Armagh republican Malachy Trainor spent many years on the protest, having joined it in 1977, and is the author of a number of published poetry works reviewed on TPQ by Tommy McKearney and
myself. His prison experience has made its way into the literary world courtesy of a book by Siobhan Hughes.
In I Only Went Out For The Paper, the author admits that because of the trauma in Malachy's life, his story has been hard to tell. She found it challenging to work with a subject who is 'reluctantly dodging traditional paths to speak openly about events in his life.' Malachy Trainor acknowledges that at times he can sound evasive and deliver one-sided thoughts but there is no suggestion here that he is seeking to obfuscate and lay a false trail. He simply finds it difficult to engage and communicate the hardships he endured.
Siobhan Hughes despite a refreshing bluntness has likely peered through a tinged lens in seeing a man whom the blanket protest 'has broken . . . physically and mentally.' In rightfully seeking to convey the trauma of the elongated prison protest, the author's assertion that Malachy Trainor was broken by it would not chime with the view of others. The arduous stance by the protesting prisoners without question left scars that can run very deep in some cases, even if they are worn with pride. Muffles, as he was known in the H Blocks, refers to suffering from post traumatic stress, yet his writing - in which he seeks to shun sugarcoating - has secured for him a creative victory over a punitive penal system that denied even pens and pencils in its failed bid to extinguish even the tiniest spark of creativity.
Sent out one morning in 1968 by his father on an errand to buy a paper, he was confronted by the hatred that came to be known as Paisleyism. The experience kickstarted his political odyssey, beginning with People’s Democracy, a left wing body. He was:
hooked by the civil rights movement, the expression of socialism ran like a wave through my veins . . . civil rights, socialism, republicanism and the INLA.
Hence, there is no puzzle that he would end up an INLA prisoner rather than an IRA one. The INLA would have within its ranks a considerably higher number of people inclined towards socialism than would be seen within IRA ranks, although within the prison both sets of prisoners embraced left wing ideas with gusto. While the INLA at times was not beyond the reach of sectarianism Muffles had an aversion to it. He rued that people like the late Brendan McFarlane, who led the protesting prisoners during the hunger strikes, carried out violence against the Unionist community rather than exclusively against the British.
Yet oddly for a blanketman at the coal face of resisting criminalisation he refers to the killings of Narrow Water Paratroopers as indiscriminate murder. That is a description better applied to the Paras of Bloody Sunday than the IRA volunteers who mercilessly settled the score in response to the Derry war crime. Furthermore, his description of the hunger strike as a 'horrific suicide' is likely to jar with most of those who wore the blanket alongside him.
No book about the blanket protest is worth the paper it is written on if it fails to mention the prison staff violence. Siobhan Hughes does not spare the reader the detail. Some screws were so brutal that Malachy Trainor still cannot bring himself to talk about them, while pointing out the terror and fear that they brought.
For a time he shared a cell with Brendan Hughes adjacent to the one holding Bobby Sands, and they often sang together. He refers to the nightly strategising by Brendan and Bobby, speaking to each other through the channel along which the heating pipes ran from cell to cell. Eventually released in 1983 Malachy Trainor settled into a cultural existence, pursuing his interests in music, singing, poetry, playwriting and reading.
Works in this genre add threads to the tapestry that helps readers understand the intensity of the blanket protest. and the determination with which it was prosecuted. The book, while informative, poses a difficulty in that a failure to always identify whether it is the voice of the author or that of Malachy Trainor that is narrating, leads to a certain confusion. In ways it makes its own case for the application of an editorial ruthlessness unfortunately lacking in the work.
As the narrative moves towards its conclusion Muffles says:
I have no regrets, just a memory of sorts, some people don't even have that. Some people never had a chance. I was lucky in that respect.
The reader is lucky too that Siobhan Hughes, despite the resistance, has coaxed a seasoned but often silent blanketman, Malachy Trainor, out of his personal quietude and intellectual solitude. Not for the first time the thoughts and experiences of this quiet and reflective soul have found expression in the literary world. That is truly a victory for the blanketmen.
Siobhan Hughes, 2025, I only went out for the paper: Memoirs of an Irish Republican Prisoner.
Publisher: Nielsons. ISBN-13: 978-1836545194
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