I met Volunteer Michael Devine, known as Red Mick in H2, shortly before my own trial in a Diplock Court, which had been set for June of that year, 1977.
We bonded because of the fact that we were both from Derry. I knew virtually nothing about socialism until I began to walk the exercise yard with Red Mick. I'm told that his nickname came more from the fact that he had red hair than from his socialist convictions, not that there would ever be any doubt about those.
He was born in Springtown Camp on 26th May 1954. The camp had formerly been a World War II US Navy/Army base which was situated on the outskirts of Derry between the Buncrana Road and the Northland Road. It consisted of corrugated iron Nissen huts; much like the ones which would be erected in Long Kesh for the Internees in the early 1970s.
In later life Mick would refer to Springtown Camp as "the slum to end all slums." During the bitter cold months of winter parents would stack coats over their children to protect him from the cold. When he was six years of age, the Devine family, including his grandmother, sister Margaret and parents Patrick and Elizabeth, moved to Creggan estate.
The poverty and living conditions he and his family experienced, in what was more or less a shanty town, lit a revolutionary flame in the heart of young Michael Devine. What he witnessed first-hand on the streets of Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972 further fanned the flame of freedom and he would go on to become a founder/member of the Irish National Liberation Army.
After spending two weeks in H2 I was sent back to Crumlin Road Gaol for my trial. Even though we both went on the Blanket Protest I never met Mick again. He joined the 1981 hunger strike and died at 7.50 am on Thursday, August 20th, the 10th and last hunger striker to die.
Fuair sé bás ar son saoirse na hÉireann.
"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
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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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