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Peadar Whelan
A JOURNALIST’S POLITICAL EDUCATION
BY PEADAR WHELAN
On my release from the H Blocks after 16 years, I began work with An Phoblacht. As a former life sentence prisoner, writing for the ‘Phoblacht’ was a platform for political work, an extension of the political education I was involved in while in jail. It was about promoting republican ideals and policies as well as challenging the narrative of the struggle, particularly that of the mainstream media and our political opponents.
Writing for this 50th Anniversary edition of the paper, I recall how often in situations where I would be labelled a journalist, I would retort “I’m not a journalist, I’m a political activist who uses the media to further republican politics.”
However, these political aspirations, these ideas that what I would be engaged in high flying political argument, promoting the ideals and vision of the republic with our ideological enemies, came crashing down in the reality of Belfast in February 1992.
In my first week, eight nationalist civilians were gunned down in two separate attacks on the Sinn Féin centre on the Falls Road at Sevastopol Street and in Sean Graham’s Bookmakers on the Ormeau Road. Eleven others were wounded in the shootings which were carried out by an RUC member and a notorious UDA gang based in the Annadale area of South Belfast.
I recalled that week in an article titled ‘February 1992 – A Baptism of Fire’, which was carried in the February 2017 edition which marked the 25th Anniversary of the killings.
In that article, I highlighted the killing of IRA Volunteer Joe McManus who was shot dead by a British soldier in Fermanagh.
Also shot dead by loyalists that week was Padraig Ó Cléirigh an Irish language activist and Black Taxi driver.
And, reading through that 25th anniversary article, I described how I got to know women like Rita McCracken, mother of IRA Volunteer Kevin McCracken killed in action in March 1988, and Patricia Campbell from Turf Lodge who supported me and other life sentence prisoners who were released on license through the North’s ‘Work Out’ scheme.
Both these strong republican women are now dead.
With the reality of these attacks comes the realisation that the political In my first week, eight establishments across the North, in Britain, and in the nationalist civilians were 26 Counties were willing to ignore the British military gunned down in two strategy that we now know separate attacks on the and accept as collusion. And the more and more Sinn Féin centre on the republicans pointed out that the British military and Falls Road at Sevastopol RUC were facilitating the loyalist death squads in one Street and in Sean way or another, the more we were told that our claims Graham’s Bookmakers of collusion were merely propaganda.
A lot of credit must go to Laura Friel and our other writers who logged so many incidents involving loyalist death squads, listing the activities of the crown forces before and after attacks and seeing the patterns emerge. One all too common example was when a heavy crown force presence in an area would disappear only for a loyalist gun gang to appear. The killing of Kathleen O’Hagan in August 1994 by the UVF is an example of the fundamental nature of collusion and exposes how the RUC campaigned against the family. Kathleen’s husband Paddy was a former H Block prisoner, The RUC continually carrying out raids on their home and sent out a message to loyalists that the O’Hagan family were ‘legitimate targets’. An Phoblacht travelled to the O’Hagan home in County Tyrone and spoke to local republicans. They brought us to where the ‘getaway’ car was abandoned and speculated that, given the remote nature of the area, their suspicions were that members of the UDR were involved and that they melted into the countryside ‘on patrol’.
www.anphoblacht.com MONDAY 3 FEBRUARY 1992 began with the news that the driver of a black taxi, Pádraig Ó Clérigh, had been shot dead in his north Belfast home by a UDA gun gang. A member of the Falls Taxi Association, Pádraig was well known in Irish-language circles and was on the Conradh na Gaeilge Executive Committee. Just months before he was gunned down he spoke on RTÉ’s Cúrsaí programme about the sectarian attacks on the Association’s drivers that left two of them dead – Thomas Hughes, gunned down in July 1991, and Hugh Magee, killed in a hail of bullets in October 1991 as he ferried passengers to Ardoyne.With the news of Ó Clérigh’s death ringing in my ears, I made my way to the community hub where my “work outplacement” was based. The building, only 200 yards from the An Phoblacht ‘bunker’ which also housed the Party President’s Office meant I could skip out at break-time and touch base with the An Phoblacht/Republican News team. The staff were going through a transition as Northern Editor Jake Mac Siacais (whom I knew from the H-Blocks) was moving on to be replaced by Mickey McMullan (himself not long released on licence from the H-Blocks). It was due to my close friendship with Mickey and my work as a PRO in the H-Blocks (as well as a sometimes columnist for An Glór Gafa, a jail periodical magazine produced by republican POWs incarcerated in England, the North, the Free State and further afield) that ensured my political activ-ism would centre on publicity and An Phoblacht/ Republican News when I was released. My first experience of the office was a daunting experience – ringing the bell on the outer security cage, being buzzed in to stand at the second grille below the security camera to be scrutinised by unseen eyes before someone would eventually appear at the door and ‘magic’ me in before slamming the door, firmly locking it shut. People I had never met before (Terry, Kieran, Mickey and Kevin) but who would become close friends and comrades stared at me from the admin room, looking at a face that wore an expression akin to that of a rabbit caught in headlights. Squeezing my way through to the claustrophobic “Editorial Department” I was again met with bemused stares. Laura Friel, shoehorned into a cramped box space in front of what then passed for a top-ofthe-range Apple Mac, greeted me, as did Jake and Mickey. Big Mick was to come on board later. Both were busy discussing with Laura how the killing of Pádraig Ó Clérigh would be covered. For my first foray into republican journalism on the outside I was allocated some short “In Brief” stories and packed off to write them up. It was on Tuesday 4 February, though, that I came to realise with bitter experience just how central to the republican struggle An Phoblacht/Republican News was. The paper was single-handedly challenging the Establishment narrative of the Northern war and prising open the steel shutters of silence and censorship behind which the British war machine was skulking. I made my way to the office at lunchtime as I was trying to establish a pattern whereby I would leave my workplace and tie in with Jake and Mickey and see what they needed me to do. While there, the relaxed but business-like atmosphere changed with one phone call. A gunman had entered the Sinn Féin offices at Sevastopol Street on the Falls Road and opened fire in the confines of the reception area. It was already clear that people were dead but who or how many was uncertain. For me the next few minutes were a blur as Jake, with years of experience, organised the response and, before I knew it, a driver, journalist and photographer were dispatched to the scene. As these were the days before mobile phones and instant communications, the next hours were a confusing maelstrom of rumour, speculation and some hard news. Eventually we were able to establish that a lone gunman, having gained access to the building, opened fire, killing three people and badly wounding two others. Of the dead, two were Sinn Féin activists: Paddy Loughran and former ‘Blanketman’ Pat McBride. The third fatality was Michael O’Dwyer, a local man availing of the party’s renowned constitu-ency service. WITH the 25th anniversaries of two of the most notorious incidents of the conflict falling in the first two weeks of February, PEADAR WHELAN looks back on his first week as an An Phoblacht/Republican News photo-journalist. It was a week that left nine nationalists dead in separate gun attacks across Belfast while, on the Fermanagh border, a young IRA Volunteer from Sligo, Joseph MacManus (22), died on active service, shot dead by a member of the British Army. In the first of two deadly assaults, on Tuesday 4 February 1992, Royal Ulster Constabulary police officer Allan Moore shot dead three men and wounded two others in Sinn Féin’s Belfast headquarters at Sevastopol Street. The following day, Wednesday 5 February, a unionist gun gang from the Ulster Defence Association rampaged through Seán Graham’s bookmakers’ shop on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast, killing five customers and wounding nine other people. For Peadar Whelan, those two days were a baptism of fire like no other as he had just embarked on the second phase of his pre-release scheme from the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, where he had spent 16 years, four of them spent on the Blanket and No Wash protests. Prisoners serving life sentences in the Six Counties went through a pre-release scheme before they were freed on licence. Peadar was in a community project in Turf Lodge where a number of republican women looked out for them, especially Rita McCracken and her friend Patricia. Rita’s son, Volunteer Kevin McCracken, shot dead by the British Army in 1988, was in the H-Blocks with Peadar. (Rita sadly died in August 2016.) As a native of Derry, which escaped the worst excesses of pro-British terror gangs, that first week with “the paper” brought into sharp focus the reality of brutal, bigoted sectarianism on one level and the degree of political abandonment experienced by Northern nationalists as the political establishments, North and South, turned the other way.] A baptism of fire with An Phoblacht A gunman had entered the Sinn Féin offices at Sevastopol Street on the Falls Road and opened fire It is in situations like this that heroes are found in the most unlikely of places 5 'An Phoblacht' reports on the aftermath
Those wounded included ex-H-Blocks POW Pat Wilson and Nora Larkin. And it is in situations like this that heroes are found in the most unlikely of places. Marguerite Gallagher, a well-known stalwart at the Green Cross Art Shop (selling prisoner crafts, flags, posters, books, etc) next door, heard the shooting. Instinctively, and fearlessly, she followed the assailant to his car parked on Sevastopol Street and tried to grab the murderer before he sped away. In the aftermath of the shooting, the RUC heavy gang Divisional Mobile Support Units (DMSU) deployed to the scene revealed their anti-republican bias when they abused and harassed party members concerned about the welfare of relatives and friends inside, lying dead or wounded. Not surprisingly, the finger of blame was initially The murderer was a member of an elite unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
5 Marguerite Gallagher, who was in the Green Cross Art Shop, chased and tried to grab gunman 5 Relatives for Justice investigation – 'Seán Graham Bookmakers Atrocity'
pointed at loyalist gun gangs but, as the day wore on, it was established that the killer, Allan Moore, was a serving member of the RUC – in fact the elite and notorious DMSU based in west Belfast and whose colleagues had been sent to investigate! Within hours of the attack, and around the same time as RUC man Moore’s body was discovered on the shores of Lough Neagh, where he is said to have taken his own life, a caller to a Belfast newsroom was naming the killer as a member of the unionist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association. The repercussions of the attack on the Sinn Féin party dominated discussions on the Wednesday when I again arrived at the office and the call linking Moore to the UDA was being intensely debated. Shockingly, it would be the UDA that would dominate the discourse with its systematic slaughter in the Seán Graham Bookmakers’ shop on the Lower Ormeau Road in south Belfast. Two gunmen entered the building and opened fire with a Czech-made VZ58 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol, killing five males, ranging from 15 5 Óglach Joe MacManus was killed in action in County Fermanagh t66 years of age, and wounding almost everyone else in the building as they had no escape route. Just as with the attack on Tuesday, people went into overdrive as they attempted to ascertain the details for the paper, which was then published weekly and went to the printer on a Thursday. Frantic phone calls were made to local repub-licans. As the day wore on, more and more information came through and it was obvious that the print deadline would have to be delayed to allow the reporters to produce as full an account of the incident as possible.Not surprisingly, collusion and the role of the RUC was raised as local people reported that the UDA killers casually walked across to University Avenue to their escape car which was waiting The UDA dominated the discourse with its systematic slaughter in the Seán Graham Bookmakers’ shop just yards from where two police armoured Land Rovers had been sitting until just minutes before the attack.
In their excellent publication, Seán Graham Bookmakers’ Atrocity, Relatives for Justice exposed the extent of the collusion between the RUC and the loyalists in this massacre, including how the pistol used was ‘stolen’ from an Ulster Defence Regiment British Army base by UDA killer Ken Barrett, who gave it to UDA quartermaster William Stobie – both men RUC informers. And both men were involved in the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane. Now, 25 years later, it is clear that An Phoblacht/Republican News was to the fore of challenging the British, the unionist and the Free State establishments’ narrative of the conflict in Ireland, ensuring that the republican analysis was heard. I am proud to have played my part with ‘the paper’, back in the day and today.
Where the story of Kathleen O’Hagan’s killing leads is into the fraught and highly contentious area of legacy and how we deal with consequences of the conflict. Portadown on the Garvaghy Road, in Ardoyne, and on the In the years after she was gunned down, two of Kathleen’s Ormeau Road. In one memorable night on the Ormeau Road, five children have died in tragic circumstances. Tomás, the we, amongst many other vigilant residents, sat with the English youngest when his mother was shot dead, died in a fire on the comedian Jeremy Hardy in the family farm. He was seven when he died. Niall was killed in a Lower Ormeau Residents offices motor cycle crash in 2008, while, in between in 2002, Paddy with the RUC surrounding the died of a massive heart attack. building. These children and their remaining siblings were The RUC had imposed a traumatised by the killing of their mother and are curfew on the area in order to REPUBLICAN NEWS ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES £1 €1.10 90p Sraith Nua Iml 27 Uimhir 27 Déardaoin 15 Íuil 2004 INSTERLING AREAS British responsible for Ardoyne The trouble flared after the PSNI, in defiance of a Parades Commission ruling, escorted Orange Order supporters, including unionist paramilitaries, along the nationalist Crumlin Road and past the Ardoyne shops and the nationalist Mountainview estates. Meanwhile, hemmed-in residents were confronted by up to 2,000 British soldiers and PSNI riot squads.Kelly told the media that the British Paratroopers deployed on Monday night had only been drafted into the Six Counties that day and hadn’t a clue where they were or why they were there. He added that the PSNI moved the Paras right into the Ardoyne area and this was “a recipe for disaster” given the tension that existed in the area.“The NIO created the situation in Ardoyne on Monday night,” said Kelly. “It was clear from the way things had panned out during the day that loyalists were going to be allowed up the Crumlin Road. The PSNI made it clear that they were in charge, not the Parades Commission.” “They would not have made the decision to allow the marchers past without the political approval of the NIO. And because the NIO had been threatened by loyalist groups and unionist politicians, the decision was taken to force the parade through - the same way they did on Garvaghy Road in 1995.“When I phoned NIO Minister Ian Pearson about the situation on Monday night, he actually told me to calm things down and ring him back.“I think it is outrageous that a British minister expects myself and my colleagues to calm down an escalating and volatile situation which the NIO created in the first place.” Kelly added that when Sinn Féin attempted to contact Secretary of State Paul Murphy to discuss the PSNI’s facilitation of Black Perceptory marchers in Lurgan on the evening of 13 July, he was instructed that Murphy was having dinner and was therefore unavailable. trouble RESPONSIBILITYfor the trouble that erupted in Ardoyne on Monday lies with the British Secretary of State, Sinn Féin spokesperson on policing, North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly, told a press conference on Wednesday. BY ÁINE Ní BHRIAIN AND THEY CALL THEM GAMES In a special two-part series, An Phoblacht’s JOANNE CORCORAN looks at the political issues that have marred the Olympic Games PAGES10 & 11 ‘victims’ of the conflict. The British and the unionists want to define ‘victimhood’ in a way that suits their narrative and their hierarchy of ‘victimhood’ excludes this family. Of course, it was always important for us as activists that we stayed focused on the nature of the Orange State, particularly with the issue of loyalist parades becoming a dominant feature of the North’s politics. Through our coverage and reporting, we built relationships with people across the North in facilitate an Orange Parade the following day. Hardy who was supporting the residents’ objections to the Orange Parade referenced the experience in a Guardian article written in August 1999. Describing the issue at the core of the marching dispute, Hardy wrote “We are not dealing with competing traditions. We are dealing with expressions of dominance and the reactions of the dominated. The Parades Commission cannot balance the right to humiliate with the right not to be humiliated”. If there is one point I would make to finish off and sum up the important role An Phoblacht played in these situations, it would be that around this time I ended up ‘doing the photos’ and was in Ardoyne to cover the annual coat-trailing Orange Parade on its return journey to Ballysillan. In a stroke of genius, the British deployed the Parachute Regiment to the area and, needless to say, the tension in the area was sky high and unsurprisingly erupted into severe rioting, during which I was hit on the head with a missile! The cover of that week’s paper carried one of my photos, a young man on the ground as an RUC officer stood over him with his baton raised. Every other media outlet that week pointed the finger of blame on the people of Ardoyne for the trouble, whereas our image exposed the RUC as the aggressors. A job well done.
