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| Brendan McLauglin |
When I say a Derry man I mean that he came from Greysteel which is a few miles outside Derry on the road to Limavady. Greysteel was virtually unknown until the night of the 30th October 1993 when Loyalist gunmen burst into the Rising Sun Bar murdering eight people and wounding nineteen. Two of which were Protestants.
Brendan joined the ranks of the IRA at the very beginning of the war in 1970. He was forced to go on the run in August 1972. His mother died on Christmas Eve 1973 and he was unable to attend her funeral due to the presence of the Crown Forces. In 1974 he was sentenced to four months in Portlaoise prison for failing to account for his movements. He was released in August of that year.
Brendan was eventually captured by the British outside Greysteel in 1976, along with his brother Michael and Tom McFeely from Dungiven. He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for possession of a .22 rifle and joined the blanket protest in H5 where he was put into a cell adjoining that of Joe McDonnell, who would die on hunger strike in July 1981.
Tom McFeely would be be one of the seven men who embarked on the first hunger strike in October 1980. When that hunger strike ended in December without having achieved the Five Demands Bobby Sands immediately and on the night began putting the plans in place for a second hunger strike which would begin in March 1981.
Brendan bravely put his name forward to be included in that hunger strike and was eventually selected to replace Francis Hughes who had died on May 12th. Within a week Brendan suffered a perforated ulcer. He was forced to come off it after 14 days having been given 24 hours to live.
He was released from the H Blocks on the 5th November 1984 having served eight-and-a-half years of his twelve-year sentence, due to lost remission. Only five months after his release his brother Michael died while collecting for the PDF. Brendan formed a band in his memory, the Michael McLaughlin Memorial Flute Band.
Brendan McLaughlin was a principled Republican and for this reason he followed Ruairí Ó Brádaigh from the 1986 Ard Fheis and walked away from the lies of Adams and McGuinness as they took the Republican Movement down a path which eventually ended in a humiliating defeat. A defeat which Adams and McGuinness dressed up as a peace process. But peace and indeed a political path was always there for the taking, as John Hume often pointed out during the 1970s and 80s, only to be ridiculed by the same leadership who eventually took it.
Brendan remained with Sinn Féin Poblachtach - Republican Sinn Féin - even after he suffered a stroke in April 1999 and was confined to a wheelchair. He often attended commemorations and was a regular at the annual hunger strike commemoration held every August in Bundoran right up until his death.
I have made reference to Brendan's release from Portlaoise in August 1974. Two months later on October 30th 16 year-old IRA volunteer Michael 'Ben' Meehan was killed while on active service, when a bomb exploded prematurely while he held it on his lap in the rear of a car at a petrol station on the Strand Road. Despite being in the driver's seat, volunteer Denis 'Sa' Gallagher, who was a month off his 17th birthday, survived the blast and managed to free himself from the wreckage of the car. Sa and a third volunteer, who had been outside the car urging civilians to move away, made their way down the Strand Road towards a group of people who were gathered outside The Carraig Bar. Sa recognised a school teacher he knew and asked him to take them both to Shantallow, which he did.
Brendan was the first IRA volunteer to appear on the scene and without waiting on orders he told Sa to get into the boot of a car so that he could take him across the border to have his facial wounds treated. As they drew closer to the British army checkpoint Brendan stopped the car and told Sa to get in with him. When they pulled up at the checkpoint a British soldier opened the boot and looked inside. He then went to the driver's side, looked in and asked Brendan where they were going to and he told him Buncrana. The soldier then waved them on.
Óglach Brendan Mclaughlin passed away on the 7th December 2025. His comrades in Republican Sinn Féin placed the National Flag on his coffin. I attended the funeral and recognised Tom McFeely so I stood with him for a while and chatted. Brendan was laid to rest in the Star of the Sea Cemetery, Faughanvale.
His two sons, Michael and Brendan and his stepson Jamie are grieving for a father. His wife Loretta has lost a husband but they can rest assured that Brendan was a fearless and committed Republican who never shied away from what had to be done. He was a father and a husband to be proud of.
I measc laochra na bhFíníní go raibh sé.
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Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
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