A former IRA prisoner, who shared cells in the late 1970s and early ‘80s with H-Block hunger strikers Bobby Sands and Thomas McElwee, says the killings and mayhem inflicted by paramilitaries during the Troubles were “for nothing”.
Thomas ‘Dixie’ Elliott (63) from Derry, reflecting on the 30-year ‘armed struggle’ as Northern Ireland marks its centenary, says the IRA leadership should have been ended the violence 1987. Instead, he says, they allowed it continue for more than a decade longer while planning to “sell-out” the socialist republican ideals for which he and hundreds of working class Catholics got involved.
While welcoming peace, he says the 23 year-old peace process is a “scam” that made some former IRA members “very wealthy”, while failing to deliver a fairer, less sectarian society.
Sitting in ExPop (Ex prisoners’ outreach programme), a drop-in support centre for “former combatants” in Derry city-centre, Elliott tells he was 19 in 1977 when sentenced to twelve years for hijacking, attempted murder and membership of a prescribed organisation.
Late into the conversation he is joined briefly by Don Browne, former member of the INLA and now yoga-teacher, who echoes many of Elliott’s observations.
Like a surprising number who joined the IRA in the early 1970s Elliot had links to the Protestant community. “My father was Presbyterian. My grandfather was wounded in WW1 in France. My mother was Catholic so I was brought up Catholic.” He grew up initially in Rosemount, a mixed area in the 1960s, before moving to the predominantly Catholic Shantallow in the early 1970s .
Asked how he got involved with the IRA he says: “Same thing as happened a lot of young people”. From about 13 he used to “sneak up to the Creggan to fire stones” and “to riots…It was the excitement.”
He wasn’t allowed to attend the anti-internment march on January 31st 1972, during which 13 civilians were shot dead by the British army on Bloody Sunday, but remembers the "stunned silence” across the Bogside the following day. And though he felt no sectarian animosity to his working-class Protestant neighbours, he remembers the horror at the British army “pointing their guns at us [Catholics]”.
Thomas ‘Dixie’ Elliott (63) from Derry, reflecting on the 30-year ‘armed struggle’ as Northern Ireland marks its centenary, says the IRA leadership should have been ended the violence 1987. Instead, he says, they allowed it continue for more than a decade longer while planning to “sell-out” the socialist republican ideals for which he and hundreds of working class Catholics got involved.
While welcoming peace, he says the 23 year-old peace process is a “scam” that made some former IRA members “very wealthy”, while failing to deliver a fairer, less sectarian society.
Sitting in ExPop (Ex prisoners’ outreach programme), a drop-in support centre for “former combatants” in Derry city-centre, Elliott tells he was 19 in 1977 when sentenced to twelve years for hijacking, attempted murder and membership of a prescribed organisation.
Late into the conversation he is joined briefly by Don Browne, former member of the INLA and now yoga-teacher, who echoes many of Elliott’s observations.
Like a surprising number who joined the IRA in the early 1970s Elliot had links to the Protestant community. “My father was Presbyterian. My grandfather was wounded in WW1 in France. My mother was Catholic so I was brought up Catholic.” He grew up initially in Rosemount, a mixed area in the 1960s, before moving to the predominantly Catholic Shantallow in the early 1970s .
In Rosemount we were running around with Protestants, playing football together. There was never no problems. The Protestant and Catholic working classes lived in the same conditions. OK some Protestants might have better conditions but there were Catholics who were well off too.
The problem was the businessmen, the politicians kept us divided. They kept the Catholics down and treated us like second class citizens, while telling the Protestants they were better off, better people. My father always says, ’Everything was alright until Paisley came along’.
Asked how he got involved with the IRA he says: “Same thing as happened a lot of young people”. From about 13 he used to “sneak up to the Creggan to fire stones” and “to riots…It was the excitement.”
He wasn’t allowed to attend the anti-internment march on January 31st 1972, during which 13 civilians were shot dead by the British army on Bloody Sunday, but remembers the "stunned silence” across the Bogside the following day. And though he felt no sectarian animosity to his working-class Protestant neighbours, he remembers the horror at the British army “pointing their guns at us [Catholics]”.
He felt “great” when asked by the IRA to join the Fianna - the youth wing of the IRA – convinced by the leadership of the justice of the ‘war’.
We were running around, scouting, watching, carrying out small operations. Then you moved on to the IRA at age 16. We were taken over the border [to Donegal] and trained - shown how to fire armalites, how to make bombs. It was sleeping in tents, making your own food. It was like the scouts with real guns.
He recalls friends ‘killed in action’. In June 1974, David Russell (18), a Protestant, and Gerard Craig (17), also from Shantallow, died while carrying a bomb in a supermarket carpark. In October that year Michael Meenan (16), from Shantallow, was killed when a bomb he was carrying on his lap exploded. “They’re examples of how young some of the people involved were.” Asked what he thought of their dying at the time, he says: “We thought it was all part of the war. Oh aye we believed in the war and the struggle.”
His parents didn’t know until his father caught him painting over the windows of army Saracen jeep, to prevent soldiers seeing out.
He brought me in home and gave me a lecture, said: ‘You are going to either end up in jail or dead and Martin McGuinness will end up in a big house.’ When I was sentenced my father wept.
So many young working-class Catholics were being sentenced to prison:
it was like a conveyor belt…You were in jail with your mates. They wiped out Shantallow. One day you were running about, living normal lives. We watched music, we watched glam rock, supporting English football teams. Next day you were in the Crum [Crumlin Road prison, Belfast, on remand]. That’s where I met Michael Devine [member of the INLA and the tenth man to die in the 1981 hunger-strike], from Derry as well. He introduced me to socialism. I never saw Micky again even though we were on the blanket together.
He went “immediately on the blanket [protest]” at the Maze prison – also known as the H Blocks - against the removal of political status from IRA and INLA prisoners and at the authorities’ insistence they wear prison uniforms.
I went on it because I was a republican. I wasn’t going to be criminalised with the prison uniform. I was on it from June 1977 until the protest ended in October 1981.
How was it? It was bad. At the start we were in clean cells, a bed and a table. Nothing was happening, we were getting beatings. So we wrecked the cells, smashed the windows, smashed the furniture and put our excrement on the walls. The worst of all was the winter of ’78. The snow was coming in the window.Coming up to Christmas ’78 there was forced washing, with scrubbing brushes…The screws would storm into the cells and dragged us down the wings. There were unmerciful beatings...You have to remember we were naked.
He recalls the “punishment block” with concrete beds, no heating and “the number one diet” of dry bread, black tea and “watery soup.”
In H-Block 6 fellow prisoners included senior members of the IRA including Sands, Brendan Hughes, Larry Marley and Seanna Walsh. In 1979, moved to H-3, he shared a cell with Sands.
He says Sands wrote poetry and songs for anyone he shared a cell with, composing I Wish I Was Back Home in Derry – sung famously by Christy Moore – for him.
In H-Block 6 fellow prisoners included senior members of the IRA including Sands, Brendan Hughes, Larry Marley and Seanna Walsh. In 1979, moved to H-3, he shared a cell with Sands.
Bobby kept morale very high. He was an amazing man, a fantastic singer – I actually thought he sang a bit like Bono though I don’t like Bono much. He was an amazing song-writer, poet, Gaeilgor. One of his favourite books was Trinity by Leon Uris. He’d tell it to us in instalments, through the cell-door at night.
He says Sands wrote poetry and songs for anyone he shared a cell with, composing I Wish I Was Back Home in Derry – sung famously by Christy Moore – for him.
Recalling the ill-fated first hunger strikes between October and December 1980, which marked the escalation of the blanket and dirty protest, and the subsequent strikes between February and October 1981 in which ten men died, he disputes Sinn Fein’s account as to how the former ended, and remains “angry” that the deaths of “brave men” like Sands, were capitalised on for ends they had not died for. “They were on hunger strike for political status, not to win elections.”
Had he considered joining the strike?
I couldn’t, I wouldn’t put my family through it, and thank God because it would have been for nothing.
Those years were really hard. It was all hell but we believed we had to keep going on. We couldn’t break or let anyone down. It was for the war, for a 32-county socialist republic. We believed that.
Released in 1985 he got involved in Sinn Féin in Derry and “probably” would have remained in the IRA but could see, “it wasn’t getting anywhere”.
We know now the war was being wound down. We know now [Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness] were meeting the Irish Government, the British government. But instead of sitting the boys down and saying, ‘Look we can’t win this, we need to take a different direction and put the guns down, they went behind these men’s backs.
“While they were seeking peace, they were still encouraging war. Their peace process was a bloody peace process, and we haven’t seen a victory yet.
By “victory” he means a fairer, less sectarian society he says;
Our children have less opportunities now than even we had during the conflict…We could just go down to the signing centre and say we wanted to learn a trade. Now they have to go through hoops, the jobs are temporary, low paid. It’s shocking.
An anguished sense regret and betrayal runs deep in many former IRA members. “I never killed anybody but I know people who have and who have been broken, become alcoholics trying to drink it away,” he says.
Nodding, Browne says his brother Tony, a former IRA member, died in 2018 of cancer. Though never charged he was suspected of involvement in a number of murders. “I remember when he was dying,” says Browne, “when he was lying in his bed talking, he said: ‘I left behind widows and orphans’ and he says, ‘For what?’”.
Asked whether they regret the things they did, Browne says:
My true answer, none of it was worth it. But if you are asking the 15 year-old me who got his first gun, he would disagree totally with the 62 year-old here.
Was it the right thing to do? At this time yes, of course. You have to believe it was right or you wouldn’t do it.
Both welcome the peace. “My son and daughter have never been involved in republicanism,” says Elliott. “That is a good. But the peace process is going on almost as long as the conflict and it’s a scam. You have to be serious and stand up and ask, who is benefiting?”
The power-sharing system of Government in Northern Ireland, according to which unionists and nationalists must be represented in the Stormont executive, institutionalises sectarianism he says.
“You see both sides whipping it up to get the vote. The unionists is scared a republican, and on the republican side they’re scared a unionist, will get the seat.” This distracts public scrutiny not only from issues like housing, employment and education, but also from nepotism and cronyism within the main political parties, he says.
Sinn Féin provides a lot of people with political careers, jobs in the community sector, so they’re loyal to Sinn Féin. If you criticise Sinn Fein in Derry you’re cut out of those jobs. I know people who say, ‘Dixie, you’re right but I have a mortgage to pay. I just keep the head down and keep going.’
"The only place in the North the nationalists haven’t the worry about a unionist taking a seat is Derry, and you can see how they hammered Sinn Féin,” he says referring to the massive 17,000-vote victory by the SDLP’s Colum Eastwood over the Sinn Féin’s Elisha McCallion in the 2019 Westminster election.
This happened “first because of what [Sinn Féin] were doing with welfare-reform and then all the other stuff that was going on in the party.”
Republicans like him, he says, find Sinn Féin today:
hard to stomach… They have no more in common with the ideals of Bobby Sands than the modern Labour Party has with the ideals of James Connolly.When we were on the blanket, if you had have even suggested Sinn Féin would be shaking hands with the Queen, sending sympathies for [Prince] Philip’s death, especially the year of the 40th anniversary of the hunger strikes, it’s unimaginable.
He says:
You have got people who are broken by it, who can’t accept this, think ‘There must be a plan for something more’. I am angry and am entitled to be angry. I saw brave men like Bobby Sands and Thomas McElwee walking from my wing for the last time; young guys like Michael Meenan getting blown to pieces … From 1987 [Gerry] Adams and [Martin] McGuinness, they should have told us, told the IRA it wasn’t working and stopped the killing. They betrayed everyone.
He hopes sectarianism is fraying in Northern Ireland as both Sinn Féin and the DUP appear to be in crisis, especially among younger voters.
“In the end,” he says, “Brexit might achieve what the IRA never could.”
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Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
Good interview Dixie. Your point about Brexit cuts through the bull. To the extent that there is a dynamic towards Irish unity it is wholly divorced from the efforts of the IRA: Brexit + demographics are the two engines. The IRA campaign has did as much for Irish reunification as it did for German reunification. It's impact on demographics and Brexit was non existent. Apart from giving British state terrorism a bloody nose, its success was very limited. Other than a glut of political careers there is not a lot to show for it.
ReplyDeleteWow Dixie, this is an historical masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteCaoimhim O'Muraile
ReplyDeleteA brilliant comparison between Sinn Fein having "no more in common with the ideals of Bobby Sands" than "the modern labour party has with the ideals of James Connolly". Spot on, if either man were alive today I doubt they'd cross the street for Mary Lou McDonald or Alan Kelly.
I agree with Dixie's Dad, Paisley had a lot to answer for.
ReplyDeleteBut I still wonder where all the money generated by the various shenanigans the Provo's were/are involved in went to? Somebody is very rich these days with no oversight.
In the end,” he says, “Brexit might achieve what the IRA never could.”
ReplyDeleteIt is true that Brexit, or perhaps more specifically English nationalism, might well lead to the unification of Ireland, and the independence of Scotland.
A Protestant socialist was once asked what he felt the IRA's campaign achieved. He replied "it stopped them enjoying their ill-gotten gains." The "them" he's referring to isn't the British state; it is unionism and loyalism. The IRA didn't achieve a 32 county unitary state, but then, it was unlikely to. I believe that the IRA's campaign was a major causal factor in Stormont falling, and in hastening the acceptability of theoretical withdrawal from Ireland among the UK's political class.
That the IRA's campaign consisted of often immoral, wretched, and tragic incidents is beyond dispute. But I believe that it's an uncomfortable fact (for some) that an insurrection on the scale of that prosecuted by the IRA in the early 70s was highly effective in changing politics and society in the North permanently.
I have written elsewhere about the reliance and necessity of performative domination to feed loyalism and unionism. The ferocity of the Catholic backlash, and the republican offensive, was such that the Unionist political class was traumatised and broken, and loyalism ushered in an era of cancerous paramilitarism within its once proud communities, which is still demoralising and disrupting once proud and confident communities.
The IRA lost the war, in terms of a united Ireland. But the IRA's campaign changed everything on the island of Ireland.
Looking at the North today, the loyalist protests against the protocol are reminiscent of the miners returning to work after the 80s strike. Defeated people, trying to reclaim a time and a place. The IRA's campaign arguably did sap British desire to retain NI. Of course, Westminster couldn't be seen to acquiesce to IRA demands, but essentially, the IRA made NI ungovernable and highly undesirable to hold onto politically and economically. I think the shockwaves reverberate and couldn't fail to inform current opinion.
In a nutshell, the IRA did sap the will of Britain to retain a desire to remain in Ireland. UKG just couldn't admit it in a hurry.
Brandon, you presume that Britain had a desire to remain Ireland. During the years of the IRA campaign Britain would have jettisoned Northern Ireland at the drop of a hat, but not at the end of the barrel of a gun. The irony now is that some sort of withdrawal will happen inspite of the IRA and not because of it.
ReplyDelete@ Terry
ReplyDeleteI basically stated your point here:
"In a nutshell, the IRA did sap the will of Britain to retain a desire to remain in Ireland. UKG just couldn't admit it in a hurry."
And I think that NI was of some (albeit limited) strategic importance to UKG in the 60s and 70s, but definitely by the 80s wanted out - and the importance of the IRA's campaign in that is significant, IMO.