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Twenty
seven years ago today the Provisional IRA launched
a strike against members of the Official IRA and Republican
Clubs in Belfast. On the opening night of the assault
- a Wednesday - an unarmed Official IRA member, Robbie
Elliman, was shot dead in McKenna’s Bar in the
Markets and 16 others were kneecapped in a city wide
offensive. The Sticks, as they were known, did not
take matters lying down. They were old hands at the
feuding game who, for the most part since their ceasefire
of May 1972, had reserved their weapons for use against
republicans whether of the Provisional IRA or INLA
variety. During the ensuing feud they claimed the
lives of two innocent civilians and a brace of Sinn
Fein members, one of whom was later acknowledged by
the Provisional IRA to have been one of its volunteers.
Yet despite their penchant for internecine fighting,
the Officials seemed to follow the dictum of Terence
MacSwiney, always managing to endure more than they
were ever able to inflict.
Both
sides sought to out kill each other, and respect for
civilian safety was an impediment all too readily
dispensed with. The Official IRA shot dead Owen McVeigh
as he ran through his home trying to escape two of
their armed members. The Provisional IRA killed 6
year old Eileen Kelly while trying to assassinate
one of her relatives. People were gunned down at bus
stops, in their homes, playing snooker, or at their
place of work as nationalist Belfast was gripped for
two weeks by ferocious bloodletting.
At
the outbreak I was far removed from all of this being
‘safely’ ensconced within the newly erected
walls of Magilligan Prison just one week short of
my release. Unfortunately, as Alan Judd argues ‘believing
and feeling ourselves to be part of a tradition profoundly
affects how we behave.’ Consequently, I thought
attacking other republicans was a good thing. A teenager,
stupefied by a self-induced belief in the potency
of Provisional IRA leadership infallibility, I offered
little resistance while slipping into that life of
obedience so well described by Adolf Eichmann ‘in
which one's creative thinking is diminished.’
Some years would pass before Pat McGeown - who had
been active during the feud - would painstakingly
persuade me to purge such notions from my mind. His
portrait now adorns a wall in my room - a reminder
not to slip again.
I
was finally released the following Wednesday. It was
November the 5th. Drink, girls and the IRA rather
than the flavour of the day, Guy Fawkes, were the
only things on my mind. The English parliamentary
abolitionist, however, would not escape my republican
mindset altogether. Years later Gerry Adams would
remind us of his worth when he said that Fawkes was
the only person ever to enter the British parliament
with good intent. A point he would underscore when
describing the Brighton bomb attack against British
parliamentarians and their aides as a blow for democracy.
My waiting mother had no interest in any of it, contented
only with the idea that her son would be returning
home. I can still recall her disappointment when I
informed her at the prison car park that I could not
go home as a result of the feud. She would have been
even more disappointed had I taken her advice and
ended up as one of its victims. As I almost did when,
a week later, armed Sticks hit a house in Hatfield
Street minutes after I had left. They were hardly
in a forgiving mood. One of their comrades had been
riddled at his front door the night before while his
wife and children looked on. My non-involvement in
the feud would probably not have saved me from their
wrath.
Instead
of returning to the family home in Twinbrook, I went
to Lenadoon - as directed by the IRA leadership within
the prison who were fearful for my safety. There,
before being taken out on a night’s drinking
- by IRA members I had only just met - to celebrate
my new found freedom I reported back to ‘the
army’. The next day, after meeting Joe McDonnell,
who would later die on hunger strike, I was sent to
Ardoyne for the duration of the feud. It would see
me there a week. The North Belfast area was regarded
as being an IRA stronghold and impregnable as far
as Official IRA penetration was concerned. The first
week of freedom was viewed in large part through a
drunken haze, a result of knocking about the pubs
and clubs with Maurice ‘Isaac’ Gilvaragh
whom I had previously known through Ardoyne school
friends. The contrast between his fate and that of
Joe McDonnell’s could hardly have been sharper
- death alone united them. The IRA would kill ‘Isaac’
five years later claiming he was an informer. The
extent of his nefarious activity I do not know but
like many other informers he had probably decided
to decommission some of the organisation’s weaponry
before the leadership got round to doing it for themselves.
For that he has remained poles apart from Joe, firmly
rooted at the bottom of the republican hierarchy of
victims - which we are all supposed to pretend does
not exist - and dismissed in our collective folklore
as a ‘tout’, a perpetrator rather than a
victim. And if he could, he may well wonder, from
his lowly rung, at the leadership - who covertly met
more British spooks and decommissioned more weaponry
than he could ever have imagined doing - praising
itself for its ‘courageous and imaginative’
venture while having dispatched him to the netherworld
for ‘treachery. A tout, seemingly, is only a
matter of dates, decided by those with the power to
arbitrarily define.
By
the time the mediators had managed to calm matters
down, the feud deaths had reached double figures.
The tension in the areas however abated only slowly.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for me were spent
in street brawls with Official IRA members, one of
whom had shot a friend and comrade, Angela Gallagher,
in the legs. My daily visits to her hospital bed hardly
enamoured me to them or him. He too would end up shot
and permanently disabled - a victim of loyalists.
But there is no sense of gratification to be derived
from that.
Now
that it has all passed and some of those who spent
time trying to kill one another can on occasion be
found drinking in each other’s company, the seeming
losers in those feuds - the Officials - must be sitting
wryly observing that, body counts apart, they ultimately
came out on top. We, who wanted to kill them - because
they argued to go into Stormont, to remain on ceasefire,
support the reform of the RUC, uphold the consent
principle and dismiss as rejectionist others who disagreed
with them - are now forced to pretend that somehow
we are really different from them; that they were
incorrigible reformists while we were incorruptible
revolutionaries; that killing them had some major
strategic rationale. And all the while the truth ‘sticks’
in our throats. They beat us to it - and started the
peace process first.
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