by Cowboy Junkies. Having previously never heard of them, Rab's persistence eventually led me to listen to them. Rab was like that - not reticent about straying from the beaten track in terms of his interests.

While we conversed quite a lot and were in each others company frequently enough on the wings, we were never bosom buddies, each having our own circle of friends. I found him much too loyal to the leadership and its vision, but the flip side was that he found me much too disloyal.

While there were never pickings on him, he loved food. After one of his first paroles he regaled me in great detail about a restaurant he and his family visited, describing the ambience and the way each course was set out.  I asked him why he just didn't bother horsing it down his neck. He looked at me as if I was a philistine too used to jail grub, explaining that food was to be enjoyed, that eating out was an event with ritual, not simply shovelling as much into the mouth and gulping it down.

He married the redoubtable Jennifer McCann, and together they had three children, Meadhbh, Sáerlaith and Fionntan. Jennifer had become an icon to republican prisoners when during her first court appearance after her arrest she delivered a defiant and passionate defence of Bobby Sands, then on the hunger strike that would claim his life. Bobby, so moved by her defiance, wrote in his diary that he was "touched and proud." 

After his release Rab again found himself in prison having being arrested with Bobby Storey. He served a further two years before being released for the final time. He would go on to publish a range of books largely based on photographic images. Another blanketman Padraic Mac Coitir of Lasair Dhearg added that Rab had been a primary inspiration behind the founding of the Twinbrook GAA club Cumann na Fuiseoga, something inspired by Bobby Sands.

IRA volunteer, author, husband, father, community activist, the many strands and shades of a man behind a Blanket.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Rab Kerr

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ To his fellow prisoners in the H Blocks he was simply known as Big Snooge. 

Kevin Snooge Crilly

Had anyone asked for Kevin, they would have got a quizzical stare. And he was big - and had the physicality to go with it which he was adept at applying on the soccer pitch. Such was his ardour for the game that a friend from the jail said: Jesus, he would have gone through you. An all-round sportsperson, when the time came to get down to the all weather pitch everybody wanted Snooge on their side. This in spite of him having sustained a leg injury during an exchange of fire with a UDR soldier. 

There were a few players like that in the jail, matchwinners, game changers, people who had that something special with which they could turn a game on its head: Leonard Ferrin, Geek O'Halloran, Brendy Mead, Jock Holme, Dominic Adams, Charlie McKiernan, Brian Campbell - memorable names pulled from memory. Snooge in the view of many ranked among that top tier.

He came into jail after the blanket protest and hunger strikes, and like more than a few of his generation had no problem with people smoking a joint. Many did high tea in the jail. I had not not been on a wing since 1982 where someone wasn't using it. It was not an open culture but something people did at evenings in the quietude of their cells. One man used to shout to a friend that it was time to listen to Mr Brownstone - a number by Guns N' Roses - indicating that he was lighting up a joint. It was the same with Porn - officially frowned upon, the same guy coined pornographic literature 'Connolly Books'. These things were part of the jail subculture, officially denied but treading away like an odd sock being pressed down by the best foot forward. 

Snooge unfortunately, while enjoying the illicit pleasure one evening in his cell after nighttime lockup took a panic attack and hit the bell. He took a fierce slagging when he returned from the hospital after an overnight stay. Nobody really cared apart from a few Heads as they were called. One guy who gave Snooge the worst ribbing ended up hitting the bell himself after taking too much of it with his coffee at lunchtime. What Snooge got was nothing in comparison to this unfortunate - it was merciless. We tormented him about asking the screw to hold his hand as he was dying. None of it said by the unfortunate bellringer but why let the truth get in the way of a good wind up?

Former prisoners, when asked about their memories of Snooge, flag two features: his skill on the sports field and his ability as a musician. One ex-prisoner said he was:

very friendly and welcoming, he was a great musician and not a bad singer. He was also a good footballer and all round sports man who was liked by everyone.

Downtown Radio used to run a feature where a listener could write in with a hour long choice of music. I tried my luck once and it got played. I had chosen a list of long tracks, with a heavy rock emphasis including Since I've Been Loving You by Led Zeppelin. The presenter announced that it was one he hadn't heard in a long time. Pretty pleased that my selection had been played, the following day I met big Snooge and was even more pleased when he told me the collection was the best yet to feature on the show. That was praise indeed as Snooge knew his music.

After release he played the Armagh pub circuit for a while, and there is said to exist a demo tape of his musical collaboration with Bik McFarland and others, made in the H Blocks.

Snooge was of of that generation seriously motivated by the hunger strikes, which saw republicanism experience a resurgence, with many young people, outraged at the brutal treatment of the prisoners, drawn to the armed ranks. The Brits had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory through their repression and had breathed rejuvenation back into armed republicanism. Imprisoned for an INLA attack on a member of the UDR in February 1982, when he was a teen, Snooge was sentenced fourteen months later to 18 years. Armagh was a dangerous place in the '80s and shoot-to-kill became a byword for British forces described by the Manchester Guardian Weekly as “no different from the death-squads operating in South America”. 

Big Snooge, a man with a big heart and a big talent, faced even bigger demons after release, often seeking solace in alcohol. The bane of many former prisoners, loyalist and republican, it can often better the best of us.

Father to Michelle, Noeleen, Saoirse and Niamh, comrade to hundreds, it was a privilege for many to have made the journey with him. In the words of a man who was in the jail alongside him he was 'a good republican and someone who will never be forgotten.'

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Snooge Crilly

Alex McCrory ☭ British Army General and renowned counter-insurgency 'expert' Frank Kitson has died.

Frank Kitson

There is a proverb: Only The Good Die Young, whereas Kitson lived a full life.

His controversial theories on how to neutralise anti-colonial movements are well known to both the oppressor and the oppressed. Kenya, Cyprus and Ireland are just a few of countries where his ideas were practised on the 'Wretched of the Earth' with devastating effects and horrifying legacies.

His book Low Intensity Operations, published in 1971, is a classic of the genre: it was used by the Americans during the Vietnam war. I came across a copy in Long Kesh with finger creased pages and highlighted paragraphs made by eager students seeking to understand the enemy.
 
The jail had gained a reputation for churning out would-be revolutionaries of the kind that would ultimately drink from the poisoned chalice.
 
In more recent times, members of the Kikuyu tribe, who were corralled into mass internment camps during the Mau Mau struggle for independence, were awarded compensation for the barbaric crimes committed against them under British colonial rule.
 
Internment was introduced in the occupied six-counties in a failed attempt to suppress the early resistance. Gerry 'The Midas Touch' Adams would be awarded compensation for unlawful imprisonment during the period, only to see it withheld under new legislation. Obviously, the British State feared an avalanche of ex-internee claims coming before the courts.

Moving on, Kitson was commanding officer of operations in the north whenever Bloody Sunday and the Ballymurphy massacre occurred, both of which resulted in the deaths of many civilians. In addition, the notorious Military Reaction Force, a counter-insurgency unit that conducted black-ops by employing rouge republicans, was based at his personal headquarters at Palace Barracks.
 
British ruling class may mourn the loss of a dyed in the wool imperialist, a real hero, however, his victims, numbering in the millions, shall be happy to see the end of him.

General Frank Kitson brought much suffering into the world in his efforts to maintain Britain's colonial empire. He left a trail of broken bodies, broken families, and broken hearts in his wake. A chip of the old block, indeed.

Alec McCrory 
is a former blanketman.

Frank Kitson

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ The world of journalism recently said goodbye to veteran reporter John Pilger. 

John Pilger

John was often outspoken with his reporting but seldom, if ever, wrong as he delved into the murky depths of international politics in defence of those wronged. It was John who was one of the first to give a non-western edited version of events and atrocities committed by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv on the Palestinian people dating back to the earlier days of the conflict in that part of the Middle-East.

From the Middle-East to “Northern Ireland” (the six counties) John Pilger was usually one of the first on the scene giving an objective account, not edited by the British Government, of the situation in the six counties. Many governments around the globe, particularly those of the USA and Britain disapproved of some of John’s reporting but this did not prevent Pilger from reporting the truth, or as near to it he could get.

When the Nigerian/Biafran conflict began in the 1960s he was one of the first on the scene sending back images and an oration of the horrific situation there including starving children. He also highlighted the roles played by Western arms dealers in prolonging the suffering in that part of the African continent to amass huge profits. I can remember back in the late 60s watching on our old black and white television set reports of what was happening out there. of course, I was too young to understand but those images have remained with me throughout the years. Such images should have sickened any sane person but mattered fuck all to the profiteering arms dealers!

In his native Australia Pilger championed the rights of the aboriginal population, the native Australians, and he exposed the crimes committed against them by the colonial Australian state. In 1985 he produced a documentary, The Secret Country, which exposed many of these offences against these natives and this remained one of his finest works. John Pilger was a bold and courageous journalist, a novelty in that profession in many respects. In his earlier years he was a War Correspondent for the Daily Mirror exposing some of the crimes committed by the West in Vietnam and Cambodia. Books like Hidden Agendas, Distant Voices and Heroes opened peoples eyes to conflicts that were rarely reported on the mainstream news, like the situation in East Timor and Biafra.

John Pilger did an outspoken report on the state of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) after a mock run was carried in London to test the NHSs state of readiness in the event of a pandemic ever breaking out. This was done in 2016 and the NHS was found wanting in many areas including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The Government did not act on this survey’s findings and when, three years later, Covid 19 hit with terrible consequences the NHS, as discovered three years previous was found wanting. The findings of the 2016 ‘dummy run’ were frightening and the British Government did their level best to keep them under wraps. John Pilger did a comprehensive report on the state of the NHS and its ability to cope based on the 2016 findings. The failure of the British Government to act on these findings had catastrophic consequences when the real thing hit in late 2019.

He also did a comprehensive report on the state of the NHS and the extensive waiting list for hospital beds. It was he who revealed to us that in 1948, the year the NHS came into being, the service could boast just over 400,000 public beds for a far smaller population. Today the same NHS can provide just over 120,000 public beds for a far larger population according to the Pilger report. Most other reporters and certainly the British Government would never inform a gullible public of this fact, the real reason for the NHS waiting lists, and would prefer people to foolishly blame immigration for the strains on the NHS. How many times do we see on various television current affairs programmes MPs, NHS bosses and others with vested interests in keeping the public blind to realities giving us bullshit reasons for the problems faced by the NHS, but never the whole truth? 

Time and again these programmes often hosted by very credible people will wheel out some important sounding official to spin us all yet another yarn about the reasons people cannot get a bed in a public hospital. They seldom, Panorama occasionally excepted, give us John Pilgers account. A little frightening for them perhaps?

John Pilger was a reporter/journalist the likes we are unlikely to see again. He was direct to the point and got to places many others in his profession would cringe to go. He was the author of several works including Year Zero about the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the evils carried out by this gang and Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy, He was also the director of various documentaries often in war torn areas of the globe often putting his own life in jeopardy. John Pilger was a journalist and activist which often prompted people hitherto just casual observers to become campaigners themselves. His documentaries won ‘critical acclaim’ including a BAFTA and an Emmy. He was twice named journalist of the year.

It wasn’t only foreign policy which john Pilger reported - he also covered the Liverpool dockers dispute in the 1990s and took up the ‘campaign for justice’ of the families affected by the Thalidomide drug during the 1970s. in 2003 he was rehired by the Daily Mirror and his reporting made the paper the only mainstream daily to oppose the war in Iraq.

John Richard Pilger, born 9th October 1939 Bondi New South Wales, Australia – died 30th December 2023 London, England, aged 84 RIP.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

John Pilger

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ He hailed from an Ardoyne family of republican activists, two sisters had been imprisoned, as had a brother.

Brendy McClenaghan

When Brendy McClenaghan first landed on the blanket wings of H4 in early 1979, he came in for particular attention from prison staff. Although convicted of four conflict related killings, he had also heard the gavel bang to confirm a further sentence for trying to kill a screw. 

On the protest blocks the screws were referred to as coimeádóiri, Irish for keepers. Because they could hear prisoners shouting 'coimeádóir' to alert others to an approaching screw they quickly picked up on the meaning of the word. Sometimes they would shout 'coimeádóirs rule.' They never quite got the Irish plural. 

Brendy became known to them as 'Coimeádóir Killer' and when the opportunity arose, as it often did, he would get an extra boot or punch. One evening, a Scottish screw known as Albannach Mor - or Nessie, after the Loch Ness monster - scalded Brendy with boiling water as tea was being served. It was the only case of scalding that I recall from my time in the protest blocks.

Nessie was just a thug who later switched to the RUC, earning the animus of his former colleagues in the prison service for stopping them as they left the jail in their cars in a bid to catch them over the limit. He was later rumoured to be an avid practitioner of wife beating. Truly a man who was the personification of the quip that the prison service is the only place in the world where a person starts at the bottom and works their way down.

For all the violence, Brendy came through. I would have endless conversations with him out the window when he was on the same side of the wing and out the door when he was across the wing. 

We discussed everything and anything, determined to squeeze the last droplet of interest from a topic with which to ward off the interminable tedium that was our constant but unwanted companion on the protest. One night our conversation, carried on in hushed tones out the door - so as not to disturb our fellow blanketmen - until the screws came around with breakfast the following morning.

By that time I had bestowed the nickname Cecil on him to wind him up. But he claimed it, and for the rest of the time in prison got called Cecil.

After the blanket he and I would run into each other on different wings, walk the yard or simply hang out in the canteen or cells. In the late 80s he began to campaign for gay rights. While most just shrugged their shoulders at the idea, there were some who were extremely hostile, on occasion complaining that there should be no place for articles with pro-gay sentiment in the prison magazine, An Glor Gafa/The Captive Voice. This was in response to a piece written by Brendi, as he then went by, in the magazine titled 'Invisible Comrades'. Brian Campbell, the editor, steadfastly refused to resile from his commitment to allow gay voices. 

The jail O/C at the time, Leo Green, while liberal, tolerant and dogma-averse, seemed not quite sure how to handle it. I think he regarded it as a passing fad which would last until the next one came along. Being equipped with a dry and wry sense of humour, he could be very witty. One INLA prisoner who openly stated he was gay complained to Leo that he felt Republican Socialist prisoners were not getting as much as IRA prisoners within the jail. Leo's response, issued without the slightest of malice: 'he is getting more than the rest of us.'

Leo was not a detractor, but those that were left Brendy unfazed. He later wrote a piece called “Letter from a Gay Republican: H-Block 5,” which featured in Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland. After his release, he met a partner, Antoinette, had children and took a view of the peace process that it was not what republicans had fought, killed and died to achieve:

sad that our friends and comrades and the struggle we held dear were betrayed by those in whom we placed our trust.

For a while he seemed to gravitate towards Republican Sinn Fein. That was at the end of the 1990s and by then we had not seen each other more than a couple of times since release.

While he was living in Donegal, we got in touch again and would chat on the phone or via Facebook. By 2011 he described his health as being in 'a pretty bad way.' By the middle of 2013 he was quite ill with COPD and told me that he had only a 50:50 chance of surviving his upcoming operation. Fortunately. he had recovered to the extent that he lived a further ten years. By the end of the year he wrote a piece for TPQ about his beloved Ardoyne. 

In 2014, at the height of the Boston College furore, he wrote me that:

Hi Mackers, hope all is well with yourself and Carrie and the kids. I know from the past few days media/sf circus that you must be under a lot of brú. Just take care of each other and know that the truth will eventually get into the daylight. Basically, I'm trying to say that I am thinking of you all. Slan cara.

Of everything Brendy did in his life, perhaps more than anything else he wanted to be known as a blanketman, writing in another of our exchanges: 

the proudest thing I ever did in my life that no one can take from me, I was one of those who held the line when it was needed most in our struggle . . .

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Brendy McClenaghan

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ About four months older than myself, he had just turned seventeen when the British prison system sucked him into its toxic innards in 1974, where he would remain for a further sixteen years.

Tom Dutch Holland

I had arrived in the Crum not long before him and got to know him and his friend the late Ta Buck Bradley. As per usual the jail was not short of Ardoyne republicans. Both men would end up on the blanket protest in H3 a few years later. It had a reputation for being a particularly brutal block, with a screw known as Srón Dhearg - infamous for his violence, licenced by both prison management and the NIO - tormenting the prisoners on a daily basis. Years later when he appeared on a republican wing in H 4, Ardoyne man Paul Kane went for him. He never showed his face again. This was the type of thug Tom Dutch resisted and ultimately prevailed over.

Dutch was sentenced to Detention at the Secretary of State's Pleasure - another term for a life sentence if the recipient was younger than 18 at the time of the action for which they were convicted. They were known by prison management as SOSPs but to the rest of us they were simply lifers. Their treatment was the same and they were not spared the brutality during the blanket protest. Pleasure always seemed a strange way to describe a life sentence but I guess it is the type of thing British secretaries of state genuinely did derive pleasure from.

While serving his sentence in Magilligan, Dutch tried to escape. With all political prisoners later transferring from Magilligan to Long Kesh at the start of 1978, Dutch was among the convoy that made its penal journey from Derry to Antrim. He was not there very long when as a punishment for his earlier escape attempt, he was deprived of his political status. He left the cages one day early in 1978 to go to court for a weekly remand hearing and never came back, stripped of his own clothes and unceremoniously dumped naked in the protest blocks having refused to wear prison garb. He remained on the blanket protest until the very end. Withdrawing political status was a vindictive measure employed by the authorities for the purpose of deterring republicans from trying to escape or getting physical with abusive prison staff.

All the wings I was on with Dutch he was heavily involved in political discussion. I remember him as someone involved in drawing up and handing out position papers ranging from Life Sentence Review Boards to Sinn Fein's dropping of abstentionism. While I can't recall playing against him, he was described to me as a nifty footballer, of which Ardoyne produced a few like Leonard Ferrin and Geek O'Halloran. The same former blanketman who admired his acumen on the field told me about a crude tackle he put in against Dutch on the all weather pitch. He quipped at least he only gave out to me rather than attack me.

That was his way. When he died after being ill for a number of years I posted on Facebook "Eternal Sleep for Tom 'Dutch' Holland. Blanketman." Responses from across the republican divide were quick to follow. He was held in high esteem by many republicans whose perspective he did not share. One comment in particular summed it up for many:

Very sad news about Dutch - I certainly remember him with fondness, a good laugh and a smile. Ar dheis go raibh an annam 

Upon release from prison he reinvolved himself in the Provisional Movement. Married with two children he threw his boundless energy into a number of projects including directing and coordinating:

the publishing of the book Ardoyne - The Untold Truth  detailing the true circumstances of the conflict related deaths on every Ardoyne citizen post 1969, a tremendous task given the fact that this small district suffered over 100 fatalities.

Occasionally I would see him at events but my abiding memory of Tom Dutch is of endlessly seeing him trudge up the Falls Road to where he seemed to travel every day on his way to the Sinn Fein office in Sevastopol Street. He would catch a black taxi down from Ardoyne and then walk the remainder of the journey.

His final journey, was in the words of his friend Jackie Donnelly ''the first Republican funeral ever to travel down Alliance Avenue.''

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.


Tom Holland

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ I first met him in Crumlin Road prison towards the end of 1974 but it was little more than ships in the night. 

Robbie Laverty

He was just settling in while I was upping sticks to go elsewhere. He was in his twenties whereas I was seventeen. At the various points in my life when I met him he always seemed to look older than he actually was. In appearance he reminded me of the 1916 leader Tom Clarke. He also had a wisdom beyond his years. 

By December I was in Magilligan and Robbie was sentenced to ten years which saw him off to Long Kesh to serve out his sentence. I didn't see him after that until May 1978 when Cage 11 was being resurfaced and we were dispersed throughout the other cages for the day. I opted for 9, where I spent much of the day talking to Robbie and Gerry Kelly about revolution, something all three of us eventually stopped believing in. 

The following month, my stay in the cages came to an end and I ended up on the blanket after what prison management alleged was an escape attempt. Back down in the Crum for another trial, I learned of Robbie being captured on active service. He had been released in 1979 and now in his early 30s was again wearing the operational gloves of the IRA. He later told me an informer had set him up.

He came up to the H Blocks in 1985, sentenced to 15 years, and over the next few years I got to know him quite well. Robbie was nobody's fool but it didn't save him from the range of mixes that would be devised. There is a story to be told about myself, Robbie and the late Cormac Mac Airt, but just not in an obituary. Cormac's mischievous sense of humour, delivered with a twinkle in his eye, lay at the heart of it.

Robbie always came to see the funny side of things but just not at the time. Once in 1988 he chased me round the snooker table after I had set him up for a Valentine's Day mix, him half laughing, half scowling, still in a state of uncertainty whether he wanted to hit me or hug me.

He was astute and acutely tuned into political developments. He did not share the Left wing perspective of many of his fellow prisoners, feeling that they needed to get a grip on how people in their daily lives thought and acted. He believed jail theorising  was hot air and as things turned out he was on the money. He rebutted many of the observations, indeed criticisms, made from within the prison about the manner in which the republican struggle was being conducted outside. He had no time for jail moralising and was very much an iconoclast.

One thing that seriously annoyed him in a way that the mixes never did was the easy going attitude in the jail towards those who had upon their arrest agreed to turn state evidence against their comrades but later retracted when the shock of their arrest wore off and they had come to their senses. He would explain the painstaking effort that IRA volunteers had put in to building networks and resources only for years of endeavour to be be brought down in one fell swoop as a result of weakness or selfishness. While he would never be nasty to the people responsible, he was privately quite unforgiving. He was also caustic about people who loose talked, feeling there were huge consequences. The IRA for Robbie was not some form of recreation to be commented on much like a soccer match. 

He and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things but he brought the benefit of experience to many discussions and was not afraid to stand up and say 'no' to something he considered a mad cap idea. Years later I would often reflect on the prudence of his perspective; how right he had been when others thought him ridiculous. There was nothing ridiculous about Robbie Laverty and he certainly did not suffer fools gladly.

After release it was only occasionally we would see each other, and chat when we did. My last memory of him was when he had a shop on the Andersonstown Road close to the Busy Bee. Myself and Tommy Gorman called in to say hello and he give us one of those you are up to no good type looks. He asked if we were looking him to put posters up in his shop window to advocate some event or promote some cause. I think at first he had difficulty believing we were just dropping by because we were in the area. But that's all there was to it. Robbie was a supporter of the Sinn Fein leadership whereas we were anything but. It caused no animosity between us. The one thing he gave out about was the difficulty of running a shop due to some of the anti-social elements that would hang about the vicinity.

Robbie continued on with his business only this time further up the Road beside Twinbrook where he was described 'the heart of the Dairy Farm and he still will be.' Last June as he was driving to work, his car was in a collision with another vehicle. It ended his life at 74. 

Robbie's was a life of service, whether to the IRA as an armed activist or as a shopkeeper to the wider community. A softspoken and studious man, his contribution to the republican struggle saw him spend more than 12 years in prison. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Robbie Laverty

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