There is this duality, there’s Robert who is trying to be like an ordinary teenager, going to the Clonard Hall dance with long hair, “Here I am ladies, take me now!” You know, the swagger, Rod Stewart and all the music of the day. And then the rest of the week you’ve got “Dinker”. Dinker is what we would call today my nom de guerre. Dinker is the person involved with the IRA.
Dinker, Belfast 2019
D
On the 14th and 15th of August 1969, the police come down onto the Falls Road, in their armoured cars.
P
Do you remember that?
D
I was 11, this was my baptism of fire. So, the police come down the Falls Road in their armoured cars, down the sidestreets that lead from the Shankill onto the Falls. (Shows photograph.) This was a police vehicle.
P
So was this the B Specials?
D
Yes, both. This was an RUC vehicle. Then the B Specials were behind it with the 303 rifles, Sterling machine guns and the 45 Webley. And then behind that is the Protestant working class and they have petrol bombs. So your Marxist theory then runs into a problem by the objective reality. You have your subjective theory about uniting the two working classes, but the objective reality from a Marxist point of view is that the Protestant working class are now part of the mob, along with the police, the RUC and the B Specials. They burnt 1500 catholic homes in two nights. 300 Protestant homes were also burnt. 140 people were taken to hospital with gunshot wounds.
What ever weapons the Republicans had, they shot and injured three policeman and shot a young Protestant by the name of Herbert Roy dead, down the Falls.
P
And you remember that moment?
D
Yes, because this is me. I’m 11 years of age. The first person I remember being murdered by the police is aged nine. Patrick Rooney was aged nine and I was age 11, you understand? Your childhood has just been shattered.
P
You knew him?
D
No, no I didn’t. I knew of him, we are the same age group, I’m two years older. He lived at Divis Flats.
So the heavy machine gun from the Browning 3030 sprays Divis Flats and Patrick Rooney gets killed in his bedroom. The second was Hugh McCabe who was a Catholic and who was a British soldier home on leave from England and he was shot dead by police sniper, while on his own balcony in Divis Flats. They’re the first two people I remember being killed by the police. You understand? All of a sudden your wee childhood notions are turned upside down.
Because all of a sudden you’re afraid of the police.
P
Would you have looked out the window or would your parents have kept you back?
D
The first night was the Thursday, the 14th of August. You’re 11 years of age and this is all a big adventure so you’re looking to see and then all of a sudden there is rounds flying over your head. And then you run in fear, “They’re coming to kill my daddy. They’re coming to kill my mummy.”
P
We were in Glencraig, we were hearing the gunfire.
D
We lived on the Springfield Road, okay? On this side of the Springfield Road you had Clonard Monastery, you had Bombay Street, Kashmir Road. I actually remember the houses being set fire, I remember Bombay Street being set burning. This is Bombay Street, this is the houses on fire. (Shows photograph.) As an 11- year-old child… I sometimes still remember the smell of the smoke and flames.
P
I remember it being amazing when you first saw troops coming in the trucks.
D
I’m basically from Clonard area, and then word starts to come through, “Geraldo has been killed.” (Gerard McAuley) Geraldo was my friend, lived in the next street. He was shot about 3 o’clock. He was a member of the IRA youth movement, called the Fianna. I don’t know who killed him, whether it was the police or the loyalists or whatever. He was just trying to help people get their furniture out of the burning houses and someone shoots him in the chest.
P
Can I ask you, as a kid when did it stop being exciting? Or did it?
D
That’s when your childhood basically dies, along with Geraldo. Then you’ve got the whole funeral. Then we built the barricade. There was a building site with a lot of rubble and hoardings and stuff. We hijacked a bread lorry and put it across the top of the street. In behind the barricades, that’s where we started. About 6 o’clock there is a big load of noise coming from the Loyalists and we thought this with them coming down to finish us off. I was crying. “They’re coming to kill my daddy, coming to kill my mummy.”
All I can remember seeing was petrol bombs and hurley sticks. My sister remembers it better than I do, she told me, “Do you remember we had to go round the houses and collect milk bottles?” We rapped the doors, “Missus have you got any milk bottles?” “C’mon in son.” And — here — they actually washed the milk bottles. You couldn’t send a dirty milk bottle off to make a petrol bomb, what would the neighbours think?
I am ripping these pieces of rag. And you’re scooping the petrol out and putting it into the bottle and then you’re putting the rag in. But I’m 11 years of age, d’you understand?
P
Did you understand?
D
I’m saying that this was still part of the adventure, the adrenaline and everything else. So the men went up to confront what they thought was the final assault of the loyalists. And then they’re coming back and they’re shouting, “It’s the Army, it’s the Army!” And that’s the British Army coming down Ainsworth Avenue onto Springfield Road. Everyone’s cheering. My mother, her brother was a British soldier. My version of British soldiers was, “He’s like my uncle Sean.” I was a British Army loving child. “Show us your gun, Mister! Mister!” We idolised the British Army from that August through to the following July. But by 1970 that’s when the British decide.
On the Falls Road and Clonard, The IRA was just humiliated. People started shouting at them, “You were supposed to be here to protect us.” The writing on the wall, “IRA, I ran away.” That isn’t a myth, people were just absolutely livid that Geraldo was dead, Patrick Rooney was dead, Hugh McCabe was dead. 1500 catholic homes had been burnt to the ground, it was a real pogrom, led by the police, B Specials in behind, and then the Loyalist mob coming in behind that. That’s when the IRA split. These new upstarts, these new pups, call themselves Provisional and one of the first things they do is set up a youth movement.
Lee
Did you understand the split?
D
I hadn’t a clue. All I knew was at school there was a split. You had the Official Fianna and you had the Provisional Fianna. Someone says to me, “Do you want to join our Fianna?” And I said yes, without realising that was the Provisonal Fianna. If someone else had of come to me and said, “D’you want to join our Fianna?” I would’ve said yes and I would’ve been in what become the Workers’ Party, and now part of the Labour Party. And then you realised that these were the ones with the guns. Whatever weapons they started getting in, they were the more militant.
P
I remember in the Belfast Telegraph around that time there was a picture of an IRA stall raising money. That was a Unionist paper wasn’t it? A picture of somebody raising money to get guns, like a tombola.
D
It was even more brutal than that. One of my first things to do… You imagine my school, people in the Official and people in the Provisional Fianna. I am now a member, I am sworn in with the flag and all the rest.
P
Did you have a bible?
D
No. Not the Bible, the Irish flag the Tricolour. By this time I’m 14. I joined the Fianna, then every Friday, Saturday we had to go round every bar on the Falls Road and Clonard and you had a collection tin and green beret and a Harrington jacket. You went round the bar and you says, “We’re doing a collection for the IRA.” You know, literally that bold and that brutal. And people are putting pound notes in. And we went round every house. Then you had a Gestettner, because you didn’t trust the Belfast Telegraph, or the Newsletter or the Irish News. My job was to go round with them to every house and say to them, “This is the latest update, behind the barricades.”
P
Did you have a moment like in Free Derry where it’s almost like the Paris Commune, where it becomes a little self-run state?
D
No, the biggest influence in Clonard was Clonard Monastery. The biggest influence in the Falls was Saint Peters Cathedral. The priests and the Catholic Church, they couldn’t wait to get the barricades down. They were coming round and what you ended up with was… (Shows photograph.) This was the barricade where we parked the bus. The British Army then put in the barbed wire. The wall that we know today, this is the barricade that my father and the community built. It’s all just a rubble and a rubbish. And the Catholic priest says, “That’s ugly, that’s obscene. Why not let the British Army come in and put up, like, a wee small barrier? Sure, it’ll be down by Christmas anyway.” And you can see how it develops from the barbed wire, til they start to build the corrugated iron. Then over the years the corrugated iron becomes a wee small concrete wall and the wall gets bigger and bigger and then 50 years later we have what we have, in Clonard and right down onto the Falls.
P
Is that division still there?
D
My job today, I work with the residents of the Falls, and it is my job to also work with the residents of the Shankhill. We’ve got the Falls-Shankhill Forum and we’re going to meet, to talk about the gates. If we can take the old gate down and put something more aesthetically pleasing in, that you can actually see through it, and at the end have a conversation because to answer your question directly the walls are still there and the gates are still there. The gates open at 6:30am and close at 6:30pm every night. If the Falls and Shankhill residents can come to some sort of short term arrangement where we can get the gates to stay open to 7:30 and then 8:30 that’s gonna be progress. It’s the baby steps that we need to take together 50 years after the barricades that we built, I built as an 11 year old with bits of rubble and help from my daddy.
My mother’s family are from the Falls. My grandparents, great grandparents, they all settled in the Falls. All of a sudden, from being “Mister show us your gun,” there’s 3000 British soldiers sent in like that. The first raid was at 4:30 when they searched a house in Balkan Street and found weapons and explosives. When they brought the guns out, there was a minor skirmish between the local people and the British army as they were withdrawing. By 10 o’clock however there is 3000 British soldiers surrounding the 50 streets of the Falls and the place is locked down for three days and three nights.
I remember the gas. They had a Jeep and on the back they had a big catapult and they were just shooting the gas. I am not in the curfewed side, but I’m crying because that’s my mummy’s family, my cousins, my aunts and my uncles are being gassed. Then you hear, they admitted in the report afterwards, firing 1000 live rounds. But that’s what they admitted in the government report, so say treble that at least.
Then you have the two IRA, the Provisional and the Official, caught within the curfewed area and they do what they want. It’s mostly nail bombs, like explosions, every lot of minutes. But the following morning most of the shooting has died down and all you have is this rancid smell of CS gas just hanging over. Your eyes are running, you’re basically yeuuuurgh!
P
How would you describe that smell?
D
It’s almost like you’re trying to be poisoned, you couldn’t get a breath. It’s almost like a poison, like a mustard. Some people says if you get a hanky and dip it in vinegar and put their hanky over. Some of my friends my age came out wearing sanitary towels dipped in vinegar and the two pieces of elastic over their ears. Not knowing what a sanitary towel was, wearing a sanitary towel covered in vinegar, obviously a clean one! That’s the memory — we were still naive. But you can imagine the fear, of all the shooting. And you’re sort of confused because I was a British Army loving child up until the 3rd of July 1970.
P
There’s a lot of people who have written books describing things in that period in the early ‘70s and it always gets described as we look back on it now, as an adult. As a kid you experience things differently.
R
As a kid you almost… people play at being soldier, Japs and Commandos and Cowboys and Indians. But here was a real-life situation where you had real people with real guns and real gunfire and real explosions and you’re only like 11 or 12 years of age. I suppose because I was so young, making petrol bombs when I was 11, because you actually knew someone who was killed… Geraldo was 15 when he was killed. All I knew was it was the Orangies who killed Geraldo and I wanted to kill Orangies. I didn’t really know what an ‘Orangie’ was, all I knew was that they were Protestant and they belonged to another community. And they killed Geraldo and they burnt the 1500 houses.
I went to Geraldo’s funeral, they had a Republican funeral, the piper and the guard of honour and the tricolour and all. This is when you start, your whole childhood seems to take on a life of its own.
Geraldo was killed on the 15th of August, the Falls gets wrecked. The Rape of the Falls was what the local people called the Falls Curfew.
P
Did it feel like a rape?
D
Homes were raided, money was stolen, jewellery, 300 people were arrested and over 600 canisters of gas. They actually admitted to firing 1000 rounds and you can probably multiply that by 10 times. So you can see the humiliation of my family, my mother’s family, my granny and grandad and all the rest, they were physically just cowed down. Then there is this big procession of media that starts driving around – with a British soldier driving. It’s all cameras, RTE, UTV, BBC and then on the back of it you have two members of the Stormont Government.
Lee
The British Army were escorting them around.
D
They were bringing them round and this was like the defeated Falls community. You can see the anger, especially amongst the adults. I’m too young to understand, so my anger becomes the same as their anger. People start shouting, “Away on, you British bastard, you’re no good to us anymore.”
I was talking to him and he was showing me this rifle, and now I’m not allowed to talk to him?
“Don’t you, don’t you! You’ll be fuckin grounded for a week if I see you talking to them ones ever again.” You’re confused! But this is our community pulling away, saying, “Not only do we reject the Unionist state, the RUC and B Specials, but we’re now withdrawing support from the British Army as well.” You can see the transition, you were in a defensive position up til the curfew in the Falls and in Clonard, and next thing the Republicans start to go on the offensive, I mean actually shooting.
You come home from school and there’s someone with an M1 carbine, guarding. Or a Thompson machine gun or a Webley revolver. That was the weaponry that was available in the area at that time.
P
Do you remember the first time you picked up a gun?
D
The first weapon would’ve been a revolver, it was during a GL, a gun lecture. I still reckon the best is a Webley revolver or a 38 special would’ve been smaller and handier. I was too young then to actually be allowed to fire one.
That’s the power of the gun. The attraction of the military side of things, there was no concept of right or wrong, good or bad. Instead of playing children’s games with bits of stick that looked like guns or something, all of a sudden there’s a whole generation of young people… And you had someone at the age of 16 at the most who would be in charge of the group. An early baptism of fire.
There was an explosion in Clonard Street, 9th of March 1972, it was a Monday morning. I actually remember seeing it from school. You heard the blast, and then you seen the whole house go into the air and then it all coming back down again. We knew instinctively it was too close to be in the city centre, we knew it was in Clonard. The first time we got a break, we ran straight from school and run down. And everybody was poking in the rubble. The person sitting beside me, his brother was one of the dead. That’s when it stopped being funny, that’s when it stopped being a childhood game.
All of a sudden there was four people killed in the bomb and we were Fianna, so we had to go and do a guard of honour around the closed coffins and that was a real sobering exercise. So if you add that to the fact that, personally speaking, my grandfather had been killed the previous December by the loyalists — it’s not funny anymore. It’s real life, real consequences.
Because Geraldo was dead. At this stage, my grandfather was dead. And now you’ve got the four people killed in Clonard. Hold on a minute here, you realise. What we would consider normal childhood, childish behaviour, is gone. Life becomes much more precious and you start hugging people, appreciating.
Whether you say it was fortunate or unfortunate, you were there at the very start. You were there and you remember the smell of the burning and you remember the smell of the gas. Then you think of the Falls Curfew has been the point in history where the community turns against the British and goes on to say, “Right it’s no longer about democracy, it’s no longer about social reform, we’re now going to destroy the state.” And I happened to be there.
P
Can I ask you about McGurk’s Bar..? I believe you had an encounter with the Fusiliers?
D
After McGurk’s Bar, I remember being in bed when the bomb goes off. I open the window because I heard the explosion. Not realising what was happening. Once the bomb went off, the regiment, the second Royal Fusiliers, they arrive and they take off their flak jackets and they put down their weapons and they start to poke along the rubble to help the rescue operation.
And there was basically nothing there. My grandfather was Philip Garry, he was 73, he was one of the dead. They brought him to the morgue and there was just rags. There was a flat table, my daddy went and my uncle who was a protestant, the two of them went to identify him. A key fell out of the pocket, out of this piece of rag in the table and my Uncle Bobby picked it up and drove back to the house and when the key fit the lock that was how they identified my grandfather. Shows you how bad he was. So the coffin was closed for obvious reasons, there was nothing in it basically except rags and a few bits of flesh.
The wake lasts three days, so this was the Sunday going into the Monday and there was a noise at the back door. The second Royal Regiment of Fusiliers came to the house and rapped the door and there was words exchanged, “Sorry for your troubles ma’am.” Or whatever. Then the next thing was, the British soldiers actually came into the house and turned their weapons up and basically were paying their respects, to my grandfather. I remember this because it’s almost unique, but also then it was a sign of chivalry, of something. Because the Fusiliers had tried to help dig about in the rubble. The place was on fire, the gas pipe had burst and set fire so some of the people were literally burnt to death. Unrecognisable. The British soldiers were trying their best among all the rubble, which was the bar of McGurk. That image, that’s what stays with me.
They started burying them, three at a time from Saint Patrick’s Chapel in Donegal Street. I remember there wasn’t enough trolleys to put all the coffins on. You’re sitting looking at it and you’re going, “Which one is my grandfather? Which one’s Phil Garry?”
Then you come out of the chapel and you walk up towards the Falls. Along the bottom of the Shankill, there’s hundreds of people. My grandpa’s coffin and a couple of others making their way over, there was a big crowd of us behind walking slowly. We get to the bottom of the Shankhill and there’s a mob. They’ve got the Union Jack and the Ulster flag and they’re waving them. And all of a sudden you hear like a rumble of noise and you realise they’re singing. There’s a song in the pop charts at the time, Bits and Pieces. You know the Dave Clark Five? “Bits and Pieces!” The whole mob singing about my grandfather, who is basically in bits and pieces in the coffin as you’re making your way over. And you sort of stop and you sort of look at them…
That’s…that’s when it really dawns on me. That’s when you really start to realise that you really hate these people. We are trying to bury my grandfather and all this – That’s really where everything changed, too long a sorrow makes a stone of the heart. The hatred just takes over. I can’t believe that they’ve just done that. That you’ve just witnessed what you’ve seen.
But what I’m saying is that was my memory of my grandfather and then after the bomb, I mean like the next day, the Sunday — the news — my grandfather must’ve been making the bomb. Inside the bar, along with the other punters, along with the other people inside the bar. But that doesn’t sound right. But the police are saying it, the British Army said it, the Unionist politicians and the BBC are all saying it. So you’re absolutely conflicted. And then you hear all the anger at the wake. They’re really angry all of a sudden about my grandfather the bomber. That’s when you first hear this term, “Own goal.” Own goal, this is like a football analogy. But it’s talking about someone you loved and was always good to you. It was one minute he was there, the next minute the bar’s a heap of rubble and there’s all these funerals. Then the next thing he’s a terrorist. And you’re going, “How’d that happen?”
That’s when your whole belief system collapses because you don’t know who to believe, you don’t know what to believe, you don’t know what to think, or how to behave. Except that you now know the Orangies killed him as well. As well as Geraldo. Your hatred starts to build and you want to do something, anything at all.
But then the sort of saviour— and this may sound crazy — is actually the IRA. When you go to join the IRA you have to go through an induction and they say to you, “Dinker why do you want to join?” “I want to kill Orangies.” “Why do you want to kill Orangies?” “Because they killed Geraldo and they killed my grandfather.” “Are you sure you’re coming to the right organisation? Have you ever heard of Wolfe Tone? Have you ever heard some of the leadership of the Republican Movement at the very start were Prestbyterian? If you’re coming to us to kill Protestants you’ve come to the wrong organisation.”
This is your political education – they’re saying, “You can’t kill people just because they’re Protestant.” If they’re Loyalists that’s maybe a different thing, Protestant was religion, that needs to be respected and cultivated and appreciated. But Loyalism is a political ideology that says, “We are superior and the Catholics are second class. ” And then you start reading. Y ou start getting as much education as you can.
P
Did you get a hunger for that stuff?
D
Yeah, that’s it. In school and out of school. History becomes important and language becomes important. I’m talking to you now in English, the language of the oppressor. The Fianna is Irish language. We start to learn Irish language, we start to learn Irish history and Irish culture. Why am I playing cricket, or why am I playing rugby? Why am I watching cricket when I could be watching hurley, or Gaelic football?
P
Did you feel like a warrior when you were in the Fianna?
D
Yes, because that’s the history. The actual meaning is warriors of Ireland, this is when you go back into mythology. Irish mythology takes you back to Cú Chulainn and Cú Chulainn the Brave is a warrior with a big shield and a sword who is there to protect the women and the defenceless. Then when the whole of Ulster collapses because of the curse that’s been put on Ulster, the only warrior left is Cú Chulainn and he has to fight off Queen Maeve and the enemies of Ulster singlehandedly. That whole Cattle Raid of Cooley, that becomes less myth and more reality, because you’re now almost an historical descendant from Cú Chulainn and we are now the Fianna, but instead of having a sword and shield, you now have a Webley or an M1 carbine, or a Thompson.
When you’re in the Fianna, mythology gets mixed up with reality. I’m still passionate about the whole Irish mythology back to Cú Chulainn and Finn and the Fianna. We are like his obvious descendants so we become really puritanical, we become the police of our generation, we don’t drink anymore. When you go into the Fianna you swear allegiance, but you also take the Fianna Oath: “Strength in our arms, truth on our lips, and purity in our hearts.” That’s the Fianna motto and that stays with you for the rest of your life. We are now the moral guardians of the Clonard and the Falls. You take that role seriously and you say, “We have to be above all the rest of it.” But obviously you’re human as well and you do like your bottle of Bow.
There is this duality, there’s Robert who is trying to be like an ordinary teenager, going to the Clonard Hall dance with long hair, “Here I am ladies, take me now!” You know, the swagger, Rod Stewart and all the music of the day. And then the rest of the week you’ve got “Dinker”. Dinker is what we would call today my nom de guerre. Dinker is the person involved with the IRA.
I did the trauma counselling, she said we need to separate these two, so if I go out anywhere and someone comes up and says — “Are you alright Dinker?” — without even having to say anything you know they’re from a particular space in my background, in my history. If someone walks over and says, “Hello, Robert,” it’s much more peaceful, it’s much more family-oriented, much more based from my childhood and school, or work.
D
I suppose this is what you’re now trying to untangle, what has went previous.
P
Is that possible to do?
D
No. I don’t think it is totally possible, but it is possible to leave Dinker behind — because the psychology of decommissioning is that you physically take your weapons and you hand them over. I didn’t get to that point easy, because I’m a child of ‘69, I remember the burning, I remember the smell of the flames and the smoke as Bombay Street burned. By 2005 the IRA had to physically hand over all their weapons, the Falls had to hand over all its weapons. The psychological impact — what are we doing?
P
You’ve got to trust. You’ve got to trust the world to not attack.
D
Yes that psychology, to handover what was basically personal issue weapons. But you understand and agree with the psychology of handing over those weapons, yet you were trying to rationalise things: “Can you leave shotguns? Because shotguns don’t have any rifling. So there can be no forensics, there can be no ballistics from them, from the sawnoff or the pump action shot guns.” They said, “No, no. We’re here to take everything. Everything that is in the armoury within the Falls has to go.”
D
“The IRA is now standing down, we want everyone to move over to purely peaceful democratic methods and means from here on forward.” That was the 28th of July and then on the 1st of August, that’s when the helicopters come to take away the watchtower at the top of Divis Tower. That was our Saigon moment. The whole symbolism, the helicopters come in, took away the soldiers, took away the spy post at the top of Divis Tower. If we go back to the start of the interview, Patrick Rooney and Hugh McCabe were killed on the 15th of August at Divis Tower in 1969, which is why Divis Tower was chosen for that Saigon moment on the 1st August 2005. When I was in the IRA, in my arrogance, in my ignorance and in my youth, we thought that we were going through the same as the Viet Minh and the Vietcong did, when the helicopter left the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975. That was our vision of victory, that the helicopters would be taking the British and the Loyalists and whoever hurt civilians over to England. That’s when you had to come to terms with reality, that was never gonna happen.
P
You were playing with that iconography, the Fall of Saigon.
D
That’s one of the historic images. The helicopter lifting off from the American Embassy to take the ambassador off out to sea to the warships. That was in our heads.
(Break)
P
You were 18 when you went to prison?
D
Aye, I went to prison in ‘76 for being stupid. We were involved in an incident in the town and on the way back the police chased us. On the way out of the car, I pushed open the passenger side window. You’re pushing open on the window with no gloves on. Digits one, two, three, four, five. So once they got the car with the traces of explosive and stuff in the back — “Fair cop, guv.” You were caught.
Crumlin Road jail, there’s A Wing and C Wing and then B Wing is in the middle. You’re a political prisoner and you get put in the basement, in B Wing. Above us there was what we called the ODCs, the Ordinary Decent Criminals, who are in for not paying their tv licence and stuff.
But they have privileges. Now I get sentenced to 20 years and then the fella that’s beside me, he gets sentenced to 10 years. So we’re lying there, basically not talking and just looking up at the ceiling. And then you hear the music from the floor above, they’ve actually got one of them wee portable record players. And the music starts playing and I’m lying there and all you hear is (sings): “Who’s sorry now? Who’s sorry now…?”
And I looked over at him and his shoulders are going (mimes shoulders shaking, as if crying). And your life has just ended, you’re thinking, “Am I gonna protest and go onto Political status and go on the blanket and all the rest. And am I gonna be in prison the next 20 years?” And then the song: “Whooooo’s sorry now!” I think they done it deliberately, they must’ve been used to winding people up, cos obviously we’d been on the radio. Y’know: bods sentenced to 20 years and blah blah blah, possession of weapons, possession of explosives, membership of the IRA. So they knew somebody was gonna be down below them. I cried my heart out. That was it, you know when the door slams shut and you’re standing there and you’ve got your three blankets and your two sheets and your pillow and BANG — the door shuts. 20 years!
When I went to Crumlin Road jail, Bobby was one of the first people I met.
P
You were friends with Bobby Sands?
D
Oh aye, yes. When I went to Crumlin Road A Wing, Bobby would’ve been — sorta — the Wing staff. If you’re brutally honest Bobby was just one of us, just an ordinary prisoner. Bobby thought he was a Rod Stewart, y’know with the feather cut hair and learning how to play the guitar. And Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee, that would’ve been Bobby’s party piece.
Bobby was only 22 and had been in before, but this was me! I was petrified just going out in the exercise yard, all these men walking round in a circle, then all these other men in the middle, playing. They wouldn’t even have given them a soccer ball, so you had to bring newspapers and squash them up into the shape of a ball and you put the newspapers into your sock and tied a knot and that was your soccer ball. All these men playing, you had the likes of Kevin Lynch, who died of hunger striking, and Bobby just going nuts. So that’s where I met Bobby, November ‘76. Five years later he would come to the world’s attention as Bobby Sands the hunger striker.
Then, he was, “We need to learn Irish.” He was one of my earliest Irish teachers, I learned how to speak it. So Bobby will be pushing the Irish language courses, all the history courses, or whatever. And Kieran Doherty, I was probably closer to Big Doc than I was to Bobby, because Big Doc taught me how to play chess.
When we talk about hunger strikers, you’ve that iconic imagery of Bobby and the hair…
I get sentenced in January ‘78 and then went up to the prison, up to the H Block. Went to the H Block, “Are you gonna wear the uniform?” “No!” Bang! And you were down. They basically stripped you naked, took your clothes. You had to strip in front of them. Then BANG! That’s when the door closed again and all you could do was take a blanket off the bed and put the blanket round you. Now you’re 18 years of age and you’re faced with all this mayhem, as an H Block Blanket Man… you were in solitary confinement because you wouldn’t wear that uniform, you were locked up on your own from the start. And then
because the numbers kept increasing you got a cellmate. You had no television, you had no radio, you had no newspaper, all you had was the King James Bible. I read the Bible from cover to cover and then I think I must’ve smoked most of the New Testament!
P
Do regret it? Do you regret stuff?
D
Not really. People say, “Oh that must’ve been terrible, you were in prison for 12 years.” But for me, the 12 years of prison was like going to university. I wouldn’t of had another chance, first of all to learn the Irish language. Between Bobby and Kieran Doherty and time during the hunger strike, I became a fluent Irish speaker.
But then after the hunger strike we got our own clothes and then we would’ve took over the system. That’s the model I use today to explain to the young people — why Sinn Fein today has to go into Belfast City Council, why we have to go into the Assembly. Instead of looking outside through the window, we have to go in and take it over from within. The point there was, the 12 years of prison… that was our University of Freedom. I done me O Levels, me A Levels, my University degree by a correspondence course at Milton Keynes.
We spent years studying James Connolly, once you studied Connolly, it was automatic to study Marx. Once you started Marx, it was the next step to Lenin. You have that hard-core debate and analysis that we need to turn Sinn Fein into a vanguard revolutionary party. Bobby had died, Bobby was our first political representative. How do we stay true, so that Bobby’s sacrifice not be in vain? And then how do we come out of jail to become political cadre?
I come out of jail after 12 years, I get involved with the Falls residents, I get involved with Sinn Fein. The 350 of us basically come out with the same ideology, the same ideas about how we need to build popular political support within the community, at the same time as the IRA is doing what it’s doing. There was a duality, yes you’re IRA, but you’re also Sinn Fein.
Then 95% of the army goes into the community, into the women’s groups, into the trade unions, the residents’ associations, and then the party itself, and that’s going to be the vehicle. You still have that 5% who calls itself Continuity, Real IRA, New IRA, whatever. They’re the ones that put the bomb in Derry and they’re saying (rubs hands): “Bring on Brexit! We want a hard border because we want to shoot British soldiers, and go back to the border campaign of the IRA from 1956-62.”
What? We’re way, way past that. That’s why I’m passionate about what I need to do with Robert Campbell whose father killed my grandfather. And how we need to be moving forward in a purely peaceful way. You can see what way I’m trying to go, and everyone else on our side is trying to do the same.
(ENDS)
“Dinker” was interviewed by Philip Davenport at The Felon’s Club, Belfast 2019.