Denis Sa Gallagher

Anthony McIntyre ⚑ I don't think I ever addressed him as Denis in my life, other than to banter him as Denis the Menace when he hadn't the wing tea ready.

Denis Sa Gallagher

In the blocks he took it on himself to make sure the boiler was always ready for lock-ups and meal times so that his fellow prisoners could return to their cells with a hot drink. Many nighttime flasks were filled by Sa.

I knew he had been unwell for a while so when his passing occurred it left me saddened but not shocked. Dixie Elliot, with whom he shared a brotherly bond had kept me up to speed on his condition. I wrote to him and sent cards on a couple of occasions, or passed messages via Dixie, acutely aware of how awkward words can seem when a friend is coming to the end of their life's journey.

For Sa it was a rocky road, which won him many friends along the way as was evidenced from the huge number of people who visited the family home to pay their respects upon his death in March. When his comrade Gary McCool commented that 'I don't know anybody who is loved as much and by so many as is Denis 'Sa' Gallagher', it is a sentiment easily shared. That bumpy odyssey was softened and sweetened by his marriage to Anna which led to the birth of two children, Sarah and Tricia. Grandchildren were to follow. It always ignites in me a proud poignancy when former blanketmen bring children into the world having emerged from a background of desolation, deprivation and death which is probably how best the blanket protest can be characterised. Children are life's victory over death.

Although he died at 66, that Sa lived as long as he did is phenomenal. 50 years ago he was the driver of a car being used in an IRA operation against a British Army sangar when the bomb it was ferrying exploded, killing the volunteer in the passenger seat behind him, Óglach Michael Meehan sat with the the device placed on his knees. Just sixteen years old, he was the same age as Sa. The youthfulness of the IRA that took the war to the British state has been commented on by viewers of the Disney series Say Nothing. Today they would be legally regarded as children. Then, children, whether in the IRA or not were often fair game for the predatory killers of the British Army. One such killer was a predator in more ways than one.

Sa, after recuperating at a farm across the border, returned to active service. If he had any delusions about what armed struggle meant in terms of just how much could be risked and lost, the close call with death would have disabused him of them. He was undeterred. In the words of Dixie:

That was Sa Gallagher, he had Republicanism flowing through his veins. His father, Dinny, was a Republican, as was his grandfather James Gallagher. By the time I joined the IRA as a 16 year old, Sa, who was five months younger than me, had been a veteran. He had even been a member of Na Fianna as a small boy, in the 1960s. He once told me that the Fianna at that time had been more like the Boy Scouts.

Sa's life in the IRA was so unlike anything a Boy Scout would experience. If he was confident of an extended run his hopes would be dashed. By 1976 he was in the Crum and sentenced the following year to two life sentences in the H Blocks. The Lord Chief Justice at the time was said to hate Catholics and Jews in equal measure. The chances of a Derry Catholic getting justice in the legal system on the watch of Robert Lowry was pencil lead-slim.

I didn't get to meet Sa on the blanket, never sharing the same block. It was often the way. So many former blanket men remain unknown to me other than by reputation. In his graveside oration Dixie shared some of the memories of himself, Sa and Bobby Sands. I met him on the wings in the years after the protest and we became firm friends. Sa took to me for some reason, perhaps with his own wry sense of humour, enamoured to some of the witticisms I conjured. He was the most unassuming of men, never in your face about anything he just got on with getting through his life sentence, uncompromising but uncomplaining.

After release as so often happens, we lost touch only to meet up again at a hunger strike march in Derry. I had been getting the usual hassle from the Stomontistas which he commented on as we walked through the streets of Derry. Sa was taken in by none of the smearing or slurring, remaining as fraternal as ever towards me.

While in later years Sa would immerse himself in the ex-prisoners group, Expop. Disillusioned with Sinn Fein's direction of travel about which, aided by the British, the party leadership misled so many activists, he was no war monger. Like so many in Expop who had borne the scars of conflict, he objected to others being directed down a road of futility and grief.

Just as the wishes of his Bobby Sands were thwarted by Sinn Fein opportunists, Sa too had his funeral arrangement preferences denied him. After his burial his friend, comrade and fellow blanket man, Dixie Elliot, hit out at the exploitation of his funeral by one of the armed republican groups that had fired a volley of shots. Sa had made it quite clear to the group before he died that he did not consent to its request for a volley to be fired. Dixie made the point that:

As a close friend of the Gallagher family I can say that they are angry that this happened and that it was done without their permission.

The family considered the spectacle an embarrassment. Where possible, everybody has the right to the funeral of their choice. Deceased IRA volunteers should not have their funerary rites hijacked for the purposes of others: not Sa, not Bobby, not any volunteer. Sa, fortunately was bigger than any of that and will be remembered long after the exploitation is forgotten. Again, captured in the words of Dixie, although we grieve for him, Sa leaves us with memories which will never diminish with the passing of time.

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