Laurence McKeown's story is unique in that it is told from inside the prison hospital as he spent 70 days on the fast. The background of the author is dealt with in a small preface and the memoir proper begins in chapter 1. He is on the run and went home one night after a dance in Moneyglass and had not prepared a billet, causing him to wake up around 4 a.m. to an RUC man standing in his bedroom.
Taken to Castlereagh where he is interrogated and removed to the Crum where he is on remand for causing explosions in Randalstown and Antrim, and attempted murder after an attack on a mobile patrol.
There are shadows while on remand. The building at the Kesh of new blocks to house newly sentenced prisoners under the new criminalisation policy. One Sunday Barney McReynolds, the OC, gathered his men together in the yard and told them that any prisoner who is sentenced and sent to the blocks is not to wear a prison uniform and not to do any prison work. Short and sweet, it was as simple as that.
The first prisoner to be sentenced under the new rules was Kieran Nugent. Kieran had already suffered a loyalist gun attack when he was shot eight times in the back, arms and legs at the corner of Merrion street and the Grosvenor road. His friend with him was fatally wounded.
The story of the hunger strike is widely known so it's best to look at the book in a somewhat different way: the degree of light that over shadowed everything, and the dark spectre of death.
The light is a joy to read, and it was that joy was always overcast. A little story is told of a guy from Belfast who was chatting to his friend through the door and became somewhat boastful, saying his area had all the up to date equipment when a rural guy jumped in and said:
I bet you guys never got your hands on a Massey Ferguson 165.
Fer fuck sake said the Belfast slabber, we had that many of them we were sending them to you lads down the country.
The response was well we could put them to better use seeing as how the Massey Ferguson is a tractor you idiot.
These lighter moments are beginning to surface. Seamus Kearney’s new memoir tells of sing-songs and skits taking place. After half eight at night, things on each wing became much livelier. The guards had left and the prisoners could speak privately without being overheard.
The author recalls being asked to sing and confessed that he didn’t have a note in his head, but the good natured abuse you got was much worse. So he sang going through the desert with a horse with no name.
At night when the prison was quiet, Bobby’s singing was always left to the end. He says that Bobby had a folksy voice rather like one of the Simon and Garfunkel two, and that his voice was filled with emotion. Included in his batch of songs was Bobby McGee.
Hack Ramsey put a chair outside the author’s cell door and took the record player from the canteen and proceeded to play the latest ELO album. He played it over and over again. The wing fell silent while he played the ELO. It was the first time the men had heard music in a number of years.
After 70 days on hunger strike, Laurence's mother had him moved to the RVH. It was here that he awoke to a female voice and a gentle woman’s touch. Raw emotion. This is very symbolic moment, rather like Seamus Kearney’s woman in the pink coat, or the little girl in the red dress in Schlinder’s List.
Darkness is never far away, as the protest took it’s toll upon the minds and bodies. Paddy Quinn was going through a rough patch and was unable to keep water down. This was a bad sign, Martin Hurson had suffered dehydration and his death was partly due to this.
Death shadows had sounds. This haunting sound came from Paddy’s room. A loud bellow, like the sound of an animal in distress. Then it would stop and begin again, almost running into each other. He was hyperventilating. Paul Lennon, the MO, put a paper bag over his patient's face and held him down reducing the amount of oxygen Paddy was taking in. He started to calm down and his mother had him removed to an outside hospital.
This book was only published last year, in 2021. And there are responses to more recent events. In an interview the author had with Brendan Hughes, the author reports what Brendan had to say.
Then there was the confusion as to who was OC, Brendan or Bobby. Bobby had always been subordinate to Brendan, but when the two met in the evening on 18-December-1980 Bobby reportedly said, Dark you fucked up. The author believed that Brendan could not live with the decision he made on the evening of December 1980. The author believes that Brendan’s ego had been dented, and in later years he moved the blame on to others. In Brendan's mind he was the one who was right and it was the others who let him down.
The author feels that Brendan then became very vociferous in his public attacks upon the republican leadership. Brendan attacked those who had been close to him, such as Gerry Adams, and that by identifying and naming him this introduced a new low. Richard O’Rawe made a claim that there was a deal on the table in 1981 just before Joe McDonnell died, and that the army council on the outside had rejected this deal and allowed 6 hunger strikes to die unnecessarily.. This claims the author, caused division.
He goes on that’s it’s ironic after all that the British state had thrown at the prisoners “it was one of our own who in one short sentence sewed division and doubt”.
These lighter moments are beginning to surface. Seamus Kearney’s new memoir tells of sing-songs and skits taking place. After half eight at night, things on each wing became much livelier. The guards had left and the prisoners could speak privately without being overheard.
The author recalls being asked to sing and confessed that he didn’t have a note in his head, but the good natured abuse you got was much worse. So he sang going through the desert with a horse with no name.
At night when the prison was quiet, Bobby’s singing was always left to the end. He says that Bobby had a folksy voice rather like one of the Simon and Garfunkel two, and that his voice was filled with emotion. Included in his batch of songs was Bobby McGee.
Freedom is just another word
With nothing left to loose.
Nothin ain’t worth nothing when it’s free
Feeling good and easy lord when Bobby sang the blues,
Good enough for me.
Good enough for me and Bobby McGee
Hack Ramsey put a chair outside the author’s cell door and took the record player from the canteen and proceeded to play the latest ELO album. He played it over and over again. The wing fell silent while he played the ELO. It was the first time the men had heard music in a number of years.
After 70 days on hunger strike, Laurence's mother had him moved to the RVH. It was here that he awoke to a female voice and a gentle woman’s touch. Raw emotion. This is very symbolic moment, rather like Seamus Kearney’s woman in the pink coat, or the little girl in the red dress in Schlinder’s List.
Darkness is never far away, as the protest took it’s toll upon the minds and bodies. Paddy Quinn was going through a rough patch and was unable to keep water down. This was a bad sign, Martin Hurson had suffered dehydration and his death was partly due to this.
Death shadows had sounds. This haunting sound came from Paddy’s room. A loud bellow, like the sound of an animal in distress. Then it would stop and begin again, almost running into each other. He was hyperventilating. Paul Lennon, the MO, put a paper bag over his patient's face and held him down reducing the amount of oxygen Paddy was taking in. He started to calm down and his mother had him removed to an outside hospital.
This book was only published last year, in 2021. And there are responses to more recent events. In an interview the author had with Brendan Hughes, the author reports what Brendan had to say.
Then there was the confusion as to who was OC, Brendan or Bobby. Bobby had always been subordinate to Brendan, but when the two met in the evening on 18-December-1980 Bobby reportedly said, Dark you fucked up. The author believed that Brendan could not live with the decision he made on the evening of December 1980. The author believes that Brendan’s ego had been dented, and in later years he moved the blame on to others. In Brendan's mind he was the one who was right and it was the others who let him down.
The author feels that Brendan then became very vociferous in his public attacks upon the republican leadership. Brendan attacked those who had been close to him, such as Gerry Adams, and that by identifying and naming him this introduced a new low. Richard O’Rawe made a claim that there was a deal on the table in 1981 just before Joe McDonnell died, and that the army council on the outside had rejected this deal and allowed 6 hunger strikes to die unnecessarily.. This claims the author, caused division.
He goes on that’s it’s ironic after all that the British state had thrown at the prisoners “it was one of our own who in one short sentence sewed division and doubt”.
Laurence McKeown, 2021, Time Memoirs. Beyond the Pale Books.
ISBN-10: 1914318110
ISBN-13: 978-1914318115
⏩Kate Yo is a Belfast book lover.
Kate - thanks for sending this our way.
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing wrong in what Richard O'Rawe did - he produced an evidence based account which caused people to doubt the leadership's narrative: that is the stuff of a porous and democratic ethos rather than deference to a leadership narrative that is itself porous only insofar as it leaks like a sieve.
I think the criticism of Brendan is incredibly weak. Leaders are not sacrosanct and should not be elevated to the point where their critics are besmirched for having a different view.
At the same time Brendan should not be protected from criticism or scrutiny and writers like Laurny must be free to give an alternative view. I just think he fails in his criticism.
Keep reading Kate and keep writing.