I
walked into the circle and then retraced my steps
of 27 years earlier, along the concrete floor of
H Block 4. The first time I made the short journey
to Cell 15 at the bottom of the wing, I was barefoot.
Now, almost three decades, later, I was kitted out
in Timberland runners. The contrast could not have
been greater. The Blanket protest seemed so far
removed. Walking into my old cell, I was immediately
reminded of Tommy McKearney's counsel after he had
returned to visit the closed H-Blocks - it is claustrophobically
small. How, I wondered, could two men share that
minuscule space each day for years without sailing
on the ship of fools?
We
had a goal, a vision, an ideal. It made us fit for
purpose. Which was never to be criminalised by a
government that invariably found in every country
it occupied that there was an inordinately high
number of criminals, whose main criminal enterprise
seemed to be opposing the British. I met many criminals
during my years in the protest blocks - all working
for the Northern Ireland Prison Service. I visualised
how they had kicked me along the wing naked as part
of the forced wash preparation. I recalled how the
Northern Ireland Office waxed ethical about criminality
yet covered for the criminal brutes in its pay at
every turn.
In
the hospital block, I stood in the ward where Bobby
Sands had breathed his last. Another contrast: the
small building which held the intense gaze of the
world in 1981 was now desolate and detected by the
mental radar of only a few. The desolation seemed
a calculated act of profanity visited on sacred
ground; as if something treasured and to be handled
with care had been rolled up in a ball and cast
into some dusty corner. More than ever before I
felt the urge to have the place preserved. It is
sacred ground for republicans. An eternal flame
should burn there similar to the one in Arlington
Cemetery at the grave of John F Kennedy.
As
I left the prison, my sole regret was not being
able to take my four year old daughter Firinne in
along with me. Her laughter at the spot where Bobby
Sands died would have been a fitting tribute to
a man who died predicting that his revenge would
be the laughter of our children.
