Showing posts with label Tom McElwee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom McElwee. Show all posts
Dixie Elliot ✒ This short poem is about conversations I had with Big Tom when we shared a cell. It is about dreaming of a life beyond prison walls and war.


You watched the shifting clouds
and dreamed.
The wind carried the curlew's call.
Rain brought memories in its wake.
So too the swirling snow, as cold as a prison wall.
♜ ♞ 
A passing greeting along the road.
Cattle grazing unconcerned.
Lough Beg in the moonlight, a meandering stream.
The welcoming fire in your mothers hearth, and a rest well earned.
♜ ♞ 
When love first caught your eye and it gripped your heart.
The slow dance long remembered, and a song from the past.
A kiss at the gate and whispered plans
of a future never apart.
♜ ♞ 
You watched the shifting clouds and dreamed.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Tomás Mór McElwee

Christopher Owens with his thoughts on the fall out from the anniversary commemoration of IRA volunteer Tom McElwee. who died on the 1981 hunger strike. 

“The life and times of Susan Strange ended in that tragic way/With the money from insurance the family went on holiday/Nothing left but rotting flowers on an unattended grave/The epitaph has faded badly/No one reads it anyway” - Subhumans

Another week, another battle over the legacy of the conflict.

Seeing political opportunists Sinn Fein commemorating the death (on hunger strike) of Thomas McElwee led to a predicable reaction, especially on Twitter (now officially worse than Tumblr at its peak).

Let’s unpack all of this, shall we?

***

Firstly, as we now know from Richard O’Rawe, McElwee (among others) was allowed to die in order to further Sinn Fein’s political profile. That, coupled with Sinn Fein seemingly prepared to allow former IRA members to be arrested for conflict related events in the hopes that the odd British soldier will also be convicted, brings a grim irony to proceedings but is typical of Sinn Fein in 2021. Reflection is a one-way street when it comes to them.

Secondly, the reaction from various commentators veered from weariness, shrieking hysteria and smug contempt. The reason for this is because McElwee was in Long Kesh for the manslaughter of Yvonne Dunlop, a 26-year-old Protestant shop owner who was burnt to death in her boutique due to a bomb (which was part of a series of bombings in Ballymena that day).

On the face of it, it’s perfectly understandable as to why people are reacting the way they are. For many, this epitomises the stark contrast between the highfaluting talk of ‘IRA volunteers’, ‘the war’ and historical fact. The thin veneer between an Armalite and an Armani. A young, innocent Protestant businesswoman killed. How can you not find the contradiction unsettling?

***

In the middle of this battle, I posted the following:

Since everyone's (rightly) remembering the death of Yvonne Dunlop in relation to #ThomasMcElwee, let's also remember Sean McCrystal, killed by loyalists on the same day in an equally barbaric fashion.

A lot of people clicked on the tweet (presumably to find out where I stood, politically speaking) but there was little interaction. One person did reply with the following:

Sean's family, friends and colleagues will rightly be remembering him. And his murder was equally as wrong as all the others that were committed here. You won't see any of the political parties here eulogising the individual or individuals who murdered Sean.

Out of all the tweets I had read that day, this was by far the most sensible and the one that really cut to the matter as to why some people reacted the way they did. I certainly couldn’t argue with the tweet, and I didn’t.

However, it also (inadvertently) highlighted a problem.

***

In the rush for the Twitterati to demonstrate how appalled they are by Sinn Fein’s cynical posturing some would include a variation on the phrase ‘don’t @ me with whataboutery all deaths were wrong’ in their tweet.

The problem with this approach is that, in this case, it removes Sean McCrystal from the narrative of that day and reduces it purely to Thomas McElwee and Yvonne Dunlop. Surely, if these people are genuinely serious about how all deaths in the conflict were wrong, they would include Sean McCrystal not only an example of how violence begets violence but also of how sickening events can lead to much more sordid events?

According to Lost Lives:

Sean Patrick McCrystal, 40-year-old Catholic civilian, single lived with his mother at Brooke Park in Antrim. Mr McCrystal's body was found burning on waste ground close to North Street in Ballymena, 60 yards from the shop where Mrs Dunlop died earlier that day. Two Ballymena men were convicted in 1977 in connection with Mr McCrystal's killing. One of the men was 21 at the time and the judge recommended that should serve no less than 25 years. The judge told him: "Mr McCrystal met a terrible and ugly death at your hands. It is difficult to imagine that sane people could perpetuate an act of savagery". The court heard that Mr McCrystal's body was found around 1:00AM in an entry and suffered lacerations and fractures. His death, however, was caused by the fire. It was said that the 21-year-old man had a fight with Mr McCrystal and then they followed him to the back of the house. They then beat him, poured petrol on him and set him on fire. The defence council said the men were "soused with drink" but the judge said they may have been so drunk as to be bereft of their senses. He said: "this can only partially explain the sadism inherent in this killing. Drink only provided the courage necessary to carry out this foul, vicious, and sadistic murder". Reliable loyalist sources said Mr McCrystal was killed by men who had UVF connections.

Doesn’t this deserve to be remembered as much as an innocent woman burning to death in her shop? When considered with Thomas McElwee’s death on hunger strike, isn’t this sequence of events a stark illustration (bombings, death of Yvonne Dunlop, death of Sean McCrystal, death of Thomas McElwee) of the depravity of the conflict as a whole?

Apparently not, due to the lack of interest in my tweet.

Alternatively, if we go along with the thinking that, because Sean McCrystal’s murderers are not commemorated by mainstream political parties, doesn’t that mean a slew of victims fall between the cracks of mainstream attention? Doesn’t this further simplify the narrative of the conflict and reinforce the idea of a hierarchy of victims that all sides are willing to weaponise them for their own purposes? Add in the narcissism that social media exacerbates, and you end up with two deeply confused groups shouting at each other, absolutely certain in their self-righteousness.

***

This needs a nuanced approach. If people want to commemorate Thomas McElwee, then they should be allowed. If people wish to discuss Yvonne Dunlop in relation to him, then by all means. But it should lead into a wider conversation about the conflict, such as how the desire for retaliation led to Sean McCrystal, leading to more needless deaths. Much more considered and positive than empty point scoring on Twitter.

If Voltaire is correct, then we need to tell the truth and be honest about what happened in the conflict. Only then will the memories of Yvonne Dunlop and Sean McCrystal be honoured, and we will understand what drove Thomas McElwee to join the hunger strike.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

Hand Wringing The Nuances Out Of Tragedy

Thomas Dixie Elliot with a powerfully evocative memory of IRA Volunteer Tom McElwee.

It was the winter of 1978 and Christmas was about a week away. Big Tom McElwee and I waited and listened as the screws got closer.

On up the wing locks rattled, cell doors flung open and we heard bare feet scurrying on the floor, as those in the cells before us tried to escape the heavier sounding boots of screws.

There was no escape - this was the H-Blocks. We were naked except for a blue towel wrapped around our waists and encased within a concrete hell on earth, officially called H4. There was no escape from the hatred that lined the wing, blocked the way at the grills and either took physical form in beatings or looked on in white shirted command. The wing shifts and forced washing had begun what was clearly another attempt at breaking us.

That winter was the worst in years, so bad we thought it would surely reach through the broken windows of our cells and that its icy touch would claim some unfortunate comrade in the night.

Big Tom waited by the cell door with fists clenched. He had a low tolerance of bullies and he fully intended taking these bastards on. I stood near the window and silently cursed his courage as fear chilled my very bones. Screws moved around outside our cell. It was too soon, we thought, as there were several cells before us to go yet.

The hatch opened, a set of eyes peered through at us. Keys rattled and they were in on top of us; pushing, punching and grabbing at our matted hair. We had been taken by surprise and before we could react we were being run down the wing, through the various sets of grills and across the circle towards a newly cleaned wing. There they waited, the cleaning crew with their tools of torture; ordinary everyday things like a bath, a scrubbing brush, scissors and a mirror. Depending on their sick sense of humour the bath would either be filled with scalding hot or freezing cold water and we would be plunged into it and scrubbed until our skins almost bled. Our hair and beards would be shorn from our heads with the scissors. The mirror was the final act of degradation, we would be forced to stand spreadeagled over it, then beaten down until we almost sat on it.

There were two chairs; the plastic type you would find in a waiting room and most definitely not those used by barbers, but that we knew was to be their purpose.

Big Tom stood with defiance in his eyes and his mouth locked in grim determination. I knew what was going to happen next as they tried to force him into the chair. I wrestled with those trying to force me down. A screw was poking me with a pair of scissors. Then Tom drew out and caught a screw with one of his big fists, sending him crashing backwards onto the cold polished floor.

Fuck this I thought, before hitting the screw who had the scissors.

We took a terrible beating from boots and batons; I know that much, but strangely I can remember little else about it. I do remember being flung into the back of a van naked, like some piece of dead meat. The screws were waiting for us in the punishment blocks where we got another beating.

Later, Big Tom was still defiant as he called to me out the door. I was just too fucking cold and sore to be defiant so I felt sorry for myself.

They starved us as part of the punishment. The Number One Diet, as they called it, consisted of dry bread and black tea for breakfast with watery soup and a single piece of potato for dinner. We got the same dry bread and black tea again at tea time.

A ‘Christmas amnesty’ said a screw as they let us go back to the wing on Christmas Eve. The cheers of the lads did nothing to lift my spirits as I followed Big Tom down the wing, banging cell doors as he went. Later that night we had the first decent meal in a week - when you’ve been starved anything’s a decent meal.

As we ate, somewhere in the distance I heard for a brief moment, ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ - Boney M’s Christmas hit of that year. Some screw had decided to remind us that it was indeed Christmas before turning it back off. We rose to our cell doors as one and sang back at the bastards. The sing song lasted into what was probably the early hours of Christmas morning. We had no way of knowing, as there were no church bells to ring in Christmas Day in the H-Blocks.

Tom and myself were sent to a wing in H6 along with the Blanket leadership in early 1979, even though we didn’t hold positions of leadership ourselves. This move was an attempt to break the protest by isolating the staff from the bulk of the Blanket men, particularly the young lads in H3 who bore the brunt of the brutal beatings meted out by the screws.

We were both then moved to H3, later that year, when the wing in H6 was broken up after that tactic had failed.

Before Tom went on Hunger Strike, that terrible summer in 1981, he called me aside at mass one Sunday and slipped me his Rosary beads. He still had that defiant look on his face as he told me to ‘hold on to them.’ I didn’t believe that Tom wouldn’t be back; he was a fighter, a hard man with a big heart.

Big Tom McElwee didn’t return. He died on 8th August 1981 after 62 days on Hunger Strike. I treasure those battered and worn Rosary beads. I also have what Tom never got to have, a lovely wife and two grown up children.

Suaimhneas síoraí ort a chara...


Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.

Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie    

In Memory Of My Friend And Comrade Tómas Mór McElwee