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| Jimmy Donnelly |
Ardoyne was a resilient community throughout the conflict with British state terrorism and armed loyalism. The republicans from it often exhibited a toughness, which was sometimes misinterpreted as a harshness. Jimmy Donnelly who died just before Christmas last year was tough but was one of the most pleasant people I met during the course of my time in jail.
The term 'gentleman' is frequently overused, acquiring the status of a cliche in its application. But there are few who would object to the former republican prisoner, Tarlach Mac Dhónaill's summing up of Jimmy as an 'Ardoyne legend and a gentleman into the bargain.' Jimmy D, as he was affectionately known to his comrades in the H Blocks, and the description 'fear uasal' took to one another as a hand does to a glove.
On the subject of gloves, Jimmy D was by all accounts a 'gloves-on' volunteer. A comrade, Jackie Donnelly, described him as a 'fearless and active Óglach' who:
made himself available for active service 24-7. If there was an operation being mounted against the state forces – and these occurred on a daily basis – Jimmy wanted to play a part, any part on it. He had no ego. No role was too small for him and by the same token no role was too big for him. If it needed done he'd do it . . . I could honestly write a book on Jimmy D's fight for Irish freedom. The old IRA may have had Dan Breen, we were privileged to have Jimmy Donnelly.
Jimmy D had initially been sent down for 18 years on the tainted evidence of the RUC supergrass Christopher Black. Barely sentenced a month, he took part in the 1983 H Block escape which shook the British penal system to its core, a stunning return of serve to what the the British had cruelly lobbed over the net during the hunger strike.
I had been on wings with both Jimmy and his brother Micky, losing the 1988 Christmas snooker final to Micky whom I had known from the cages. That was something else Ardoyne men had an aptitude for - snooker. The best players I met in the jail were from 'the district', the colloquial manner they used to describe Ardoyne. I no longer recall if Jimmy played the game.
While I knew Micky somewhat better than Jimmy, I would often chat to him on the occasions he landed on our wing while on the punitive Red Book. Eager to deny books for all the years of the blanket protest here was Prison Management handing them out like confetti to those who had humiliated it on the 25th of September with the break out from the Blocks. Unable to complete his dash for freedom, Jimmy was retuned to the blocks battered but not broken. There he simply dug deep, put the head down, and forged ahead. Red book meant nothing to him - he had given prison security the red card.
Speaking to a republican prisoner after Jimmy's death, he told me that he met Jimmy by chance in West Belfast. Knowing that each of them were no longer on the same side in the Treaty debate, curiosity prompted me to ask if there had been any tension. The response: Nah, Jimmy was much too civil and courteous for any of that. He would never pass you on the street without a greeting.
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