The following transcript is of an interview that was broadcast in November 2013. The interviewee and one of the interviewers are now deceased. TPQ transcriber thought it an appropriate and poignant time to revisit the interview. Sandy Boyer (SB) and John McDonagh (JM) interview Gerry Conlon (GC) at a book tour event at Rocky Sullivan's scheduled as Gerry is in New York City to accept the Sister Sarah Clarke Human Rights Award. Radio Free Eireann.
WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
23 January 2016
New York City
23 January 2016
(begins time stamp ~ 17:00)
To honour Guiseppe Conlon today on the
thirty-sixth anniversary of his undignified and unjustified death at the hands
of the British government Radio Free
Éireann replays its last interview with his son and international justice
campaigner, Gerry Conlon. This interview originally aired on 2 November 2013.
Audio clip: Trailer of the film, In the
Name of the Father, is played.
SB: And we have a great privilege here to welcome
Gerry Conlon to Radio Free Éireann and, for the very first time, to Rocky
Sullivan's. Gerry, it's such a great pleasure finally to have you here.
GC: Well it's a great pleasure to be here, Sandy,
and you and John have done great work down the years on this station helping
people get the message out about what's happening to prisoners back home. And
it's an issue that still is happening back home and it's an issue that I've
become involved with along with Paddy Hill from the Birmingham Six. You know, we have several cases at the minute that need outside
scrutiny and we need help in order to highlight the injustices that some people
that are having such as the Craigavon Two, such as the internment-by-remand of Stephen Murney and Marian Price and Martin Corey. And the work we do needs the help of everyone we can get.
SB: Gerry, everybody knows that you did
twenty-five years for....
GC: ...Sandy, you just gave me an extra ten! (all
laugh)
SB: It must have felt like twenty-five, Gerry! But
what very few people know is that you're not a victim – you're a crusader -
that once you got out the first thing, almost the first thing you said when you
emerged from the court house was: The Birmingham Six are innocent. And clearly
within weeks of being free you were in this country because you and your lawyer
figured out this was a good place to put pressure on for the Birmingham Six.
And Gerry you knocked on every door – saw everybody - until you were
testifying before Congress in a hearing co-chaired by Joe Kennedy and Tom
Lantos. But Gerry, you didn't have to do that – everybody would have been
perfectly understanding if you just got your head together – taken a bit more
time - your three co-accused, and nobody blamed them for it, just tried to
retire to private life. When the Birmingham Six finally got out – and you're
largely responsible for that – five out of six of them again – just tried to
get their heads together, get their lives together – didn't do too well but
that's another story – but Gerry, why? Why did you decide that you had to keep
going? And as you said you're crusading to this day. That made you very
different. Why did you do that?
GC: Well, you know my father died in prison. My
father came over to help me and he was arrested within three hours of being in
Britain. The little overnight suitcase that he had lay on my aunt's floor for a
year and was never touched by the police. You know, this was obviously a
conspiracy that went to the highest level. And when my father died I'd lost my
way in prison. I had become consumed by bitterness and anger and, to a certain
extent, a hatred of everything British which I've come to understand – you
know, not everything British is bad. My lawyer's British; she campaigned
tirelessly for me. We had two Law Lords, Leslie Scarman and Lord (Patrick)
Devlin. We had two archbishops, we had Cardinal Hume, we had Archbishop Runcie,
we had cross-party delegation. But most important of all I met Paddy Hill in
prison. And Paddy Hill was running, single-handedly, the campaign for the
Birmingham Six. And I was running, single-handedly, the campaign for the
Guildford Four. And I knew all of the Birmingham Six well but it went beyond
the Birmingham Six! There was the Bridgewater Four, there
was the Tottenham
Three, there were different single individuals who I knew were in
the same predicament as me. And how could I walk out and not try to highlight
the injustice that happened to me and that was still happening to them and walk
away from it? And I made Paddy Hill a solemn promise: That if I got out first
that I would do everything in my power to help him and he made the same vow to
me. And you know, I thought when Paddy got out and the Birmingham Six got out
the baton would be handed on like in a relay race – that they would pick it up.
But as you said, Sandy, I came here for a specific reason because by the time I
was released everyone knew we were innocent because there had been
documentaries made about us, there had been newspaper editorials written about
us and we had the most influential newspapers and media groups within Britain
campaigning for our release. And when I got out Gareth said to me: Anybody who
knows anything about the Birmingham Six here in Britain knows they're innocent.
And they're not out. The place to go is to go to America because the Brits didn't
like outside influence in their judicial system or in their way of government.
But what they did care about was people questioning their ability in
relation to Irish people. So when I came here you were my first point of
contact and we were lucky enough to meet some great politicians - you know from
Charlie Rangel to Brian Donnelly to Joe Kennedy to Bonnie Dwyer to Tom Lantos
to Cardinal O'Connor – people who opened doors - people who were concerned
about human rights abuses. And it was the scrutiny of American politicians and
the scrutiny of American newspapers that brought the ultimate pressure to bear
on the British government and the British judiciary in order for the Birmingham
Six to be released. And it was a pleasure to lead a delegation of cross-party
American politicians to Gartree Prison, the maximum security prison in the
Midlands, to meet with Paddy Hill. And they came away and they did more within
a short space of time than what we all did in a long period of time.
SB: Gerry, I just want to say there are still, as
you said very eloquently a few minutes ago, there's still a lot of people,
political prisoners, in prison and the Brits still respond to American
pressure. (event announcement)
JM: (station identification and announcements) Now
Gerry, we've interview you a lot over the years and what I wanted to do now in
the last twenty minutes or so is talk about your life after you got released,
about the compensation, you got a book deal, the name of the book is Proved
Innocent which is being sold and will be signed here at Rocky's and at the
other events around the tri-state area and about the movie deal. How did this
all come about? What type of compensation? What was you life like when you were
released one day after fifteen years in prison?
GC: Well you know, it was strange – I was just
saying to some friends of mine last night – the night before I was released I
remember standing in Brixton Prison holding the bars and trying to catch a
glimpse of the moon and maybe to see a star and I started crying. And it wasn't
tears of joy or expectation. It was tears of anticipation and trepidation
because in many ways we'd become institutionalised. You know, we were products
of the system. And the outside world – you know when you go into prison, John,
the outside world is so vivid. And as years pass and it stretches into five
years and then ten years and fifteen years you know - that becomes your home
and the prisoners become your family. And that's why it was so important that
when I got out that the Birmingham Six were at the forefront of every thought I
had. And I came to America and I met with Sandy and I was sort of commuting
between New York and Washington with my cousin, Martin, and we were trying to
get doors opened and get people to listen and we were fortunate in that
respect. And when I came back I was staying with my lawyer, Gareth Peirce, because you know – I had made a short journey to Belfast and I
went to see Paul Hill's mother, Lily Hill, great woman who sold her furniture
in order to campaign on our behalf. And you know I had a few quid in my pocket
- they'd given us a little bit of money and I wanted to go to make sure she was
alright, and I remember I had my niece in my arms and being pulled out by the
RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) and a gun put to my head and told that under no
uncertain terms the first opportunity they got they would shoot me.
So I ended up staying with Gareth and doing
whatever I could and highlighting whatever I could. But you don't realise the
trauma that you're witnessing within prison – I seen two guys being murdered in
front of me in the most horrendous fashion by the same guy who wanted to go to
a mental institution and this was his way of getting to a mental institution
was stabbing somebody with a twenty-eight inch sword through his back and
coming out through his ribs and cutting his spleen - I mean the violence that
you suffered in there and the personal violence that you suffered from the
system. When we went in, you know, the guards were paying people to stab us. We
used to go to sleep with magazines taped to our chests so that the prisoners
wouldn't stab us. And then the watershed came with my father – my father dying.
By that time he had met Cardinal Hume and he had met eminent people who came on
board. And you know, when Paddy got out we campaigned for other groups and
stuff like that and it started to impact on me - the loss of my father – you
know - what he had given up for me.
JM: So how does the deal come around for the
movie and how does that get made?
GC: Well, I mean I came back from New York and
there was a letter from a publishing company and they were offering me a lot of
money for my life story and I thought: Well, who wants to write about paint drying in a prison you know? Because that, at times, is what it was like. But two
people had written a book about us, Ros Franey and Grant McKee called Timebomb, along with Robert Kee (book: Trial and Error), and they
said that Bloomsbury were interested and that Hamish Hamilton was interested
and different companies were interested and Gareth thought that it would be a
good idea to document what had happened and to tell it from our point of view.
Because in many respects were never had an appeal. They kept us in gaol for
fifteen years. They spent millions of pounds on security in keeping us in. And then when it came to
releasing us they let us out in three hours. And that wasn't because they were
being magnanimous or fair - that was to
protect the people who were allowed to torture innocent people in order to
extract confessions and frame them. And this went right up to the highest
positions in government.
JM: So how does the book then get made into the
film? How does that work?
GC: Gabriel Byrne! Gabriel Byrne! I mean I'm back
in New York – the book's come out - I'm at The Limelight in New York and this
girl, Ann McPhee, comes up to me and she said to me: Are you Gerry Conlon? And
I said: Yes. And she says: Well, I'm Gabriel Byrne's nanny and everyone who
comes round to see Gabriel he gives a copy of the book and says: Read this!
Read this! And she asked me if I had a number and I gave her a number and
through a good friend of mine, Shane Doyle who had a cafe, Sin-é Cafe, down in
Saint Mark's Place, we arranged a meeting. Gabriel just thought it was an
amasing book. And it happened at the time of Shoot to Kill (Ed. Correction: film was Hidden Agenda) with Frances MacDormund and it was
produced by a guy called John Daly and he invited us to the premiere of it and he
stood up and he said he wanted to make a movie from my book. And I went out to
Los Angeles and I met with a guy called John Patek from the William Morris
Agency who offered me an outrageous amount of money for an option but I wanted
somebody who would understand the situation. I didn't want John Wayne coming in
and releasing people. I wanted the story to be told. I wanted people to
understand it - when terrorism happens, when bombs go off, when innocent people
are killed that the reaction of the press and the police is to Get someone. Get
anyone.
GC: Look Sandy, we're always going to have
injustice, no matter what part of the world we're in. And injustice is like
rust – it never sleeps. But I'm living in Ireland now and there are cases that
are really, really disturbing. The case of the Craigavon Two : a policeman gets killed. The rush from the media to find someone
– the pressure that politicians put on the police and the corruption within the
PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland), the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary),
is still endemic. And they've taken two innocent people within a day and they
framed them! And how could I not want to get involved when this is happening on
my doorstep? If I'm working with the Aborigines in Australia and I'm working
with anti-death penalty groups here in America and I'm working with a great
organisation called Centurion Ministries out of Princeton
that had fifty-four people released from never-ending sentence, most of them
from death row in the last twenty-five years, how can I not do this on my
doorstep? It's imperative I do it! You know, I have to do it
because I can't sit back and not give the help to others that I expected for
myself.
JM: (station identification and announcements)
After the show today at two o'clock we'll be showing In the Name of the
Father here and then have Gerry, who's going to watch it for the first
time, comment on the movie.
GC: Can I just say something, John? I heard I've
got to watch it on Sunday and on Monday as well... (all laugh) You know, this
could be pretty cruel!
JM: Now the actor that played you in the movie,
Daniel Day-Lewis, is probably one of the greatest actors right now – he just
got the Academy Award for Lincoln. The movie itself got nominated for
seven Academy Awards it just had the unfortune of going up against Schindler's
List. Did you interact with Daniel Day-Lewis because he's notorious for
taking on the character itself? Has...
GC: ...He's a method actor.
JM: Right! Well, how did that work out?
GC: Well I mean, you can imagine: I went into
gaol when I was just turned twenty so when I got out of gaol at thirty-five I
still had that twenty year old mentality and I wanted to party all night and I
wanted to go out and do the things a twenty year old did even though I was
thirty-five. And I would just be coming back from the pub at five or six
o'clock in the morning with a crowd of Irish guys just to have another few
scoops and Daniel would turn up and just sit and watch. But he was such a
great, great guy you know? He was just a lovely, lovely human being. You know,
Gabriel had the visions of Johnny Depp playing the part because he was close to
Johnny Depp, they had the same agent in LA and I met Depp when I was out there
– an absolute gentleman you know and still a good friend. And you know, I never
expected a kid from West Belfast for this to happen to but I never expected -
even though we didn't come from a Republican family – my father was an ill man
most of his life – he had been in and out of sanitoriums and stuff like that
and you know - I thought I was a pop singer when I was a kid, you know I
probably woke up a few neighbours thinking the cat was screaming and stuff. And
then this incredible thing happens to you you know and turns your life around.
And as my mother used to say to me in her letters in prison: You know you could
have been dead. At least I know you're safe. So and then you get out and a
movie's made about you and stuff like that - it's just one of those things. But
there's so many people this happens to and so many people we don't know it
happens to. It's happening here in America all the time – Trayvon Martin you
know, down in Florida and stuff – so we've got to be aware and try to highlight
what's right and what's wrong.
JM: Gerry, what I find: People were amazed when
you answered the question that you hadn't seen the movie. Why is that? Twenty
years now – Daniel Day-Lewis plays you. Why is it? You must have been in hotel
rooms clicking through cable TVs and you would see In the Name of the Father
is on. Why is it that you just didn't go and see it or rent to DVD or, or...?
GC: Well I live it, you know? And that was it. I
lived it. You know, we want everything to be as it was – almost
documentary-type movie - and it wasn't. And I understand, for cinematography
reasons, they had me and my father in the same cell. We were never in the same
cell. We were Category A prisoners. We were on opposite sides of the landing.
You know, his cell was facing mine so and that... But you know? It's painful.
You know, I wake up every night and I think of my father. I never had a
nightmare in prison, John, not one nightmare in prison. Since I've come out –
all the things that they did to us in prison - the unspeakable
things that they did to Irish prisoners –
and that's a story that hasn't been told yet. This is a story that needs to be
documented. They suffered incredible, incredible cruelty within British prisons
from the guards and they couldn't break them. You know, you think to yourself:
There but for the grace of God go I. And I'm haunted by my father coming to
help me, wanting to do something for his son and ultimately giving his life for
me in order that his death would ultimately get my release. So I do what I do
because it's the right thing to do. And for a long time I lost the plot. For a
long time I got involved with drugs and alcohol, you know? And I make no
excuses for it and I blame no one except myself. And it was like a second life
sentence but here I am with a third chance in life and I'm making the most of
it and I'm trying to do as much as I can to help people.
SB: And Gerry, you said you had a real problem
with drugs and alcohol for years but you were trying to get counseling. You
were trying to get treatment. What happened?
GC: They threw us out – it was almost as if when
our release came about – I mean I existed on say six dollars a week in prison
and then they give me seventy-five thousand dollars and I didn't know what to
do with it - you know I looked after my family, I'd no direction – when I was
in prison
Irish prisoners weren't allowed education.
They weren't allowed vocational training courses so you came out and you didn't
know what you were going to do. And it was almost like they were giving you
money so you could medicate yourself because there was no help.
And you think: That the hostages who were in
Beirut - Brian Anderson and Brian Kennan and Terry Waite and John McCarthy and
Jackie Mann - when they were released they all got trauma counseling. They all
got the best trauma counseling. And subsequently people who've been involved in
disasters such as the Marchioness disaster or the Paddington rail crash
disaster - they've all got help. And the victims of crime have got help.
Neville and Doreen Lawrence whose son, Stephen, was murdered by racists on the
streets of London - stabbed to death – they got help. But being Irish we got
nothing. It was almost like they threw money at us in the hope that we would
destroy ourselves and in some cases we have done.
JM: (station identification and
announcements) Also, they're selling the
book here that Gerry will be signing, the book that he wrote called Proved
Innocent. Gerry, maybe you could read a piece from it and do you know what
piece you're going to read from that?
SB: Yeah, the first piece is about the death of
Gerry's father, Guiseppe. (set-up chat)
JM: (announcements) And we have special guest,
Gerry Conlon, here in the bar and he's now going to read an excerpt from his
book called Proved Innocent.
GC: (reads
from his book, Proved Innocent) My father was in a room on the ground
floor. He had a drip plugged into his arm and I don't know what other treatment
he'd been getting, but he looked fifty percent better than I'd seen him for
months. He was sitting up and the nurses were clucking over him and saying he'd
been a good boy, eating up his tea and all that. I went away feeling that so
long as he stayed where he was and they kept up the treatment he was capable of
getting back on his feet.
But a few days later a screw said he had
seen someone looking in the window of my father's hospital room. Some bright
spark decided that it might be an IRA reconnaissance team and that any time now
they were going to try and trying to
spring Joe Conlon from hospital – Joe Conlon who couldn't walk twenty yards. So
in a panic they bundled him into his pyjamas and into a taxi and whisked him
back to the prison hospital. Then my mother could no longer stay, she was
terrified of losing her job. So she flew back to Belfast. And it was like being
back at square one again, my mother back across the water, my father back being
looked after by the screws who had the bare minimal of paramedical training and
now thought they were brain surgeons.
By the eighteenth of the month he'd gone
back downhill, lost all the ground he'd made up in the Hammersmith Hospital and
was developing pneumonia. He went back to Hammersmith Hospial and I was sitting
in my cell listening to the radio late one night, around ten o'clock, when the
screw came and told me I was going down to see him now, in the middle of the
night. The hospital was full of policemen armed to the teeth. I was taken up
stairs past policeman holding a pump-action shotgun and into his room.
I couldn't understand why it was so full of
people, Catholic priests, Home Office people, screws, prison doctors. The room
was crowded, everyone was standing around muttering or just standing quietly,
as if they were there to witness something.
My father had an oxygen mask on, drips stuck
in his veins. He was awake. I was near the bed, still handcuffed to the screw,
and saw that even with the oxygen mask he was labouring for breath. I began to
cry. My father moved, twitched his hand up and pulled away the oxygen mask.
'I'm going to die.'
'No, you're not going to die. No, you're
not.'
'Yes, I am. But don't be worrying. I want
you to promise me something.'
'Yes, okay.'
'I mean it.'
'Yes, I promise you.'
Speech was taking it out of him, but it was
so important that he raised his voice. 'When I die I don't want you attacking
any screws. I want you to start clearing my name. My death's going to clear
your name and when your name gets cleared, you clear mine.'
I was crying. I leaned forward to touch him
with both my hands, but one wrist was still handcuffed. And then he looked past
me at all the people and said out in a voice loud enough for them all to hear,
'If any of youse people think I'm guilty, look me straight in the face.' They
all dropped their heads onto their shoulders and he said, 'How does it feel to
be murdering an innocent man?'
Then a screw came to me and said, 'The
visit's over.' And I was led out. (reading ends)
SB: That was an excerpt from Proved Innocent
and that is the horrible story of Guiseppe Conlon, Gerry's father, dying in
prison.
JM: Now, when he was released for his funeral
were you allowed to go to the funeral?
Or who was allowed to go to his funeral?
GC: My father's body was stolen by the government
and my mother couldn't find the body for seven days. And when she eventually
did find out the location of it it was in an SAS base in Herefordshire. And the
body was flown home by the RAF to Aldergrove Airport and there was a delegation
of Unionists there demanding that the body be put back on the plane again and
flown back to England because they said it would have been an insult to fly an
IRA man's body home in a British military aircraft. So my father's body was
flown back to London and my mother tried to arrange with British Airways for
British Airways to fly the body to Belfast and British Airways released a
statement at the time saying that they didn't fly the bodies of terrorists back
to Ireland. So British Airways wouldn't fly it. So my mother had to scrape
together the little bit of money that she could find with the help of the
neighbours and Aer Lingus flew it to Dublin. So my father's body was missing
for a week. And when he arrived back at my mother's home they had performed an
autopsy on him and he had been cut from his navel to his throat. And we don't
even know to this day, John, if they took organs out. I mean everything
surrounding this case is disgusting.
JM: Were you allowed to appeal to the authorities
to get out on compassionate parole? Because that happens all the time – a
next-of-kin dies you're allowed out even with a prison guard or an officer
going with you to the wake or the funeral.
GC: John, I wasn't even allowed a phone call.
They wouldn't even give me a phone call. It was out of the question that they
would even consider releasing me although I applied to attend my father's
funeral they refused. And when I applied for a phone call they refused that as
well. And at the same time there was two guys who had been convicted of rape
who were given compassionate parole to go and visit sick relatives in hospital
and both of them never returned. And there wouldn't have been much chance of me
not returning because you can imagine if they had of let me out the security
presence they would had had around me. But everything surrounding my father's
death was disgraceful. I mean, there was no consideration. And by this time we
had Cardinal Hume, we had Archbishop Runcie, we had Leslie Scarman, we had Lord
Devlin – you know, the doubts were there and they were huge.
JM: But why was his death a turning point in
getting your release?
GC: Because he had met these dignitaries, these
leaders, these politicians and had convinced them and whatever he had said to
them – because a lot of the time my father seen them on his own – probably
because he thought I may have been abusing them or shouting or swearing at them
because of the situation that we were in. And he made such an impression upon
them. And I think he got them to promise that they wouldn't let this case go
and that his name would be cleared – that they give firm promises to him and I
have to say that they held those promises and delivered on them.
SB: Well Gerry, you talk in your book about how
your father was the only man in the prison who even the prison administration
came to and asked his advice about what they should do - the unique respect
that he was held in throughout the prison.
GC: I mean, there was two politicians, there was
two Labour politicians called Phillip Whitehead and Andrew Bennett who came to
see my father in 1978 and they said they had secured a transfer to a prison
back in Ireland and that he would be released within three months - this was
two years before his death. And he said: Is my son going with me? And they
said: No, your son won't be transferred with you. And he said: Well, I'm not
going. He said because I came over here to help my son and my son is as innocent
as I am and unless he's going I don't want the transfer. I mean, it was the
ultimate sacrifice and unconditional love from my father. And you know I think
my father, I think probably a lot of what I do today is driven by what I think
my father would have wanted me to do. He would have wanted to use his
experience to prevent it happening to someone else. And it's a double whammy. I
mean, here in The States we see so many convictions being overturned through
the development of DNA and stuff like that. But when we gaol people wrongly we
not only destroy the lives of the person we put in gaol and their families but we disrespect the victims' families
and we leave the killers on the street. And how can that be right in any
society?
JM: Now, is there the possibility if your father
didn't have the love for you to try to come and get you out and he just said:
Ah, he was probably mixed up and didn't bother to go to England is there a
possibility that he never would have got
caught up in the conveyor belt over there?
GC: No, I mean there were several factors, you
know. And people – you know I don't class myself as a Republican. I don't class
myself as a Nationalist. I class myself as an individual who an extraordinary
thing happened to where I've been given an opportunity to help people
irrespective of what their political backgrounds are or what the colour of
their skin is or what their religion is. But I have to pay tribute, I have to
pay tribute to the integrity of the Balcombe Street Unit who bombed Guildford
who, upon arrest, when taken to four different police stations, when
interviewed individually, confessed that they had done what we had been
convicted of and without that confession nothing would have happened. My father probably would have proved that
he's innocent – he probably still would have died in that but that set people
thinking as well. And there was so much that happened with the Balcombe Street
that the police withheld the evidence – you know? They perverted the course of
justice. And it's not that I would like the police who lied and tortured me to go to gaol because they've been demonised in the media and they
wouldn't get a fair trial. But what I would like would be the system to work
they way it is supposed to work – to be transparent, to be accountable and to
deliver fairness and to be honest.
SB: But Gerry, one of the extraordinary things
about your case is the involvement of the Balcome Street people and the other
thing: It was known up to the very highest levels of the British government
that you were innocent and yet you were still in prison.
GC: Sandy, the Birmingham Six case and the
Guildford Four case are the only two cases in British legal history where there
is a seventy-five year PII, Public Immunity Interest Order, around it - which
is the official Secrets Act. And we met a woman who was the Undersecretary of
State at the Justice Department called Marie Eagles who apologised to us. She
said: I have been in reading your files and youse weren't a miscarriage of
justice - youse were something completely different.
(ends time stamp ~ 52:55)
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