Anthony McIntyre ⚱ reflects on a former republican prisoner who succumbed to Covid in January.

Eamon Peggy McCourt

There are people I have been on prison wings with and when their names come up in conversation, I have no recollection of them. Occasionally I see a photograph of a group of prisoners huddled together in front of the camera and fail to recognise some of them. They haven’t been photoshopped in, so the image is not fake. There simply are people I was on jail wings with that have completely faded from my memory.

Peggy McCourt is not one of them. When I first met him in 1983 in H1 we hit it off immediately. We walked the yard, chatted in the cells or canteens. Peggy was a soft spoken man and serene-like in his manner. He was fortunate to have any manner at all given his experience at the hands of British special forces in May 1981 when hunger strike tension was at its height. He survived a clash in which two IRA volunteers lost their lives, George McBrearty and Pop Maguire.
 
When a blanketman from Derry told me of his death, I felt a sense of regret, not one of those occasions where an it happens suffices before moving on. Peggy and I would not have been on the same side of the discussion around where Sinn Fein had ended up but that is no reason for me to join the ranks of the screamers and remember him through invective. He was a good companion in the H-Blocks for the time we were on the same wing and one of those guys I remember with fondness decades after we last set eyes on each other.

That wing with Peggy and the lads was one of the better I was on. The protest had ended and a fusion of blanket men and the new batch of republican prisoners was underway. There were Derry characters like Twinkle Barbour - Peggy's cell mate if I recall correctly - and Paddy McGlinchey, along with Belfast men like Tomboy Louden and Alex McCrory who was wing O/C. It was a wing of literature, boundless energy, ideas, soccer rivalry and banter.

Peggy was a good conversationalist – and often talked of family, in particular of his wife Majella. I think he felt it was only by the grace of whatever that he was alive and able to experience the family he loved. He saw in his own family what the sightless eyes of slain comrades would never see again.

He remained within the Sinn Fein fold and gave much of his time to the Republican memorial garden in the Creggan, working with the Derry Graves Association and  Creggan Monument Committee. That Peggy would have had a deep emotional attachment to fallen comrades is easily understood: whatever woes the rest of us went through, for the majority, being next to two volunteers as their life’s blood seeped away was not an experience we had to undergo. The T-shirt Peggy wore helped conceal the scars he bore.

Like so many other friendships developed in jail, they were of their time. People move on, meet new friends, acquire different commitments and interests. I never saw him after 83 but the impression he created was a lasting one.

The atmosphere surrounding his funeral unfortunately was laden with bitterness. Unionist lemon suckers were aghast seemingly that people were even allowed to mourn him. The PSNI, not to be outdone by their DUP friends, put on a suitably grumpy face to express their own displeasure. There were attempts to compare it with the funeral last year of Bobby Storey, with objections to the number of mourners. 

The real anger from the DUP is that people turned up to honour a man who took up arms against the British state in a city that sounded the death knell for British claims that the UK government did not practice crimes against humanity. After Bloody Sunday, the question to be asked is not why some people joined the IRA, but why others didn't.

Much the same has to be said of Leo Varadkar who used the opportunity to call for an end to republican funerals. In all of this, there is a clear sense that Varadkar's objections were pitched at the legitimacy of the IRA campaign that continues to bestowed on it by mourners honouring former IRA volunteers. If it was really about Covid concerns Fine Gael would not have stayed silent in response to the packed funeral cortege of the murdered Garda, Colm Horkan.  

After the funeral the name of Peggy, despite his considerable contribution to the republican armed struggle, was not permitted to feature on the Derry republican Roll Of Honour. Gerry Kelly claimed that Sinn Fein played no role in the funeral which might be true but to have denied Peggy his place on the Roll Of Honour upset many people, including those who disagreed with him on political matters, but nevertheless recognised what he gave and what was taken from him. It also upset members of his immediate family. His son Eamonn wrote

Oglach in life and oglach in death to your family daddy. We will always hold you to this esteem and when people ask why your name isn’t here or read out there, we as a family will let them know that your name was good enough in life but not in death for THEIR roll of honour! … you contributed to the struggle to the extent that you almost lost your life, you lost friend after friend and had seen your fair share of bloodshed more than a human being should ever witness.

Peggy lost a lot but, but as his funeral cortege showed, he did not lose the admiration of those who knew and appreciated his role in the republican struggle, or those whose time in jail was made that much lighter by his company. 

 ⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Peggy McCourt


Anthony McIntyre ⚱ reflects on a former republican prisoner who succumbed to Covid in January.

Eamon Peggy McCourt

There are people I have been on prison wings with and when their names come up in conversation, I have no recollection of them. Occasionally I see a photograph of a group of prisoners huddled together in front of the camera and fail to recognise some of them. They haven’t been photoshopped in, so the image is not fake. There simply are people I was on jail wings with that have completely faded from my memory.

Peggy McCourt is not one of them. When I first met him in 1983 in H1 we hit it off immediately. We walked the yard, chatted in the cells or canteens. Peggy was a soft spoken man and serene-like in his manner. He was fortunate to have any manner at all given his experience at the hands of British special forces in May 1981 when hunger strike tension was at its height. He survived a clash in which two IRA volunteers lost their lives, George McBrearty and Pop Maguire.
 
When a blanketman from Derry told me of his death, I felt a sense of regret, not one of those occasions where an it happens suffices before moving on. Peggy and I would not have been on the same side of the discussion around where Sinn Fein had ended up but that is no reason for me to join the ranks of the screamers and remember him through invective. He was a good companion in the H-Blocks for the time we were on the same wing and one of those guys I remember with fondness decades after we last set eyes on each other.

That wing with Peggy and the lads was one of the better I was on. The protest had ended and a fusion of blanket men and the new batch of republican prisoners was underway. There were Derry characters like Twinkle Barbour - Peggy's cell mate if I recall correctly - and Paddy McGlinchey, along with Belfast men like Tomboy Louden and Alex McCrory who was wing O/C. It was a wing of literature, boundless energy, ideas, soccer rivalry and banter.

Peggy was a good conversationalist – and often talked of family, in particular of his wife Majella. I think he felt it was only by the grace of whatever that he was alive and able to experience the family he loved. He saw in his own family what the sightless eyes of slain comrades would never see again.

He remained within the Sinn Fein fold and gave much of his time to the Republican memorial garden in the Creggan, working with the Derry Graves Association and  Creggan Monument Committee. That Peggy would have had a deep emotional attachment to fallen comrades is easily understood: whatever woes the rest of us went through, for the majority, being next to two volunteers as their life’s blood seeped away was not an experience we had to undergo. The T-shirt Peggy wore helped conceal the scars he bore.

Like so many other friendships developed in jail, they were of their time. People move on, meet new friends, acquire different commitments and interests. I never saw him after 83 but the impression he created was a lasting one.

The atmosphere surrounding his funeral unfortunately was laden with bitterness. Unionist lemon suckers were aghast seemingly that people were even allowed to mourn him. The PSNI, not to be outdone by their DUP friends, put on a suitably grumpy face to express their own displeasure. There were attempts to compare it with the funeral last year of Bobby Storey, with objections to the number of mourners. 

The real anger from the DUP is that people turned up to honour a man who took up arms against the British state in a city that sounded the death knell for British claims that the UK government did not practice crimes against humanity. After Bloody Sunday, the question to be asked is not why some people joined the IRA, but why others didn't.

Much the same has to be said of Leo Varadkar who used the opportunity to call for an end to republican funerals. In all of this, there is a clear sense that Varadkar's objections were pitched at the legitimacy of the IRA campaign that continues to bestowed on it by mourners honouring former IRA volunteers. If it was really about Covid concerns Fine Gael would not have stayed silent in response to the packed funeral cortege of the murdered Garda, Colm Horkan.  

After the funeral the name of Peggy, despite his considerable contribution to the republican armed struggle, was not permitted to feature on the Derry republican Roll Of Honour. Gerry Kelly claimed that Sinn Fein played no role in the funeral which might be true but to have denied Peggy his place on the Roll Of Honour upset many people, including those who disagreed with him on political matters, but nevertheless recognised what he gave and what was taken from him. It also upset members of his immediate family. His son Eamonn wrote

Oglach in life and oglach in death to your family daddy. We will always hold you to this esteem and when people ask why your name isn’t here or read out there, we as a family will let them know that your name was good enough in life but not in death for THEIR roll of honour! … you contributed to the struggle to the extent that you almost lost your life, you lost friend after friend and had seen your fair share of bloodshed more than a human being should ever witness.

Peggy lost a lot but, but as his funeral cortege showed, he did not lose the admiration of those who knew and appreciated his role in the republican struggle, or those whose time in jail was made that much lighter by his company. 

 ⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

2 comments:

  1. One of the good guys. Thanks for remembering Peggy here. Up the Provos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A friendly and comradely obituary. I too liked Peggy in jail. He was good company.

    Alex

    ReplyDelete