Rab Kerr

By AM Sunday, January 7, 2024

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Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ For around a year from the end of 1980 to the end of 1981, he was my next door neighbour in H6 and H3.

Rab Kerr

Then we talked more than we ever saw each other. Every day out the back window some conversation would pass between us. 

Rab Kerr came onto the blanket protest in 1979, having been convicted for his part in an IRA operation the previous year that became known as the Rag Day killings. A number of IRA volunteers dressed as Arabs and mingling with Rag Day students approached a British army search point in Belfast city centre. Once in place, they killed a soldier and a civilian searcher. The audacity of the operation was a fillip for IRA morale while infuriating the NIO and unionism. The human tragedy involved in it all was lost on us at the time. 

When Rab arrived on the blanket he came in for more attention than most new arrivals. Word quickly spread that the civilian searcher was a relative of one of the blanket screws, giving rise to a vendetta  against Rab. It might just have been that the high profile nature of the case made him a magnet for abuse. Not that it mattered in the overall scheme of things as he frustrated the efforts to break him, retaining the stamina to see the protest through to the end.

Years later he would wreak revenge on prison management even if that was not his intention. Many people credit Bobby Storey with salvaging the 1983 escape, once the operation came off the rails on the wrong side of the wall. There is a lot of truth in that as Storey's on-feet thinking charted a way through. But it was all made possible by Rab Kerr who forewent his own chance of making it to freedom and held the tactically crucial tally lodge. He not only gave up his chance of freedom but risked his life. Badly beaten once he was overpowered by the sheer number of screws he was trying to contain, he held the fort long enough for the others to make good their dash. An imprisoned friend of Rab described events of the day:

Whenever the escape started to go awry at the Tally Lodge and the lads had to make a run for it Big Rab did not hesitate for one second when he was asked to stay behind and guard a room full of screws to give the rest of the lads a few extra minutes to get away. Not only did he agree to this knowing he wouldn't get away but he also knew that once the screws realised they had the greater numbers they would attack him and give him the beating of his life. However Rab was an ex-blanket man and he was used to beatings and he knew what comradery and self-sacrifice was.

During the blanket protest the men would sometimes wind him up by calling him Abdul or A-Rab, an allusion to the operation he was convicted for. An intelligent man he had a strong interest in other struggles, was an avid news follower and loved to read. Often, he would land in my cell with some book he thought had an interesting twist to it. He could also influence people to listen to music different from the norm. Today, two of my favourite albums remain Mind Bomb by The The and The Trinity Session by Cowboy Junkies. Having previously never heard of them, Rab's persistence eventually led me to listen to them. Rab was like that - not reticent about straying from the beaten track in terms of his interests.

While we conversed quite a lot and were in each others company frequently enough on the wings, we were never bosom buddies, each having our own circle of friends. I found him much too loyal to the leadership and its vision, but the flip side was that he found me much too disloyal.

While there were never pickings on him, he loved food. After one of his first paroles he regaled me in great detail about a restaurant he and his family visited, describing the ambience and the way each course was set out.  I asked him why he just didn't bother horsing it down his neck. He looked at me as if I was a philistine too used to jail grub, explaining that food was to be enjoyed, that eating out was an event with ritual, not simply shovelling as much into the mouth and gulping it down.

He married the redoubtable Jennifer McCann, and together they had three children, Meadhbh, Sáerlaith and Fionntan. Jennifer had become an icon to republican prisoners when during her first court appearance after her arrest she delivered a defiant and passionate defence of Bobby Sands, then on the hunger strike that would claim his life. Bobby, so moved by her defiance, wrote in his diary that he was "touched and proud." 

After his release Rab again found himself in prison having being arrested with Bobby Storey. He served a further two years before being released for the final time. He would go on to publish a range of books largely based on photographic images. Another blanketman Padraic Mac Coitir of Lasair Dhearg added that Rab had been a primary inspiration behind the founding of the Twinbrook GAA club Cumann na Fuiseoga, something inspired by Bobby Sands.

IRA volunteer, author, husband, father, community activist, the many strands and shades of a man behind a Blanket.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.