A Year Without The Light of The Dark

By AM Monday, February 16, 2009

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Sometimes, I've sat here crying for a week. I think of all my comrades' suffering and I don't even want to go out. You never really leave prison – Brendan Hughes

Time zooms by. The past year seems to have been the quickest since records began; all subjective but for me at any rate the fastest in living memory. On this day in 2008 the left wing IRA leader Brendan Hughes died. The turmoil he had endured for years would no longer plague him. With the spreading of his ashes he would never be contained behind concrete walls again. Beyond all crying and suffering he really did leave the psychological prison that had long confined him.

Although his death had been anticipated, given his illness coupled with progress reports from his family, it was no less a blow when it did occur. I vividly recall spending the evening with my wife and Dolours Price, seeking consolation in each other’s memories; then travelling to Belfast on three consecutive days after his death. The last trip was made with my wife and children for his funeral, accompanying him to the crematorium. Later the same week I made the journey to the Cooley Mountains for the spreading of his ashes and then back to Belfast the following day with my children for a similar procedure at the Falls Road Commemorative garden. On that occasion we arrived minutes too late due to being delayed in town. As we arrived people were just leaving. There was a buzz of excitement in the air. A volley of shots had been fired in Brendan’s honour presumably by members of one of the IRAs still opposed to partition and unwilling to be co-opted into Britain’s establishment in the North.

Some time later again I was back in the same Cooley Mountains for the erection of a monument to him. It was an occasion considerably less sombre than his funeral. Yesterday in Belfast a plaque was erected in his memory at Divis Flat where he had lived up until his death. On this occasion I was too fatigued to make the trip, having put in a busy week with too many late nights and early mornings, without even the benefit of drink as an excuse. By all accounts yesterday’s event was a well attended affair. Brendan, a powerfully charismatic individual always had that pulling power.

As I write his photo is again adorning our mantelpiece as it did this time last year. There are candles in front of it, just as there were then; the establishment of a sort of family tradition. My wife feels it is a poignant way to honour him. I do too but could hardly claim to have come up with the idea myself.

There is little that has happened in the year since he died that would have surprised Brendan. He would have been hurt by some of it but hardly shocked. The calls by the Sinn Fein leadership for people to inform to the British police on republicans still wrapped up in the physical force tradition would have gutted him. He had led too many young men during the black years of blanket protest who were jailed for doing what other young republicans are doing today. As wrong as they are undoubtedly are to persist in their armed activities, ignoring all the lessons learned from futility, they are no different in motivation from those of us who braved the blanket protest in defiance of criminalisation. Nor are they any different from Harry White and Charlie Kerins, IRA leaders when the IRA was a micro group and one that the IRA to which Brendan belonged claimed continuity from.

With senior British government officials openly admitting to writing Sinn Fein leadership statements, there can be no real sense of awe that criminalising republicans now features so prominently in such statements.

A year seems such a short time whereas thirty years ago has the feel of an eternity; when it was Thatcher labelling republicans as criminals. Brendan never succumbed to any of that. To the end, always The Dark, he stayed light years away from her and her legacy of criminalisation.