Peter Skeet Hamilton

By AM Saturday, December 31, 2011

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As the year moves into its final hours it leads to reflection on those who will not cross the threshold of the year about to dawn. Skeet Hamilton may have remained with the Provos right up to his last breath, even having voted for Gerry Adams in Louth a few short hours before he died, but those of us who knew him and journeyed with him through difficult times never allowed that to get in the way of friendship.

A contemporary comrade of the late Martin Meehan, Skeet had received a life sentence upon conviction for a 1975 IRA attack on the Shankill Road’s Bayardo Bar. The IRA denied the attack as was customary at the time but no one believed it. Nobody in Crumlin Road Prison, where I first met him, regarded Skeet as a member of the North Belfast Catholic Reaction Force. He was IRA to his bones.

It was an overcast June morning. I had turned 21 two days earlier and could feel the knot of tension in my midriff as I prepared to leave Cage 11 for a court appearance at the appeal Court near Belfast City Centre, Few were up out of bed, but one of those who were was the inimitable Skeet.

When a few weeks earlier I first learned that my appeal against conviction and sentence would be heard my first instinct was to approach Skeet. The previous year he had lost his grip and slipped trying to flee on foot the same court house, and was returned to Cage 11 after a spell on the boards. Together we hatched a plan and put it to the camp Intelligence Officer. He approved and things moved from there.

A replica weapon that cocked was obtained. It had earlier been made by Larry Marley, himself now in the H Blocks on blanket protest having been caught trying to escape a few months earlier. Some unfortunate’s platform shoes were requisitioned in which the weapon could be concealed, ultimately unsuccessfully. It was to be my last day in the political status cages of Long Kesh. And so began my sojourn in the ‘Maze Cellular’, better known as the H-Blocks of Long Kesh where hopes were outlandish, news scarce and screws were thugs.

Skeet being addicted to escaping joined us there three years later, caught making his freedom bid along with Gerry Kelly and I can no longer recall who else. In 1983 he was frustrated once again when caught in a river bed where he took refuge after the H-Block escape. That was an event that prompted graffiti artists to scrawl ‘H7, open all day Sunday.’

We met in Dundalk by chance one morning a few years ago. He had been forced to head south after almost being caught on active service shortly after his release. That was Skeet; he just wouldn’t give up. He said to me how disappointed he was at Sinn Fein’s poor election performance. I laughed and told him I had little sympathy. I would bump into him frequently in the town. Once when trying to make the bus to Dublin for a course, he did his best to get me to stuff the class and go to the pub with him.

The last drink we had together was on the train back from the funeral of Brendan Hughes. If it was not banter that sustained our conversation on the journey, it was our differing views of where the Provisional movement had ended up. He didn’t strike me as being convinced of the Sinn Fein narrative. He had been around too many corners to believe it. Nor did he buy into the policing perspective. Sometime before Skeet died I found myself in conversation with an active member of an armed republican organisation. I asked him how the town’s Provos treated people of his persuasion. We got around to talking of Skeet and his words were simple – would do no republican the slightest harm.

Skeet was popular amongst Provisionals and republicans alike.  Martin Og Meehan was right to describe Skeet as an Ardoyne legend but his impact was felt much wider than Ardoyne.  His North Belfast funeral was attended by a wide spectrum of opinion. A man who gave his entire adult life to the Provisional movement, he was acknowledged in death by those who shared his company along the way.