Brendy McClenaghan

Anthony McIntyre ⚑ He hailed from an Ardoyne family of republican activists, two sisters had been imprisoned, as had a brother.

Brendy McClenaghan

When Brendy McClenaghan first landed on the blanket wings of H4 in early 1979, he came in for particular attention from prison staff. Although convicted of four conflict related killings, he had also heard the gavel bang to confirm a further sentence for trying to kill a screw.

On the protest blocks the screws were referred to as coimeádóiri, Irish for keepers. Because they could hear prisoners shouting 'coimeádóir' to alert others to an approaching screw they quickly picked up on the meaning of the word. Sometimes they would shout 'coimeádóirs rule.' They never quite got the Irish plural.

Brendy became known to them as 'Coimeádóir Killer' and when the opportunity arose, as it often did, he would get an extra boot or punch. One evening, a Scottish screw known as Albannach Mor - or Nessie, after the Loch Ness monster - scalded Brendy with boiling water as tea was being served. It was the only case of scalding that I recall from my time in the protest blocks.

Nessie was just a thug who later switched to the RUC, earning the animus of his former colleagues in the prison service for stopping them as they left the jail in their cars in a bid to catch them over the limit. He was later rumoured to be an avid practitioner of wife beating. Truly a man who was the personification of the quip that the prison service is the only place in the world where a person starts at the bottom and works their way down.

For all the violence, Brendy came through. I would have endless conversations with him out the window when he was on the same side of the wing and out the door when he was across the wing.

We discussed everything and anything, determined to squeeze the last droplet of interest from a topic with which to ward off the interminable tedium that was our constant but unwanted companion on the protest. One night our conversation, carried on in hushed tones out the door - so as not to disturb our fellow blanketmen - until the screws came around with breakfast the following morning.

By that time I had bestowed the nickname Cecil on him to wind him up. But he claimed it, and for the rest of the time in prison got called Cecil.

After the blanket he and I would run into each other on different wings, walk the yard or simply hang out in the canteen or cells. In the late 80s he began to campaign for gay rights. While most just shrugged their shoulders at the idea, there were some who were extremely hostile, on occasion complaining that there should be no place for articles with pro-gay sentiment in the prison magazine, An Glor Gafa/The Captive Voice. This was in response to a piece written by Brendi, as he then went by, in the magazine titled 'Invisible Comrades'. Brian Campbell, the editor, steadfastly refused to resile from his commitment to allow gay voices.

The jail O/C at the time, Leo Green, while liberal, tolerant and dogma-averse, seemed not quite sure how to handle it. I think he regarded it as a passing fad which would last until the next one came along. Being equipped with a dry and wry sense of humour, he could be very witty. One INLA prisoner who openly stated he was gay complained to Leo that he felt Republican Socialist prisoners were not getting as much as IRA prisoners within the jail. Leo's response, issued without the slightest of malice: 'he is getting more than the rest of us.'

Leo was not a detractor, but those that were left Brendy unfazed. He later wrote a piece called “Letter from a Gay Republican: H-Block 5,” which featured in Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland. After his release, he met a partner, Antoinette, had children and took a view of the peace process that it was not what republicans had fought, killed and died to achieve:

sad that our friends and comrades and the struggle we held dear were betrayed by those in whom we placed our trust.

For a while he seemed to gravitate towards Republican Sinn Fein. That was at the end of the 1990s and by then we had not seen each other more than a couple of times since release.

While he was living in Donegal, we got in touch again and would chat on the phone or via Facebook. By 2011 he described his health as being in 'a pretty bad way.' By the middle of 2013 he was quite ill with COPD and told me that he had only a 50:50 chance of surviving his upcoming operation. Fortunately. he had recovered to the extent that he lived a further ten years. By the end of the year he wrote a piece for TPQ about his beloved Ardoyne.

In 2014, at the height of the Boston College furore, he wrote me that:

Hi Mackers, hope all is well with yourself and Carrie and the kids. I know from the past few days media/sf circus that you must be under a lot of brú. Just take care of each other and know that the truth will eventually get into the daylight. Basically, I'm trying to say that I am thinking of you all. Slan cara.

Of everything Brendy did in his life, perhaps more than anything else he wanted to be known as a blanketman, writing in another of our exchanges:

the proudest thing I ever did in my life that no one can take from me, I was one of those who held the line when it was needed most in our struggle . . .

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