1999 (19 page)

 

Republican women were as active, and as dedicated, as their men. With a condom—available in the north but not the south—a cigarette pack and some sulphuric acid, it was possible to construct an incendiary weapon. A woman could try on a coat in a unionist-owned shop, leave the small bomb unseen in a coat pocket, and walk away. When the acid burned through the condom it ignited the paper. The resulting fire was highly destructive.

 

On the fifth of October bombs planted in the Horse and Groom Pub in Guildford, England, left five people dead and over fifty injured. Two more were killed in a pub bombing in Woolwich. Subsequently four men accused of being members of the IRA were arrested and jailed. Their pictures were prominently displayed on television, identified as “The Guildford Four.”

Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Harold Wilson promised to fight the IRA with the full resources of the United Kingdom.

 

Ten days later republican prisoners set fire to the Cages in Long Kesh.

November sixth brought further violence to the prison. Thirty-three republicans successfully tunnelled their way out, but were discovered as they ran toward freedom. One man was shot and killed; the rest were recaptured.

On the twenty-first of November two pubs in Birmingham were bombed, killing a total of twenty-one people. Six suspects were arrested. Almost overnight they became “The Birmingham Six.”

Speaking for the Provos in an interview shown on British television, Dáithí Ó Conaill denied both the Guildford and Birmingham bombings. “We strike at economic, military, political, and judicial targets,” he stated.

 

In the first week of December Barry received a letter from McCoy.

The letter was dated before the escape attempt. “Séamus might have been involved in that too,” Barry warned his mother. “One man was killed.”

“Not Séamus,” said Ursula. “I would have known.”

In classic republican tradition, Sinn Féin suffered another split on December eighth when a dissident group broke away to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

Máire Drumm, a vice president of Provisional Sinn Féin, had arranged a meeting between six Provisionals and a group of northern Protestant clergymen. The expressed hope of the clergymen was “to try to strengthen the doves in the Army Council.”
²
The meeting began on the ninth of December in Feakle, County Clare. Dáithí Ó Conaill and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, the president of Provisional Sinn Féin, were amongst those present.

The meeting encountered numerous difficulties, but by the tenth they were making solid progress. Then an IRA courier arrived with urgent information. Dublin Castle had learned about the meeting and was sending Special Branch to arrest Ó Conaill, described as the most wanted man in the British Isles. He made a hasty departure. The meeting continued until the arrival of Special Branch forces brought it to an abrupt end, but the negotiations bore fruit.

The banner headline in
An Phoblacht
proclaimed, “IRA Declares Christmas Ceasefire!”

On Christmas Day an intermediary for the British government paid a visit to Ruairí Ó Brádaigh in his home to discuss extending the ceasefire into the New Year. Ó Brádaigh told the man, “There is no war as far as we're concerned, though of course the IRA reserve the right to defend themselves.”
³

On the first of January Ireland took over the rotating presidency of the EEC for the first time. The IRA ceasefire was still in effect but 1975 would be a year of mixed blessings. The Fine Gael/Labour coalition was beset by severe problems at home. The stagnant Irish economy was in a cul-de-sac, with inflation hitting twenty percent and the highest unemployment rate in the EEC. “Hall's Pictorial” satirised “the Minister for Hardship.”

Not to be outdone, Ursula quipped during dinner, “We're suffering from stagflation.”

She had given in on the matter of the wheelchair. Eating meals on a tray in her room was intolerable. “It makes me feel like a pariah,” she told Barry. When the wheelchair arrived she discovered that she rather enjoyed being ceremoniously wheeled through the house to the dining room, like a queen arriving in a sedan chair.

She could not endure the chair for long. As soon as the meal was ended she had to go back to bed. She lay there hating the prison of her body.

 

The IRA ceasefire had not received unanimous approval from republicans. There was strong disagreement between those who thought the truce offered a way into meaningful negotiations, and others who believed the military campaign was the only hope for ever getting the British to withdraw.

Opinion among the Usual Suspects was divided. Brendan was guardedly optimistic. “If the IRA proves it can be trusted, Britain may be willing, step by step, to begin withdrawing from the north.”

Luke was less hopeful. “Maybe, but only if withdrawal is in their own best interests.”

“It is of course. Maintaining Northern Ireland is costing the rest of the United Kingdom a fortune. It's an artificial economy, you know; quite unsustainable in the real world. With the ongoing shrinkage of heavy industry since World War Two almost forty percent of all employment in the north is in the civil service. If you were a taxpayer in Kensington would you be happy paying for that?”

Danny argued, “More's at stake than money. Britain hangs on to the north to save face. Ireland was their first conquest, the first place they colonised. Now their damned empire's dying on its feet, Ireland's gonna be the last holding they release.”

“Only way to get them out is to blast them out,” Patsy asserted. “If Séamus was here he'd tell you the same.”

“Any news of him lately?”

“Not since Barry was in here the other night.”

“Now there,” said Danny, “is the man you need to blast them out.”

 

Early in the new year the Irish Republican Socialist Party set up a military wing called the Irish National Liberation Army, which attracted a number of disaffected Provos.

The ceasefire ended abruptly on the twenty-seventh of January. Four bombs attributed to the IRA went off in London. No one was killed, but nineteen people were injured by another bomb in Manchester.

Meanwhile top-secret meetings were being held between representatives of the British government and the Provisional IRA with an eye toward establishing a permanent truce. The Provos presented twelve points in their negotiations; the British responded with sixteen. Ostensibly the British were interested in resolving the outstanding problems. In actuality they hoped to drag matters on and on until the IRA lost its support base altogether and gave up the struggle. “Play the Provos along” was the British policy as expressed by Merlyn Rees, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
¹

 

Relations between Dublin and London grew increasingly strained. Liam Cosgrave's government suspected the British were negotiating with the IRA about pulling out of the north. Should that happen, massive violence was predicted. Cosgrave and his cabinet began secretly planning to accommodate up to fifty thousand of the refugees they expected to flood south across the border.
²
At least twice that number were anticipated, but the Republic simply did not have enough resources for them.

Nor did the Irish government want them. The incomers could have a dramatic effect on the political landscape. If enough of them were Irish nationalists they would want no part of Fine Gael, whose founders had backed the treaty that partitioned Ireland.

The IRA announced a new ceasefire to go into effect on the tenth of February. Seven incident centres manned by Provisional Sinn Féin were opened to monitor the ceasefire in cooperation with British officials.

 

The Irish possess an irrepressible wild streak that the English have never understood. Centuries of exercising imperial control have left them unable to recognise an unfettered spirit.

In Long Kesh this spirit expressed itself through imaginative pranks and mordant humour. “Being in Long Kesh is like being in the Army, only different,” McCoy wrote, “in that none of us volunteered for this and we are doing our damnedest to get out. As long as we're here, though, we manage to have some fun. The screws are baffled by what we get up to. (It don't take much to baffle them, they are not hired for their brains.) When they get mad enough they hammer us. I have some new scars but I'm tougher than I thought I was. We all are.”

 

In February Margaret Thatcher, wife of a wealthy businessman, became the first female leader of a political party in Britain. Taking the reins of the Conservative Party at the age of forty-nine, Mrs. Thatcher said simply, “I beat four chaps. Now let's get down to work.”

 

On the first of March Seán Garland of the Official IRA was ambushed on his way home by members of the newly formed INLA. He spent four months in hospital.

 

Barry bought all the major Irish newspapers, including those from the north. As he explained to Barbara, “I never know where I might find the next story to tell with my camera.”

“Television cameras tell lots of stories every day,” she replied. “If only we had a telly…”

Until that moment Barry had been considering purchasing a television at last.

He changed his mind.

If he wanted to see the news on television, there was always the set in the Bleeding Horse. Grainy black-and-white pictures of a world created for drunken comment.

Since McCoy's arrest Barry had been visiting the pub more often, though he rarely had more than one drink. When he returned home Barbara usually made her resentment obvious. Yet at the most unexpected times she would urge him to go. “It'll do you good to talk with those buddies of yours,” she said.

When she bothered to think about it she knew how much her husband missed Séamus McCoy. She missed him herself, and wrote to him every week or so—usually after Brian was asleep. Most of her missives were in the form of postcards. She had a huge box of postcards given to the Hallorans by a company for whom Barry took scenic photographs.

McCoy's most frequent correspondent was Ursula. She filled empty hours by composing long, amusing letters, spiced with word games or quotes from books she was reading. In the evenings she scoured the day's newspapers for articles she thought McCoy would find interesting. Everything was grist to her epistolary mill, from reports charting Brian's development to the employment situation of the boarders and the current gossip in Harold's Cross.

In her letters Ursula never mentioned McCoy's imprisonment, however. Or her illness.

Illness. I'm not ill, I'm broken.

The word “broken” rang like an alarm bell in her brain.

I'm
not
broken! In spite of everything that happened to them Papa and Mama were never broken. Pearse and Connolly were never broken. Papa used to say, “You have not lost the battle until you lay down your arms.”

 

The fall of Saigon at the end of April resulted in tens of thousands of South Vietnamese trying to flee the city as communist forces swept in. Television relayed unforgettable images of Americans being rescued from the U.S. Embassy by helicopter. After fourteen years, the Vietnam War was over.

 

Barbara enjoyed ambushing Barry. She met him as he came in the front door with, “What did you bring me?”

“What do you mean? Was I supposed to bring you something?”

“If that isn't just like a man! You forgot all about our anniversary, didn't you?” While Barry's brain raced across the known calendar, trying to catch up, she went on, “Now you're trying to play innocent because you don't have a present for me. I didn't expect much, just some little token, a tiny thing to show you still love me.” She sounded wistful.

He took a deep breath. “Barbara, our anniversary isn't until next week.”

“Oh,” she said.

And walked away.

When the IRA ceasefire continued to hold, loyalists launched the greatest assault on Catholic civilians in recent memory.
³

 

Weeks elapsed before another letter arrived from McCoy. The envelope showed signs of having been opened and resealed.

The British government erected an additional prison at the Long Kesh site to accommodate the burgeoning population. Based on a German model from World War Two, the new facility consisted of eight immense, flat-roofed prison blocks built in the shape of a giant “H,” together with an assortment of auxiliary buildings and a prison hospital. The four legs of the “H,” called wings, contained twenty-five cells each. The cells had been built for single occupancy but could easily hold two.

The centre bar of the “H,” although rectangular in shape, was called the Circle. It was locked off from the wings with barred steel doors. The Circle contained the warders' offices, storage closets, a medical treatment room, a communications room, toilets, and two games rooms for the prisoners. There was an officers' mess just off the Circle—as well as a padded cell for prisoners who were deemed to be a danger to themselves. The cell was six feet square and contained nothing but the “padding” on the walls. This consisted of one thin layer of wallpaper pasted on bare concrete.

All construction was of concrete, iron, or steel. Nothing flammable; nothing yielding.

Each H-Block was enclosed by a high fence topped with razor wire, with more wire strung across the top to thwart helicopter rescue. The entire H-Block compound was surrounded by a concrete wall seventeen feet high and over two miles long. A corrugated iron wall further separated the Blocks from the Cages. The perimeter boundaries of the combined prison consisted of more iron walls augmented by wire fencing. The result was a prison within a prison within a prison, like nested Russian dolls but without the pleasant connotation.

As part of the upgrading, Long Kesh officially was renamed Her Majesty's Prison, The Maze. The H-Blocks were designated as The Maze (Cellular), while the Cages were The Maze (Compound). Most people, however, continued to refer to the overall prison complex—which now covered 630 acres, more area than Belfast city centre—as Long Kesh.

The British claimed H.M.P. The Maze was the most luxurious prison in Europe.

Before the first prisoner arrived in the H-Blocks, the
Sunday Times
revealed that files on visitors to republican prisoners in Long Kesh had been given to loyalist paramilitaries by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
⁴

 

Barry drove to Clare as often as he could. Each time he went down Ursula asked him to collect something for her, like the pillow from her bed or her favourite books. The best thing he brought his mother was peace of mind. He was able to report that Paul Morrissey had been the perfect person to take over management of the farm. An honest, hardworking man, Morrissey was as conscientious about caring for Ursula's property as his own. “Clare people look after each other,” he told Barry.