Owen Farrell

By AM Saturday, December 27, 2008

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Anthony McIntyre remembers an old republican cell mate.

On occasion it happens. Someone who once figured importantly in our lives many years ago is laid to rest before we even learn of his death. It happened a few years ago when I took a phone call telling me that the writer Brian Campbell had been buried the previous day.

With Owen Farrell from the Lower Falls I knew he had been suffering from terminal illness. I had not seen him in 12 years and like so many from the ex-prisoner community battling a similar state, often the progress of their condition slips off the radar. When I learned that he had been cremated a heaviness descended upon me. ‘Farley’ was a character whose warmth was infectious.

In the early 1970s Owen Farrell was a young republican activist in the ranks of D Company in the Lower Falls; the same battling ‘dogs’ that Brendan Hughes and Frank McGreevy belonged to, both of whom predeceased him earlier in the year. He was also a contemporary of Kieran Nugent, the first republican blanket man. As teenagers both were on remand in Crumlin Road Prison in 1974. It was then from ‘Farley’ that I first learned of the significance of Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes, when the then leader of the Belfast IRA was captured in the affluent Malone Road area, an arrest that was heralded to a fanfare of publicity.

Owen Farrell was released having beaten whatever charge he was held on but the following year after a brutal battering at the hands of his RUC interrogators he was back in ‘the Crum’ charged with having shot dead Samuel Llewellyn in what became known as the ‘Good Samaritan’ killing. After a loyalist bomb attack on the Falls Road Llewellyn, a Protestant, had been sent to the area to carry out repairs from where he was abducted, held captive and then killed by an IRA unit. The death provoked ‘widespread revulsion’ and many sympathy notices from the Lower Falls appeared in the Irish News. In that atmosphere few were going to make waves about the torture claims of a young West Belfast republican who stood accused of killing the ‘Good Samaritan.’ Eventually Owen Farrell came to be acquitted of the killing.

I was approaching the end of a short sentence in Magilligan Prison at this time and had the same intentions as Farley when he had left prison the year before – to go straight back into the ranks of the IRA. I followed him in more than intent, ending up in the Crum alongside him a mere four months after my release. A further two months would elapse before events would throw the two of us together creating one of those bonds that would forever see me cherishing him for the source of strength and friendship he proved to be.

While on remand in A Wing both he and I received short sentences which because of their brevity could not be served in sentenced republican wings but in B Wing of the Crum. He crossed over first, having appeared in court a few days in front of me. B Wing was not a place any republican prisoner wanted to be. There was a fear that once there the screws would make life a misery for isolated republicans. My first steps down the wing were hesitant and apprehensive. Summoned to the class office the screw in charge laid down the law in stern language before sending me out into the body of the wing.

Immediately Farley approached me full of smiles. Sensing my misgivings in my new surroundings he asked what the screw had said. I explained, to which he replied that I had no need to worry, the screws were actually sound and would give no hassle. After the first few days the accuracy of his assessment became evident. The B Wing screws wanted a quiet time. They had a live and let live attitude. Often they would share their lunch with us and would never see us stuck for a cigarette. Still, without the companionship of other republican prisoners it was a lonely experience. Farley was brilliant throughout, always there, forever at my back when we crossed to D Wing for recreation or meals where I was frequently subjected to verbal abuse by a small number of South Belfast loyalists held there who had reason not to warm to me. They never tried anything physical as there were enough of us backed up by prisoners from Ballymurphy, the New Lodge and Lower Falls to ward off anything serious.

A great companion, he was an inveterate raconteur who regaled me with stories about his exploits, life in the Lower Falls, his fondness for women, his nights on the gargle.

By the time Farley had returned to A Wing, while not completely at ease in my new abode I had mastered it. He had been a strong stanchion of support. Later in Cage 13, I shared a cubicle with him, the late Frank McGreevy and Danny O’Connor, all from the Dogs. I only ever met him once after release from prison. It was in difficult circumstances for both of us but as always he was chirpy, funny and absolutely determined to be philosophical about the challenges he faced. For the few short hours we were together we may as well have been back in the Crum.

Owen Farrell was a good guy whose human decency and selfless solidarity stand out more than thirty years later. My time spent with him was short and our paths in later life were rarely to cross. His funeral was organised by his old D Company comrades. It was fitting for a man whose name never blazed with the neon lights of celebrity but whose contribution to republicanism caused him no small measure of deprivation.