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There
was a time when the death of an IRA volunteer had
some meaning broader than the end of an individual
life. No matter how startling the loss nor intense
the grief, it could always be rationalised in terms
of some wider purpose. When Seany Bateson died in
jail in June 1990, his passing proved particularly
difficult to come to terms with. When Sean Lynch informed
me of the news at the grill separating the two republican
wings, I blanched and gripped the bars for support.
Seany had breathed his last simply walking up the
wing - the result of what appears to have been a congenital
heart defect. Others had died in prison but their
deaths were easier to comprehend. When Tom McElwee
expired through hunger strike his death hurt us badly
but it had a very definite purpose. The lives of IRA
volunteers were considered so precious to their comrades
that the ending of one was incomprehensible if it
could not be fitted in with some higher end. Our minds
could not fathom how one could die merely walking
up a wing. Going out that way gave life a pedestrian
status - walking into a cul de sac from which little
meaningful could emerge.
In
earlier years within the prisons the deaths of IRA
volunteers would be marked by a 'day of mourning'
on the occasion of their burial. Each cage would hoist
a black flag and a military parade would be held in
the yard in full view of the prison administration
and the armed British sentries guarding the jail.
It concluded with a two minute silence. There would
no television viewed, games played or even handicrafts
made. People sat and read or walked the yard in pairs.
A silence enveloped the cages and was accompanied
by a sombreness that could make the warmest summer
acquire an autumn chill.
Nobody
seemed to mind such a regime. It seemed the least
we could do. And if there were any who suspected enforced
contemplation, they kept their opinions to themselves.
Gradually, such measures became less stringent. The
television would be turned on at 6 in the evening
and the atmosphere lightened. As far as I am aware
no one suggested by way of complaint that the days
of mourning were punitive rather than mournful. It
just seemed that jail leaderships merely took a step
back, relaxed matters and allowed those under their
command to honour the dead in their own way. By the
time the blanket protest had concluded and H-Block
republicans were very much in charge of their own
wings, the day of an IRA funeral was pretty much the
same as any other apart from the news programmes which
invariably saw a concentration of people in the canteen.
On
a Friday evening in May 1987, not long after we had
been locked up for the night, the radios we had in
our cells informed us of a gun battle at a RUC station
in some rural village and that heavy caualties had
resulted. Doors banged and a few cheered thinking
that the news indicated a military success for the
IRA. Others urged caution, reminding everyone that
we had at that point no way of knowing who had died.
An uneasy thought ran through my mind. Jack Hermon,
head of the RUC, had days earlier promised a tough
response to a spate of IRA successes which had included
the killing of, what from a republican perspective,
was a particularly detestable high court judge. Was
this pay back time? We had no watches but there was
a permanent chiming sound in our minds as the minutes
and seconds ticked away painfully slowly until the
next news programme. As the night drew on the name
'Loughgall' picked at our consciousness. Few of us
had heard of it but it would burn its way into our
memories to claim a permanent place. It was the worst
loss of life experienced by the Provisional IRA since
its emergence in 1969. And it was the backdrop to
the most concentrated round of IRA funerals ever witnessed
in the North.
In
the days that followed, we watched the television
as our comrades were lowered into their graves and
out of our sight for eternity. We listened to our
leaders speak at their gravesides and promise us that
the rich and the powerful would be made to pay for
butchering our fellow volunteers. Some of them had
come through the jails with us. Padraig McKearney
from Tyrone was one of the first prisoners I had met
when I arrived in prison for the first time as a sixteen
year old in 1974. Shortly after my arrival his brother
Sean died on active service with the IRA. We held
our parade in the yard for both he and a comrade who
died alongside him. In Cage F Magilligan the following
year I would chew the fat with Padraig in his cubicle
in the half-hut, both of us blissfully unaware of
what lay ahead for him.
As
each volunteer died we reflected and, steeled by the
experience, moved on. Their deaths gave reinvigorated
meaning and determination to our lives. I felt this
about the deaths of all volunteers. When my head was
pressed tight against the coffin holding the remains
of Volunteer Thomas Begley in October 1993, I felt
honoured to help carry him to his final resting place.
The operation he carried out days earlier had went
disastrously wrong but the purpose and ethos that
were the backdrop to his 'putting the gloves on' that
bright Saturday resonated with powerful meaning. Reviled
by both press and politicians Thomas Begley was, in
our view, an honourable man. When people from our
communities gathered on the Falls Road to mark his
passing, it reinforced our morale. They had not mistaken
his intentions.
And
then something changed. IRA volunteer Ed O'Brien died
on a London bus in 1996 when the device he was carrying
exploded prematurely. Local republicans in Ballymurphy
gathered at the small commemorative plaque on the
Ballymurphy Road on the day of his funeral. Ed was
one of our own and his death had the same poignant
meaning. Despite whatever doubts some of us might
have had about the politics behind the peace process,
it still seemed that there was this teleology taking
us to something much better than we had then; that
by merely believing in it's inevitability it could
somehow be willed into being. Shortly after this I
flew to London to take part in a discussion at the
Camden Irish Centre. Somebody, in the audience harangued
me for defending volunteers like Ed O'Brien.
And
then, as if she was administering an electric shock,
Suzanne Breen, the Irish Times journalist - also on
the discussion panel - stated that Ed O'Brien died
to achieve all-party talks which themselves could
only lead to an internal settlement. What a waste
of life she opined. I tried to parry her comment and
offer a different context for the death of Ed O'Brien.
As I did, I felt overcome by that same sense of hopelessness
I had experienced on being told Seany Bateson had
died. This was a death that would achieve nothing.
It seemed that the words coming out of my mouth in
disagreement with Suzanne Breen were in some way disconnected
from my intellect. From that point on a belief began
to take root within my mind - there was no reason
for IRA volunteers to have their lives exposed to
risk for a strategy, the real purpose of which the
leadership would not come clean about.
Last
Thursday, a young IRA volunteer, Keith Rodgers, died.
I am not now a part of the Republican Movement, can
no longer identify with the attitudes and behaviour
of its volunteers and would like to remain emotionally
detached from events like that in South Armagh. But
I can not. Because somewhere within me as a result
of my long association there is still a Provisional
IRA volunteer that empathizes with other volunteers
no matter how removed I am from their allegiances,
activities and associates. And when they die it dismays
and angers me.
The
circumstances of Keith Rodger's death are still disputed
but it is hard to find anyone persuaded by the IRA
leadership's version of events. There is a view that
the peace process is so in need of its intake of lies
that the manner of volunteers' deaths is to be falsified
now as well. Where once the IRA activity that led
to their deaths could be proclaimed as worthy, it
now seems that active service is a source of major
embarrassment. And if Keith Rodgers did give his life
on active service why can't those who led him stand
over the actions that he was engaged in at the time
of his death? Is their sense of establishment duty
more in need of protection than the integrity of dead
IRA volunteers?
If
Keith Rodgers did die on active service, what, in
the minds of the Sinn Fein leadership is so terrible
about IRA active service that it needs to be buried
along with its volunteers? And if there is something
so terrible about it is it not better to call it to
a halt rather than have IRA volunteers die absolutely
needless deaths? Republicans would be spared the revolting
spectacle after incidents like that in South Armagh
of having to endure some Sinn Fein waffler come on
TV and tell us the IRA ceasefire has not been broken
and that IRA guns are silent. Thursday's needless
and futile loss of an IRA life may emit a message
to some within the rank and file that republicanism
now has a cynical self-serving leadership whose eagerness
to jump into the political establishment has rendered
null and void the purpose and meaning of IRA deaths
throughout this conflict. That volunteers should still
be dying as a result of such leadership is a crime
for which leadership should carry ultimate responsibility.
It is their crime and they should be told most clearly
- no blood for power and privilege.
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