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Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ As a sixteen year old, a workmate, not much older, brought me to a bar on the Antrim Road one evening. 

Paddy Mo Burnside

Nobody asked for photographic ID then or proof of age. If you looked old enough to work and were not wearing a school uniform, you got served. I think the bar was called The Phoenix, a name emblematic of the rise of the Provisional IRA out of the ashes of 1969. 

There I was introduced to Paddy Mo Burnside and his friend Denis Gregg.  We did little more than chat and have a beer. I met them separately a couple of times after that, usually by chance before being imprisoned in 1974. I would encounter them again but this time under very different circumstances. We were all in jail, where they proved to be great comrades.

Paddy Mo was in Cage 11, serving a sentence imposed for an attack on a forensic facility used by the RUC.  It was no surprise to me that The Mo, as he was endearingly called in the cages, had joined the ranks of the IRA as a teenage volunteer. The New Lodge was an area that had been attacked both by British forces and the Loyalists. In one incident 15 people died in a bar bombed by loyalists which the Lisburn Lie Machine in Thiepval initially blamed on the IRA. In another series of incidents over a two day period a combination of British Army and Loyalist death squad killings left nine men dead. Critics sometimes ask why people joined the IRA. In a community like the New Lodge that at times underwent intense state and loyalist violence, a more obvious question would be why people didn't join the IRA. 

I met many from the area over the course of my imprisonment, being cellmate to some of them as well. What I learned early on was that when the Royal Marines came in to conduct a search in Crumlin Road jail every six weeks or so in 1974, they had a particular hostility for New Lodge Men. They had plied their vicious trade in the area where a lot of enmity had developed between them and the local republicans. 

In Cage 11 Paddy Mo was in the half hut which housed other North Belfast men like Liam Fennell, Paddy Branniff and Chris Black who would later turn Queen's evidence against his own friends and comrades. Paddy Mo was very close to big Paul Loughran from Beechmount and might even have shared a cube. He was young and immensely popular amongst the Cage 11 men. While there is a tendency to speak only well of the dead, it is hard to find anything inflated in the words of his Cage O/C: "I don't know anyone who had a bad word about him that wasn't in a uniform belonging to the British."  

He and myself were quite friendly. His mother Bridie visited me once, his sister Mary on a number of occasions before I ended my sojourn in the cages to make my way involuntarily to the H Blocks in 1978.

Within two years Paddy Mo would join the same protest but he was in H3, the most vicious block of all, so I never got to meet him until the blanket was over. We would occasionally end up on the same block although on adjacent wings.

He was a committed republican volunteer who had not managed to stay out of prison long after leaving the cages before he ended up back behind bars having been arrested on an IRA operation with Martin Meehan. He understood only too well the rigours of the blanket protest and the fate certain to await him if arrested. It did not deter him.

He was held in high esteem in his local community where local people and businesses were quick to rally round in support of his family upon his death on the Christmas Eve before last. 

Reading about him online or from talking to other blanketmen it was heartening to find his old comrades turning out in numbers to bid him farewell. Fenso, to whom it was said he was joined at the hip, even turned up with his dog. Veterans of the protest like John Pearse and Tomboy Louden were in attendance with Tomboy delivering the oration for his friend and comrade. The guard of honour was made up of former blanket men and ex-prisoners whose time inside had not coincided with the protest years.  

A fitting send-off for a volunteer who throughout life had little but gave plenty. 

The Blanket still has life in the persons of those who wore it. But as each separate thread is pulled with the passing of those who held the protest together in defiance of British state violence, the time will come when it will be a cultural rather than a living memory. There is no one younger than 60 who experienced it. When the last man or woman standing eventually falls, there will be no blanket men or women to accompany them on their final journey. The last page of the story written by people like Paddy Mo Burnside will soon be turned.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Paddy Mo Burnside

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ As a sixteen year old, a workmate, not much older, brought me to a bar on the Antrim Road one evening. 

Paddy Mo Burnside

Nobody asked for photographic ID then or proof of age. If you looked old enough to work and were not wearing a school uniform, you got served. I think the bar was called The Phoenix, a name emblematic of the rise of the Provisional IRA out of the ashes of 1969. 

There I was introduced to Paddy Mo Burnside and his friend Denis Gregg.  We did little more than chat and have a beer. I met them separately a couple of times after that, usually by chance before being imprisoned in 1974. I would encounter them again but this time under very different circumstances. We were all in jail, where they proved to be great comrades.

Paddy Mo was in Cage 11, serving a sentence imposed for an attack on a forensic facility used by the RUC.  It was no surprise to me that The Mo, as he was endearingly called in the cages, had joined the ranks of the IRA as a teenage volunteer. The New Lodge was an area that had been attacked both by British forces and the Loyalists. In one incident 15 people died in a bar bombed by loyalists which the Lisburn Lie Machine in Thiepval initially blamed on the IRA. In another series of incidents over a two day period a combination of British Army and Loyalist death squad killings left nine men dead. Critics sometimes ask why people joined the IRA. In a community like the New Lodge that at times underwent intense state and loyalist violence, a more obvious question would be why people didn't join the IRA. 

I met many from the area over the course of my imprisonment, being cellmate to some of them as well. What I learned early on was that when the Royal Marines came in to conduct a search in Crumlin Road jail every six weeks or so in 1974, they had a particular hostility for New Lodge Men. They had plied their vicious trade in the area where a lot of enmity had developed between them and the local republicans. 

In Cage 11 Paddy Mo was in the half hut which housed other North Belfast men like Liam Fennell, Paddy Branniff and Chris Black who would later turn Queen's evidence against his own friends and comrades. Paddy Mo was very close to big Paul Loughran from Beechmount and might even have shared a cube. He was young and immensely popular amongst the Cage 11 men. While there is a tendency to speak only well of the dead, it is hard to find anything inflated in the words of his Cage O/C: "I don't know anyone who had a bad word about him that wasn't in a uniform belonging to the British."  

He and myself were quite friendly. His mother Bridie visited me once, his sister Mary on a number of occasions before I ended my sojourn in the cages to make my way involuntarily to the H Blocks in 1978.

Within two years Paddy Mo would join the same protest but he was in H3, the most vicious block of all, so I never got to meet him until the blanket was over. We would occasionally end up on the same block although on adjacent wings.

He was a committed republican volunteer who had not managed to stay out of prison long after leaving the cages before he ended up back behind bars having been arrested on an IRA operation with Martin Meehan. He understood only too well the rigours of the blanket protest and the fate certain to await him if arrested. It did not deter him.

He was held in high esteem in his local community where local people and businesses were quick to rally round in support of his family upon his death on the Christmas Eve before last. 

Reading about him online or from talking to other blanketmen it was heartening to find his old comrades turning out in numbers to bid him farewell. Fenso, to whom it was said he was joined at the hip, even turned up with his dog. Veterans of the protest like John Pearse and Tomboy Louden were in attendance with Tomboy delivering the oration for his friend and comrade. The guard of honour was made up of former blanket men and ex-prisoners whose time inside had not coincided with the protest years.  

A fitting send-off for a volunteer who throughout life had little but gave plenty. 

The Blanket still has life in the persons of those who wore it. But as each separate thread is pulled with the passing of those who held the protest together in defiance of British state violence, the time will come when it will be a cultural rather than a living memory. There is no one younger than 60 who experienced it. When the last man or woman standing eventually falls, there will be no blanket men or women to accompany them on their final journey. The last page of the story written by people like Paddy Mo Burnside will soon be turned.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
Anthony McIntyre Obituary

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