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When
Pearse Jordan died at the hands of the RUC ten years
ago this month, I and other republican prisoners were
on the work-out scheme from Maghaberry Prison where
it was customary for Long Kesh lifers to serve out
the last three months of their sentences in a sort
of half board existence. Sleeping in the prison -
usually aided by a few pints - four nights a week,
the rest of the time was our own or nominally that
of whatever employer we were supposed to be working
for as part of our smooth transition to becoming ’normal’
citizens again.
After
almost two decades in prison and now faced with decisions
which would determine whether imprisonment would feature
as part of our lives again, the killing of Pearse
Jordan was a wake up call. It brought home to any
of us considering reporting back to the IRA in any
active capacity that life in the organisation for
serious volunteers was devoid of frills. While there
were plenty of areas within the structures in which
to hide, there seemed no reason other than pseudo
ones for choosing them as an option. For active volunteers
a pitiless existence was what lay ahead. For those
of us pondering such a path the seriousness of the
matter was etched ever deeper in our minds as we felt
a sense of eeriness descend upon us while visiting
the flower marked scene of Pearse Jordan’s death
at the front of the City Cemetery facing St John’s
Chapel. Each time I passed in a black taxi on my way
to the bus to return to jail on dark December evenings
the thought that a new life was awaiting me while
his had ended so soon proved turbulent to any peace
of mind I expected to have as a result of imminent
release. Two decades earlier we had promised to end
it and now volunteers born into it were dying with
still no end in sight.
Pearse
Jordan graced the ranks of the IRA at a time when
membership of the body had a purpose other than lording
it over neighbours or maintaining some disembodied
sense of esprit d‘corps. He was no ceasefire
volunteer or Good Friday soldier - the manner of his
end underscoring the point. Some of those who strut
our streets and ex-prisoner centres today would not
have opened the door to him or his comrades during
the course of an IRA operation. Militant republicans
of the verbal type, their homes were IRA free zones
when the IRA needed houses most; a point often made
with understandable bitterness by those who risked
their lives and freedom alongside Pearse.
On
the morning of his funeral I travelled to South Derry
to visit friends whom I had been in prison with. I
had not known him and a year would elapse before I
attended my first IRA funeral in over twenty years,
that of Volunteer Thomas Begley in Ardoyne. Later
I would live in Ballymurphy, the home territory of
the IRA squad that Pearse belonged to. Through the
prism of bereavement it could be seen that a generational
change had occurred within the IRA. Although Ballymurphy
had lost a number of volunteers during the conflict
Pearse more than any other was revered amongst his
comrades. Their respect for him mirrored that of the
Blanket men for Bobby Sands. For many of them he was
the only dead volunteer they had served alongside.
Some local republicans named their children in honour
of Pearse’s memory. His framed photo adorns the
walls in the halls and living rooms of others. On
Monday many of them congregated in Milltown Cemetery
to pay their respects.
His
death hurt them. It still does. The number of times
his name has come up in conversation over the years
is testimony to his status within local republican
iconography. His father Hugh summed up what many of
them feel: ‘Every anniversary is difficult. You
wonder what he would have been doing now, would he
have had children?’ He died as a Provisional
IRA volunteer in a war that could not be won. Although,
he was not told that at the time. Had he survived
a mere two years, like his comrades, he would have
been denied any input into the 1994 leadership decision
to halt the war - an event being planned as he was
losing his life while prosecuting the same war. In
the minds of the leadership he was sound enough to
risk and ultimately lose his life for the war but
strangely, like the rest of us, not sound enough to
decide on either ending or persevering with it.
Arguably,
the greatest tribute that could have been paid to
his Provisional republican memory was in the end not
paid at all. A simple display of the moral courage
required to say ‘no’ to a leadership determined
to go ‘Stick’ would have been more fitting
than anything else and at the same time less incongruous
with both the etiology and formative ideology of the
Provisional Republican Movement.
In
terms of republicanism as distinct from the political
ambitions of this or that individual republican, very
little was gained from this war. But that can never
take away from the enormity of the sacrifice made
by people like Pearse Jordan. A young New Barnsley
IRA volunteer with his life in front of him he gave
it all up out of a sense of something wider than himself.
And as the Belfast drizzle pounds his grave of ten
years people will pause to reflect that his sightless
eyes once blazed with a vision of something better.
Much better than what we have now.
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