Irish Republican Literature 1968-1998: Standing on the Threshold of Another Trembling World by Justin Hill

IRISH REPUBLICAN LITERATURE 1968-1998: “STANDING ON THE THRESHOLD OF ANOTHER TREMBLING WORLD”

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By David F. Fanning, M.A. *****

The Ohio State University 2003

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Morris Beja, Adviser Professor Barbara Rigney Professor Sebastian Knowles

_______________________ Adviser English Graduate Program

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1960s, Ireland has seen an intense struggle for national selfdetermination waged on its own soil. This struggle is an extension of a centuries-long fight to free Ireland from British rule and establish an Irish Republic comprising the entirety of the island. This project examines the literary productions of Irish Republicans and analyzes the ways in which this literature interrogates notions of history and negotiates power within continually shifting conceptions of nationalism. It is impossible to understand Ireland without understanding the Anglo-Irish conflict and how it has been examined and critiqued by Irish writers. As such, it is irresponsible and scholastically suspect if scholars ignore the material emanating from what have quite literally been the front lines of that conflict. A preoccupation with questions of identity and belonging typifies much Irish writing. By examining Irish Republican texts written between the resumption of armed conflict in the north of Ireland in 1968 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, I show that the discursive complexities of the national situation are mirrored and in some cases anticipated by Irish Republican writing in ways which can shed light on Irish culture in general. I demonstrate that it is a mistake to view nationalism as modular and unchanging; indeed, I show that conceptions of nationalism in Ireland have developed and changed in complex ways in recent years. The present project attempts to place the literature produced by members of the Irish Republican movement within the context of Irish history as well as within the history of Irish

literature, demonstrating Irish Republican literatureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important place in discussions of the interplay between history and expression and between writing and warfare. My first chapter is an overview of modern Irish literary history with a focus on the development of nationalist thought. It establishes the crucial role played by nationalist discourses in the formation of Irish literature and draws connections between this literature and the concerns of literary and critical theory. The chapters which follow examine specific modes and trends of Republican discourse. Chapter 2 argues that Republican autobiographies subvert autobiographical conventions by shifting the focus of the text from the author to the community, with the text becoming a critique of national and historiographical ideologies. The third chapter focuses on the writings of Irish Republican prisoners from the advent of internment without trial in 1971 to the hunger strikes of 1981, and argues that the literature of this second battlefield reads as a condensed history of Irish literature as a whole, with all its themes of exile, loss and perseverance. The final chapter demonstrates that Irish Republican writing often blurs the distinction between the material and the imaginary by addressing the political issues facing nationalist communities in the years following the hunger strikes. Together, the chapters trace the evolution and development of an area of Irish literary history which has too often been ignored.

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Dedicated to Maria

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The topic of my dissertation is unusual for doctoral students in English, and it took the trust and help of many people to gain access to some of the information included herein. From the Republican movement, I’d like to thank Francie Broderick, Joe Cahill, Toni and Peter Carragher, Noel Cassidy, Pat Doherty, Seán Fay, Gina Herold, Richard Johnson, Bobby Laverty, Micheál Mac Giolla Ghunna, the late Seán MacStiofáin, Gerry McGeough, the late John McGuffin, the late Jack McKinney, Danny Morrison, Matt Morrison, Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh, Seán Oilibhéar and Chris Ward. In addition to these individuals, I’d also like to extend my thanks to the leadership and volunteers of Sinn Féin and the Irish Northern Aid Committee. I also deeply appreciate the trust given me by the men and women of the Irish Republican Army. My greatest thanks go to the people of the north of Ireland who were so generous with their time and energy and without whom this project would never have been completed. On the academic side of things, my greatest thanks go to my advisor Murray Beja, whose encouragement and interest were always there and always (if at times silently) appreciated. I also thank Chad Allen, Vincent Cheng, Walter (Mac) Davis, Leigh

Gilmore, Wayne Hall, Noel Ignatiev, Ellen Carol Jones, Sebastian Knowles, Seamus Metress, Barbara Rigney and Robert White.

VITA

August 13, 1971 ......................................................................... Born â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Cincinnati, Ohio 1994.......................................................................B.A. English, University of Cincinnati 1994-2000................................. Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 1996...................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract...........................................................................................................................ii Dedication...................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments........................................................................................................... v Vita ............................................................................................................................... vii Note on Terminology ..................................................................................................... ix Chapters: 1.

Introduction: Mise Éire — Irish Republicanism and Literature to 1968................ 1

Irish Republican Autobiography: Power, Community, History........................... 51

Irish Republican Prison Culture from Internment to Hunger Strike .................... 99

“Until that certain day”: Irish Republican Writing Since the Hunger Strikes .... 158

Afterword.................................................................................................................... 223 Endnotes ..................................................................................................................... 227 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 235 Glossary...................................................................................................................... 246

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NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

The terminology used to describe the national and political situation in Ireland is largely a matter of calling a spade a shovel. Often, clues to a speaker’s political background can be found in the very words she or he uses to discuss the island and the powers and factions which exist within it. First, there is the problem of the nomenclature to be employed when referring to the land itself. Politically, the island of Ireland is divided into two states known as the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Republic is also referred to by some as the Saorstat, or Free State. “The South” is often used in reference to the Republic, as is, less frequently, “Southern Ireland.” The Northern Ireland state is referred to variously as “Ulster,” and simply, “the North.” There are problems with all of these names, as Irish Republicans are quick to point out. For Republicans, “the Republic” is a misnomer, since the goal of both the original Republicans and their modern day equivalents is the establishment of a sovereign, allisland state, and this sovereignty is obviously denied in reality; since a Republic cannot be anything less than a united sovereign state, using the term “Republic” to refer to the truncated twenty-six county state is seen as inaccurate. Likewise, the term Saorstat is generally only used by Republicans to refer to the Republic in a sarcastic manner, though it is used by others without negative connotations, when used at all. As far as variations

on “North” and “South” go, the fact that the northernmost part of Ireland, County Donegal, is, using this logic, in the south of Ireland, defeats any real purpose these terms may serve: that said, they are used so frequently that their acceptance as shorthand is general. “Ulster” is frequently used by English politicians and the media, as well as by Loyalists and unionists, to describe the six-county state; this, too, is inaccurate, as the term “Ulster” refers to the ancient kingdom of Ulster (in Irish Ulaid), which comprised what are now nine counties (the six occupied counties, plus Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan). Republicans, then, refer to what is known as the Republic of Ireland as “the twenty-six counties” and what is known as Northern Ireland as “the six counties.” I will follow this practice with a few exceptions. It should be noted that some people use the term Éire, the Irish Gaelic word for “Ireland.” This is normally only used when speaking in Gaelic or when referring to the island as a whole. It is inaccurate to refer to the twentysix counties as Éire, though that was technically the state’s name before it declared itself the Republic of Ireland. The term “statelet” has acquired a certain degree of currency in recent years among Republicans, particularly with Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, for referring to both the six and twenty-six county states, and the implications of this are quite interesting. First, “state” is used instead of “nation” because the latter term implies a degree of collective/national self-determination that Republicans are quick to point out was never a factor in the creation of “Northern Ireland” by the British Government of Ireland Act of 1920 or the Anglo-Irish treaty signed in December 1921, which made partition a political reality. The word “statelet” further implies that the state in question is

in actuality only an artificially-created part of what should in fact be a whole (a thirty-two county republic). However, although the importance of recognizing the difference between a “nation” and a “state” is essential to the type of political analysis I will be venturing in this text, the distinctions between “state” and “statelet” seem less welldefined and more a matter of semantics than anything else — for this reason, I will not strictly adhere to either term. Other terminology which could be confusing involves the couplets Republican/ nationalist and Loyalist/unionist. These terms are often conflated, but most Republican literature imbues each word with specific meanings. “Nationalist” refers to those who desire a united Ireland, whereas “unionist” refers to those who favor the union of the north of Ireland with England and the rest of the “United Kingdom.” A “Republican” is a nationalist who approves of the use of violence to achieve the goal of national reunification; a “Loyalist” is a unionist who approves of the use of violence to maintain British rule in Ireland. The term “terrorism,” often used when discussing acts by Republicans, is inextricably tied to notions of nation, and imperialist notions of nationhood at that. The word is typically used to refer to those actions of unofficial armies — those not under the control of a recognized state — and, hence, any anti-imperialist army or anticolonial uprising will always be considered terroristic since the state for which it is fighting either is unrecognized or does not yet exist. The term decidedly does not refer to behavior or actions: the actions of an official military grouping, even if recognized by the controlling state and the rest of the world as atrocities, are not labeled terrorism. The term is simply a

dysphemism, and its great propaganda value is something all revolutionary movements (especially those which are actively militant) must get used to and attempt to fight against through their own war of words. As a result of this situation, I refrain from using the word in this dissertation except to discuss its meaning and its propaganda value. Quotations or expressions from the Irish Gaelic are translated immediately after their use in the text; unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. A glossary of terms, abbreviations and nomenclature which may be unfamiliar to the reader is included following the text.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION:

MISE ÉIRE — IRISH REPUBLICANISM AND LITERATURE TO 1968

In the early 1940s, midway between the Easter Uprising of 1916 and the civil rights campaigns of the late 1960s, the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh reflected on the years of conflict which had resulted in the formation of the twenty-six county state. His poem, “Seed Wheat 1916-1922,” looks to the past and future together and examines the transition from mythology to liberation: We then were fed On stars not bread, And when we stepped From hill to hill ’Twas logic — Not a miracle, For we were fed On stars, not bread. And we have still From hill to hill Men striding with The ancient tread. And what was myth And high-star fed Is the germ of a people’s Daily bread. (Kavanagh 138)

At the time of writing, the state was known as Éire, having ratified its own constitution in 1937. From the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty in December 1921 until 1937, it had been the Irish Free State, Saorstat hÉireann. In April 1949, the twenty-six counties were declared the Republic of Ireland: a clear sign that the government of the day had given up the hope of establishing the thirty-two county Republic which had been the goal of the revolution a generation earlier. Kavanagh wrote, then, during a time of flux between the immediate aftermath of the Civil War (1922-1923) and the declaration of the twenty-six counties as the Republic for which so many fell. He also wrote during a time when the nationalist mythology was breaking down, being relegated to history books and folklore, even becoming quaint. Yet Kavanagh does not denigrate what could be read as the Irish national creation story as being purely “myth / And high-star fed”: he recognizes the importance, even the necessity, of the nationalist mythology, and its power to transform narrative into social action. Narrative has always been important to Irish nationalism; the nineteenth-century nationalist newspapers (The Nation, The United Irishman, and The Irish Felon in the days of the Young Ireland group, the Fenian Irish People, Parnell’s United Ireland, and Griffith’s United Irishman) all played important roles in the dissemination of Irish nationalist discourse. However, until the advent of widespread literacy in the twentieth century, Irish nationalism was primarily an oral discourse, frequently propagated through songs, poems and ballads. The early twentieth century saw the literacy rates in both English and Irish rise dramatically in Ireland. The printed word took on a power it did not previously possess,

and the literature of the nationalist movement became imbued with a symbolic power which went beyond the mere dissemination of information. While the Irish Revival of Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, and others had a tremendous effect on the formation of Irish nationalist mythology, it was the words of the martyrs which took on the most symbolic power: the speeches of Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet (massively reprinted and distributed at this time), the writings of the Fenian dead, Pádraic Pearse’s oration at the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa, and, most importantly, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic as read by Pearse on the front steps of the General Post Office in Dublin at the beginning of the Easter Uprising of 1916. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic is perhaps the single most important document in the history of Irish Republicanism, that branch of Irish nationalism which holds the use of qualified political violence to be justified in the absence of constitutional means to work toward the goal of Irish independence and unification. The Proclamation sums up the ideological position of Irish Republicanism in 1916 while at the same time tapping into (and to some degree, creating) a symbolic power that was lurking beneath the social fabric of Irish society: Poblacht na hÉireann The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers, and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory. 3

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish republic as a sovereign independent state, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comradesin-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. The Irish republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past. Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishing of a permanent national government, representative of the whole people of Ireland, and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the republic in trust for the people. We place the cause of the Irish republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. Signed on behalf of the provisional government, Thomas J. Clarke, Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett (FDA III.733-734)1 We can see some of the main ideological forces behind Irish Republicanism of this period in the Easter Proclamation: the emphasis on God (carefully constructed in this document as a non-denominational deity); the “old tradition of nationhood” received from “dead generations”; the maternalization of Ireland; the reliance on notions of “right” and “sovereignty”; and the importance of sacrifice. Some of the ideas and ideals of the

Proclamation reflect traditional beliefs of honor, patience and discipline in warfare; others are fairly new and radical for their day: for example, the inclusion of women as a part of the rhetorical audience and the specific reference to female suffrage (included at the insistence of Countess Constance Markievicz) before women’s right to vote existed in either England or the United States. Most importantly, however, the Proclamation posits the existence of an unbroken thread of nationalist thought that has come down through the generations: the idea that the nationalist impulse has always been present in Ireland, even in the worst of times, is of the utmost importance to Irish nationalist mythology. The age and history of this impulse give it a power beyond the realm of the realpolitik — a power normally reserved for religious discourse. The emphasis on the ancient and mystical in early twentieth-century Irish nationalism is well demonstrated in Pearse’s important undated poem “Mise Éire” (“I Am Ireland”): Mise Éire, Is sine mé ná an Chailleach Béara. Mór mo ghlóir, Mé do rug Cú Chullain cróga. Mór mo náire, Mo chlann Féin do dhíol a máthair. Mise Éire, Is uaigní mé ná an Chailleach Béara. (quoted in Adams, Free 118) The poem’s simple power is preserved in the English translation: I am Ireland, I am older than the Old Woman of Beare. Great is my glory, I bore Cuchulainn the brave. Great is my shame, My own family sold their mother. I am Ireland, I am lonelier than the Old Woman of Beare. 5

The Proclamation and poems like “Mise Éire” try to invent Ireland, not ex nihilo, but from fragments. To say “I am Ireland,” is to attempt to create a metaphysical connection between the people as a group (and the revolutionaries in particular) and the land; the land itself becomes an entity (the seanbhean bhocht, or poor old woman). After the Civil War, such a feeling was dead, or at least mortally wounded, in the twenty-six counties: the older mythology began to be seen by the general population as quaint and romantic (forgetting that while this was how the mythology was originally seen by most people it actually succeeded in gaining putative independence for the twenty-six counties). The revolution in Ireland was left incomplete: following the Civil War, the twenty-six county population largely accepted the limited independence gained through the Anglo-Irish war. This acceptance deeply alienated many Republican veterans in the twenty-six counties, not to mention those in the six remaining under British rule. This alienation is reflected in the increasing fragmentation of Irish culture in the years following the Civil War. The growing acceptance of partition in the “south,” the workings of the six-county government, and the stagnation brought about by the fact that independence changed little for many, all resulted in the weakening of the nationalist mythos. (This stagnation is similar to that reflected so well in the works of James Joyce, though that earlier stagnation was largely due to the social factors of Dublin before the Easter Uprising.) As a result, what we commonly call “culture” was pushed increasingly to the margins: state censorship affected many of those writing in the generation following the Civil War, and the Catholic state constructed so carefully by Eamon De Valera relegated the arts to a position of little importance and went against the aims of the

nonsectarian Easter Proclamation. While the twenty-six county government achieved a sort of decolonization, it is hard to say that Irish literature was ever decolonized: indeed, most of the material I will be touching on in this chapter is still engaged in the process of coming to terms with its colonial past and establishing an identity. In his important 1985 collection of essays Celtic Revivals, Seamus Deane writes of the nationalist mythology that “it is a moral passion more than it is a political ideology. It was and is so imbued with the sense of the past as a support for action in the present that it has never looked beyond that. This is particularly true after the end of the War of Independence in 1921” (15). Deane’s statement is true for Irish nationalism in the twentysix counties in the decades following the 1920s. I argue in this project, however, that while this stagnation developed and intensified in the twenty-six counties, the nationalist tradition did not suffer the same sort of decline in the north. While Deane is accurate in his portrayal of nationalism’s decrepitude in the south and in his assertion that “its separation from socialism left it ideologically invertebrate” (15), his comments do not accurately convey the dynamics of nationalism in the north, the location of the front lines both physically and philosophically. Nationalism in the north did decline as an ideology after the war years, and it did suffer the same loss of bearings which the Republican movement’s gradual withdrawal from socialism caused, but the movement did not end there. Irish nationalism’s rebirth in the late 1960s in the six northeastern counties marked something far more important than the simple resurrection of a dead ideology: it marked a reformulation of the nationalist ideology itself, a redefinition of the Irish mythos that had considerably less to do with Wolfe Tone or the slaughter of Catholics under

Cromwell than it did with the next-door neighbor’s inability to pay the gas bill. While the nationalism of the south continued its slow decline well into the 1990s, the nationalist areas of the north had been living a different set of experiences and a different mythos for some time. This chapter provides an overview of Irish literature and Republicanism in the period preceding the advent of civil rights agitation in the northern counties in the late 1960s. I trace the origins of the nationalist mythology in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Irish literature and show its development through the major changes brought by the ensuing decades. I demonstrate the fragmentation seen in works by Republicans in the years following the Civil War, as well as the alienation felt by most in the twenty-six counties with Republican ideals and the effects this alienation had on both the mythology and Republican veterans. By focusing both on Republicans who have entered the Irish literary canon (such as Frank O’Connor, Seán O’Faolain, Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Liam O’Flaherty) and those writers who have remained better known in the political than the literary sphere (for example, General Tom Barry, Dan Breen and Kathleen Clarke), I show how this alienation affected a cross-section of Republicans in the twenty-six counties as they tried to determine what remained of the old mythology and how it could be adapted to a different world. I also show that the literary material of the time, while differing in so many ways from what was to follow, acts as a necessary prelude to the writing and the thinking to come. Later chapters will examine the position of northern writers, particularly Republican writers and the ways they have updated, amended, and revitalized the nationalist mythos.

Thomas MacDonagh, one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Uprising, wrote in the Preface to his 1916 Literature in Ireland: Studies Irish and Anglo-Irish, that “the ways of life and the ways of thought of the Irish people — the manners, customs, traditions and outlook, religious, social and moral — have important differences from the ways of life and of thought which have found expression in other English literature” (viii). One of the primary aims of both the Revivalist movement and the more Gaelicoriented scholarship exemplified by MacDonagh’s work is the differentiation of Irish literature, whether written in Irish or English, from English literature. We can see important moves in this direction in Douglas Hyde’s famous 1892 speech on “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” and in George Moore’s 1900 address on “Literature and the Irish Language,” both coming at the end of the nineteenth century. The foundation of the Gaelic League, Conradh na Gaeilge, in 1893, provided considerable impetus towards the creation of literature in Irish as well as widespread (and successful) literacy programs. MacDonagh’s work, however, is primarily concerned with tracing the influences of Gaelic language and culture on works written by Irish writers in the English language. The problem of what made “Hiberno-English” or “Anglo-Irish” literature distinctive, a genre of its own, was of great concern to many writers of the day, whatever their political motivations or opinions. This need to define, delineate, and distinguish between terms of self and other is essential to the development of nationalist movements and denotes a key moment in the process of establishing an identity as a nation. Having come to the conclusion that the

Irish were as capable as the English of achieving a culture, the Irish now had to develop a sense of national consciousness: a sense of separation, of difference. Once the notion is accepted that such a thing as an “Irish culture” exists beyond the terms of “English culture,” it becomes necessary to reclaim it — to dig into the archive and restore the lost memory, the forgotten history. It is not enough to have a culture merely in the present: it must be shown to have existed all along. This is the cornerstone of Irish nationalist thought: Ireland has always existed (at least practically speaking) and the Irish nation has existed as long as Ireland has been inhabited. Or, to put it in the cruder terms of an old jingle, “Ireland was Ireland when England was a pup; Ireland will be Ireland when England’s buggered up” (Adams, “Sláinte” 45). The easiest and most successful way of demonstrating the existence of a different and autonomous culture in Ireland — a culture which predated English influence and indeed English culture itself — was through the Irish language. Benedict Anderson has eloquently argued in his Imagined Communities (1983) that the advent of print-capitalism is quite possibly the single most important development in the history of nationalism, creating as it does a community of readers who do not otherwise know of each other but whose existence is inherently posited by the existence of a print culture. Although it was not the case in Ireland, aristocracies typically had no interest in forcing their language of state onto the people under their control: this meant that the people had a connection which lay dormant until widespread printing made it apparent that there was a very real link between an individual reader and thousands of others unknown to him or her. Of course, for this link to become clear, there had to be a community of readers — literacy is

a necessary element to this argument, and it is not surprising to learn that these nationalist instincts arose originally among the bourgeoisie. Anderson does not discuss Ireland in his book, and the literary history of Ireland complicates his argument considerably. We have two languages to consider: English and Irish, and the fact that large sections of the population were illiterate in both until the late nineteenth century. Widespread education brought about increased literacy in English at about the same time that organizations like Conradh na Gaeilge were being founded to promote literacy in Irish. This resulted in the perception of there being two distinct communities vying for one’s attention and allegiance. The existence of the two languages also deeply affected the ways in which Ireland was perceived and invented as a nation. As Anderson writes, “If radical Mozambique speaks Portuguese, the significance of this is that Portuguese is the medium through which Mozambique is imagined (and at the same time limits its stretch into Tanzania and Zambia). . . . Print-language is what invents nationalism, not a particular language per se” (134, emphasis in text). With widespread literacy coming about in both languages at approximately the same time, language was immediately tied to the national question and became a source of antagonized debate among nationalists in Ireland. The advent of widespread literacy amongst the Irish peasantry was slow in coming; prior to its achievement, however, revolutionary notions and writings were making their way into smaller towns and villages, largely through the medium of song. A now-obscure nineteenth-century American periodical, Littell’s Living Age, included in its March 3, 1866, issue an article entitled “Fenian Literature,” which provides some

explanation. In a review of a collection of Irish street ballads, the unsigned author calls attention to the widespread perception amongst English bureaucrats and Irish landowners that the Young Ireland group (nationalists who published widely in the period of the late 1840s) had accurately represented nationalist feelings amongst the poorer classes of Ireland. As it turned out, the author notes, “The abortive rebellion of ‘48 was more of a literary imposture than any thing else. The Young Ireland party wrote so well that they managed to excite the interests of all classes except the people of Ireland” (638). Part of the reason for this was that literacy rates were so low that one could not count on there being enough literate people to help spread revolutionary discourse. This had changed by the 1860s. According to our nameless correspondent: The mistake that the British public made in giving undue importance to the rebellious literature of the Young Ireland party, and thus overrating the strength of the agitation, was not, however, greater than the mistake now universally made in the opposite direction. The vast mass of our readers will learn with surprise that not only is there in Ireland a collection of Fenian writings published in 1865 quite equal in point of literary ability to anything in the same strain published from 1843 to 1848, but (which is far more important than any question of literary merit) a collection of writings which has found its way into the cabins and whisky-shops of the lower classes. (638) Indeed, the article in Littell’s Living Age goes so far as to express outrage that the authors of these Fenian verses were deliberately writing them in a cruder fashion in order to attract broader appeal (as opposed to the more effete attempts of the Young Ireland writers) — in other words, our unknown reporter writes that the Fenians were starting to recognize the power of the word in propaganda and that they were losing no time in making use of it.

The article cites a particular verse, Charles Joseph Kickham’s “Patrick Sheehan,” as an example of the type of revolutionary discourse being disseminated by traitorous ballad-singers: My name is Patrick Sheehan, My years are thirty-four; Tipperary is my native place, Not far from Galtymore; I came of honest parents, But now they’re lying low; And many a pleasant day I spent In the Glen of Aherlow. My father died; I closed his eyes Outside our cabin door; The landlord and the sheriff too Were there the day before! And then my loving mother, And sisters three also, Were forced to go with broken hearts From the Glen of Aherlow. For three long months, in search of work, I wandered far and near; I went then to the poor-house, For to see my mother dear; The news I heard nigh broke my heart; But still, in all my woe, I blessed the friends who made their graves In the Glen of Aherlow. Bereft of home and kith and kin, With plenty all around, I starved within my cabin, And slept upon the ground; But cruel as my lot was, I ne’er did hardship know ‘Till I joined the English army, Far away from Aherlow. “Rouse up there,” says the Corporal, “You lazy Hirish hound; Why don’t you hear, you sleepy dog, 13

The call ‘to arms’ sound?” Alas, I had been dreaming Of days long, long ago; I woke before Sebastopol, And not in Aherlow. I groped to find my musket — How dark I thought the night! O blessed God, it was not dark, It was the broad daylight! And when I found that I was blind, My tears began to flow; I longed for even a pauper’s grave In the Glen of Aherlow. O blessed Virgin Mary, Mine is a mournful tale; A poor blind prisoner here I am, In Dublin’s dreary gaol; Struck blind within the trenches, Where I never feared the foe; And now I’ll never see again My own sweet Aherlow! (639) Recognizing the potential effect of this sort of verse upon the everyday people of Ireland, the author of the Littell review declares that “there is more danger in the disaffection that this artfully-told story of Patrick Sheehan may produce, than in all the writings of the Young Ireland party, and all the contemptible blusterings of the now so-called national organs — the Nation and the Irishman” (639). The ballad did become quite well-known, and is even alluded to in the “Cyclops” episode of Joyce’s Ulysses (12.1468). We find, then, that the language question (ceist na teangan, as it’s known in Irish) arises at the same time in Irish history as nationalist revolutionaries were beginning to recognize the potential power of the written word. This is, perhaps, one of the reasons that the language question is so highly political — from the very beginning, it has been

immersed within the world of propaganda. The question is more important than simply deciding what the spoken language of a new Ireland should be. If language is a constitutive element of the construction of one’s subjectivity, then surely the particular language used is relevant to a colonized people. Homi Bhabha has described the hybridity of culture when he argues that What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These “in-between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood — singular or communal — that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. (1-2) If we think of the question of language in terms of a “communal selfhood,” we can see that the situation in which Irish nationalists found themselves at the end of the nineteenth century impelled them to seize upon the Irish language as a means of promoting their political agenda. It provided solid evidence of a pre-existing Irish culture, one alien to the English culture. The growing success of Conradh na Gaeilge and other organizations aided the development of Irish nationalism in ways few could understand initially. The Irish language was dying throughout most of the nineteenth century. The Great Hunger of 1845-1852 had severely affected the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas and had created an economic situation wherein it was necessary to learn English to survive. In the 1860s, it was estimated that there were 1,105,000 Irish speakers, including over sixty percent of the population of Counties Galway and Mayo and over half of Waterford, west Cork, Kerry and Clare. However, adult speakers were abandoning the language, and fewer and fewer school-aged children were learning it (Greene 12). By

1891, “there were almost 700,000 Irish speakers and it is reasonable to assume, as the revival had not yet begun, that the vast bulk of these were native speakers” (Mac Aodha 25). Literacy rates were much lower. Greene writes that, In Donegal, for example, where Gallagher’s Sermons had long been a popular devotional book, it was estimated in 1874 that only about a thousand people, out of an Irish-speaking population of well over seventy thousand, could read Irish and everywhere the few available books had to be read aloud if they were to reach the people. (14)2 Scholastic societies were beginning to be founded for the express purpose of preserving and studying the Irish language — the Ossianic Society in 1853 and the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language in 1877 — but with few exceptions, the members of these groups were more interested in studying Irish as a historico-linguistic curiosity than as a living language. It was not until the foundation of Conradh na Gaeilge that Irish was embraced on a large scale as a living language and an essential part of a vibrant Irish culture. The cultural climate in which the Conradh was founded was ready for a revival of the language; there was a reaction at the time against what we would now consider the “Orientalization” of Gaelic and the other Celtic languages: the treating as an inanimate object of study the living culture of another society. There was also a growing resentment of the fact that Great Britain and other major European powers were increasingly dominating much of the world,3 a domination which reminded some Irish of their own subservient place in the world’s political sphere. In many ways, though, it was the scholars of “Celticism,” mostly of English background, who politicized the language movement. A good example of these scholars is Matthew Arnold, a man who knew

almost nothing of any of the Celtic languages but who was more than willing to lecture on them and their literatures at length for a fee. In his series of lectures published as On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), he describes his admiration of the Celtic literatures, but only as a matter of academic study. When it comes to modern literature and the living languages, he repeats the most conservative arguments of his day: I must say I quite share the opinion of my brother Saxons as to the practical inconvenience of perpetuating the speaking of Welsh. . . . The fusion of all the inhabitants of these islands into one homogeneous, English-speaking whole, the breaking down of barriers between us, the swallowing up of separate provincial nationalities, is a consummation to which the natural course of things irresistibly tends; it is a necessity of what is called modern civilization, and modern civilization is a real, legitimate force; the change must come, and its accomplishment is a mere affair of time. The sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social life of Wales, the better; the better for England, the better for Wales itself. . . . For all serious purposes in modern literature . . . the language of a Welshman is and must be English. . . . let the Welshman speak English, and, if he is an author, let him write English. (9-10) The “inconvenience” Arnold speaks of in relation to a language which was spoken by more than half of Wales and which continues to be the most widely-spoken Celtic language exists, of course, only for the English. His sentiments aptly demonstrate the political motivations of the language Orientalists: while claiming to admire and study the Celtic languages, they insist on studying them as if they were dead languages, despite the significant number of native speakers. The paternalism involved in claiming that what is best for England is what is best for Wales speaks for itself as an example of “compassionate colonialism,” the notion of civilizing the natives in order to bring them up to the superior level of the colonizing power. Arnold seems incapable of understanding the political nature of some of his comments, taking for granted that “we

have Ireland, the Scotch Highlands, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall. They are a part of ourselves, we are deeply interested in knowing them, they are deeply interested in being known by us” (135). The interplay of knowledge and possession behind such a sentiment echoes perfectly the Orientalist project. It was precisely this sort of sentiment that the founders of Conradh na Gaeilge were fighting against: theirs was the task of advancing Irish as a spoken, living language. On November 25, 1892, the year before the establishment of the Conradh, Douglas Hyde gave his famous lecture “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” to the National Literary Society in Dublin. Taking as his point of departure the contention that the Irish were “ceasing to be Irish without becoming English,” he notes that “in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world’s recognition of us as a separate nationality” (153). Without the language, he argues, the Irish are “cut off from the past, yet scarcely in touch with the present,” unable to establish a sense of communal self, of nationhood (157). Hyde’s address is a landmark in the revival of Irish as a language, but it is only one of many similar speeches and exhortations given and published at this time. Even George Moore, a man who knew no Irish and who wrote in English, spoke at the turn of the century on “Literature and the Irish Language” and argued in favor of the revival of Irish as a means of increasing “national spirit and energy” (46). While Moore argued for a bilingual Ireland, where English would remain the language of commerce and Irish would be used “as a medium for some future literature,” he saw the Irish language as integral to the Irish culture and strongly advocated its use (47).

After ten years of activity, Conradh na Gaeilge had succeeded more than any previous organization devoted to the resurrection or study of the Irish language. While the total number of Irish speakers continued to decline due to the decreasing population in the Gaeltacht areas, the number of new learners in the Galltacht (English-speaking) areas was increasing rapidly (Mac Aodha 25-27). Literacy in Irish flourished, with many people becoming able to read Irish far better than they could speak it. The fact that these new speakers had little opportunity actually to speak the language in non-Irish speaking parts of the country, coupled with the problem of having to construct an “official” printed language out of a number of dialects, led to some accusations that the Conradh was encouraging an artificial language.4 As Benedict Anderson points out, however, the construction of a print language is always fraught with such concerns and reflects more upon the nature of capitalism than on linguistic matters: “Nothing served to ‘assemble’ related vernaculars more than capitalism, which, within the limits imposed by grammars and syntaxes, created mechanically reproduced print-languages capable of dissemination through the market” (44). While the revival of the Irish language is a cultural phenomena of its own importance, its real relevance to the development of modern Irish nationalism is in its revolutionary potential. Máirtín Ó Cadhain has written on the development of Irish language literature and Irish nationalism from the nineteenth through the twentieth century and clearly links the two in his work. In “Conradh na Gaeilge agus an Litríocht” (“The Gaelic League and Literature”), he begins with the assertion that “Níl tréimhse i stair na hÉireann is mó is díol bróin agus náire liom ná an 19ú céad” (“To me, no period

in the history of Ireland is more deserving of sorrow and shame than the nineteenth century”). Ó Cadhain states this in response to the near-eradication of the Irish language during the nineteenth century, though he then continues to trace the revival of the dying language through the early parts of the twentieth century to the 1960s (52). In “Irish Prose in the Twentieth Century,” he says of Conradh na Gaeilge that “Modern Ireland, such as it is, is of its making. Modern Irish literature, such as it is, is also of its making. I may say that in bulk, if not in anything else, this literature is greater than in any comparable period in the history of our language” (139). An accomplished novelist and short-story writer and a one-time member of the Irish Republican Army, Ó Cadhain is in a particularly useful position for assessing the link between the language and the struggle for national independence. The revolutionary potential of the work of Conradh na Gaeilge was recognized by some from the beginning. Douglas Hyde, whose own ideas concerning Irish were certainly radical for his day, quotes in his 1937 autobiography Mise agus an Conradh (Myself and the League) one Tomás Bán Ó Concheanainn as exclaiming, “Every speech we make throughout the country makes bullets to fire at the enemy; isn’t it a wonder they don’t stop us!” (quoted in Greene 19). Pádraic Pearse himself wrote in March 1914 that “I have said again and again that when the Gaelic League was founded in 1893 the Irish revolution began” (quoted in Mac Aodha 23). The Conradh was a place where revolutionaries could meet fairly openly: Earnán de Blaghd wrote in the late 1960s that “In 1906 when I joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood [the predecessor of the IRA], on the invitation of Sean O’Casey, the great majority of its members in Dublin, which

was incomparably its strongest centre, had come in through the Gaelic League” (34). De Blaghd writes that after the 1916 Uprising, the Gaelic League became increasingly and more blatantly political, leading to Douglas Hyde’s stepping down as President (although a nationalist, Hyde was devoted to the Conradh being apolitical): The Gaelic League moved, after the Rising, into a new period of activity and expansion; but it was no longer anything like the sole guardian of the interests of the Irish language. The Volunteers and the political movement associated with them held the key to the future and anything to be done by an organization devoted entirely to the language would have had to be done, practically speaking, under the auspices of the new national political party [Sinn Féin]. (38-39) Other cultural organizations found themselves increasingly politicized as the century continued, particularly the Gaelic Athletic Association (Cumann Lúth Chleas Gael), which, combined with Conradh na Gaeilge, formed a large and powerful Gaelic movement (Nowlan 43). The politicization of the Gaelic organizations and the increasing emphasis placed on the Irish language by revolutionaries meant that an increasing amount of material was written by Republicans in Irish. Pearse, who taught the language, was one of the early proponents of the creation of a modern literature in Irish and wrote a number of poems in the language as well as two collections of short stories: Íosagán agus Sgéalta Eile (1907) and An Mháthair (1915). His stories often attempted to mix the older folk tradition with the modern short story and did much to bring Irish Gaelic literature into the twentieth century. Pearse strongly felt that any attempt to revive Irish as a living language meant that texts printed in the language must have a direct bearing on modern lives and not simply replicate older modes of writing:

We lay down the proposition that a living modern literature cannot be built up on the folktale. The folktale is an echo of old mythologies, an unconscious stringing together of old memories and fancies: literature is a deliberate criticism of life . . . we would have our literature modern not only in the sense of freely borrowing every modern form which it does not possess and which it is capable of assimilating, but also in texture, tone and outlook. This is the twentieth century and no literature can take root in the twentieth century which is not of the twentieth century. (“About Literature” 6) It is, however, unfortunately the case that the vast majority of Gaelic texts, even the particularly popular ones, published in the early decades of the twentieth century were cultural throwbacks. The literature of the Blasket Islands in particular — as edited by various scholars with their own agendas — painted a portrait of the Gaeltacht that was far removed from reality and which dwelt on piety and simplicity in a manner which was often quite different than what was actually composed by the authors.5 It wasn’t until after the Civil War and partition that a number of prominent writers began using Irish as their primary or as a secondary language. Within the Republican movement, authors as diverse as Liam O’Flaherty, Brendan Behan, Frank O’Connor and Máirtín Ó Cadhain all wrote occasionally in Irish (primarily in Ó Cadhain’s case). O’Flaherty, a native Irish speaker, had his 1953 short story collection Dúil deemed by Máirtín Ó Cadhain as “perhaps the most remarkable collection of short stories in Irish” (“Irish Prose” 146). These writers were often writing specifically against the romantic tradition of earlier Anglo-Irish works characterized by what one wag has dubbed “the Synge-song school.”6 Behan’s powerful 1958 play An Giall was translated by a theater group in England and changed to the point where it is essentially a different play — far more a comedy and even including song numbers not in the original.7 Despite this

experience, he continued writing poetry in Irish, though he never wrote another play in the language. O’Connor’s one short story in Irish, “Darcy i dTír na n-Óg,” is certainly one of his more imaginative, and Ó Cadhain’s 1949 novel Cré na Cille is renowned as one of the most brilliant novels written in Ireland, whatever the language used. More recent Republican writers continue to use the Irish language in their works, the Republican prisoners at Portlaoise Gaol at one point holding an Irish short story writing contest and publishing the winners. The poet and hunger-striker Bobby Sands and the poet Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh, both of whom I discuss later in this work, also use Irish in their work. Republican writers who normally write in English have at times had their work translated into Irish as well: Gerry Adams’s collection of short stories The Street is an example of this, having been translated by Eoghan Mac Cormaic as An tSráid agus Scéalta Eile. The language movement was in decline by the 1930s, largely due to the Saorstát’s taking over responsibility for the teaching of Irish to schoolchildren and to the establishment of An Gúm, literally “the scheme,” a state organization entrusted with making available Irish-language books but which tended in actuality only to translate popular books readily available in English. As Mac Aodha bluntly puts it, “the hamhanded and hypocritical way in which the newly established state handled its language problem during the succeeding half century made it difficult for the League to function effectively” (24). Criostóir Mac Aonghusa agrees, adding that the lack of support for the Gaeltacht regions left few options but emigration: “Le leathchéad bliain áirítear gur fhág 40,000 duine an Ghaeltacht” (“With the passing of fifty years, 40,000

people left the Gaeltacht” [83]). Despite the efforts of the writers above, as well as others such as Pádraic Ó Conaire, Myles na gCopaleen, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and more recently Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, the spoken language has continued to decline, though paradoxically there are probably more books in print in Irish at this moment than ever before. However, the efforts of the Conradh and other Irish language groups were far from wasted: they stepped in at a critical moment in the development of the Irish national consciousness and broadened and strengthened that consciousness greatly. While Seamus Deane may be correct when, speaking of the Irish literary revival of the first three decades of the twentieth century, he says that “The ultimate failure of that attempt to imagine a truly liberating cultural alternative is as well known as the brilliance of the initial effort,” it can be argued that movements like the language movement and events like the Irish Revival had to happen in order to prepare the way for a more successful attempt at decolonization to follow (Introduction 3-4). It was imperative that the Irish be able to distinguish a culture of their own from the dominating English (or “British,” to use the more encompassing terminology) culture. In any attempt to resolve a conflict between self and other, one must come to some understanding of the self being defended: while the language and literary movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may not have successfully brought about this understanding of the self, it seems safe to say that the Irish learned a lot from the attempt. This attempt to define Ireland and what it means to be Irish did not end with the decline of the language movement, however. If anything, the events of 1916-1923 left the

Irish people with a keen interest in nationalism and the problems confronting a colonial or newly-independent state. Irish writers, writing in English or in Irish, were at the fore of rethinking the national question in the aftermath of partition. Irish writing in English became known the world over: as Deane puts it, “The recovery from the lost Irish language has taken the form of an almost vengeful virtuosity in the English language, an attempt to make Irish English a language in its own right rather than an adjunct to English itself” (Introduction 10). In later years, the struggle to understand Ireland was, in the north, an often violent struggle to establish it. This struggle frequently took on symbolic form. On March 1, 1981, an Irish Republican prisoner by the name of Bobby Sands began a hunger strike aimed at bringing to a climax a five-year-long prison protest demanding recognition by the British government of the prisoners’ political status. On this first day, he wrote in a diary he kept that “I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul” (“Diary” 153). While Sands was obviously thinking of his impending death — he died on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike, despite having been elected as a Member of the British Parliament (MP) less than a month before — his notion of standing between two worlds is one which can be used to understand not only the Anglo-Irish conflict in particular, but modern Irish history, literature and culture in general. Ireland exists on the border of racial, economic, religious, cultural and geographic discourses, which complicates any discussion of such an entity as “Irish literature” (McVeigh 36). Homi K. Bhabha argues that the location of culture is to be found precisely at these discursive boundaries, and that we should (to quote Heidegger)

see boundaries not as where something ends but where “something begins its presencing” (1). If we accept this proposition as valid, it is not difficult to see how Ireland occupies a liminal space within which extremes of human experience reach a threshold which manifests itself as a discursive juncture. From this juncture burst forth streams of discourse, often contradictory, tangled, short-lived but quick to resurrect, all of them infused with power and aware that, while their origins cannot be traced to some preternatural purity, what has come before exists alongside their present (re)incarnations. The discursive problems presented are several. Ireland has a long colonial (and, arguably, neo-colonial) history — yet its inhabitants are, in the twentieth century at least, largely considered “white,” unlike those of most colonized or formerly colonized nations. It is far wealthier than many former or current colonies, yet has suffered more from poverty and unemployment than most of its European neighbors. It is primarily composed of two related religious traditions, yet the differences between these traditions have been antagonized to the point where many mistakenly consider the current conflict in Ireland to be a religious war. It seems culturally European to many, yet has a rich indigenous culture and language going back to well before the advent of the English tongue. It is part of Europe (and therefore part of the definitive imperial entity) and yet has been colonized by another European power. It is an island, and therefore selfcontained and undivided by any geographic borders, and yet is artificially divided in itself, part of it being in “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” and part of it being “The Republic of Ireland.” As we have seen, it may not be an overstatement to say that all of twentieth-century Irish literature has been searching for an

identity: a sense of what it means to be “of Ireland.” Yet this is not simply a matter of a longing for placement within a national literature, and the case of Ireland goes beyond the traditional barriers and breaks with the standard definitions of such concepts as nation, place, and people. Throughout the century there have existed side by side two ongoing realities: an increased awareness of the importance of nationalism to the development of a “nation” and a sense that the fractured politics of the twentieth century — much of it colored by often violent struggle — have resulted in an “Ireland” home to so many divisions that a unitary conception of nationhood seems no longer valid. On the surface, these divisions seem few in number, but they increase rapidly the closer one examines the situation. Ireland is politically split into two: the present Republic (of twenty-six counties) and Northern Ireland (the six counties). The Republic has been independent for some time but has been in a political arrangement wherein its neighbor, England, has enormous influence over it economically and even politically. (The English insistence on the Republic’s rewriting Articles Two and Three of its constitution — Articles which claimed the entirety of the island of Ireland as its territory — in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is surely an indication of that influence.) Much twentieth-century Irish literature has been concerned with overcoming this state of affairs and is still recovering from the Ascendancy culture which ruled over Ireland for so long. Irish literature and history are also still split because of the Civil War. This war, fought between the divided nationalists (the “Free Staters,” who accepted the partitionist treaty as a stepping-stone towards Irish unity, and the Republicans, who didn’t), still has

its legacy today, most visibly in the two most prominent political parties in the twenty-six counties, Fianna Fáil (which originally represented the remnants of the anti-Treaty Republican forces) and Fine Gael (which initially represented the Free Staters). Many of the writers who were to become prominent in the twentieth century were involved in some way with the Civil War and the events preceding it: the 1916 Uprising and the Anglo-Irish War (1919-1921). The rebellion in 1916 was, in fact, led in part by three poets, all of whom were executed by the English after the rising: Pádraic H. Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett. Writers now firmly considered part of the Irish literary canon such as Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty, Sean O’Faolain and Francis Stuart all fought on the Republican side in the Civil War, while others, such as Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Brendan Behan, were involved in the IRA in the ensuing decades. The people of the northern counties are also split, both between themselves and from their fellow islanders in the “south.” The colonization of the northern counties was somewhat different from that of those to the south. The northern counties were planted with settlers, who developed a culture very different from either the Irish Catholic culture dominant on the island or the Ascendancy culture dominant politically in Dublin and environs. The seventeenth-century plantation, in which native Irish were driven off the land which was then given to English and Scottish settlers, has resulted in two strictly defined communities today: unionists, devoted to maintaining the link with England, and nationalists, desiring a unified and independent Ireland. The literature which has been written in all parts of Ireland has of necessity examined matters pertaining to nationalism for quite some time. Indeed, mammoth texts

such as Declan Kiberd’s ambitious Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation have been devoted to tracing the “invention” of the Irish nation in literature. Much of this literature — particularly that written in the twenty-six counties around the turn of the twentieth century — is concerned with developing what Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, calls a “national consciousness.” Long before the current conflict in the north, Irish writers in the south were struggling with the split consciousness that results from colonization. Seamus Heaney writes in “Frontiers of Writing” that the current northern population are adepts in the mystery of living in two places at one time. Like all human beings, of course, they would prefer to live in one, but in the meantime they make do with a constructed destination, an interim place whose foundations straddle the areas of self-division, a place of resolved contradiction, beyond confusion. A place, slightly to misquote Yeats, that does not exist, a place that is but a dream, since this promised land of durable coherence and perpetual homecoming is not somewhere that is ultimately attainable by constitutional reform or territorial integration. (190) This description, written in the 1990s about the people of the six counties, could easily be about the people of the twenty-six counties at the turn of the twentieth century. Writers of the earlier twentieth century needed to develop a sense of space, of home, and in the Irish case this became a struggle towards the development of national consciousness. It is fascinating to examine the interplay between Republican and non-Republican writers of this period and the ways in which these writers demonstrate the historical shift from the early stages of national consciousness towards actual decolonization. As we shall see, however, this movement towards decolonization was thwarted by the partitioning of the six north-eastern counties.

The three stages towards decolonization set out by Fanon in his 1961 The Wretched of the Earth can be seen in operation in the first three decades of the twentieth century in Ireland. Specifically, Fanon outlines the way in which artists (particularly writers) contribute to the development of national consciousness: If we wanted to trace in the works of native writers the different phases which characterize this evolution we would find spread out before us a panorama on three levels. In the first phase, the native intellectual gives proof that he has assimilated the culture of the occupying power. His writings correspond point by point with those of his opposite numbers in the mother country. His inspiration is European and we can easily link up these works with definite trends in the literature of the mother country. This is the period of unqualified assimilation. We find in this literature coming from the colonies the Parnassians, the Symbolists, and the Surrealists. In the second phase we find the native is disturbed; he decides to remember what he is. This period of creative work corresponds to that immersion which we have just described. But since the native is not a part of his people, since he has only exterior relations with his people, he is content to recall their life only. Past happenings of the byegone days of his childhood will be brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted in the light of a borrowed estheticism and of a conception of the world which was discovered under other skies. Sometimes this literature of just-before-the-battle is dominated by humor and by allegory; but often too it is symptomatic of a period of distress and difficulty, where death is experienced, and disgust too. We spew ourselves up; but already underneath laughter can be heard. Finally in the third phase, which is called the fighting phase, the native, after having tried to lose himself in the people and with the people, will on the contrary shake the people. Instead of according the peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lethargy an honored place in his esteem, he turns himself into an awakener of the people; hence comes a fighting literature, a revolutionary literature, and a national literature. During this phase a great many men and women who up till then would never have thought of producing a literary work, now that they find themselves in exceptional circumstances â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in prison, with the Maquis, or on the eve of their execution â&#x20AC;&#x201D; feel the need to speak to their nation, to compose the sentence which expresses the heart of the people and to become the mouthpiece of a new reality in action. (222-223)

It is the second and third of Fanon’s stages that concern us in this chapter, though the actions of the first stage are a necessary prerequisite to those of the second. While much of the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could usefully be examined as pertaining to the first stage of Fanon’s tripartite theory, it is with the advent of cultural nationalism in the second phase that we enter into the scope of the current project. The second stage is arguably the most dangerous of the three in terms of bringing about a successful revolution: it is the phase which is most likely to be usurped by the bourgeoisie and the one most likely to lead to the development of an alternative status quo. Speaking of this secondary phase, Nigerian critic Chidi Amuta writes: Fanon was sufficiently realistic to admit the legitimacy and historical necessity of this phase in the consciousness of the native. But he equally cautioned that it must constitute only a transient phase, for to adopt continental cultural reaffirmation and nostalgic romanticism as a permanent stance would amount to a false consciousness totally dysfunctional in the task of national liberation. (91) In the case of Ireland, we will see that this phase was quite brief, leading quickly to a period of outright warfare and a renewed liberationist rhetoric in Irish literature. However, it should be pointed out that these three phases do not necessarily occur in a chronological fashion amongst the whole of the people — they occur in the development of a national consciousness, not necessarily an individual one. Hence, aspects of stage two can still be seen in literary works when other writers are attempting to express the third and final phase of Fanon’s framework. The Irish Revival can be said to mark the beginning of the second stage in the development of the Irish national consciousness, though it should also be pointed out that most of the writers affiliated with the Revival were incapable of or uninterested in

bringing about the third phase of active decolonization. The Revival brought about a myth of Ireland, a history, albeit one more in touch with the cosmological histories of the middle ages than with the disciplines of modern history. While it may be easy for modern readers to chuckle at an overly-romantic play like Lady Gregory and Yeats’s Kathleen ni Houlihan, it must be stressed that this kind of literary production provided the Irish with something that they needed — a sense of their own past and the ways in which the spirit of the past can influence and even change the present. A more successful blending of romanticism and nationalism (at least to our ears) is to be found in Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon, in which the song from which the play gets its title is the backdrop to the more modern act of rebellion depicted. This romanticism and mysticism were continued by Yeats, Synge, Moore and others, as well as by poets like Pearse and MacDonagh. The latter two, however, made the step from the second to the third phase and accepted that revolutionary action was justified in achieving the nationalist aim. The task of the cultural nationalist phase is large enough and important enough that it continued even after some writers began — in Fanon’s words — to “shake the people.” Certainly, one cannot pigeonhole the entirety of Yeats’s long career into one ready classification, but it seems safe to say that his early work (pre-1916) constitutes the best Irish example of cultural nationalism developing national consciousness. Using folktales and songs as his inspiration, his earlier poems, such as “Down by the Salley Gardens,” “Fergus and the Druid,” “Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea,” and others from his first three books, begin to instill a sense of value in the old stories and common songs. As he developed his craft, he lamented the current state of Ireland in such poems as

“September 1913” and “To a Shade” (in line 24 of which he tells the ghost of Parnell that he is “safer in the tomb”). In each of these, he reaches to the past for assistance and emotional refuge while increasingly distancing himself from the noises being made by those developing beyond cultural nationalism. Of course, part of this has to do with his ill-fated relationship with Maude Gonne, whom he portrayed as teaching “to ignorant men most violent ways” in “No Second Troy” (3), but a larger part still has to do with his having come from an Ascendancy background and his privileged position in an Ireland under British rule. Yeats was not alone, of course, in helping to develop cultural nationalism in the pre-1916 years. Lady Gregory’s plays mentioned above, along with those of J.M. Synge, helped establish a vivacious and often controversial theatrical scene in Dublin, and George Moore, whether writing on his own (in collections like The Untilled Field) or in collaboration (as with Yeats with Diarmuid and Grania), made his own contributions to the blending of old myth and modern culture. Although not as well known in these earlier years of the twentieth century, James Joyce’s writings can be read as an attempt to combine the search for an Irish identity with the problems confronted when a small nation starts down the road to modernization. However, the works of the Revivalists could only go so far: as Amuta puts it, “cultural action cannot be divorced from the larger struggle for the liberation of the nation” (91). Some writers, mostly notably the future insurrectionists Pearse, MacDonagh and Plunkett, were attempting in their poetic and other works to go beyond the mere establishment of an Irish past. This is not to discount the importance of the Revivalists

and other writers working towards the development of a national consciousness. However, as Amuta writes, “It is the responsibility of the writer not to immerse the people in a past they have left behind but to join and inspire them to confront the present as a historic moment” (91). MacDonagh had written in his Literature in Ireland that “Propaganda has rarely produced a fine poem” (151); it could be argued, however, that the works of these three poets often act in a similar fashion as propaganda: they urge, even at times berate, and they offer their lives. Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh all wrote specifically about how they perceived the link between poetry and revolution. In “Of a Poet Patriot,” MacDonagh describes the power of the single word: His songs were a little phrase Of eternal song, Drowned in the harping of lays More loud and long. His deed was a single word, Called out alone In a night when no echo stirred To laughter or moan. But his songs new souls shall thrill, The loud harps dumb, And his deed the echoes fill When the dawn is come. (91) There is this confidence that the “dawn is [to] come” in many of the three poets’ works. There is also a hint of obligation, a sense that the efforts of the past have made possible the present opportunity to rise up: “For you have flung a brand and fixed a spark / Deep in the stone, of your immortal fire,” as Plunkett put it in his poem “Daybreak” (Ryan 132). The present owes the past.

This obligation to revolt, and the very act of publishing such an obligation, makes necessary another obligation: that of the poet to offer his own life. In his “The Little Black Rose Shall Be Red at Last,” Plunkett takes the old figure of Dark Rosaleen, like Caitlín Ní hÚilleahan a personification of Ireland, and makes her live, or bloom, by turning her red with his blood: Because we share our sorrows and our joys And all your dear and intimate thoughts are mine We shall not fear the trumpets and the noise Of battle, for we know our dreams divine, And when my heart is pillowed on your heart And ebb and flowing of their passionate flood Shall beat in concord love through every part Of brain and body — when at last the blood O’erleaps the final barrier to find Only one source wherein to spend its strength. And we two lovers, long but one in mind And soul, are made one only flesh at length; Praise God if this my blood fulfills the doom When you, dark rose, shall redden into bloom. (Ryan 160) Of course, these poems became far more powerful when the poets actually did die in their attempts to end English rule in Ireland; as I said earlier in this chapter, the words of the martyrs took on a discursive power that is much the same as religious discourse in the years after 1916. In particular, the poems of Pádraic Pearse seemed especially prophetic. In the autumn of 1915, months before the insurrection in Dublin, Pearse wrote “The Mother,” which took on a far more palpable power when both he and his brother William were executed after the Rising: I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, 35

And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and in their going; And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow — And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought. (FDA II.758) The 1916 Easter Uprising enjoyed the support of few of Dublin’s people; after the English responded to it by indiscriminately shelling the city and executing sixteen of its leaders, however, sympathy turned toward the insurrectionists. Yeats’s haunting poem “Easter 1916” perhaps best represents the feelings of the many Irish people who never expected the revolutionaries to do anything other than talk. The works of Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh were reprinted in great numbers in the years following the Uprising, and their poetry, which would otherwise have remained relatively minor, became especially important in the development of a specifically Irish literature. The Irish literature developed by the Revivalists as well as the insurrectionists did not speak to the entire island, however, and this, as well as the fact of partition, caused the movement towards decolonization to crumble. Seamus Heaney reminds us that both Joyce and the Revivalists, in their different ways, prepared cultural paths for the political fact of Irish independence; and indeed when that independence came it included only those constituencies whom the writers of genius at the turn of the century had written into the imaginative record. The Irish Free State was from the start coterminous as a demographic and geographic entity with the textual Ireland of Joyce and the Revivalists — the Ireland, that is, of urban Catholicism, rural peasantry and those of the protestant ascendancy and professional classes who were prepared to stay on after the Union Jack came down. (“Frontiers” 195)

These limitations on the works of these poets prevented their acceptance by a sizable part of the population, especially in the industrial northeast, and subsequent events made their message seem less realistic and less powerful to a significant proportion of the population in the south. For most Irish writers in the south, the years following the Civil War were marked by confusion and uncertainty: the nationalist mythology was still alive, but the partitioning of the island had divided the population in more ways than one. Many were content to accept the limited and incomplete independence of the nation; those who did not accept partition did accept that the old conceptions and methodologies of nationalism had to be amended in order to respond properly to the situation. Exactly how these changes should come about or what form they should take, however, was unclear. This uncertainty, coupled with the perplexities confronting a nation slowly being modernized, are reflected in much of the literary, historical and critical work of the post-war years. Partition had failed to resolve the colonial conflict in Ireland. The threefold framework outlined by Fanon was disrupted by partition and the nationalist movement was illequipped to respond to the crisis. After partition, a sort of “official nationalism” was developed by the twenty-six county government that slowly but inexorably distanced itself from Republican nationalism. The conflict with England was over, according to this nationalism. While the six counties (now “Northern Ireland”) remained an English province, the twenty-six county government paid them little attention. It is possible that never before had a country run away from the ideology of its foundation as quickly as did the new Irish

state: within a decade of its inception, commemorations marking the 1916 Uprising and other important nationalist events were few and far between. Once Eamon De Valera became President, he embarked on a program of government that horrified many of his former allies from the IRA: the state was run as a Catholic state as much as it was an Irish state and political dissidents were treated harshly (indeed, De Valera ended up being the one to proscribe the IRA). The environment was not friendly to writers, whose works were routinely censored and even banned. At the same time, however, the period between the end of the Civil War and the resumption of armed struggle in 1968-1969 was a period of renewed literary output. Some nationalists, recognizing that the anticolonial struggle had to be rethought, wrote memoirs, allowing themselves and others to reflect on what had been accomplished, how the struggle had taken shape, and how it could be reinvigorated. The history of Republican memoirs goes back at least to the preceding century, when the Fenian John Mitchell’s Jail Journal was very popular both in Ireland and the United States; other revolutionaries had their diaries and recollections published as well. Now a new generation added to this material. Dan Breen, a prominent IRA man in Tipperary, published his My Fight for Irish Freedom in 1924. Earnán (Ernie) O’Malley’s On Another Man’s Wound, the first part of a two-part autobiography, followed in 1936 (the second part, The Singing Flame, wasn’t published until 1978, twenty-one years after his death). Kathleen Clarke, widow of executed 1916 leader Thomas Clarke and the first woman to be named Lord Mayor of Dublin, began working on her memoirs in 1939, though these remained unpublished until 1991, when they were released as Revolutionary

Woman: My Fight for Ireland’s Freedom. General Tom Barry’s Guerilla Days in Ireland, a detailed history of the Anglo-Irish war and the Civil War, came out in 1949. Most if not all of these writers were IRA veterans and had supported and fought on the Republican side in the Civil War. Other former IRA men who went on to become professional writers also published memoirs during this period: Brendan Behan’s literary autobiography Borstal Boy in 1958, Frank O’Connor’s An Only Child in 1961, and Seán O’Faolain’s Vive Moi! in 1964. Others attempted to redefine the nationalist perspective by attacking it. What became known as revisionism responded to a notion of nationalism and Republicanism derived largely from the revivalist school of thought. However, revisionism sought to construct a history of Ireland that did not rely on the nationalist mythology as its backbone and which sought to denigrate the actions which had allowed Ireland to separate part of itself from English control. While putting forward a public face of simply wishing to broaden the horizons of the Irish historical canon, the bulk of revisionist work consists chiefly of anti-nationalist discourse. The revisionists began with a view of nationalism simplified by the pieties and political inconsistencies of the revivalists, who stripped nationalist discourse of its class consciousness and focused on a notion of race that became increasingly disturbing as the twentieth century progressed. Deane writes that Yeats “took the racial element in Irish nationalism, separated it from the class element, and made the former supreme” (Celtic Revivals 46). Yeats’s focus on a heroic nationalism which tapped into the old Irish mythology became easy fodder for those later commentators who wished to write off Irish nationalism as so much racism. In Yeats’s

point of view, “Easter Week made the Great War look like a mindless, despiritualized carnage. Cuchulain’s (and, by extension, Ireland’s) cycle of recurrence became finally complete in the sacrifice of Pearse. What stalked through the Post Office was a new and specifically Irish version of modern, existential heroism” (Deane, Celtic Revivals 46). This “specifically Irish” point of view became the target for the revisionists’ assaults. Along with the acceptance of the revivalists’ view of nationalism as the dominant view of nationalism was the increasing tendency to view the Catholic, distinctly premodern Ireland shaped by De Valera as being that which was desired and foreseen by Irish nationalism. The combination of the two points of view led to a perspective which saw Irish nationalism as being a racialist, pre-modern philosophy based in Catholicism more than anything else. If this sort of nationalism was what the revisionists attacked, however, their criticisms would be seen as merely a sign of the increasing modernization of the Irish people. As it turns out, though, the bulk of revisionist discourse came as a direct result of the resumption of active hostilities in the north in the late 1960s. In response to the reemergence of the Irish Republican Army in the six counties, revisionist historians and philosophers in the twenty-six counties began publishing works decrying the ongoing struggle in the north as rising out of this pre-modern, Catholic nationalism, which, far from being liberationist, was arguably fascist. That revisionism was more concerned with fighting the Irish Republican movement than with establishing Irish history has been demonstrated many times. Historian Desmond Fennell has expended much energy in this regard in his Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modern Ireland (1993) and The Revision of Irish Nationalism (1989).

Critic Luke Gibbons has also written a thorough overview of the subject in his “Challenging the Canon: Revisionism and Cultural Criticism.” Gibbons sums up the revisionist project as being one which seeks to read “back from the 1916 Rising, or present-day events in Northern Ireland, a one-dimensional catholic nationalist tradition, immune to cross-cultural influences and social change” (568). This revisionist fixing of “an essential nationalist idea, a static monolithic tradition” becomes the burden of history. . . . Part of the problem with “Celticism,” as we have seen, was that it was an attempt by a colonial power to hypostatize an alien, refractory culture in order to define it within its own controlling terms. By the same token, the spectre of nationalism conjured up by revisionism is largely of its own making, a spirit of the nation whose very lack of substance makes it all the more easy to exorcise. (568) Indeed, some revisionist work is not against nationalism per se, but is simply against Irish nationalism. Willy Maley, writing in the Irish Studies Review, warns that “we must be alert to the ways in which revisionist discourse can subtly recast ‘mainland mythology’ and promote a pervasive British nationalism” (37). The notion that Irish nationalism is merely a tool of Catholicism haunts the Republican movement to this day. Despite centuries of Vatican opposition to the ideals of Republicanism, there continue to be many who see the Republican movement as yet another “Popish plot” designed to increase the power of the clergy. This chimera is one which is simultaneously invented as it is described: it is remarked upon only by those whose sectarianism forms the basis of their politics. For those for whom religion is either immaterial to the discussion or simply irrelevant altogether, disentangling Republicanism from Catholicism is a short day’s work. The specter of Catholic nationalism is, however, distasteful enough to persuade many who would otherwise come to support the

Republican movement to ignore it, or rather worse, condemn it as reactionary or primitive. This problem is not new. In a report written for the Pall Mall Gazette from Paris on February 17, 1881, an anonymous reporter discussed Charles Stewart Parnell’s visit to the French author Victor Hugo. At the time, Hugo was preparing a statement on landlordism in Ireland, a statement which came down squarely on the side of the peasantry. The article describes the steps which had to be taken to convince Hugo of the justice of the Irish cause. “At first the Roman Catholicism of Ireland was a stumblingblock to the illustrious octogenarian, who did not wish to side in that country with a party — the clerical — which he opposes here because it is the enemy of light and liberty,” the reporter notes. Hugo was gradually brought around by detailed discussion regarding how “Roman Catholicism had no part in the struggle, which exclusively aimed at a political and economical — or, if he liked the word better, socialistic — object.” Only after careful consideration was Hugo able to state that “I remove altogether from my mind the religious bearings of the Irish question” (“With Mr. Parnell at M. Victor Hugo’s,” 190191). The influence of Catholicism on Irish Republicanism remained a continual source of commentary one hundred years later, as Bobby Sands prepared to embark on his hunger strike, and is still reflected by those revisionists who see the struggle in Ireland as one of Catholicism versus modernity. It was in literary fiction rather than in criticism, however, that writers of the twentieth century were able to more fully examine the psychological and material disruption caused by partition and the limited independence they had gained through the Anglo-Irish war. While veterans like O’Connor, O’Flaherty and O’Faolain could and did

look back on the years of warfare, they set their minds to the present as well. O’Flaherty in particular was adept at commenting on the sad and brutal history of Ireland through more symbolic means, often utilizing scenes from nature to reflect on the actions of humankind. More directly pertaining to the subject at hand, O’Flaherty penned what is still the definitive story of treachery and intrigue within the IRA, The Informer (1925). O’Connor’s masterpiece, “Guests of the Nation” (1931), is likewise considered perhaps the most poignant account of the tragedies inherent in any war between neighbors. Later, IRA men like Brendan Behan and Máirtín Ó Cadhain gave the points of view of veterans of later Republican campaigns, when public support for their actions had reached a new low. By mid-century, writers like Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien) were simultaneously attempting to reflect upon and break out of the stagnation in which the nation found itself.8 Even Joyce’s seemingly-chaotic Finnegans Wake could be read as an attempt to trace the development of all human history in order to come to some understanding of the machinations of history and power. Writers active after the resumption of armed conflict in the six counties continued to dwell on the problems facing an increasingly modernized Ireland as well as matters of cultural contestation in the past, present and future. Many of the works by such diverse authors as Francis Stuart, John McGahern, Jennifer Johnston, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Roddy Doyle and Patrick McCabe try to deal with the difficulties facing family life, religion, nationalism, women and children in a manner which is often painful both for the authors and their audience. Modern Irish poetry, written both north and south of the border, has tried to understand what it means to be Irish, what it means to be a colonial or formerly

colonial state, and how one can go beyond the traditional forms of thought on these subjects. Even George Bernard Shaw, hardly a Republican, had recognized that Ireland would have to address its internal problems before it could possibly take its place in the modern world. Speaking of the average citizen, he writes: you cannot induce him to forgo the achievement of national independence on the ground that international federation is a step higher. He knows by instinct that if his foot missed that one rung of the ladder, he would not reach the higher rung, but would rather be precipitated into the abyss; and so it comes that there is no federating nationalities without first realizing them. (“Crib” 23) Many Republican and non-Republican writers realize that one cannot reach a state of true decolonization or liberation without devising some way of “seeing around” partition. While their methods vary, they are all involved in a form of postcolonial criticism, albeit one in many ways different from that practiced in the Anglo-American academy. *

That criticism and theory which goes under the aegis of “postcolonial studies” has not fully recognized Ireland’s status as postcolonial. A quick glance through the indexes of some of the more important works in the field will show that Ireland seems to be forgotten by these scholars. This is partly due to the fact that, as I have mentioned, Ireland is very difficult to classify due to the fragmentary nature of its history. This fragmentary history and literature should, however, be seen as a clear sign that Ireland’s colonial past and present have left indelible traces upon that history and literature. Irish culture is, however, not typically seen in this way. In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, one of the foundational works of postcolonial

studies, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin define postcolonial literatures when they write that What each of these literatures have in common beyond their special and distinctive regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this which makes them distinctively post-colonial. (2) One could be forgiven for assuming that the authors are here discussing twentieth-century Irish literature. However, they later argue, in a brief aside on Irish, Scottish and Welsh literatures that While it is possible to argue that these societies were the first victims of English expansion, their subsequent complicity in the British imperial enterprise makes it difficult for colonized people outside Britain to accept their identity as post-colonial. (33) This is a deeply offensive portrayal of the Celtic societies which lumps these cultures together as “British” in precisely the same way as they are by the English imperialist system. The “complicity” of these groups is never described by the authors, nor is the very long anticolonial traditions of all of these cultures. To suggest that one can point to collaborators as evidence that a culture isn’t really colonized ignores centuries of penal laws, neglect leading to devastating famine, forced emigration, the attempted destruction of native languages, the outlawing of native dress and custom, public executions, and negative stereotypes of drunken Paddies, tightfisted Scots, and dirty Welshmen. It is an especially insulting insinuation when one notices that the authors accept literature from the United States as being postcolonial.

The assumption that the colonization of Ireland was so total that it has become part of the English imperial power is one reason why postcolonial theorists rarely deal with Ireland, though this assumption is easily refuted by anyone with some knowledge of Irish history. Another reason, and one which would seem to contradict the above, is the unease with which postcolonial theory treats the concept of nationalism. Benedict Anderson’s important study of nationalism, Imagined Communities, is often accepted as having stripped nationalism of its ideological support, despite his very clearly insisting early on in the work that when he speaks of “imagined communities” he is not using the adjective “imagined” to imply falsity or fabrication (6). Anderson’s book, though useful, only treats the origins of the idea of “nationhood” and “nationalism” and has little to say of nationalist movements in our era. Unfortunately, this implies that present nationalisms are dinosaurs: unchanging, pre-modern, if not outright archaic. His argument that nationalism is a modular discursive formation which can be “applied” to various situational contexts also implies that nationalisms are incapable of real change or development. When we combine this distrust of nationalism (especially modern European nationalism) with the fact that for thirty years a violent guerrilla war was waged against English rule in the north of Ireland by Irish Republicans, we have a situation which postcolonial scholars seem to not want to touch. The fear of subjecting to careful critical analysis the literature emanating from those groups which have accepted the use of violence towards political ends is a fear born partly out of the anxiety of representation: the notion that if one holds a body of literature up to critical inquiry, one has already

judged that literature as worth taking seriously, and if one has deemed the literature worth taking seriously, one has on some level approved of it and what it in turn represents. This fear has led to laughable attempts by critics to “prove” their impartiality while maintaining the impression that they have something intelligent to say regarding Irish literature. Gerry Smyth’s 1997 The Novel and the Nation bends over backwards to demonstrate that he is not a “critical Republican.” In a section discussing his plans to examine writing from all parts of Ireland, even including the north, he states: Such a manoeuvre should not be seen as some kind of critical Republicanism in which a discrete Northern tradition is absorbed into an inclusive cultural formation, but rather as part of the exploration of the limits of modern Irish identity, as well as an exposition of the limitations of any narrowly defined cultural or political tradition. (113) While it may seem odd to have to justify the inclusion of literature from within a fairly recently-drawn, geographically artificial border in a study of Irish literature, Smyth seems to accept the notion that political borders define cultural borders.9 Indeed, on the same page as the above, Smyth describes the six counties as being “officially part of the British political, and thus cultural, apparatus.” QED, QE II. Attempts at impartiality by writers on the subject of the “troubles” generally run into trouble themselves. The mistake made by many (perhaps most) writers on the topic is in assuming that there are only two sides to the conflict. Indeed, there are several sides besides the traditional delineations of nationalist/unionist or Republican/Loyalist. The side of the British government is in actuality only partially the same as the side of the unionists, and only marginally the same as that of the Loyalists. Likewise, the side of the Irish government is only partially the side of the nationalists, and only marginally the side

of the Republicans. Ignoring interior delineations between the aforementioned camps, there are other ways in which critical theorists and others “take sides”: ignoring the conflict is one way of taking sides; condemning all of the various participants is another; fence-sitting yet one more. Despite its hesitations to approach the subject of the Anglo-Irish conflict, critical theory has a great deal to offer an examination of Irish literature and culture in this context. Critical theory must, however, be conscious of the fragmented nature of Irish culture and the fluid dynamics of Irish nationalism if it is to address Ireland in any meaningful and productive manner: unfortunately, the genre of “postcolonial theory” seems unable to apprehend this in its present form. As Luke Gibbons has put it: Considering Ireland in a postcolonial frame is not a matter of including one more culture within existing debates, but reworking the paradigms themselves. Theory itself needs to be recast from the periphery and acquire hybrid forms, bringing the plurality of voices associated with the creative energies of postcolonial cultures to bear on criticism itself. (27) I hope in this study to show that Irish literature has the power and complexity to examine its own hybrid, fragmented culture in ways which are at times similar to the methods of traditional literary theory and which at other times are a distinct mutation born of a history, language and culture that has sedulously avoided definition. My project is an examination of a literature which, while dealing with many of the same problems faced by more “mainstream” Irish literature, has been marginalized by the dominant Irish literary cultures: that emanating from the Irish Republican movement since its revitalization in the late 1960s. Most, though not all, of this literature is written by people active in either the Irish Republican Army (the “Provisionals”) or the

Republican political party Sinn FĂŠin. Again, most, but not all, of it is written by members of the minority nationalist community in the six counties. The lack of secondary critical material examining the literature of the Irish Republican movement is striking, all the more so considering the plethora of books on the topic of the conflict and, in particular, on the IRA. There has been very little critical attention paid to this area of Irish literature despite the (often uneasy) interest regarding nationalism and colonialism within the Irish literary establishment. Much of the current project, therefore, is concerned with establishing the record and tracing the development of Irish Republican literature since 1968 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; examining the primary source material (much of it difficult to find), and placing these primary sources within a historical and political context. Developing contacts within the Republican movement in Ireland aided me in communicating with some of the writers whose works I examine herein. In some cases, formal interviews were conducted; in other cases, correspondence was exchanged. My transcriptions of these interviews and letters constitute in many cases the first public discussion on the subject of Irish Republican literature which actually includes the voices of Irish Republican writers themselves. One of my goals with this project is to show that modern Irish literature is frequently concerned with the effects and aftereffects of colonialism, though it is rarely dealt with as such. By using a body of literature from what is generally regarded as an extreme political position, I wish to highlight the ways in which Irish culture has examined and redefined notions of nationalism throughout the twentieth century. The body of the dissertation will focus on these Republican texts and discuss their ideological

bases in the context of the historical background and literary theory. I wish to demonstrate that it is a mistake for literary theorists to view nationalism as modular and unchanging: we can see through the texts I will be examining throughout the dissertation that conceptions of nationalism have developed and changed in quite complex ways even throughout the past thirty-five years. I wish to show that Irish Republicans, rather than being a people steeped in dead traditions and unchanging ideologies, are constantly involved in processes of self-reappraisal and that an examination of these processes sheds much light on the past few turbulent decades in the north of Ireland and on twentiethcentury Irish literature as a body.

CHAPTER 2

IRISH REPUBLICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: POWER, COMMUNITY, HISTORY

Irish Republican Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey), one of the leaders of the Northern Irish civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, begins what critics would normally consider her autobiography, The Price of My Soul, with the following words: The Price of My Soul is not a work of art, an autobiography, or a political manifesto. Readers who expect one or other of these things will no doubt class it as a failure. Let them. I’m not basically concerned with its success, financial or literary. I have written this book in an attempt to explain how the complex of economic, social, and political problems of Northern Ireland threw up the phenomenon of Bernadette Devlin. (vii) This act of writing an autobiography that isn’t quite an autobiography is fairly typical of Irish Republican contributions to the genre. Fellow Irish Republican “autobiographer” Seán MacStiofáin writes of his Revolutionary in Ireland that, rather than working from a desire to tell readers necessarily of himself, “I had wanted to let people understand what makes a Revolutionary” (letter, January 17, 1997). Likewise, Gerry Adams, current President of Sinn Féin and a member of the British Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, places the emphasis of his Before the Dawn: An Autobiography on the events that constructed him rather than on the glorification of his individual self: 51

In offering this account of my experience of some thirty years of life in the north of Ireland, most of them years of conflict, I am conscious that the conditions and circumstances of this conflict were created before I was born. The statelet set up under the British “Government of Ireland Act” was established by force of arms against the will of all but a small, privileged section of the population of Ireland, its area determined on a sectarian headcount. Violence, exclusion, and the denial of democratic and civil rights were the indelible hallmarks of this statelet for a generation before I arrived on the scene. There has never been peace. In every decade of the statelet’s existence, political opposition to its sectarian structures has been met with measures of suppression. I am also conscious that the elements of conflict remain today and retain their potency. (1-2) While all three of these texts are routinely catalogued by bookstores and libraries (and in the cases of Adams and MacStiofáin by the authors themselves) as autobiographies, they depart from the conventions of that genre by devoting the vast majority of their texts to political analysis and historiography. While to varying degrees the author is never too far from the surface of the text, none of them accepts the perhaps bourgeois notion of the autobiography as being the story of a man or woman’s rise to glory, power and personal attainment — instead, all three center on the importance of the communal rather than the individual in ways that implicitly question both the genre of autobiography and the motives behind reading and writing autobiographies. Their works become, in short, less “autobiographies” than “communographies,” histories and analyses of a community under siege. This is a characteristic of many autobiographies and memoirs from the north of Ireland. Seamus Deane, in his introduction to “Autobiography and Memoirs 1890-1988” in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, notes that Autobiography is not just concerned with the self; it is also concerned with the “other,” the person or persons, events or places, that have helped to give this self definition. The selection of pieces presented here [which includes an excerpt from Devlin’s book], although drawn from a diversity of sources, has at least this feature in common. (FDA III.380) 52

Read in the political context of the north of Ireland since its inception, we can see how these three texts in particular are concerned with organizing power/resistance and are engaged in acts of “truth telling” which are counter-hegemonic and which work towards the development of a revolutionary history of the six northeastern counties of Ireland currently under British political and military occupation. These writers refuse to accept the alleged split between the individual and society, and subvert the genre of autobiography in ways which create a community which exists in cooperation with the individual at the same time as they comment upon it. The fact that all three writers have at one time or another been engaged in Irish Republican activities also forces us to reexamine our own assumptions about what it means to be marginalized and how power relations operate within a colonial environment. This is because Irish Republicans are not only nationalists working towards ending the English military and colonial occupation of the six counties, but are nationalists who believe that they have the right to engage in armed action in support of this goal. This belief complicates notions of oppression which adopt a simplistic view of how power operates in circumstances such as these. The three texts and three people I will be examining here represent in some ways three different aspects of the contemporary Irish Republican struggle. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (born 1947) began her involvement in this struggle in the late 1960s, with the Northern Irish Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and a somewhat more leftist group, People’s Democracy (PD). She was a proponent of constitutional nationalism at first, becoming the youngest woman ever to have been elected a member of the British Parliament (MP) at Westminster, at the age of twenty-one. She remained an MP for Mid-

Ulster until 1974. As the situation in the six counties degenerated, she became an active supporter of the Republican movement, and became famous for her role in the Battle of the Bogside, where the newly-elected MP could be seen organizing the production of petrol bombs and throwing rocks at Loyalist mobs and the Royal Ulster Constabulary as they attempted to take over the nationalist ghetto, which had resisted occupation by the crown forces for some months. She became even more famous when she was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for inciting to riot. In December of 1974, she helped found the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), but split with the organization a year later over the organization and operations of their paramilitary group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). In early 1981, she survived an assassination attempt by the Loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defense Association (UDA) on herself and her husband in which she was shot nine times in the chest and head.1 Her book was written and published during the early period of the modern struggle (1969), and is very much an attempt to make use of her celebrity to focus attention on the conditions the nationalist population of the north faced at that time. Seán MacStiofáin (born 1928) joined the IRA in September of 1949, being one of the few “old school” Republicans to remain active in the modern struggle. After the IRA split in December 1969 into the “Officials” (who in the next few years gave up military operations, concentrated on socialist politics, and faded from existence) and the “Provisionals,” MacStiofáin became Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, the highest position within the command structure. MacStiofáin’s job was no easy one, having to organize, train and arm an illegal paramilitary organization that just a few years before barely existed, making it into an effective guerilla army capable of the military defense of 54

nationalist ghettos as well as widespread attacks on British forces in Ireland. After his arrest on November 19, 1972, he went on hunger strike for fifty-nine days, not coming off until ordered to do so by the Army Council, the governing body of the IRA.2 There was, however, speculation at the time that he had pressured the Army Council to order him off the hunger strike, and this weakened his credibility within the movement.3 He later became highly critical of and largely uninvolved in the Republican movement, occasionally giving interviews or writing articles (largely book reviews in Irish). His Revolutionary in Ireland was published in 1975, after his involvement in the IRA had ceased. He is coming from a rather different perspective than Devlin, not only along gender lines and because of differences in age, but because of geographical differences (he was actually born in England and lived most of his life in the twenty-six counties), political differences (he was a leftist on most political matters, but very conservative religiously), and in his manner of involvement with the Republican movement (White 35). Finally, Gerry Adams (born 1948) gives us a more recent and more explicitly political perspective from which to examine the Irish Republican struggle and selfrepresentational writing. Adams comes from a Republican family, and became involved with the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and gradually with the more militant side of the Republican struggle. Interned without charge or trial along with thousands of other nationalists in the 1970s, he served four and a half years in Long Kesh internment camp. Here he became better versed in Republican philosophy and studied the Irish language. Upon his release, he worked with Sinn FĂŠin and played a pivotal role in the 1981 hunger strikes, organizing support on the outside for the prisoners and their families (he knew 55

several of the hunger strikers personally from his time in Long Kesh). He became President of Sinn Féin in 1983 — a position he has held since. Adams is currently involved in the attempts to implement the Good Friday Agreement and work towards a political solution to Ireland’s problems. Though until a few years ago his voice was banned from the media in the Republic of Ireland under the draconian “Section 31” censorship laws, and while he remains a favorite punching bag of the British press, he is without question the most famous politician in all of Ireland. *

It is nothing new to say that colonialism affects the production of one’s subjectivity, that it defines, limits, and plays a central role in the development of one’s psyche: Franz Fanon argued that such was the case in his Black Skin, White Masks in 1952. If we take this as a given, it seems a small step to argue that colonialism affects every act of self-representation attempted by the colonized subject. Deane argues precisely this when he writes that Northern Irish authors are seeking, through personal experience, self-examination, reconsideration of historical events and circumstances, to identify the other force, the hostile or liberating energy, which made the self come into consciousness and thereby give to existence a pattern or the beginnings of a pattern of explanation. Inevitably, in a colonial or neo-colonial country like Ireland, the forms of “otherness” available are multiple and blatant, so much so that they rarely escape stereotyping. An idea of Ireland has to be fashioned, discovered, recreated over and against that which threatens to disallow it. (“Autobiography” 380) Deane brings up three areas of focus here that I want to emphasize in my reading of Irish Republican autobiography: the focus on history and historiography; what Deane calls “hostile or liberating energy” (and which I shall call “power relations”); and the construction of an “Ireland,” a community, for the writer. History, historiography, power, 56

and nationalism have all been written on extensively by critical theorists in the past thirty-five years, and it is interesting to note that this writing is at times very similar to the writing emanating from the Irish Republican movement during the same period of time. Writing is generally seen as being primarily educational by Republicans, and the formulation and dissemination of Republican political theory is the dual purpose served by much Republican writing. Mary McArdle, a former Republican prisoner of war who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Maghaberry Prison, writes of Republican women’s artistic endeavors that “Church, state and feminism are some of the main concerns of women in almost any society. For us they become interwoven with the struggle against the British and are some of the forces which shape the freedom movement as well as our poems” (quoted in Campbell, “Irish Prison Poetry”). Such writing is seen to exist less as a product of the individual spirit than as a product of the society which produced that individual, a society which in this case happens to be a colonial society in a state of warfare. This conception of writing has created a situation wherein everything an Irish Republican writes is inherently political: as Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh, a poet sentenced to a life term in Long Kesh prison for IRA activities, writes, “If I write a poem about a flower it is still a political poem because I wrote it” (letter to the author, June 10, 1997).4 Writing theory and propaganda is also seen as essential. Remarking on his experiences in Long Kesh, Matt Morrison, a former IRA member and prisoner, has told me that this kind of activity “was imperative.” While realizing that it was not enough to constitute the struggle on its own, he says that it was “imperative to be able to explain what we were doing and why we were doing it,” and that the prisoners “had to engage in some form of self-criticism” (interview, December 6, 1996). It is this kind of politically-aware, 57

socially-conscious self-criticism that Devlin, MacStiofáin and Adams are engaged in: a self-criticism that is always a form of social criticism. In Bernadette Devlin’s The Price of My Soul, this self/social criticism takes the form of a history of the development of her own political thought and that of her peers. For Devlin, born in the working-class nationalist ghetto of the Bogside in Derry, this political development is primarily focused on tracing the relationship between socialism and Irish Republicanism. She is writing on the brink of social change, albeit not the kind of change she is hoping for: her book precedes such events as Bloody Sunday and the reemergence of the IRA. Devlin’s politics here are primarily constitutional and classbased, concerned with the northern Irish campaign for civil rights and the friction between the middle-class leadership of NICRA and the predominantly working-class nationalists whom they claimed to represent. Indeed, at times she seems more critical of the middle-class nationalist leadership than of the partition of Ireland itself. Devlin is writing at a time of Republican restructuring, a time in which socialism was beginning to have an effect upon Irish Republican political theory, and part of her task here is to explain why she and so many other young Irish people were becoming socialists. She defines nationalists (as distinct from Republicans) as those middle-class Catholics “who want an end to a separate Northern Ireland but are in favor of no further tinkering with the social system,” and later refers to them as “Catholic Tories” (5, 54). She is blunt about the material conditions she has lived with, writing, “I’m not a socialist because of any high-flown intellectual theorizing: life has made me one” (45). Despite her comment about The Price of My Soul not being an autobiography, it is the one of the three texts I examine here that most closely adheres to telling the story of a 58

life, and unlike Adams and MacStiofáin, Devlin devotes a significant part of the book to her childhood and teenage years (of course, it was published when she was twenty-two). Her analysis of this period of time centers on the development of sectarianism and classbased fear between the Catholic and Protestant working classes. Noting the differences in education, especially in history (the site, as it were, of postcoloniality itself), she says: We learned Irish history. People who went to Protestant schools learned British history. We were all learning the same things, the same events, the same period of time, but the interpretations we were given were very different. At the state school they teach that the Act of Union was brought about to help strengthen the trade agreements between England and Ireland. We were taught that it was a malicious attempt to bleed Ireland dry of her linen industry, which was affecting English cotton. We learned our Irish history from Fallon’s Irish History Aids, Fallon’s being a publishing firm in Southern Ireland. Now the Ministry of Education had issued a memorandum saying that Fallon’s Irish History Aids were not to be used in schools, because they were no more than sedition and treason in the name of history. On a point of principle, all our books were published by Fallon’s. When the Ministry wrote to complain, Mother Benignus wrote back in Irish, just to make another point clear. (60) Devlin recognizes that state structures such as the Ministry of Education exist to maintain a certain ideology based upon English imperialism, and that this ideology is disseminated throughout the population through such institutions as the educational system. The fact that schools such as the one Devlin attended continue to exist is a form of resistance whose very loci are language and history. I quote the example above at length because it demonstrates the kind of resistance to colonial power that defines the nationalist and Republican population of the north of Ireland. It is local resistance, which as we shall see is typified both by community action and support as well as by guerrilla warfare. Of the members of the Protestant working class from which most Loyalists come, Devlin writes, “He fears the Catholic because he knows that any gain made by the

Catholic minority will be his loss, for the businessmen and the landowners, Orange or Nationalist, are not going to suffer losses on anyone’s behalf” (55). She rejects the traditional, non-socialist Republican viewpoint, arguing instead that “the task was not to free the Six Counties but to start all over again the national revolution. There were no free counties anywhere in Ireland. The Irish had replaced the British in twenty-six of the counties, but they had done nothing to change the system” (88). Although Irish Republicans had never accepted the existence of the so-called Free State, to say that the immediate task at hand was not to free the six occupied counties was very much a new perspective within Republicanism at this time. Although she never denies the importance of reunifying the island, by displacing the focus of the movement from simple reunification to a class-based critique which also seeks reunification, she is reformulating the Republican movement itself and offering a critique of that movement which can perhaps help the nationalist minority in the north of Ireland far more than the older forms of Republican ideology. Devlin was indeed writing in a time of great change, when older ideologies were failing to address the problems faced by working-class nationalists and Republicans, and the new focus on class ended up greatly influencing the Republican movement. Devlin redefines both the problems facing nationalists in the north of Ireland and the means through which one can address these problems. She refuses to see the problem merely as a matter of Protestant versus Catholic (96), and questions the validity of focusing all energy on the contested border: I began moving away from traditional Republicanism to being generally opposed to the system. I didn’t know what I was in favor of, but I knew I was against the system, which I hadn’t yet learned enough jargon to term 60

“capitalist.” It was a subconscious journey to being a socialist, though I didn’t call myself a socialist then. The problem in Northern Ireland, I decided, was not partition. If we took away partition, what did we join? If we had a truly free Ireland on the other side, we would have something to join, but what was the point of ending partition merely to alter the boundaries of injustice? (90) Reconciling her new-found socialism with the older forms of Republican thought took time for Devlin, it being no easy task. She later recognized that “only in a thirty-two county Ireland could socialism even begin to work. But I had realized that the essential problem was not to unite the country, but to unite the people, and this could only be done on the basis of socialism” (125). This reconciliation (as tentative as it may have been) comes about for Devlin right before the Unionist/Loyalist opposition to the civil rights campaign began to put Northern Ireland in the world media’s headlines on a daily basis, as well as right before her own political involvement which led to her being elected MP for Mid-Ulster in April 1969. By 1968, civil rights were a priority for most nationalists living in the north of Ireland. The discrimination they faced included a lack of universal suffrage, gerrymandered constituencies, no protection against unfair employment practices, and the denial of public funds for Irish cultural events. However, the vast majority of northern Irish nationalists are working-class, and the views of the middle-class leadership of groups such as NICRA were often at odds with working-class nationalists, especially Republicans (94-5, 164). One particular point of contention was the fact that this leadership refused to align themselves with the national struggle, singing “We Shall Overcome” while their marchers sang “A Nation Once Again” (95). The national struggle and the struggle of the working class were merging for many people; as Devlin writes,

“At some point in a country’s history there are enough people who feel the same way at the same time to create a force and change the pattern of events. That’s what happened in Northern Ireland in the autumn of 1968” (91). Devlin’s “autobiography” is not only a reflection or representation of this force — it is, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett on James Joyce, that force itself. Within the complex web of power relations in which she is writing, the act of writing this text creates the possibility of change rather than merely confirming its existence — it is part of the struggle, not a memory of it. The friction between the marchers and the NICRA leadership resulted in the formation of People’s Democracy (PD), a more left-leaning and younger civil rights organization, and one in which Devlin was involved from the start (103). Headquartered at Queen’s University, Belfast, they worked towards clearly defined goals: “one man, one vote; a fair drawing of electoral boundaries; freedom of speech and assembly; repeal of the Special Powers Act (which give the police almost unlimited power of arrest and detention); and a fair allocation of jobs and houses” (104). Furthermore, “We also hoped that at a local level people would see their problems were problems of class, not religion” (106). People’s Democracy was concerned with changing the power structures of the colony, not with bringing about the implementation of cosmetic changes: “the students, as they developed, came to realize that to demand merely a fair allocation of existing resources was on its own futile; it was merely asking for an equal share of Northern Ireland’s poverty. The basic problem was a shortage of jobs and houses: the basic answer to supply the insufficiency” (104). However, even the demand for cosmetic changes was beginning to cause a violent reaction from Loyalists (most of them working-class Protestants, led by middle-class politicians like Ian Paisley) — the demand for an 62

equitable restructuring of society was bound to result in an increase in the number and severity of reactionary attacks. Civil rights marches had already been attacked by the RUC, the B-Specials (an auxiliary police force which was notoriously violent and which was disbanded in 19691970), and Loyalist mobs. The attacks on civil rights marchers culminated in the incident at Burntollet Bridge, where a large march was set upon by a particularly violent crowd (followers of Paisley) which sent eighty-seven marchers to the hospital (149). No one was arrested for attacking a marcher, despite a large police presence. Devlin recalls her experience of the attack: I was a very clever girl: cowardice makes you clever. Before this onslaught, our heads-down, arms-linked tactics were no use whatsoever, and people began to panic and run. Immediately my mind went back to Derry on October 5 and I remembered the uselessness of running. As I stood there I could see a great big lump of flatwood, like a plank out of an orange-box, getting nearer and nearer my face, and there were two great nails sticking out of it. By a quick reflex action, my hand reached my face before the wood did, and immediately two nails went into the back of my hand. Just after that I was struck on the back of the knees with this bit of wood which had failed to get me in the face, and fell to the ground. And then my brain began to tick. “Now, Bernadette,” I said, “what is the best thing to do? If you leave your arms and legs out, they’ll be broken. You can have your skull cracked, or your face destroyed.” So I rolled up in a ball on the road, tucked my knees in, tucked my elbows in, and covered my face with one hand and the crown of my head with the other. Through my fingers, I could see legs standing around me: about six people were busily involved in trying to beat me into the ground, and I could feel dull thuds landing on my back and head. Finally these men muttered something incoherent about leaving that one, and tore off across the fields after somebody else. (146-147) The brutality of the attack at Burntollet Bridge was captured by the world’s press and made the PD marchers all the more political. The fact that their attackers had been working-class Protestants forced them to refine their socialism and attempt to understand

how while the nature of the struggle in the six counties is not sectarian, sectarianism runs deep in the colony and plays a very real role in the hostilities between and fears of the Catholic and Protestant working classes. The PD marchers became more and more interested in furthering their political education. As Devlin writes, “Policemen always call me a stupid bitch, and I deny that I’m stupid” (148). The socialism within PD developed at a rapid pace for a while, but after the organization decided to get involved in electoral politics, the group backpedaled on its socialism, much to the detriment of the group (153, 159, 164-165). The group’s participation in contesting elections resulted eventually in Devlin being elected the MP for Mid-Ulster. This was brought about largely through the Republican tradition of abstentionism: for obvious reasons, the Republican leadership wanted there to be Republican-friendly MPs, but active Republicans would not themselves take their seat in Westminster if elected, as to do so would necessitate taking an oath to the Queen of England. Devlin, thinking nothing of taking an oath she thought ridiculous, was supported by the Republican leadership of the time, and this led to her election (171-173). At first, the media went into a frenzy that such a young woman could be elected MP, but after her status as fad of the week had worn off, the media was put off by her politics, taking particular exception to her initial speech at Westminster, which was seen as an incendiary attack on the British occupation of the six counties (192-193). She went from famous to infamous shortly after, when the British invasion of Free Derry’s “no-go” zone resulted in the Battle of the Bogside (August 12-14, 1969), in which the RUC, B-Specials and Loyalists attacked the ghetto, burning row after row of houses (218-221). The Battle of the Bogside resulted in Devlin facing charges of inciting to riot, an investigation into 64

whether or not she was guilty of treason, and, most importantly, the introduction of the British Army into the six counties (221). Here Devlin’s account ends. Earlier in her book, she had written that It will take a long time to achieve anything. And in the end, I believe, it will come to a clash — for at no time have those in authority relinquished their position without a struggle. But when it comes to that, it must be fought not in the Six Counties by Catholics, but in Ireland as a whole by the working class. Only if it’s an all-Ireland working-class revolution, are there enough of us to overthrow the powers that be. (167-168) Writing on the brink of violent change, Devlin foresees a time when the British government will be unable to rule the north of Ireland, when the state apparatus which has been imposed upon the Irish people will be destroyed by the very people it had considered its “subjects” (in both senses of the word): “For half a century it has misgoverned us, but it is on the way out. Now we are witnessing its dying convulsions. And with traditional Irish mercy, when we’ve got it down we will kick it into the ground” (224). Only one year later, the situation in the north of Ireland was very different from that existing when Devlin’s book was published. The differences were mostly due to two fundamental changes in the drama: the introduction of British troops into the north of Ireland and the reemergence of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA leadership had failed miserably to respond to the renewed violence in the north. This failure was partly because the leadership was located in Dublin, far removed (ninety miles, but half a universe) from Belfast and Derry; partly because the IRA had maintained a ceasefire since 1962; and partly because the IRA leadership of the time was far more interested in Marxist political theory than running guns up to the beleaguered nationalist ghettos. Tim Pat Coogan, the

foremost historian of the IRA, writes of the disorganized conditions of the time that “it is literally true, for instance, that in August, 1969, the only weapons known to be available to the I.R.A. were ten guns” (IRA 279). This situation, and the exasperation of northern Republicans, led to the split in late 1969 which created the “Official” IRA and the “Provisional” IRA, the latter of which began operations under the leadership of Provisional Chief of Staff Seán MacStiofáin.5 Just as Devlin recognized early on that two histories were being taught to the children of the north of Ireland, MacStiofáin is well aware of the role “history” has played in the Irish struggle. In Revolutionary in Ireland, he is writing a type of history that is traditionally of great importance to the Republican movement. He is writing within a certain genre, Republican history, a counter-hegemonic history which at its simplest tries to disseminate the Republican perspective regarding the northern Irish situation, and at its more complex levels attempts to develop a critique of the very foundations of history as a discipline and a form of narrative and reinscribe them in politically viable, revolutionary ways. This is what I could call, taking my cue from critic Cheryl Herr’s article “Ireland from the Outside,” a kind of “provisional history” (pun intended), which (and I realize that I am going considerably beyond her argument) is a history which is temporary and tentative — and hence, largely discredited by the “keepers” of history. This history has a job to do; it involves a keen sense of historical immediacy, practicality and contextual flow: meaning, ultimately, is present, but present only when a certain number of different configurations are immediately at hand within a given context. Provisional history is in a constant state of flux, its elementary structures constantly changing shape through the interaction of power relations. One may argue that all history 66

is precisely so; however, provisional history foregrounds this aspect of historiography — it recognizes and accentuates within its very structures and (de)limitations that all revolutionary history must be such. In Revolutionary in Ireland, MacStiofáin is concerned with developing a history of the Republican movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a particular emphasis on the role of the IRA. His text is more descriptive than analytical or critical, although the descriptive elements of his book are certainly not wholly divorced from the overall Republican critique of society. His is the least “autobiographical” of these three texts. He virtually skips over his apolitical years (childhood, adolescence) and spends very little time discussing personal matters (his wife and daughters, for instance) unrelated to the Republican struggle. This is partly because he was for a time so deeply involved in the Republican movement that little existed for him outside of that context, but most importantly because he sees such information as irrelevant, focusing on the unimportant individual instead of upon the struggle (though occasionally the personal details he gives are rather amusing, such as his story of shaving off with great relief the hated mustache he had to grow as part of a disguise). His emphasis is on “truth-telling,” and his literary aspirations are few (though he writes reasonably well in both Irish and English).6 In a letter to me, he writes, “Autobiographies do play an important role in the literature of the Republican mov[ement]; But anyone who writes one must write the truth. No real Revolutionary will write lies or tell lies about ... another Revolutionary. Most writers want [to] make money. Truth is an obstacle to many so called writers” (letter, January 17, 1997). MacStiofáin is a firm believer that the more one learns about the political and colonial situation in the 67

north of Ireland, the more likely one is to come down on the Republican side. His history (like other Republican histories) writes against the portrayal of the Irish conflict in the more “official” media — the press, statements made by politicians, academic treatises — which more often than not are content to merely repeat the information provided them by the British government and military. This type of information portrays the Irish conflict as being primarily a religious war — Catholic against Protestant, with the English present simply as “peacekeepers” — and refuses to recognize that the current Anglo-Irish conflict is primarily an anti-imperialist war against British colonialism. MacStiofáin’s job is also to explain the political foundations of the modern IRA, a fairly new organization in many ways and one that was extremely active during the early 1970s.7 This is not to say that he has no personal motivations for writing this book. He begins his foreword by writing: A great deal has been written about me by journalists from all over the world, most of whom have never met me, much less interviewed me. A great deal written has been, to say the least, inaccurate and uncomplimentary. Some of it has been just “black” propaganda or character assassination by the British. More has been written in ignorance by foreign journalists unable to check their facts. But the result has been an image of me as a hard-hearted brute unconcerned with loss of human life or the sufferings of the people, a kind of moron obsessed with the use of violence, and a power-crazy maniac determined to maintain his position at all costs. (vii) Put simply, MacStiofáin had a terrible reputation in mainland Britain and in the twentysix counties, as well as throughout the world via the mass media. In particular, he was portrayed by an undercover operator named Maria McGuire (who joined the IRA under false pretenses for a time and afterwards wrote a very unflattering book about it) as an unfeeling monster, relishing the deaths of Protestants in general. However, his emphasis

in Revolutionary in Ireland is on countering the claims that have been made about the IRA; countering those made about himself is a purely secondary concern. MacStiofáin begins his text with an account of his trial in 1953 in which he was convicted of taking part in an IRA arms raid. He immediately portrays this trial not as a personal event, but as the continuation of a collective one: “To the spectators on that early October day in 1953, the case was in puzzling contrast to the routine legal events of the Hertfordshire assizes. But it was a scene foreshadowed thousands of times before and repeated hundreds of times since in Ireland’s long revolutionary struggle to recover her freedom and national sovereignty” (1). Yet MacStiofáin is something of an anomaly among Irish Republicans, having been born in England with the name John Stephenson (his mother was born in the north of Ireland) and having served in the RAF after the Second World War. He pays scant attention to the early years of his life (he joins the IRA on page 39), noting only a few experiences which came to influence him, especially his experiences in Jamaica, where he was stationed during his years in the RAF, and where he first began to recognize the ways in which colonialism and racism operate in society and the role the British military plays in relation to them (23). It is in Jamaica that he begins to reflect on the similarities between what he was seeing there and what he knew of Irish history and the ways his English co-workers back in England had treated Irish workers. Jamaica led him to begin thinking about anti-Irish sentiment as a form of racism, and he reflects on this, the media, and class when he writes, Possibly they [the English in general], and especially the working class, are unwitting victims of the propaganda and the cruel caricatures of their Irish neighbors instigated by British governments and editors since the seventeenth century. Much of this propaganda can only be described as racialist, and so much of it is still on file to be read by anybody with two 69

eyes in his head that the point is not worth arguing. The image of the Irish as a lazy, good-for-nothing and untrustworthy race has always been combined with the harshest oppression, which is a familiar combination in colonial history. (20)8 His experiences in the RAF in Jamaica also contributed to the development of two strains of thought for MacStiofáin: his distrust of party politics and his belief in the legitimacy of armed political action. He writes that “the situation [in Jamaica] was ripe for revolutionary effort. But a lot of the people’s attention had been side-tracked by party politics. It was a hoax that kept them competing with each other, but getting no real benefits in return” (27). Reflections like this made proper training in the use of firearms seem essential to MacStiofáin, and he took an advanced defense course before leaving the RAF: “Some day, I said to myself, all this would be useful” (29). Upon returning to England in 1949, MacStiofáin set about attempting to turn his interests into action, joining Conradh na Gaeilge, the Gaelic League (34). Although the preservation of the Irish language has remained dear to him to this day (for much of his life, he worked as an Irish language teacher), he found the Gaelic League to be apolitical, if not anti-Republican. Resigning, he took his interest to the United Irishmen, a nationalist group of the time (37). Here he found a few men with whom he attempted to form an active service unit of the IRA. After waiting for some time, permission was granted by the Republican leadership in Ireland, and a new London active service unit was formed with MacStiofáin as Officer Commanding (OC). This was in late 1949, a relatively inactive period for the IRA, preceding the border campaign of 1956-1962. He notes that he and his men found particular inspiration in General Tom Barry’s Guerrilla Days in Ireland, the former IRA General’s memoirs from the Anglo-Irish and Civil Wars

(letter, May 20, 1997). The unit proved secure and long-lasting: MacStiofáin writes that of that original London unit, at least half remained active Republicans at the time of his arrest in November 1972, a remarkably long time (44). MacStiofáin was jailed in 1953 along with two other Irish Republicans, Manus Canning and Cathal Goulding, the second of whom would go on to become the first Chief of Staff of the “Official” IRA (and to some degree, MacStiofáin’s nemesis). He would remain imprisoned until 1959. Like many Republicans, he took advantage of his time in prison to hone his political ideology and broaden his education (prison was and is still called “Republican University” by some). Agreeing with the Irish revolutionary Constance Markievicz’s remark that “Jail is the only place where one gets time to read” (9), he took the time to study accounting as well as to study, as best he could under his conditions, revolutionary theory and political history (57-58). In addition to this, he began to take lessons in Irish from Canning, which proved to be an advantage since guards and other prisoners could not understand what he and Canning would discuss.9 It was also in prison that MacStiofáin became particularly attuned to international struggles, reading the daily papers for information on liberation movements around the world (70). Once the Cypriot group EOKA actively began to fight English imperialism in April 1955, Cypriot leaders began to be introduced among the prison population at Wormwood Scrubs where MacStiofáin was imprisoned. He became friends with many of them, and discussed revolutionary theory and history with them to a great extent (70-79), even learning enough Greek to converse with the prisoners — at one point he remarks that for a while, Canning and he conversed half in Irish and half in Greek, a very odd combination (78). 71

The MacStiofáin released from prison in 1959 was very different in some ways than the one who was sentenced in 1953. He knew far more about revolutionary politics and tactics, and had broadened his battlefield to include the rest of the world, seeing himself now as not only an Irish Republican, but as part of a worldwide network of revolutionaries. He reported back to the IRA leadership the night he was released (86). He remained active for the period preceding the eruption of the north in 1968, and was elected to the Army Council (the governing body of the IRA) in 1964 (93). In early 1968, he nearly resigned from the movement in disagreement with the new focus on Marxist politics (while a critic of capitalism, MacStiofáin was not a Marxist), but remained part of the organization until the split in 1969, writing that to do otherwise would be “like saying ‘I resign from myself’” (107). The events of 1968 and 1969 sickened MacStiofáin, partly because they were happening at all and partly because the Republican leadership in Dublin was doing nothing about them. Arguing strenuously with General Headquarters staff and the Army Council, both of whom urged that the time was not right for armed action, MacStiofáin was forced to threaten a split if the leadership continued to do nothing to defend the nationalist ghettos of the north (113). In a moment of bitter irony, MacStiofáin had to break with the old IRA through its Chief of Staff, Cathal Goulding, with whom he had been arrested back in 1953 (131). In Bernadette Devlin’s The Price of My Soul, she describes a number of different strategic reactions to British rule that, by resisting the power of the state, construct forms of local power. These can be as simple as teaching Irish history or refusing to allow a split nationalist vote in elections. In Seán MacStiofáin’s Revolutionary in Ireland, we see 72

a far more blatant use of power and resistance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; actual armed resistance against the military and police forces. However, I argue that these different forms of power/resistance are inseparable: indeed, it is out of the spirit of collective strategic resistance that the modern IRA came into being, and the operations of the IRA would never have been possible without the support of a significant section of the community. After the Provisional/Official split of December 1969, the Belfast IRA reorganized and became the hub of the Republican movement, which it remains today (137). The Army Council elected MacStiofĂĄin as Chief of Staff, and set out their goal as being a united, democratic socialist Irish Republic (MacStiofĂĄin himself saw a big difference between communism and socialism, seeing the first as reactionary, anti-nationalist and opposed to the use of force, and the latter as being far more flexible and non-dictatorial). However, the organization of which he had been elected Chief of Staff was in a state of complete disarray: So there I was just before Christmas 1969 with an organization that was only a nucleus. Outside Belfast, the battalions were very much paper battalions. The strength of a company varied from twelve to forty volunteers. But manpower was not the worst problem. Allegiance was given at a heartening rate. By mid-January, for example, there were nine units in Belfast, five in Armagh, four in Down, three in Tyrone, two in Fermanagh, two in County Derry, one in Derry city and one in south-west Antrim. Units in most other counties were nowhere near as strong. The real problem was resources. We had five years of neglect to make up for as quickly as possible. There was very little equipment in the units, and practically none to form a reserve. As for funds, I emerged from that special convention in the uncomfortable knowledge that the kitty contained exactly one hundred and five pounds. One of the Belfast delegates had provided a hundred of it, and another delegate a fiver. (138) In addition to these problems, there was animosity between the Officials (who operated militarily for a time as the National Liberation Front) and the new IRA, though for the

time being this would be peaceful (139-141). Also, it was imperative to inform the public of the changes in the organization and maintain their support base. The Provisional IRA issued its first public statement on December 28, 1969, in response to a Sunday Press article which reported a rumor of a split. This statement refutes the position of the Officials, accuses them of accepting parliamentary politics in a situation under which it was impossible for them to work, and reaffirms the IRA’s allegiance to the Easter Proclamation of 1916 and the Dáil Éireann of 1919 (the only government of a 32-county Irish Republic this century, it was considered illegal by the British and was brought down by the treaty of 1922 which established Northern Ireland). It cites in particular the failure of the Republican leadership in Dublin to respond to the increasingly vicious attacks on nationalists in the north, and calls upon “the Irish people at home and in exile” for their support (142-143). This document marks a decided shift in emphasis from Dublin to Belfast, away from parliamentary politics and towards armed struggle, and specifically calls on the support of the Irish not only in Ireland but abroad, all of which would prove to be important moves for the IRA. That the IRA is one of the most sophisticated guerrilla armies ever to arise is largely due to the support it receives from those living in the nationalist ghettos of the north of Ireland. Contrary to the British Information Service’s attempts to portray the leadership of the IRA as “criminal godfathers” with little public support, a sizable proportion of the nationalist northern Irish see the IRA as an anti-imperialist army, or at the very least as a safeguard against sectarian attack and a police force in itself (due to the harassment so many nationalists have been subject to by the RUC, most do not trust it and would only call upon it as a last resort).10 This community support is analyzed in far 74

more detail in Adams’s autobiography than in MacStiofáin’s, though he too recognizes that the IRA’s mandate comes from the collective experiences of the nationalist people of the six counties. When one takes into account the fact that there were 100,000 people attending IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands’s funeral, it becomes very difficult to argue that the IRA are merely bloodthirsty terrorists who do not represent in any way the wishes of the nationalist population. There have been times, however, in living memory, when the IRA was more or less inactive, and when their support was at an ebb. The experiences of the post-1968 era, however, to paraphrase an overused phrase, changed things utterly. Guerrilla warfare is perhaps the most extreme form of local power/resistance, and this resistance is very much a reaction against the forces of power wielded against the population in question. Responding to a radio address by Brian Faulkner, the colonial administrator of Northern Ireland, to the Catholic population, in which he assured them that internment without trial would “remove the shadow of fear” from them, MacStiofáin writes, This ignored the fact that it was the enraged people of the nationalist areas themselves who were on the warpath, as all observers and British troops in Belfast were only too aware. Regardless of shadows of fear, in some localities it was as much as IRA officers could do to get the people to leave the fighting to their own units. The central confrontation was between the people and the British army. (188) In short, the emergence of the Provisional IRA was not the seizing of power by “gunhappy paramilitary elders,” as one New York Times analyst suggested as recently as 1997,11 but a phenomenon in which local communities organized socially, politically, communally and militarily to resist the manifestations of colonial power.

Much of MacStiofáin’s book after this point is a history of the events of Northern Ireland from 1970 until his arrest in November of 1972 and his subsequent hunger strike. Although what he has to say about such events as the introduction of internment in August 1971, Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972, and other key events of this time period are important for the different perspective it provides, for the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on MacStiofáin’s comments on the use of propaganda by both the Republican movement and the British occupation forces and the ways in which IRA operations and the colonial context in which they took place were public spectacles. This “propaganda” is in many ways simply another form of self-representation, and is the selfrepresentation of communities rather than individuals, even if filtered through the lens of the individual and at times marketed as such. The notion that IRA actions and propaganda exist as public spectacles may seem an odd statement to make, considering the emphasis on secrecy in the Republican movement, but as I will show, the war for national independence takes place as much in the newspapers of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England as it does on the streets of Belfast or the rural Republican stronghold of South Armagh. The distinction between private and public knowledge becomes blurred in a situation like that of the north of Ireland, just as the distinction between the individual and the social becomes indistinct. The IRA must operate secretly, but relies on public support in order to function effectively and hence needs to operate to some extent publicly as well. Likewise, the British attempt to put down the insurgency of the IRA and related Republican groups is at the same time one planned in secrecy and yet reliant on the mass media for much of its work. (And, of course, in a genre like autobiography, 76

notions of secret, truth, public and private knowledges, and, in cases like MacStiofáin’s, propaganda, all become blurred.) The British system of media control is an example in point. During the early 1970s, a new military figure arrived on the scene of the six counties, fresh from putting down insurgencies in Kenya and Cypress: Brigadier General Frank Kitson. Kitson was an expert at what the military prefers to call “low intensity operations,” and which critics of these operations variously refer to as black propaganda, psychological operations (“psy-ops”), or dirty tricks. “He was to become our deadliest enemy in the North,” writes MacStiofáin (72). While Kitson’s particular area of expertise was intelligence (his was the theory that a lot of less valuable information was better than a few pieces of very sensitive information), certain British tactics of this time are traceable back to him. Control of newspapers was particularly important, as was taking advantage of the enemy in any way possible. Kitson, along with the Special Air Services (SAS) units with which he worked, was responsible for a number of strategies: promoting infighting among Republicans (173); creating the British reliance on informers and double-agents (194-195); the introduction of internment without trial (not his idea: it had been used many times in Ireland in the past); the manipulation of official reports and the media to give the impression that, to use a very well-worn phrase, “the IRA is on the run”; and far crueler practices which I shall describe below. Indeed, Kitson has written a textbook on the subject, titled Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-Keeping, which has become something of an unholy bible in Republican circles. The book, an extension of his previous counterintelligence publication Gangs and Counter Gangs, written in relation to his work in putting down the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, goes into considerable detail about the 77

ways in which a government (with the intensive involvement of the military and intelligence communities) can put down and subvert insurgencies, especially ones aimed at toppling colonial governments. His ideas are far removed from notions of “British fair play” in war, and he was responsible in spirit if not in fact for some of the more atrocious acts of the British Army in the north of Ireland. Little about his book, however, focuses on Ireland, as it was written while he was still serving in a military capacity there. An example of the use of “black propaganda” is the Parker Report, which investigated methods of interrogation widely held to be nothing less than torture (and which have led to denunciations by Amnesty International and to England’s being criticized by the European Convention on Human Rights). In particular, the Parker Report was investigating what was known as “the hood treatment.” In this “treatment,” the prisoners (internees who had not been charged or tried) were forced to wear a heavy hood, which blocked all visual stimuli and made breathing difficult, and made to stand leaning on their fingertips against a wall for several hours at a time, being severely beaten when they inevitably fell (and often simply when those guarding them felt like it). In addition, a machine was used to generate a high-pitched whine that was designed to disorient the prisoner. This was repeated over and over, for days at a time for some internees. The process worked, leaving prisoners with severe disturbances and in some cases irreparably damaging their physical and mental health. The use of this torture led to the method’s being roundly condemned in England (not to mention Ireland) and the government’s temporary embarrassment. However, the Parker Report found some benefits to the use of the hood treatment. As MacStiofáin writes,

The Parker report claimed that as a direct result of two operations involving fourteen interrogations, “a further seven hundred members of both IRA factions, and their positions in the organizations” were identified. “A further advantage,” it said, “was the ‘snowball’ effect generated by following up the information thus obtained.” Republican intelligence did not have to look far to find where his lordship [Lord Parker, head of the commission investigating] picked up that idea since Brigadier Kitson, outlining his personal theory for developing background information, had referred to a “snowball” process. This claim, of course, was utter rubbish. . . . If the so-called “snowball” effect had been anything but pure theory, the Brits could reckon to get a minimum of one more name for each on the list. At that rate, the IRA would have been crippled by late autumn and rolled up altogether by Christmas. There had to be some logical reason why the IRA had not disappeared. . . . The simple explanation, of course, is that they inflated the value of what information they did manage to get so as to be able to justify the methods of torture used. (202-203) Later, during the short-lived truce of 1972, the motives of Republicans were called into question by the British press, which wished to believe that the IRA had agreed to a truce only because they were near extinction. Word was that the Republicans were in danger of losing the support of nationalists for giving in to the “peace at any price” people, that they were resented by the nationalist population who saw themselves as betrayed by the truce, and that the moderate (and non-violent) Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) was beginning to receive ex-Republican support. The story varied week to week. As MacStiofáin points out, it is very strange propaganda indeed which alleges that Republicans are furious at the leadership for calling a truce one week and then are declaring their allegiance to an anti-Republican group the next (272). The response to internment is another case in point of the propagandistic use of the media by the British government. Internment was a disaster for the British, who seemed far more capable of rounding up innocent civilians than prominent IRA activists — after the initial raids of August 9, 1971, only fifty-six members of the IRA were 79

among the three hundred forty two arrested (184, 192). Joe Cahill, then Officer Commanding of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA, confirmed the low number of IRA members who had been interned at a press conference held just a few days after the arrests (Coogan, Troubles 128). The press, however, continued to claim that internment was working: It was . . . chiefly for the benefit of the British public and foreign opinion that the IRA was wiped out several times over on paper. Since the people in the North could see for themselves that the IRA offensive was increasing on a large scale, British credibility soon reached vanishing point. If the IRA activists were now behind the wire, who was shooting more British soldiers than ever and stepping up bombing operations? (211) Obviously, part of MacStiofáin’s goal of “truth-telling” is to counter the propaganda put forth by the British government and military, and at times the fulfillment of this goal seems a remarkably easy task. On at least two occasions, the IRA leadership held press conferences under the noses of the British Army which were great propaganda successes (190, 260-262). MacStiofáin’s job becomes much harder and more sensitive when it comes to documenting the existence of “counter-gangs” and far more violent acts of British anti-subversion. In one instance, MacStiofáin describes occasions when British troops in civilian gear connected to a Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF) opened fire on civilians and were apprehended by local people — this happened in unionist as well as nationalist areas (276-277). The promotion of sectarian warfare works to the British advantage as it creates the illusion (repeated in the press) that the nature of the conflict in the north of Ireland is religious, not colonial. The far more vile tactic of deliberately ignoring IRA bomb warnings in order to ensure the deaths of innocent civilians (and, hence, cause people to condemn the IRA) is the most extreme form of “dirty tricks,” and

one which MacStiofáin is at pains to denounce (295-296). Both of these cases are more difficult for MacStiofáin to make (even though both have been documented elsewhere12) mainly because of the position from which he is speaking: readers who are not Republicans themselves or who are not particularly aware of the conflict in the six counties will always find it difficult to believe that the British government and military would do such things, and they will find it even more difficult to believe when the allegations are coming from a person like MacStiofáin. It is interesting that he never addresses this problem: as interested in autobiography as a form of “truth telling” as he is, he never quite addresses the fact that many readers are simply going to be prejudiced against him in advance — that his “believability quotient” is going to be rather low for many readers. For reasons I shall go into in my conclusion, I believe that part of the reason MacStiofáin does not address this issue is that he does not see this autobiography as being the story of a man, but of a community of which he is only a small, albeit important, part. The private is always public in some ways in the north of Ireland, just as the public is always somewhat secretive; and just as the distinction between “self” and “community” does not work in this context, the distinction between “public” and “private” fails as well. We can see the ways in which these distinctions crumble in Gerry Adams’s Before the Dawn: An Autobiography as well. Unlike MacStiofáin, who operated at a more removed level during the conflicts of the early 1970s because of his position in the IRA, Adams was coming of age in the Ballymurphy district of Republican West Belfast in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and was involved in community-based action from the renewal of the conflict. His descriptions of communities mobilizing in self-defense are 81

detailed and personal, he having known most of the people involved. It is no surprise to find that his “autobiography” begins with two maps: one of Belfast in general, the other of Ballymurphy (or the “Murph”) in particular: Before the Dawn is truly a “communography,” a history of a community living with war. Father Des Wilson, longtime commentator on the conflict in the six counties, writes of Adams’s book, “it tells a story which, as he himself said at the launching in Belfast, many persons in West Belfast might have written” (6). It goes without saying that this is certainly not how most autobiographies are described by reviewers. Adams’s book is a manifestation of local power/resistance as well as an instance of local knowledges coming to the fore. By a manifestation of local knowledges, I mean what Foucault calls an “insurrection of subjugated knowledges,” an uprising of forms of knowledge (which are never quite divorced from power) which for one reason or another are disqualified (81, emphasis in text). For Foucault, these subjugated knowledges include both the historical contents which do not fit into the established discipline of history (what he elsewhere calls “effects” of history), as well as local forms of disqualified knowledge: On the other hand, I believe that by subjugated knowledges one should understand something else, something which in a sense is altogether different, namely, a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity. I also believe that it is through the re-emergence of these low-ranking knowledges, these unqualified, even directly disqualified knowledges ... and which involve what I would call a popular knowledge (le savoir des gens) though it is far from being a general commonsense knowledge, but is on the contrary a particular, local, regional knowledge, a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity and which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything surrounding it — that it is through the re-appearance of this knowledge, of these local 82

popular knowledges, these disqualified knowledges, that criticism performs its work. (82) Foucault goes on to argue that what these forms of knowledge are concerned with is the “historical knowledge of struggles,” that “in the specialised areas of erudition as in the disqualified, popular knowledge there lay the memory of hostile encounters which even up to this day have been confined to the margins of knowledge” (83, emphasis in text). Memory, and the preservation of “counter-knowledges” (for example, Irish Republican histories) and “counter-memory” (such as folk memory), play a very important role in the nationalist north, and these are caught up in the blurred distinctions between public and private space I discussed earlier. The secret also plays more than one role here. When Adams’s book was published, many journalists flocked to it in hopes of it justifying some of the statements made in the press about Adams, and were largely disappointed when they were confronted with a book that to them did not spell out all of the author’s secrets (that is, did not incriminate him to the degree hoped by much of the press). Danny Morrison, former Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin and a good friend of Adams’s (and, as we will see in Chapter Four, a novelist), writes of the British press: “Tell us, when did you join the IRA, Gerry?” “Did you ever plant a bomb?” “Were you ever on the Army Council?” Let the British hacks languish with their cirrhosis. The questions are usually insidious and rarely part of a genuine inquiry, and, Lord, it is so, so sweet that they are frustrated and deprived of the answers when nationalist working-class people are so satisfied that they don’t even have to ask. (“Portrait” 12) Before the Dawn is a book about the processes involved in constructing a communal identity which asserts itself against the power structures which attempt to interpellate it and which very nakedly operate within the greater society. This is not to say, of course, that the greater society does not interpellate the subject to a degree, but this interpellation 83

exists within the realm of power/resistance, where subject construction can indeed be fought against and reinscribed. Unlike Devlin and MacStiofáin, Adams has written other books, and does consider himself a writer (see Chapters Three and Four). In most of his works, Adams blends fiction with non-fiction, and in particular with autobiography. To a lesser degree, this remains true in Before the Dawn. While the focus here is on the “true,” Adams feels free to bend the genre of autobiography, repeating “conversations” he and his friends had as children, peppering the book with quotations and songs, and even at one point including a short story he had previously written (168-171). (This story, about an IRA sniper, raised quite a fuss in the British press, which preferred to read it as evidence that Adams was himself a sniper for the IRA at one time — a very unlikely prospect considering his poor eyesight. Adams has regretted including it.) In one particularly funny, but admittedly hard to believe Joycean echo, he writes, “‘Abercorn Street North, Leeson Street, the Falls Road, Belfast, Ireland, the World, the Universe,’ I wrote in my schoolbooks” (21). However, as with the other writers I have examined here, Adams is more concerned with telling the story of a community than that of an individual (if in some ways exceptional) life. He does spend more time than MacStiofáin, however, on his early influences. Born in a Republican family (his father had been a member of the IRA and had been imprisoned on more than one occasion), Adams came to an understanding of the political situation around him early on: I was beginning to get a sense of the political shape of my world. Unionists were in control and the British government seemed happy enough with the situation. It was a one-party state, “a Protestant 84

parliament for a Protestant people.” Attempts to change this by physical force, by publicising the injustices or by the development of a party political alternative had failed. . . . The prospects for anyone who became involved in Republican politics were not good. . . . Political expression by the nationalist people, who had never accepted the partition of Ireland and the authority of the British imperial presence, was ruthlessly suppressed, as it had been since the foundation of the northern statelet. . . . Faced with the lack of democracy, with the Special Powers Act, the lack of adult suffrage, the gerrymandering of local government and the ban on Republican parties, I was convinced that the injustice of the system must be challenged. (53-55) Joining the nationalist Wolfe Tone Society, Adams was first arrested while attempting to sell the organization’s banned newspaper on the streets of Belfast (78-79). Questions of civil rights were beginning to be raised, centering on the inequalities of the voting system: “restriction of voting rights at local government level to ratepayers and their wives, and the allocation of up to six votes to the directors of limited companies, placed unionists in control of the entire political system. In Derry, for example, 20,000 nationalist votes elected eight city councillors, while 10,000 unionist votes elected twelve” (78). It was also very difficult for nationalist families to find housing, since once they did so they would become ratepayers and, hence, voters. While the infighting within the IRA was beginning to develop, Adams busied himself in more local forms of resistance, becoming active in the civil rights marches (91ff) and writing letters to the various newspapers: “I put out a few press releases on political matters of the day and carried out little letter writing campaigns, usually in the columns of the Irish News, in which I used five or six different names. Sometimes I even wrote a letter critical of the last one I had written, just to try to stir up interest in issues” (82-83). However, such humorously subversive tactics were about to change. The civil rights marches had enraged certain segments of the unionist/Loyalist population, and 85

sectarian attacks were becoming more common. As things heated up, Adams found that the communities involved could not rely on the Republican leadership in Dublin and had to seize the initiative themselves: “By July we were actively involved in trying to get people in Ardoyne and Unity Flats organised to defend themselves during the Orange parades. Someone had to do it. The Republican leadership was in no way prepared for any sort of military defense, never mind an offensive. It was, instead, engaged in political semantics” (96). The failure of the IRA to defend the nationalist areas of the north became especially clear in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bogside and the subsequent eruption of Belfast (99ff). The situation became so tense that three cabinet ministers of the twenty-six county government (which had more or less disowned the people of the north) “proposed that the Irish army cross the border and seize Derry, Newry and other areas of majority Catholic population,” an action which would almost certainly have brought about a state of war between Britain and Ireland. Of course, an Irish invasion did not materialize, nor did any substantial support from the IRA until after the December 1969 split. Meanwhile, quickly organized groups of civilians were left to defend themselves from the newly-introduced British Army and the Loyalist assaults which, under the watchful eye of the RUC, resulted in thousands of people’s homes being burned out: People responded over those August days with great fortitude and resilience, and they showed a remarkable ability to organize collectively. So spirits were good despite the situation. Young people who had never been responsible for anything now found themselves guarding the property of displaced families, organizing and minding barricades, securing supplies and so on. It was a heady and a testing time, but it was also uniquely and unforgettably fulfilling. People who had long been regarded and treated as the lowest of the low now proved themselves to be capable and resourceful and strong. The biggest forced movement of 86

population in Europe since the second world war had resulted from the loyalist pogroms, and people had responded by opening up their homes behind the barricades to refugees. Working people had taken control of aspects of their own lives, organized their own districts in a way which later deeply antagonised and traumatised the Catholic middle class, particularly the hierarchy of the Catholic church. It was an experience of community oneness, of unselfishness at every hand. (111) At the same time, the dangers of the military situation meant that “many people involved with the defense committees flocked to the IRA, which speedily mushroomed out of all proportion to its previous numbers” (118). Adams became active in Sinn Féin, which was at that time illegal, and sided with those arguing against the Goulding leadership of the IRA. However, even at that time he did not think it enough to have an active IRA. One of the first to recognize the importance of an effective political presence, he writes, failure and inadequacy did not relate only to the question of the defense of the beleaguered nationalist areas. Indeed, lack of guns was not a primary problem: once the pogroms were over, this lack was made up quite rapidly. The primary problem was the lack of political awareness and acumen, a shortcoming which I shared and which was to remain even after the guns had become plentiful. (121) However, at the time, few saw the need to form a viable political party as important. The Belfast leadership of the IRA had broken with the Dublin leadership, and soon the IRA had split irreparably and the Provisionals became active in the north. The fact that the split was largely caused by the Dublin leadership’s “going in for politics” created a situation wherein many Republicans in the north were wary of getting involved in the political process. Adams’s desire to formulate new political means through which the Republican movement could work towards the end of national unification was also a desire to assist the political development of the individuals within that movement, including political

development beyond the national issue. Adams is firmly of the belief that one cannot be progressive on the national issue while being reactionary toward political liberation in other areas of one’s life or the life of the community. This attitude is reflected in both his non-fiction and (as we shall see in Chapter Four) his fiction. Communities in the northern counties at this time underwent great social upheaval, particular the nationalist areas which were coming under increasing pressure from the British forces. Women in particular began to challenge old attitudes regarding the propriety of women in politics by establishing committees and organization designed to help women seize the power necessary to respond to the situation around them. In Women in Ireland, Lily Fitzsimons reflects on the situation in the nationalist areas during 1971: The most traumatic effect the early part of the conflict had on families, especially on the women, was the sudden separation of fathers from their wives and children. As well as the imprisonment of sons and daughters, some of them still in their teens, without charge or trial. It was because of these widespread arrests and constant house raids across the Six-Counties, following internment that women found themselves forced more and more into the front line, defending their families, homes and communities against the brutal onslaught of the British crown forces. (17) Many women who had never taken part in any sort of political activity, much less direct action, found themselves confronting fully-armed soldiers and publicly drawing attention to themselves and the plight of their communities. Right across the Six-Counties, women of all ages, from teenagers to grandmothers took to the street in protest. The result was the setting up of the “Hen-Patrols.” These were made up of groups of local women who met every night in an effort to counteract the British raiding party’s movements. The strategy was a simple one and ironically along the lines of the British foot patrol (code named “Duck Patrol”). We broke up into groups of four, and while one group followed the Brit patrol blowing whistles, the other women gathered at street corners banging dust-bin lids as a warning and to alert the community of another house being raided. It

also served as a means of showing support for those families who were being continually harassed by the British army. (17) This type of activity had implications which went beyond working for the Republican cause and allowed people within the nationalist communities the opportunity to expand their political development and begin to recognize other forms of oppression present in their lives besides the colonial oppression faced by the community. In response to increasing British violence, community groups began to organize more effectively: “The network of organisation included street committees, women’s committees, a revamped Sinn Féin, youth groups, the relief co-ordinating committee, the tenants’ association and the co-ordinating committee; we were in effect operating a whole, organic system of local democracy” (137). Many people were involved in these forms of local power/resistance who had never been involved in anything of the sort before, and many of them were beginning to come to the attention of the British Army, including Adams. Support for the IRA was increasing constantly (142). Also increasing were calls for the introduction of internment without trial, in which suspected Republicans and their supporters could be legally held for an indefinite period in makeshift prison camps. Internment had been used a number of times in twentiethcentury Ireland, though this practice has never been utilized on the English mainland. The IRA recognized the potential damage internment could inflict upon the Republican movement and instructed active IRA volunteers to sleep away from home. While this tactic worked in that few of those initially interned were IRA members, a significant number of Republicans would eventually find themselves in one or another prison camp during the next five years.

Internment without charge or trial was introduced on August 9, 1971 and would continue to be British policy until late 1975. Adams was interned on July 19, 1972; he further received an official sentence for trying to escape from the camp, extending his imprisonment to the spring of 1977. During the buildup to internment, civil rights agitation was ending in bloodshed, and internment night itself ended in the shooting of a number of nationalists by the British army (151-152; 158-161): In the immediate aftermath of internment, there were 2,500 forced evacuations. Thousands of refugees streamed over the border, 6,000 alone winding up within two days in five refugee camps established by the Dublin government. In the four days from 9 to 13 August [1971], twenty-two people were killed, nineteen of them civilians; others died later of their wounds, and scores were injured. (161) These events, and the word which quickly spread about the ill-treatment and torture of those taken away to the internment camps, were broadcast by the world media and brought condemnations from around the world. The policy of internment, however, remained in place until it was replaced by the “criminalisation” policy and the H-Block prison in the mid-1970s. At the time internment was introduced, Adams was on the run, and almost never slept in the same place twice, much less at home. Despite these circumstances, he married Colette McArdle around this time (he was late to the ceremony because he had a meeting beforehand), and the two began making plans to raise a family together (174-176). Although a wanted man who, as he later learned, was on a “shoot on sight” list (221), family obligations occasionally required some risk-taking on his part: We found a new billet in the Whiterock, and Colette became pregnant in September. We were both delighted at this news. In the first few weeks of her pregnancy, Colette took a craving for bananas and Walls vanilla 90

ice-cream. The bananas were easy, but more than once as I toured Falls Road shops looking for Walls vanilla ice-cream — no other flavor would do — I knew that only the fathers or expectant fathers amongst my comrades would understand if I were arrested on such a mission. Mother Ireland sometimes had to take second place. (183-184) Generally, however, the situation was bleak. In the aftermath of Bloody Sunday — when British troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing fourteen of them — the violence intensified, as American weapons were smuggled into the north of Ireland and the British Army stepped up operations against the civilian population (179-181).13 Never one to romanticize the physical force tradition (172), Adams describes his pain at losing a number of friends and family members in the fighting (188-189). It was while trying to get over the shock of the death of some friends that Adams let his guard down, stayed too long at one place, and was arrested by the British Army (189). Adams’s first experience with internment didn’t last long, though he too suffered the beatings and interrogations that marked British treatment of Republican prisoners (190-191). He was released for the IRA talks with the London government soon after his internment, in which Seán MacStiofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Martin McGuinness and Ivor Bell also took part (197-198). This was the time of Billy McKee’s successful hunger strike for political status and the ill-fated IRA truce of 1972: a heady time for Irish Republicans, and a bloody one. Immediately after the resumption of military activities by the IRA, British snipers killed several civilians in the Ballymurphy area, and the IRA responded in kind, killing eight British soldiers and an RUC man (207209). The “Shankill Butchers,” a Loyalist gang who kidnaped Catholics at random and tortured them to death with knives and meat cleavers, were in operation at this time, as were the Military Reconnaissance Forces described by MacStiofáin (209, 212-213). The 91

Diplock Report, which recommended the introduction of juryless trials in the north of Ireland, was accepted by the British government, leading to a phenomenon in which more than half those sentenced were under twenty-one and 56% of the convictions obtained relied solely on forced confessions (214, 261, 284). Adams continued to feel that the absence of a viable political party was hurting the cause: “the reality was that, irrespective of elections, we were politically ill-equipped. We had failed to develop a means by which popular support could express itself, and the key failure of the leadership was the lack of an integrated strategy” (216). Adams’s commitment to the community is clear in his insistence that Sinn Féin be developed, though this insistence was difficult to put into action in an environment in which Brigadier Kitson’s idea that the law be merely a form of military control was dominant (214). Inevitably, Adams was rearrested, and this time he was interned until 1977 (217218). He was also, however, to spend these years in Long Kesh, where he met many of the people who would go on to play very important roles in the movement, and where he honed his own political ideas. In between unsuccessful attempts to escape, Adams spent his time becoming an essential element of camp culture. IRA military structure was recognized by the prison administration, and the average prisoner had little if anything to do with the guards and administrators (234). Education was a central concern of the prisoners, who elected their own Education Officer who would help put together lectures and discussions on issues important to Republicans.14 Adams’s family was, unfortunately, always a part of the Kesh: Our Paddy was in our hut, and our family association with the camp is such that ever since it opened at least one of us has been imprisoned there. My father, my Uncle Liam Hannaway and a couple of my cousins were 92

amongst the first to be interned, in August 1971, in Belfast prison, being transferred the following month to the Kesh. Liam was for some time OC of the camp and was highly respected. My brother Dominic was only six years old then, but he has since done several years in the Kesh, as have our Sean and our Liam. The women of our families, like Colette and my mother, and many other wives, mothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, sweethearts and aunts, have spent twenty years and more visiting prisons. (233) His family was, however, not particularly unusual in the proportion locked up at this time. This put particular stress on the women of families, as it was normally the male breadwinner of the family who was interned, and Adams speaks out about the strength of the women who not only managed to keep families intact during this time but were in a sense “liberated through the experience” (235). The community outside the Kesh was just as important as that within. Personal political development within a movement centered on a particular goal could be difficult at times as occasional conflicts could arise between the means and methods used to attain personal liberation versus those used to attain national liberation. An example would be the interaction between the women’s movement and the Republican cause. As a Sinn Féin policy document puts it, Feminists have always had to make tactical campaigning decisions that were often seen to be in conflict with, for example, the nationalist agenda (campaigning for the vote from the British parliament), or party political agenda (petitioning the Free State government to amend the anti-women 1937 Constitution). There is never an ideal time to push for women’s interests, yet women cannot afford to wait. Sinn Féin has consistently engaged with feminist ideas, acknowledging that the common central goal of republicanism and feminism is equality for all citizens. (Women in Ireland 3) Balancing the desire to liberate the individual and the communal has at times been difficult for the Republican movement, within which there is a fair amount of disagreement regarding other political causes and ideals. Part of the educational process 93

within the jails and internment camps was coming to an understanding of the connections between different types of liberationist struggles and recognizing the political problems besides colonialism with which the people of the north of Ireland were faced. The Republican movement made efforts to work with new political ideas as they developed and Sinn Féin has one of the broadest and most progressive political platforms in Ireland as a result of this effort. Adams was released in the spring of 1977 after some four and a half years of “Republican University,” and found himself immediately on the run again (253). Although by now a father (his son Gearóid was born in 1973), he took a seat on Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle (executive committee) and busied himself with the dissemination of Republican propaganda (234-235, 254, 262). Arrested and held for several months on a charge of IRA membership (later successfully defended), Adams found himself in the newly erected H-Blocks: maximum-security blocks said to be the most secure prison in Europe (a claim not made since thirty-eight Republican prisoners escaped on September 25, 1983). At this time, a policy of “criminalisation” was in force, one designed to take away political status from the prisoners. As a result, Republican prisoners were forced to either wear a prison uniform or go naked. Kieran Nugent, who was to become the first “blanketman,” chose the latter, saying, “If they want me to wear a convict’s uniform, they’ll have to nail it to my back” (267). This was to set the stage for the hunger strikes of 1981. While awaiting trial in the H-Blocks, Adams, not part of the protest due to his remand status (those awaiting trial did not take part in prison protests), saw the blanketmen on a regular basis:

They were like characters from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag, shuffling along in big boots without laces, wearing, for their visits [the blanketmen wore parts of the uniform for visits only], ill-fitting jackets and trousers. Most of the trousers had their backsides slit open, and all of the blanket men had long, unwashed hair and unkempt beards. All of them were in great form, and some of them I knew. (273) This was before the “dirty protest,” a reaction against brutal beatings taking place while prisoners attempted to use the lavatories, resulted in permanent lock-up, with prisoners forced to smear their excreta on the walls. Still, the protest in the prisons and the state of the prisoners, good morale or not, was enough to convince Adams that something terrible was around the corner.15 After his release, Adams was elected Vice President of Sinn Féin, and was to become an international figure during the crisis of the hunger strikes. It was a time that brought the Republican community together in a way unlike anything else since the crises of the early 1970s: I have been shaped by many influences and many intense experiences. There have been occasions which have been turning points for me as an individual, and there have been times which have been turning points not only for me but for an entire people. When with the advantage of distance the history is written of Ireland in the years in which I have lived, I know that an Everest amongst the mountains of traumatic events which the Irish people have experienced will be the Republican hunger strikes of 1980-81. (285-286) The history of the hunger strikes has been written about extensively elsewhere.16 The first hunger strike, in 1980, was unsuccessful, being called off when, while one striker was nearing death, the British government brought forth a proposal they subsequently did not act upon. Sinn Féin was initially opposed to the 1981 hunger strike, feeling that another failure after the traumatic events of 1980 would decimate public support for the prisoners. However, beginning with Bobby Sands on March 1, 1981, the IRA and INLA prisoners 95

brought the prison crisis to the fore in such a way as to bring the world’s attention to the plight they suffered in the north of Ireland. Sands, a poet, was a friend of Adams’s, as were several of the other strikers. They struck for five demands: 1. The right to wear their own clothing at all times. 2. Exemption from all forms of penal labour. 3. Free association with each other at all hours. 4. The right to organise their own recreational and educational programmes. 5. Full restoration of remission. (291) While the hunger strike brought out massive support for the Republican cause (Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone while on hunger strike, and other strikers were also elected to office), the devastating collective ordeal of watching ten men starve themselves to death nearly broke Adams and many other supporters. Adams reflects on the hunger strikes when he describes a walk he took at Christmas after the strikes: “Everywhere I walked marked some childish escapade and later teenage adventures as well. There had, after all, been a life before 1969. But I also passed the homes of friends who had died. I paused at places where some had been gunned down” (316). Rather than dwell on just the past, however, the memories of the dead turn his thoughts to the present and then to the future Many of my childhood friends had died. Too many. For every section of our people there was so much pain. We wanted equality and justice. We wanted freedom. We demanded peace. For all the people of our island. A thin marzipan layer of snow lay on the Black and Divis Mountains. I could see the black flags for the hunger strikers still hanging from telegraph poles and lamp posts on the Whiterock Road. But the writing on the cemetery wall gave hope for the future. Now things would never be the same again. The graffiti captured the new mood: Tiocfaidh ár lá — Our day will come. (316)

Adams develops a new perspective here for Republican writing. Although, as Des Wilson reported, Adams has said that many could have written this text, many others could not. Adams is writing for the dead as much as for the living, for those voices cut off by the British colonial apparatus Adams has devoted his life to fighting. It is appropriate when thinking of Republican “history” (and Irish “history” in general) to note that Adams ends his “autobiography” echoing the words of Seamus Heaney: “Let us ignore the naysayers and the begrudgers. Let us confound the sceptics and cynics. Let us make hope and history rhyme” (327). The three Republican texts I examine in this chapter are responses of a community at war. That they are published as autobiography is misleading, for they are not the stories of a man or woman’s life, except insofar as they are the story of a community’s life as told by an individual. The emphasis here is not on the attainment of the individual life but on the collective experience of suffering and resistance. Matt Morrison put it well when he said, I think that we’ve learned by long and bitter experience, to use Mao’s expression, about the cult of personality. And you first of all recognize that your suffering is a collective suffering, and not an individual suffering; it means that your experiences are a collective experience, not an individual experience, so it’s very hard for Republicans to divorce themselves from the common experience, from the collective experience, and I think it’s also critical in that they simply contextualize things, you’ve got to create or recreate the set of circumstances that led to . . . development for the individual. (interview, February 23, 1997) These texts by Devlin, MacStiofáin and Adams question the form and the politics of autobiography as a genre, as well as such conventions as authorship. That they come from within an environment in which subject construction and power/resistance are violently fought over should make us reexamine the politics of autobiography, and 97

perhaps of writing itself. Writing a “communography,” as I have called these texts, is to situate oneself within a nexus of power relations — which necessarily means that one is resisting power at the same time that one is seizing it. When the focus of the text is shifted from the individual to the community, it is the community which is situating itself within the realm of power and resistance; to Danny Morrison’s famous statement that the way to win Irish independence is through a combination of the ballot box and the Armalite,17 we can add Republican writing, particularly these “communographies,” which by reinscribing the past, inscribe the future.

CHAPTER 3

IRISH REPUBLICAN PRISON CULTURE FROM INTERNMENT TO HUNGER STRIKE

The literary productions which I will be examining in this chapter are part of and rose out of a distinctive Irish Republican prison culture. Although some of the works which will be discussed in my following chapter were written in prison, the works which form the basis of Chapter Four are products of a struggle which has been tested by fire. The works examined here, on the other hand, were written in reference to or within the crucible itself. Specifically, the Republican writing examined in this chapter pertains to the Irish Republican prison culture that developed in response to the British policies of internment and “criminalisation.” The works examined in Chapters Three and Four also differ in their discursive means and ends: while the works to be discussed in Chapter Four can largely stand on their own, the present chapter’s texts are far more engaged in dialogue — a dialogue amongst Republican prisoners and between the prisoners and their supporters. While most of the writing in this chapter is attributable to one individual, the production of the material is collective. One of the primary motifs of the literature to be discussed here is the body as a site of political struggle: a natural motif, perhaps, since incarceration is based upon the 99

imprisonment, surveillance and punishment of the body itself. As the body is the locus of the legal and prison system’s machinations, so it is the body which becomes the focal point of Republican resistance. This becomes most starkly apparent during the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981, but it is a theme present throughout all Irish Republican prison writings. Texts of the prison struggle highlight the ways in which Republican prisoners of war have used their confined bodies as weapons against the system which has tried to use those same bodies to crush Republican resistance. Hand in hand with the punitive policy of the British came an effort by Republican prisoners to engage in self-representation, self-criticism and self-construction. The written word — often in the form of notes (or “comms”) smuggled out of the prisons — became both a subversive link among the prisoners and between the prisoners, the outside leadership and the broader Republican community. Writing was a way to defeat the system which had locked them up largely in order to silence them. As important, perhaps, is the fact that many of the texts dealt with in this chapter break out of the traditional, corporate publishing system and resist controls over the production and distribution of the physical text. The production of “outlaw” knowledge is one thing; its dissemination is quite another, particularly in a society which proscribes it. People who had been hitherto uninvolved in the formal production of knowledge were now entering into a new set of discourses as they began to vocalize their experiences in the public sphere. Likewise, people who had hitherto been uninvolved in the dissemination of such knowledge found themselves entering the public sphere as clandestine publisher, distributor or bookseller. Those who wrote texts while in prison are the most extreme examples of Irish Republicans producing revolutionary discourses, and 100

the physical difficulties confronted by those wishing to publish their writings (which were often written on cigarette or toilet paper and smuggled out of prisons in the body cavities of visitors) under these conditions are exemplary of the extreme lengths the Republican community would go to in order to ensure the dissemination of these texts.1 Although there were Irish Republicans in prison for their activities before internment, it was with the introduction of internment without trial on August 9, 1971, that widespread arrests were made within the Republican community. As I mentioned in Chapter Two, few of those initially arrested were IRA volunteers — in fact, the British Army was originally against internment, fearing that this would be the case, but was overruled by the Prime Minister for Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner. Political commentators had been speculating for some time that internment might be introduced, and the IRA saw the dawn raids of Republican homes on July 23, which involved over 1,800 troops and RUC members, as a “dry run” of sorts and warned their members not to lodge in their normal billets. Hence, few of the original internees were Republican activists.2 Despite this general lack of a militant Republican background, the internees did come exclusively from the nationalist community at first, and their shared nationalism formed the basis of a fledgling prison culture. As internment continued, many active Republicans were arrested, and the internment camps were run as prisoner of war compounds with a highly-structured military command. The majority of those interned without charge or trial were eventually sent to the “cages,” as they were called, at Long Kesh and were housed in old Nissen huts surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. The internees had political status, as did the sentenced prisoners who were also housed in the cages. This political status amounted to 101

recognition of the IRA command structure by the prison establishment. The sentenced Provisional IRA cages were cages nine through fourteen. In these cages, there were normally eighty men, though sometimes there were more, overcrowding being a problem. Women were interned beginning on December 29, 1972, and were kept in Armagh Women’s Gaol (D’Arcy 16). In each of the Long Kesh cages were several Nissen huts, some of which were used as study areas or cooking and laundry facilities. The men lived in the others, there being generally thirty-two men to a hut. The military structure was organized as it was in IRA battalions outside the prison; in fact, the prisoners in Long Kesh formed the Fourth Battalion of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA.3 Prison guards (commonly referred to as “screws”) were based in the “bunk,” a small hut by each cage; they did not walk inside the cages normally, but patrolled the perimeter outside. Prison administrators dealt directly with the military command and the average IRA volunteer who was not part of the command structure had little experience dealing with them. An IRA Duty Officer was stationed inside the gate and communicated between the prison staff and individuals about matters such as visits and hospital passes.4 It is probably the case that the IRA was more highly structured in the cages of Long Kesh than it was on the outside during the exceedingly violent years of the early 1970s. Martin McGuinness, in his testimony to the Bloody Sunday inquiry in January 2002, shed some light on working conditions within the IRA at the time of Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972).5 McGuinness echoed a number of other prominent Republicans when he testified that “the repression, brutality and killings carried out by British State forces in an attempt to crush the civil rights campaign created the political conditions in which I became a member of the Irish Republican Army.” At the inquiry, 102

McGuinness confirmed what had only been rumor in most circles: that at the time of Bloody Sunday, he had been the Adjutant of the IRA in Derry city. He said, “I have been asked what the role and responsibilities of adjutant were. Frankly I was not sure what an adjutant did. I was only 21 at the time and found myself in a position and role that was not defined. In practice, the role was to maintain the integrity, discipline and structure of the organization.” He continued his testimony by giving the inquiry some idea of the organization of the IRA at that time: “This was not a conventional army. A lot of the volunteers were younger than me. There were very few older men. We were inexperienced. My role was to ensure that the units met regularly, that the organization was properly structured and that discipline was maintained. Members needed to know what the IRA was about.” The relative disorganization on the outside created a bizarre situation wherein being imprisoned or interned led to the young IRA volunteer’s more formal indoctrination into Republican philosophy and, in particular, into the IRA’s military structure. On the outside, new volunteers had little experience dealing with a formal military command and had no time to study or discuss the political philosophies underlying their actions. They only found time for this while serving time as prisoners of war. The most important aspect of prison life at this time was that both the prison administration and the English government recognized the prisoners as prisoners of war. This was to change on March 1, 1976, when the English implemented their “criminalisation” policy, a policy designed to convince the world that what the English were fighting was not a liberationist army but a criminal conspiracy. Any prisoner sentenced after that date was to be sent to the newly-erected H-Blocks and denied any 103

political status. Prisoners would have to do prison work, wear a prison uniform and conform to the prison regime. No IRA command structure was to be recognized and prisoners were to be addressed by and answer to a number instead of their name. Prisoners who had been sentenced before the cut-off date would continue to serve out their sentences with political status in the cages or elsewhere. The IRA prisoners’ refusal to conform to the new regime led to a five-and-a-half year prison protest which resulted in ten prisoners dead on hunger strike and a number of prison guards and warders shot dead. Internment and the “criminalisation” policy were the two most significant events to shape the emerging Irish Republican prison culture in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. As such, these two policies of the English government had a tremendous effect on the literary and cultural productions of the prisoners. Much of what was written during the brutal days of the blanket and dirty protests from 1976 to 1981 could not be published at the time due to the extraordinarily harsh conditions under which the prisoners lived. During internment it had been relatively easy to get an article or poem out of the prison and published in a Republican newspaper or pamphlet. For more than five years after the introduction of “criminalisation,” however, the voices of the prisoners were nearly silenced, at least publicly (no matter how hard things got, Republican prisoners of war were ingenious at devising ways of maintaining their lines of communication with the outside leadership). What follows is a generally chronological examination of the literary productions and history of Republican prisoners of war from 1971 to 1981. In several cases, works written about a particular period of time were not written until long afterwards due to the 104

difficulty of producing written material during the years of the prison protests. I have also included a discussion of educational structures in the prisons, including the teaching of Irish Gaelic, as this is relevant to my discussion of the overall prison culture. I trace the development of Irish Republican thinking among the prisoners during this time and demonstrate the ways in which the Republicans most affected by the conflict conceived of their political positions and engaged in dialogue with the outside world. I argue that the increased politicization of the prisoners is a direct result of the conditions they have been subjected to in the prisons and that the printed words of the prisoners — second only to the words of the martyrs — in many ways determine where the Republican movement is going and what path it is going to take to get there. The struggle to write and publish under extreme duress and the motivations behind that writing tell us much about the philosophy of the Irish Republican movement during these years. *

John McGuffin begins his book Internment! with a description of what he went through on the morning on which internment was introduced: In the early hours of Monday 9 August 1971, I was kidnapped from my bed by armed men, taken away and held as a hostage for five and a half weeks. I was not in Uruguay, Brazil, Greece or Russia. I was in the United Kingdom, an hour’s flight from London. I was in Belfast. A crashing on the door awoke me. It was 4.45 o’clock. I went down stairs in my pyjamas to answer. As I opened the door I was forced back against the wall by two soldiers who screamed at me “Do you live here?” Overwhelmed by their perspicacity I admitted that this was so, whereupon they ordered me to get dressed. I foolishly asked why. “Under the Special Powers Act we don’t have to give a reason for anything,” an officer said. “You have two minutes to get dressed.” Through the window I could see in the dawn light half a dozen armed men skulking in our tiny front garden. I was given exactly two minutes to get dressed while a young soldier boosted his ego by sticking an SLR [self-loading rifle] up my nose. 105

My wife, not surprisingly, was almost in tears as I was dragged down the stairs and into the street. She ran after me to give me my jacket and was roughly ordered back into the house. (9) McGuffin’s book is exemplary of the works written by Republicans and Republican sympathizers at this time: it is concerned primarily with recording facts and giving the Republican perspective on the political chaos of the day. Irish Republican literature in the early 1970s was almost entirely non-fiction. The autobiographical tone of the above quotation is in this regards misleading, as the bulk of his text is concerned with analyzing legal documents, media reports and governmental claims regarding internment and attacking them with the first-hand knowledge he had of the situation. Although not a member of the IRA (or, at the time of his internment, even necessarily a Republican), McGuffin was interned because of his socialist political activities, which invariably included criticizing what he saw as a corrupt and colonial government. A member of People’s Democracy, he had become outspoken on the national issue, and this was enough to warrant his internment along with that of a number of other People’s Democracy activists.6 The new internees were initially taken to several locations, including the Crumlin Road Gaol and the Maidstone, a British Navy vessel; later, these men would be transferred to Long Kesh or the internment camp at Magilligan. McGuffin writes that of the 342 men arrested (the British army tried for 450), 116 were released within 48 hours. 226 men were detained: 86 from Belfast, 60 from Co. Derry, 20 from the Newry area, 20 from Armagh and 40 from Fermanagh and Tyrone. Initially, 124 men were held in C wing of Crumlin (the number was to rise to 160 within five weeks) while the remainder were held on the Maidstone. (86-87)

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Statistical information is given at length in McGuffin’s book, and this serves a primary purpose in the literature coming out of the Republican movement at this time: that of propaganda. In an age which was beginning to embrace mass communication, Republicans realized that, although it may be difficult, it would be possible to get their perspective on their experiences to people who would otherwise have only been exposed to the English version of events. As censorship was rampant in both Ireland and England at the time, Republicans looked to supporters abroad as well as at home to get the message out.7 McGuffin’s tactic for much of his book is to rely on logos to argue his point (though his ethos as an ex-internee and the pathos generated through his stories of ill-treatment and downright torture certainly help). He argues particularly against the notion that while internment may be unpleasant, it was at least ridding the streets of the “terrorists”: the arrests continued and after three months even the Unionists had to admit that the numbers did not reflect the “resounding success” that Albert Anderson, MP claimed. In the first three months 882 people were arrested. Of these, 416 were released within 48 hours after suffering various forms of maltreatment, 50 were detained and then released, ten were released on the recommendation of the Brown Advisory Committee, 278 were interned and 128 detained. In other words, 54% of all those arrested were released. The six-month mark showed even more startling figures: 2,357 arrested under the Special Powers Act, 598 interned, 159 detained, and 1,600 completely innocent men (by even the Government’s standard) released after “interrogation” — nearly 67%. (87) Organized civil rights groups were also publishing a record of what was happening with the advent of internment, and were publishing these records for the same reason as people like John McGuffin. Knowing full well that the newspapers would, with few exceptions, not write about the violence that was being unleashed upon the

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nationalist community, they pulled together what little funds they could and began publishing their own books, pamphlets and articles. The Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland published one of the most thorough and well-documented of these reports at the end of 1971: Northern Ireland — The Mailed Fist: A Record of Army and Police Brutality from August 9 to November 9, 1971. Cheaply printed, and with few photographs (and a selling price of only thirty-five pence), it brings together a tremendous amount of material including accounts from the internees themselves and those arrested and released. The descriptions given in the publication of the treatment of the “hooded men,” whom I described in Chapter Two, are especially gruesome. Whatever the public outcry, it was clear that internment was going to be British policy for the foreseeable future. As one former IRA member told me, “it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere soon, so you had to figure out how you could still be a part, play a part in the struggle outside while you were inside” (Neeson).8 As Gerry Adams describes in Cage Eleven, his collection of articles and stories written while he was interned in Long Kesh for four and a half years, prisoners adapted to prison life in a variety of ways and relied heavily on their political beliefs and their own brand of black humor to see them through. Rumor, in the form of scéal (literally “news”), was rampant throughout Long Kesh, real news being tough to come by. Adams recalls in his story “Cage Eleven” that You’d be surprised at the rumors which go the rounds here. Scéal is the word used to describe the widest possible generalized interpretation of the word “news.” It includes real news as well as gossip, scandal, loose talk, rumor, speculation and prediction. ... In between praising the food and manufacturing scéal, receiving scéal, discussing scéal and passing on scéal, we read a wee bit, back-stab 108

each other a wee bit, talk a great deal and engage in a little sedition, which is mainly a matter of getting to understand the political situation which has us in here in Long Kesh. (7-9) It was in this process of attempting to comprehend the political landscape of the north of Ireland that Republican prisoners began to more seriously politicize themselves, a process which would have an enormous effect on the movement as a whole. Matt Morrison was arrested on October 23, 1975, and sentenced in February of 1976 to twenty years. Hence, he was one of the last prisoners of war to have his political status recognized by the courts and the prison administration. His experiences in many ways mirror those of most of the prisoners of war in the Long Kesh cages. I was arrested along with two other students in Portrush, County Antrim. There was an exchange of gunfire, we were just outside the RUC barracks. And then we were arrested because the other guys came rushing out of the barracks. We were, I think we were interrogated for about three days, two and a half days, I can’t remember how long, but basically they were pretty continuous interrogations, although the RUC record of interrogations would have had you believe that I was interrogated for about fifteen minutes during that period, but the interrogations were actually constant, night and day. In fact even after we went to court and were remanded into custody I had a subsequent six, at least it was a six, maybe an eight hour interrogation after that. And then I was transferred to Coleraine. (telephone interview, February 23, 1997) Morrison was charged with conspiracy in the attempted murder of a member of the RUC. He was tried before a no-jury Diplock court and was fully aware that he was facing a lengthy prison sentence: “Well, we didn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the court. We had no legal representation on account of that, because we didn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the court. Basically, yeah, we pretty well knew that that’s what our sentence was going to be.”

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Morrison had joined the IRA at age sixteen in response to the killing of fourteen unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday. He had read widely as a young man and “was very taken with James Connolly.” In the cages of Long Kesh he was able to continue his education. The cages already had “quite a bit” of educational structure by the time Morrison arrived: In the later years it became more formal, when they permitted teachers to come in, but for the better part of my period in prison most of the education was informal, where lectures were drawn up and delivered on a whole variety of topics. We had our own Educational Officer for each cage. And the Education Officer would then maybe arrange committees to draw up lectures or pick individuals to draw up lectures on specific subjects, and the lecture typically was really a nucleus for discussion. And I think in some ways the discussion was probably as important if not more important than the original lecture itself. The lectures were an opportunity for people to pull apart other ideas, dissect ideas and piece them back together in a way that was more acceptable to them or fit more readily into their particular philosophy. Republicanism itself was discussed: how you define Republicanism, what were the particular facets of Republicanism, where was Republicanism leading us, was it a vibrant philosophy, was it a philosophy that had become stagnant, how was it applicable to people in the city, how was it applicable to people in the county, so forth and so forth, that’s one example. I mean, we would have taken Marx — not just Marx, I mean a whole variety of ideologists and ideologies — and look at them and examine them and ask, you know, was there any particular piece of this that could work for us? The prisoners read about struggles in other parts of the world, as well as general revolutionary theory: Morrison cited Che Guevara and anarchist material, for example. They were avid readers, but realized that no one was going to give them ready-made answers and that they had to craft their strategies and tactics themselves. Writing and reading also made them feel more connected to the outside struggle. Other prisoners concentrated on the production of more creative works. Morrison explains that when you’re in prison,

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in many ways you’re stripped down to your essence . . . and I think in a way writing was an expression of that spirit. They could take so much from you, but not that. Writing was humanizing and allowed personal political life to continue. It was also a form of communication with the outside. It goes beyond a mere melding of the political with the artistic. The literary productions of Republican prisoners of war were exemplified in later years by the publication of Voices against Oppression, a collection of poems written by Republican women prisoners in Maghaberry and Durham prisons, as well as collections of poetry from Long Kesh and Portlaoise Gaol and the magazines An Réabhlóid (The Revolution) and An Trodaí (The Fighter) from Portlaoise and An Glór Gafa (The Captive Voice) from Long Kesh. The use and teaching of the Irish language was also seen to be important: speaking the same language as the enemy was acknowledged as a problem. “Gaelic is important despite the risk of cutting down on your audience,” says Morrison. “Although this was the case, you were also creating something for those who would come, prisoners or not” (telephone interview, December 6, 1996). There were always Gaeltacht (Irish Gaelic-speaking) huts in the Long Kesh cages, and Morrison lived in them, having been formally trained in Irish prior to imprisonment — an advantage most of the other prisoners didn’t have. A lot of the prisoners learned a Gaelic patois often jokingly referred to as “Jailic,” with their community referred to as the “Jailtacht.” As a result, in Derry and Belfast this variation on the Irish language can occasionally be heard. Morrison acknowledged that in the desire to use Gaelic there was an element of separatism which could border on the reactionary and that it was difficult at times to clearly distinguish motivations. Promotion of the language was “very important in many ways. A significant proportion of the Republican movement has come through the jails.” 111

Self-identity is key as well. Speaking Gaelic gave one “a touch of exclusivity” and marked one as someone who had served time in the jails. There was also the convenience of being able to communicate with another prisoner in a language the prison administration did not understand. Morrison has told me that prison was a “think tank” for the outside movement (telephone interview, December 6, 1996). Feldman interviews an IRA volunteer who describes in detail the educational structures in the H-Blocks after 1976: It was a long day in jail. You’d wake up at 7:00 A.M. in a black depression, lying there in your cell, “I can’t go on with this here.” But most of the time because of the Gaelic and other educational classes you were that caught up in what you were doing and you believed what you were doing was so important for the fortunes of the struggle that you refused to be broken. To maintain the integrity of the Republican movement by maintaining resistance in the jails. The Gaelic kept the whole thing together. The educational programs traced the history of Ireland right back to the Ice Age. How Ireland as part of the European continent separated and right the way down through the history, the Viking invasions, the British invasions right down to the development of Republican ideology. When we finished that, we went into all the different political philosophies — capitalism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Western Socialism, Cuban Socialism, and all that. (213) This was all done despite the fact that none of the prisoners could leave their cells and that most of the time they had no writing materials or books. While conditions in the cages were considerably more relaxed, the prisoners faced a number of the same challenges in organizing educational activities and keeping their minds occupied. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that Republican prisoners were trading agitation for education. Protests were common even before the erection of the H-Blocks and intensified when the new prison became operational in 1976. While personal contact between the prison authorities and Republicans was kept to a minimum through the

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command structure, tensions did escalate from time to time. The burning of Long Kesh on October 13, 1974, by Republican prisoners is perhaps the best example of this. Months of simmering tensions between guards and prisoners came to a head when an argument between a guard and the Officer Commanding of cage thirteen over the number of crumpets provided with dinner escalated, with the guard starting to scream insults at the prisoners and then threatening to cut the throat of the Officer Commanding’s wife. The Officer Commanding informed the Prison Officer that there would be no “association” until further notice (association was when the guards would enter the cage and patrol within it — something neither the prisoners nor most guards enjoyed). The Prison Officer bluntly told the Officer Commanding that his men would indeed be patrolling that evening. Needless to say, when the two guards on patrol duty that evening entered the cage, they were set upon by a group of prisoners, beaten, and driven out of the cage. The Prison Officer then threatened to send in the British Army if the Officer Commanding and his Adjutant didn’t willingly go to the “boards” (the punishment block). They refused, and both sides settled down to see what would happen next. Exactly what did happen next is a matter of some dispute. There had been plans in place for some time to burn the camp in the event of any serious harassment from the British. The order to burn the camp was not given, but it would seem that a small fire built outside one of the huts was mistaken by another cage as an indication that the camp was to be burnt. As fires were set throughout the camp, the cage Officers Commanding realized that it would be useless to try to put them out and gave the orders to torch the camp. All Republican cages burned that evening. The British Army was called in; CR gas and rubber bullets were 113

used in astonishing quantities and many prisoners were wounded. By the time the Army and prison authorities had regained control, most of the prisoners were injured or suffering the effects of the gas (a particularly dangerous gas rarely used for purposes of crowd control). In a show of defiance, a group of the prisoners, some still bleeding, began playing football in the yard to show that their spirits were unbroken. Jim McCann, a prisoner at the time, wrote in 1998 that while the fire, the battle and the subsequent brutality of the British Army had no effect on our attitude towards either British Soldiers or their political masters, I believe our attitude had a significant impact on their attitude towards us. If it wasn’t the actual architect of the British Government’s Criminalisation strategy and the H-Blocks, it speeded up the building of both. The failed criminalisation strategy is testimony to the British ignorance of the Irish Republican mentality. The soon-to-be-empty cells of the H-Blocks etc. are testimony to the British ignorance of the Irish Republican spirit. (33) The burning of Long Kesh is only one of the most extreme examples of prison protest in the cages at this time. A far quieter form of protest was escaping. As long as Irish Republicans have been imprisoned, they have been trying to escape; the history of the movement is replete with tales of tunnels, sheets made into ropes and even hijacked helicopters aiding prisoners in their escape attempts. Famous escapes were memorialized in songs like “The Crumlin Kangaroos” (about a group of men who managed to hop over the wall of the Crumlin Road Gaol) and did much to boost morale. Gerry Adams has written of how escaping had become almost a hobby of sorts for some Republicans. “Some POWs sing or play musical instruments which is one of the reasons why others try to escape,” he joked in “Cage Eleven” (10). But escapes were risky. Tunnels could collapse, suffocating anyone inside. One IRA man, Volunteer Hugh Coney, was shot and

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killed as he emerged from a tunnel which had made its way past the perimeter fence around Long Kesh. Adams describes the experience of tunneling in claustrophobic detail in his story “Moles”: Did you ever dig a tunnel? Down into a shaft. A makeshift trapdoor overhead and then in. In, into clay and gravel and rocks and water, everywhere seeping water, and the pitch blackness and bad nerves making bad air taste worse. (91)9 While tunneling was the method of choice in Long Kesh, other prisons lent themselves to different techniques. The degree to which a successful escape can revitalize the spirits of the Republican movement cannot be overemphasized. In the earlier years, the escape of Martin Meehan and Tony “Dutch” Doherty from the Crumlin Road Gaol on December 2, 1971, provided the movement with a much-needed boost. As John McGuffin relates in Internment!: Two weeks [after the successful escape of “The Crumlin Kangaroos”] an even more embarrassing escape was made. The Green Howards, stationed in Ardoyne, were cock-a-hoop. They had captured Martin Meehan and Tony “Dutch” Doherty, two of the most wanted local Provisionals. . . . On 2 December the prison authorities got a phone call from the press. Reporters had asked people of Ardoyne why bonfires had been lit and were told that it was because Meehan and Doherty had escaped; could the prison authorities confirm this, the reporters asked. The authorities were startled. It was the first they’d heard of it. A check was made and the awful truth revealed. Meehan, Doherty and Hugh McCann were, indeed, gone. In fact, Meehan and McCann had crossed the border before the prison authorities even knew they had escaped. Doherty stayed around to take care of some business and leisurely crossed over the next week. For five hours they had hidden, uncomfortably, in a manhole, up to their knees in water, until the rest of the prisoners had gone in from exercise, and then, under cover of fog, went over the wall, using a sheet. Comrades on the inside had wrecked the normal head count by staging an “incident.” Furious, Faulkner ordered an inquiry into prison security. (102-103) The escapes were successful in that they not only released prisoners who were much needed by the IRA but they also provided the Republican movement with proof of some 115

of their allegations concerning torture and ill-treatment in the interrogation centers and prisons. Tim Pat Coogan, author of the most definitive history of the IRA, notes that they “provided marvelous propaganda opportunities for the Provisionals to provide living refutation of the Compton Report’s attempt to whitewash reports of army brutality” (The IRA 307). Escapees often held press conferences in secret locations south of the border. Their testimony at these conferences confirmed much of what had been written by prisoners at the time and they served the same purpose: to get the truth of what was happening in the north to the outside world. The literature of the Republican movement at this time was still largely concerned with simply stating the facts of what they were experiencing. Little of it is of high literary merit and genuinely artistic representations are few and far between. This was to change with the coming of the H-Blocks, whose brutality and isolation forced Republican writers to search for new methods of conveying their experiences. While escapes provided the Republican movement with propaganda victories, the struggle outside the prisons was worsening with every passing month. On December 29, 1972, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth McKee was arrested and given the dubious honor of being the first woman interned without trial in the north (Raymond Murray 10). On New Year’s Day 1973, she was sent to Armagh Women’s Gaol. The jail had held Republican internees in the 1940s and had come to the world’s attention again in 1970 when Bernadette Devlin served four months there for her part in the Battle of the Bogside (Patricia Collins 15). There were already sentenced Republican prisoners in the prison, but with the introduction of internment for women, the number of Republican prisoners 116

of war in Armagh was to grow to over 120 by 1975 (McGahan 12). In a few weeks’ time, McKee was joined by Teresa Holland, Margaret Shannon and Anne Walsh. More were on remand. On March 4, 1973, just two months after McKee’s arrest, she took part in an unsuccessful escape attempt with four other prisoners (17). The women in Armagh tried to maintain a military structure and paraded in the yard in full uniform each Sunday. “It was very important,” says former prisoner Eileen Hickey, “in keeping the women together. It kept them aware that they were soldiers. In Armagh you could feel so far removed from the Movement, from the struggle outside” (quoted in Patricia Collins 17). The struggle outside was going through a particularly difficult period. 1975 saw an IRA ceasefire from February through October, a ceasefire which was to cost the Republican movement dearly and which some believe nearly destroyed the IRA. The British intelligence forces took advantage of the ceasefire to step up surveillance on IRA members, many of whom became far more lax in their security precautions than they should have. Even more ominously, while it seemed that peace talks were on the horizon, the British government was developing its criminalization policy, designed to destroy the Republican movement by breaking it in the prisons. Some in the Republican movement sensed that while things may have been changing, they were not necessarily changing for the better. The criminalization policy was meant to do more than send Republicans to prison. It was meant to change the very face of the conflict in the north by unceasingly portraying IRA activists as criminals as opposed to members of a legitimate army. The broadcast media was to be tightly controlled in order that this message and only this message got out. Internment was to be phased out and replaced with procedures which 117

would ensure a far more tightly-controlled prisoner population serving considerably longer sentences in much harsher conditions. New juryless courts were established to maintain high conviction rates. The right of habeas corpus was abolished. Refusing to testify on oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own behalf would now legally be held as implying guilt. No military structure would be recognized within the prison and no prisoner of war rights would be acknowledged. Republican prisoners sentenced after March 1, 1976, would no longer have political status. As the living conditions for sentenced IRA prisoners changed in the years following the development and implementation of the criminalization policy, so did their attempts to record their experiences in writing. While Irish Republican literature of the late 1960s and early 1970s is predominantly non-fictive and largely devoid of overt artistic technique, the literature of the H-Blocks is far more poetic and makes considerably more use of narrative voice and symbolism. This literature arguably reached its highest point of development in the writings of Bobby Sands, whose works are examined later in this chapter. While Sands may be the most developed of the H-Block writers, there are several others who deserve mention. Their writings are still primarily concerned with letting people know about the conditions under which they lived and the social conditions which led to their being incarcerated in the first place, but the methods they use to convey this message are beginning to change. I have mentioned earlier that while it could be difficult for the prisoners to reach an outside audience, there were ways in which this could be done. Comms were routinely smuggled out of the cages of Long Kesh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in fact, Matt Morrison has told me that he could get a comm out in the morning and have it answered sometimes by the evening, 118

and certainly by the next morning. Short stories, essays and poems came out of the Long Kesh cages at a steady rate — Gerry Adams’s “Brownie” columns being an example of this. For prisoners in the H-Blocks, however, things were very different. Security was far tighter there and visits (the prime opportunity to pass a comm on to the outside) for prisoners on protest were rare and routinely revoked as an unearned “privilege.” Press censorship reached new heights as part of the criminalization package. Those prisoners still in the cages were able to maintain their excellent communications with the outside leadership, however, and at times they were able to assist the H-Block men. Most of the time, though, those prisoners with political status and those whose status had been denied were rarely in contact with each other. The prisoners in the cages after 1976 continued to write and to explore their various thoughts and experiences on paper, but my focus in this section of this chapter is on the writings of those in the H-Blocks, the “blanketmen,” as they became known. Long Kesh was officially divided into two entities once the H-Blocks opened: Her Majesty’s Prison The Maze (Cellular) and Her Majesty’s Prison The Maze (Compound), the first being officialdom’s name for the H-Blocks and the latter the name for the cages. The prisoners and most people on the outside continued to refer to it as Long Kesh (with either “the H-Blocks” or “the cages” added on as clarification). Those lucky enough to have been sentenced before the March 1, 1976, cut-off date remained in the cages and continued to have their political status recognized as well as the IRA military command structure. Beginning with the arrival of IRA Volunteer Kiaran Nugent at the H-Blocks, however, the situation changed radically.

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Nugent was the first IRA prisoner to be sentenced after March 1, 1976. He was brought to the H-Blocks, stripped, informed of his lack of political status and told the prison rules and regulations. He was thrown a uniform and told to put it on. He refused, and the blanket protest was born.10 The first woman prisoner to fall under the new regime was IRA Volunteer Mairéad Farrell, who was sentenced on April 5, 1976 (Farrell, “Woman’s Place” 2). Farrell was later killed in a highly controversial SAS ambush in Gibraltar in 1988, making her one of the most revered women martyrs of the movement. The women prisoners were subject to different regulations than the male prisoners; their protests, hence, were also different at times (Farrell, “No Let Up” 38). The term “blanketman” refers only to the male prisoners in the H-Blocks who were protesting the required prison uniform among other things. The blanket protest defined Irish Republicanism in the period from 1976 to 1980. The image of a naked man wrapped in a threadbare towel and locked in a prison cell reverberated throughout the nationalist areas of the six counties. The propaganda value of this image was immense, and was used memorably in “The H-Block Song,” by Francie Brolly, a song (quickly banned from radio play by the authorities) whose refrain would set the tone for the prison protests: So I’ll wear no convict’s uniform nor meekly serve my time, that Britain might brand Ireland’s fight eight hundred years of crime. Although there were similarities in the lives of the blanketmen and those in the cages, overall their situation was strikingly different. The brutality of the various protests took their toll on the men in the H-Blocks, many of whom relied heavily on the Gaelic 120

and history classes the prisoners arranged to stay mentally healthy. Classes in the HBlocks were, of course, not as organized or formal as they were in the cages. In the HBlocks, lessons had to be yelled out the door by the teacher and the students scratched on their prison cell walls with anything they could find. One former IRA member who had been in both the cages and the H-Blocks described the differences between the two prisons: Well, I was in the cages for a while in the 70s, the early 70s, and then in the H-Blocks for a year and a half almost, starting in June ‘78, so I was able to compare the two sections, you know, the two parts of the prison. And it was amazing . . . I think we’d have all gone mad if we hadn’t made a real effort to take our minds off ourselves and our surroundings. The classes, the Gaelic and history and the like, and the figuring out ways to communicate. It was impossible for us to get our minds around where we were but we were able to get some, some ways round it. I don’t know how much you know about it and I don’t want to bore you with stories you’ve heard before, but it was bad times a hundred. (Colm Murray) The similarity of experience of many of the blanketmen is striking. With the vast majority coming from working-class urban environments, they arrived in Long Kesh with a common background and a common goal, one of the reasons the IRA prisoners were able to exist in such harsh conditions and yet function as a coherent group. One former volunteer, Dan Barry, described his background and experiences to me. I joined the IRA because of what was happening in my neighborhood. That in many ways influenced me more than what was going on in my nation. I mean a lot of people could never really care what’s going on in their nation and I think a lot of young kids who joined felt that way at first — it wasn’t their country they were defending, it was their town or their neighborhood or their street. Was only after a bit of thinking and learning that you realize how much all this, how much you have in common with everybody else resisting the Brits and fighting them and that’s when you thought that it was really the nation, the nation that you were defending. That’s when we’d make the step, so to speak, of becoming a Republican and realizing what that meant. We were very naive in a lot of ways but in the long run I’m not sure that we really were, you know. I mean we started 121

out not knowing a whole lot, just fighting the Brits and getting them the hell out and all but when we became more sophisticated and learned about politics and ideology we realized that we’d been doing it right from the start, we just didn’t know it. We’d been instinctual and it turned out we were right. ... The politics grew from the jails and you could tell that Republicans who’d a bit of time on them, who’d been in the jails and come back to fight, they were — I don’t want to say smarter cause it’s not that, it’s just — they were more thoughtful, they thought about the big picture, the ways things were coming together or spreading apart and they used their minds more strategically, I think, than a lot of lads just coming off the streets or out of school. Prison gives you time to think. Not much else to do. And it made you more certain of what you were doing and what led to your being there in the first place — it made you stronger and it wasn’t supposed to, it wasn’t supposed to, it was supposed to break you, break you down. And I don’t mind saying I reported back the night I got out. Was never any doubt about it — after going through that, I had to. One of the things the men had in common was their experience at the hands of the legal system. With Diplock courts working constantly, what became known as the HBlock conveyor belt came into existence. This was the notion that, once arrested, a person suspected of IRA activities would be systematically and routinely forced through violence to confess, nominally tried and convicted before a no-jury Diplock court, and sent to the H-Blocks. If the suspect refused to break under interrogation, a false confession would be presented to the court instead. Amnesty International has estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of all convictions in Diplock courts were based solely on self-incriminating confessions; overall, the conviction rate was an astonishing 94 percent (Coogan, The Troubles 274). This three-stage process of interrogation, trial and imprisonment became the focus of one of Bobby Sands’s most powerful poems, the trilogy comprising “The Crime of Castlereagh,” “Diplock Court” and “The Torture Mill — H-Block.” I discuss this trilogy later in this chapter.

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In response to the increasingly brutal prison conditions, prisoners stepped up their protests. The blanket protest had hundreds of participants, all of them subjected to humiliating and harsh treatment for their refusal to be considered ordinary criminals. More prisoners were on remand (being held pending trial); in fact, so many people were in prison on remand that the nationalist population began to consider remand simply another form of internment (Sinn Féin POW Department, “H-Block Conveyor Belt” 2021). Tensions were mounting within both the prisons and the outside community. Part of this was because, after a few years of “criminalisation,” prisoners were being released now and again, having served their full sentences. Their voices began to be heard, and what they had to say about the conditions in the H-Blocks horrified people. Due to the frequent beatings they received when out of their cells, the Republican prisoners began to refuse to “slop out” (empty their chamber pots) in the prison restrooms. Guards had to go cell to cell with a large barrel on a trolley, allowing each man to slop out, something the guards certainly didn’t care for. Frankie O’Brien (a pseudonym), in The Crunch Has Come, describes this situation and the mounting antagonism which was leading to the dirty protest: “Right O’Brien, slop-out,” snaps the screw at the door. It’s about a day or two after the start of the protest and the screws are coming round every few hours, shouting and trying to intimidate men into slopping-out. Frankie just ignores the screws, but a few seconds later he finds that he’d been better not to have ignored this particular screw. “So you don’t want to slop-out. Well, slop-in instead.” And at that the screw kicks the pot full of urine round the cell, soaking the floor and Frankie too. Before Frankie can say a word the door is shut and the screw has moved on to another cell. “Stinking rat!” shouts Frankie. He shouts out to the boy next door to be ready in case the screws should try the same on anyone else. Frankie sighs to himself and tries to dry a patch on the floor for walking on, while Tony tries to dry any urine from the blankets lying on 123

the beds. Over the next few days, the same harassment follows — urine thrown round men and bedding alike and other dirt being scattered round the cells by the screws. After a week or so the screws change their policy and begin bringing around a large bin from cell to cell to empty the urine pots while the men throw the excrement out the windows. But even this is used as a form of harassment, since many days go by without any slopout. Frankie and his comrades are finally forced to urinate into the prison boots and pour it out the cell windows. Each day the battle of wits continues, until some form of regularity is reached where by a slop-out of some description is being done every morning. Then one Sunday morning just before Mass, Frankie and Tony are waiting on the slop-out bin to reach their door. Suddenly, they hear a loud crash and splash and it doesn’t take them long to realise that the bin (almost full) of urine and excrement from ten or more wings has been spilled into the wing. They try looking out the side of the door, and they can clearly see a screw pushing the putrid smelling waste into one of the cells. (26-27) O’Brien’s work is interesting as it is one of the earlier works of Republican literature written in a narrative form — the story is an amalgam of experiences, not fiction, but not anyone’s individual experience either. This style was used for other works being written at this time including Seachtain ár an Bhlaincéad (A Week on the Blanket) by Ruairí Ó Dónaill (another pseudonym), a short booklet which takes the experiences of Republican prisoners and distills them into the experiences of one prisoner during one week. This style doesn’t exaggerate experience as much as it attempts to apply a form to what seems at first glance to be chaos. The booklet begins by discussing the case of Noel Ó Casaide (Noel Cassidy), the prisoner about whom the booklet is written. A Monaghan man, Cassidy was arrested in February of 1978 and sent to the H-Blocks, where he took part in the dirty protest. Republican prisoners had refused to leave their cells and were now smearing their excrement on the walls (they did so as it would dry faster and the smell would dissipate). This, naturally, appalled the public and drew much-needed attention to their plight.11 The booklet begins: 124

Ceithre ballaí fuara folmha, fuinneog bheag shuarach le barraí tiubha iarainn, dhá thocht ar an urlár sna coirnéil, trí bhlaincéad scáinte agus ceannadhairt ar achan tocht, próca uisce, cupla tuáille agus pota. Sin a raibh sa chillín dhuibheagánach ar chaith Noel Ó Casaide as Muineachán na cupla blianta deireanach seo ann ar an bhlaincéad i gCampa na Ceise Fada. (1) (“Four cold bare walls, a small shabby window with thick iron bars, two mattresses on the floor in the corner, three thin blankets and a pillow on each mattress, a water jar, a couple of towels and a chamber pot. This is in the abysmal cell in which Noel Cassidy from Monaghan has spent the last couple of years on the blanket in the Long Kesh internment camp.”) While this account of life in the H-Blocks at the time is still primarily concerned with informing a mass audience of the conditions under which the prisoners were living, it is interesting that it does so with a certain amount of artistic expression, from the impressionistic beginning to the vivid descriptions of wet, filthy cells and the maggots which get into the hair and beards of the prisoners as they sleep on urine-damp foam mattresses. The fact that the text was published in Gaelic is also significant as it indicates a willingness to forego a larger audience (and, hence, minimize the text’s propaganda value) in favor of using the means of expression which the author wishes to use. This kind of artistic expression is generally lacking from earlier publications. Impressionistic descriptions imbued with a poetics of suffering and trauma are indicative of the literary works being written by Irish Republican prisoners towards the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. This form was brought to its high point in Republican literature by Bobby Sands, then Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in Long Kesh, in One Day in My Life. Sands is important for a number of reasons. Not only was he a significant person in the IRA, holding a high position of responsibility, but he was able to express himself in

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writing, both in Irish and in English, to a far greater degree than most of his comrades. That he went on to become a martyr, being the first of the ten hunger strikers to die in 1981, has made him almost a mythical figure. In his writing, however, he comes across as a deeply human character, one who keenly experiences wide ranges of emotion and who has the same fears and anxieties as his fellow prisoners. The poetic work of Bobby Sands is unlikely to eclipse the more accomplished, polished poetry of Irish writers such as Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland; his poetry, however, is successful in capturing a momentous time in the history of both Ireland and the Republican movement and in portraying that time in a way which had eluded previous attempts at articulation, whether by Republicans or others. By not only focusing on the political situation in the north which led to his being incarcerated, but by focusing on that situation from the Republican point of view, he managed to create in his poetry, essays, songs and other narratives a homage to the liberation of the human spirit which has struck a chord throughout the world. Echoing Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Sands’s One Day in My Life is a prose narrative which attempts to take the experiences of the Republican prisoners throughout the entirety of the prison protests, compress them, and present them as the experiences of one prisoner on one day. The effect neither exaggerates the brutality of the H-Block regime nor implies that the average day of a Republican prisoner of war was similar to the one depicted in the book. The literary device instead uses the constant anxiety of the prisoner facing the unknown — where a jingle of keys down the hall can mean impending freedom or a violent cell search — to draw the reader into the story being told and to create in the reader a sense of the anxiety being faced by the prisoner. 126

By rarely pausing between scenarios, Sands provokes a reading experience that is uncomfortable, while compelling. The few pauses in the day being lived by the narrator are devoted to recollecting traumas from the past, so that while the prisoner perhaps gets a break from the degradation, the reader does not. From the beginning of Sands’s account of life in the H-Blocks, he invokes the imagery of the dead to tell his story. The H-Blocks become a necropolis, the prisoners surrounded by maggots, filth and bitter cold: Dear God, another day I thought, and it was a far from pleasant thought. Naked, I rose and crossed the cell floor through the shadows to the corner to urinate. It was deadly cold. The stench rose to remind me of my situation and the floor was damp and gooey in places. Piles of rubbish lay scattered about the cell and in the dimness dark, eerie figures screamed at me from the surrounding, dirty, mutilated walls. The stench of excreta and urine was heavy and lingering. I lifted the small water container from amongst the rubbish and challenged an early morning drink in a vain effort to remove the foul taste in my throat. God it was cold. (25-26) The meager sunlight drifting into the cell doesn’t drive away the impression of being buried alive — it simply paints the living grave in stark relief: “The dirt and filth, the scarred walls — the inner confines of my stinking, smelly tomb greeted me once again” (26). Sands invokes Stephen Dedalus’s famous comment regarding history when he writes, “One morning I am going to wake up out of this nightmare, I thought, as I huddled in under the blankets again” (26). Of course, Sands never did wake up outside the prison again, dying in Long Kesh on May 5, 1981. If the cell is a tomb, then the prisoner is nothing more than a corpse, albeit one seemingly partially animate. In this, parts of Sands’s text are reminiscent of Beckett’s story “The Calmative,” which begins with a dead narrator lying in his grave thinking to himself: 127

But this evening, alone in my icy bed, I have the feeling I’ll be older than the day, the night, when the sky with all its lights fell upon me, the same I had so often gazed on since my first stumblings on the distant earth. For I’m too frightened this evening to listen to myself rot, waiting for the great red lapses of the heart, the tearings at the caecal walls, and for the slow killings to finish in my skull, the assaults on unshakable pillars, the fornications with corpses. So I’ll tell myself a story, I’ll try and tell myself another story... (61) The notion of being between worlds, between life and death, resounds through Sands’s work, though rarely in such a literal fashion as in One Day in My Life. Indeed, in much of his work, he places himself as existing between death and life — not the other way around, but between the death of a violent, imperialist world and a living world in which human liberation can truly come into being. In One Day in My Life, however, the narrator frequently sees himself becoming more and more dead rather than slowly progressing towards a new life: “At least I can see you once a month,” my mother would say. “Better where you are than Milltown Cemetery.”12 But then there were times when Milltown would have been the preferable alternative, when things became so unbearable that you just couldn’t care less whether you lived or died just as long as you could escape the hellish nightmare. Aren’t we dying anyway, I thought. Aren’t our bodies degenerating to a standstill? I am a living corpse now. What will I be like in six months’ time? Will I even be alive after another year? (54) This is perhaps Sands’s bleakest work, focusing as it does so much of its attention on the physical ramifications of the brutality the Republican prisoners faced from the prison administration and on the hardships they chose to face rather than capitulate to that administration. Even the ending, where the narrator assures himself that “tiocfaidh ár lá” (“our day will come”), produces mixed emotions in the reader, who understands that,

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while much improvement in living conditions may have come about through the prison protests Sands describes, Sands himself did not survive the experience (118). One Day in My Life was not published until 1983, by which time the situation in the H-Blocks had changed radically and the conditions under which the IRA prisoners were living had vastly improved. In other words, the book was not published during the vicious struggles taking place in Long Kesh in the months and years leading up to the hunger strikes, when it would have had enormous propaganda value. It was published, instead, after Sands’s death and the deaths of nine other young men in prison on Republican charges. The text functions, then, as a sort of Republican hagiography, not just of Sands (though he is clearly the dominant martyr of the community, as a short walk through any Republican area in the north of Ireland will amply demonstrate), but of all of the men and women who took part in the prison protests of 1976 to 1981. Republican literature is not just a call to action, propaganda designed to instill the desire for immediate action in the mind of the reader. It is also involved in the ancient task of mythbuilding, as I describe in the first chapter of this work. Stories must be told and retold; the past must be brought to the present again and again. The stories of Bobby Sands and the other Republican prisoners of war of the time play an almost sacred role in the development of Republican ideology and mythology even today. The essays, stories and shorter poems written by Sands were occasionally published during his imprisonment, generally in the Republican newspapers, but also in booklet form once Sands embarked on his hunger strike. The essays frequently make use of fictional forms, blurring the distinction between political essay and short story. The most famous of these works, Sands’s tale of “The Lark and the Freedom Fighter,” is both 129

exemplary in its form and style and exceptional in its effect on the Republican community. Indeed, the image of a lark amongst barbed wire is probably the second most widely seen image adorning Republican posters, shirts, pins and the like — the most widely reproduced image being Sands’s own visage. “The Lark and the Freedom Fighter” is a parable in the strict sense of the word: a short story designed to teach a moral or ethical lesson through the use of symbolism. It is didactic, yet subtle in its implications. In form, it is told to the reader as something passed along from the narrator’s grandfather to him, which mimics the traditional transmission of Republican ideology from the old to the young. My grandfather once said that the imprisonment of the lark is a crime of the greatest cruelty because the lark is one of the greatest symbols of freedom and happiness. He often spoke of the lark relating to a story of a man who incarcerated one of his loved friends in a small cage. The lark, having suffered the loss of her liberty, no longer sung her little heart out, she no longer had anything to be happy about. The man who had committed the atrocity, as my grandfather called it, demanded that the lark should do as he wished: that was to sing her heart out, to comply with his wishes and change herself to suit his pleasure or profit. (15) The symbolism here is obvious, as it is in most parables. The image of a songbird which will not sing in captivity was clearly one which resonated amongst Republicans. The image holds value not only for those affected by the imprisonment of Republicans, but for the entire Republican community, which feels that not until they are free to determine their own political institutions and structures will they be able fully to express themselves. The lark’s refusal to sing for its captor results in the captor taking drastic steps in order to force it to comply with his demands. He deprives the bird of sunlight, then

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attempts to starve the lark into submission when that doesn’t work. In the end, the man murders the bird. As my grandfather rightly stated, the lark had spirit — the spirit of freedom and resistance. It longed to be free, and died before it would conform to the tyrant who tried to change it with torture and imprisonment. I feel I have something in common with that bird and her torture, imprisonment and final murder. She had a spirit which is not commonly found, even among us so-called superior beings, humans. (15) The similarities between the experiences of the lark in the story and Sands’s own experiences in prison are clear, and seem prophetic when one reads the piece knowing Sands’s eventual fate. What can seem trite on an initial reading takes on considerably more significance when one realizes the degree to which Sands and his comrades were willing to back up their beliefs. I am now in H-Block, where I refuse to change to suit the people who oppress, torture and imprison me, and who wish to dehumanise me. ... I have lost over two years’ remission. I care not. I have been stripped of my clothes and locked in a dirty, empty cell, where I have been starved, beaten, and tortured, and like the lark I fear I may eventually be murdered. But, dare I say it, similar to my little friend, I have the spirit of freedom that cannot be quenched by even the most horrendous treatment. Of course I can be murdered, but while I remain alive, I remain what I am, a political prisoner of war, and no one can change that. (16) As I mentioned in my first chapter, it is the words of the martyrs which take on the deepest meaning in Republican mythology, and Sands’s death on hunger strike on May 5, 1981, did much to turn what were previously modest literary achievements into words which contained within them the power to topple governments and inspire readers to devote their lives to a cause. Any collection of Sands’s work is necessarily uneven and almost randomly organized, as he wrote different pieces for different reasons and in highly varying 131

circumstances. Thus we can read his essays and stories largely as experiments in propaganda (rather successful propaganda in cases like “The Lark and the Freedom Fighter”), while we read his poetry in the more contemplative mood created by this darker, more complex writing. The fact that Sands rarely had the leisure to revise his work — he had to keep his writing secret, even hiding it in his own body before smuggling it out of the prison in the bodies of others — results in an unpolished poetic style that, while perhaps occasionally awkward, articulates a communal trauma in ways which continue to resonate today. His writing is often overly stylistic and derivative, but even this can contribute to its power, as in his rewriting of Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Sands’s trilogy of poems (“The Crime of Castlereagh,” “Diplock Court” and “The Torture Mill — H-Block”), metrically and thematically based on Wilde’s famous prison poem, is arguably Sands’s finest literary work. Although the differences between Wilde and Sands are many,13 the similarities which do exist add another layer of meaning to any interpretation of the work. In the trilogy, he writes as an Irishman in an English prison; as someone imprisoned who does not see himself as a criminal; as someone struggling between despair and ecstatic fortitude; as someone caught in a political nightmare one had no part in creating; as someone nonetheless attempting to use that very nightmare to construct a self and a soul. The first poem in the trilogy, “The Crime of Castlereagh,” is perhaps the most powerful. In form, the poem ranges over ninety-six stanzas of eight lines each, for a total of 768 lines. The rhyme scheme is ABCBDEFE, with internal rhymes in those lines not rhymed at the end. Thematically, the poem focuses on the experiences of Sands (who 132

serves here as the narrator) at the interrogation center of Castlereagh. Castlereagh was as important as the H-Blocks in the British strategy to break the Republican movement. Staffed both by experts in psychological approaches to information gathering and interrogation as well as by people who were well-experienced in the more physical ways of forcing people to talk, Castlereagh was a place where even the most dedicated Republican could frequently be brought to divulge information. It is this threat of forced betrayal, rather than the threat of physical violence, which frightens the poem’s narrator the most. The opening lines have Sands writing: I scratched my name and not for fame Upon the whitened wall; “Bobby Sands was here,” I wrote with fear In awful shaky scrawl. I wrote it low where eyes don’t go ‘Twas but to testify, That I was sane and not to blame Should here I come to die. (stanza 1) Much of the beginning of this first poem of Sands’s trilogy is concerned with the possibility of being killed by the police and having his death declared a suicide by them, as is said to have happened to one Brian Maguire in May of 1978. Maguire was found hanged in his cell by the police. There was and remains significant question as to how this death occurred, with the police ruling it a suicide and Republican and civil rights organizations not being so certain. Sands knew about Maguire’s case and worked him into the poem. Maguire’s death adds to the fear of the inevitable interrogation, which provides the poem with its tone and impetus. With the knowledge that a violent interrogation conducted by sadistic professionals well trained in the art of psychological

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warfare awaits him, the narrator paces his cell, having no idea of the passage of time, jumping at every sound. While the narrator’s thoughts and fears in Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” are largely generated by the proximity of a man condemned to hang, Sands’s narrator is caught up entirely in the fear of the unknown future he himself faces: including the possibility of being hanged and the disgrace of having his death declared a suicide. Death is at least a certainty; for Sands’s narrator it is a possibility, but so is another possibility worse than death to him: breaking under interrogation and revealing information betraying comrades. Not only does he have to confront his fully justifiable fear of pain and death, he also has to face his fear of inadvertently aiding in the capture, torture and possible death of friends and comrades. Sands’s descriptions of the paranoia fostered in Castlereagh, the most notorious of the interrogation and detention centers in the six counties, are stark and vivid. The monotony, the inability to distinguish the passing of time, the enforced quiet punctuated by bursts of sobbing or cries of pain, all combine to form an atmosphere which Sands depicts as demoniacal. That Sands recognizes the possibility that he will prove to be weak during the interrogations and will give his captors information demonstrates the emotional validity of the poem, which in no way attempts to paint the poet as a hero. Everything surrounding the narrator is designed to strain the mind of the prisoner: White walls! White walls! Torturous sprawls, With ne’er a window space. And so confined a quaking mind Goes mad in such a place. The monotony so torturously Cuts deep into the mind, That men lose hope and just elope With charge of any kind. (stanza 16)

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This fear of Sands’s makes him recognize more clearly what is going on. No prisoner in Castlereagh is concerned with finding a way out. Instead, the goal is to admit to something which will result in the prisoner being charged without implicating others. The certainty of facing charges, even ones on which one will surely be convicted, is preferable to the uncertainty and fear of awaiting interrogation. Throughout the trilogy, Sands makes use of repeated stanzas which form the emotional underpinnings of the poem — in this case, fear and the knowledge of injustice. They also deal explicitly with the role art, and in particular, poetry, can play in this environment. Stanzas twenty-eight through thirty are especially important: This Citadel, this house of hell, Is worshipped by the law. It’s built upon a rock of wrong With hate and bloody straw. Each dirty brick holds some black trick Each door’s a door to pain. ‘Tis evil’s pen, a devil’s den, And Citadel of shame. The Men of Art have lost their heart, They dream within their dreams. Their magic sold for price of gold Amidst a people’s screams. They sketch the moon and capture bloom With genius, so they say. But ne’er they sketch the quaking wretch Who lies in Castlereagh. The poet’s word is sweet as bird, Romantic tale and prose. Of stars above and gentle love And fragrant breeze that blows. But write they not a single jot Of beauty tortured sore. Don’t wonder why such men can lie, For poets are no more. (stanzas 28-30)

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These lines form the crux of the poem and possibly of the entire trilogy. They describe not only Sands’s vision of the state but his views on the possibilities of art. A poetry which cannot speak to the experiences of the people is dead, Sands argues, with those poets who ignore the pain of their people being devoid of the magic and heart which forms the basis of poetry. The poets become as useless as the priests, who “kneel and pray, or so they say, / And play their little game” (stanza 31, lines 3-4). The scene shifts when Sands’s narrator is called for interrogation. The narrator notices that while the guard signs the prisoner out of his cell, he deliberately leaves the time blank, so that it may be adjusted accordingly afterwards to reflect a shorter period of interrogation than what the prisoner was actually subjected to: The Watcher signed and underlined My name into the book. But ne’er he sign departure time, The devious, dirty crook. He flanked my side like devil’s guide On lonely gallows trek. And, curiously, he stared at me, Like one not coming back. (stanza 37) The fascination with those about to suffer is also seen in Wilde’s account of Reading Gaol, wherein he writes of the condemned prisoner that “with curious eyes and sick surmise / We watched him day by day” (stanza 26, lines 1-2) until At last the dead man walked no more Amongst the Trial Men, And I knew that he was standing up In the black dock’s dreadful pen, And that never would I see his face For weal or woe again. (stanza 27) The thirty-eighth stanza of Sands’s poem marks a transition, as it takes place outside, during a brief period where the narrator is taken from one building and down into 136

the basement of another. Unlike Wilde’s condemned murderer, Sands’s narrator cannot look “With such a wistful eye / Upon that little tent of blue / Which prisoners call the sky” (stanza 3, lines 2-4). Instead, I felt the bite of chilly night And warning in the air A yellow moon like eye of doom Gripped me in its glare. Down twelve iron steps to darker depths Where lurking figures were. A hurried swap, like smuggling drop, And I was in their care. (stanza 38) While outside, the narrator confronts his greatest fear as he passes a prisoner being led from the interrogation rooms: “His eyes were red and swollen / And knew I then, that this poor friend / Had had his secrets stolen” (stanza 40, lines 2-4). As the narrator is about to sink into despair, however, a second prisoner, a woman, is led past him: They led her by, her head held high Their faces hanging low. It seemed to me quite obviously That they had come to woe. She looked at me determinedly Across that gap of doom, And smiled did she so pitifully Like rose in winter bloom. And in her wake she left an ache That gripped my very heart. If men but knew what she went through They’d tear their souls apart. (stanzas 45 and 46, lines 1-4) Once again in the Irish Republican literary tradition, a woman is the symbol of strength and defiance. The interrogation itself, after having been built up to such an extent, is passed over relatively lightly by Sands, who frames the lines dealing with his interrogation with

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a repeated stanza which recognizes the place his interrogation takes in the broader and more abstract history of Ireland: From day to day in Castlereagh The hours tick by like years, While to and fro men come and go To play upon your fears. And some wear masks for their grim tasks To hide their black disgrace. But what black mask, I dare to ask, Could hide the devil’s face? (stanzas 50, 61 and 69) This is not to say that Sands does not describe his own suffering. The portrayal of his abuse at the hands of his interrogators is both starkly worded and vividly imagined:14 They poured it on, this boiling wrong, The body burned with pain, ‘Til hefty throws and heavy blows Came hurtling down like rain. ‘Til clumps of hair lay everywhere And blood lay red as wine, One would have thought a prey was caught And butchered up like swine. (stanza 64) Sands’s narrator survives his ordeal, however, and is taken back to the cell he had been in prior to his interrogation. The situation is now different, though. He has faced his fears and has refused to talk. While he knows that he will surely be convicted anyway, the victory has been won. The narrator is once again briefly taken outside on his way from the interrogation rooms to his cell, mirroring his earlier journey from the cell to the interrogation rooms. The difference in the portrayal of the outdoors, which had been marked by a “warning in the air” and “a yellow moon like eye of doom,” is striking: As dawn converged the world emerged Into a brand new day. I stepped out to a sky of blue 138

Where silver fleeces lay. The chirp of bird I plainly heard And as the breeze went by, I drank the air in thirsty tear With greed upon my eye. I drank the day o’er Castlereagh Like one back from the grave, And feasted high upon that sky Like one with awful crave. Each soothing breeze was laced with ease Each golden ray with life, Each little bird that chirped a word Echoed sweet as fife. (stanzas 70-71) Sands twists the situation of Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” where the prisoners “watched with gaze of dull amaze” the man condemned to hang (stanza 21, line 5), by portraying the Watcher as having “gazed with deep amaze” at the prisoner’s triumphant return to the cells (stanza 72, line 1). The narrator’s war is far from over, however, and once returned to his cell, he has a vision of what is to come. In phantasmagoric and hallucinogenic language, Sands paints a Blakean vision of what was in store for the prisoner. Though he had so recently been walking “Like one back from the grave,” he now sees that entombment in the H-Blocks is his fate. Shadowy figures surround him, walking the walls of his cell and staring at him. “They marched in pairs with tortured stares / For they were marching dead,” Sands writes (stanza 78, lines 3-4). The “dead” whom he envisions are the blanketmen in Long Kesh: Each gruesome weird had rambling beard And wore a blanket coarse His flashing eyes spit out despise With mystifying force, And bloody tears in blushing seers Cascaded through the gloom, To paint a rose in trembling pose Of beauty tortured bloom. (stanza 79) 139

These men are the damned to the narrator’s eyes: “What these poor men had met, my friend, / A man dare not suppose,” Sands writes (stanza 80, lines 3-4). The vision of the damned soon enough shifts to a vision of those who torment the damned. Just as in Wilde’s poem, where the “crooked shapes of Terror crouched, / In the corners where we lay” (stanza 48, lines 3-4), the narrator of Sands’s poem finds himself surrounded by “devils’ rooks and phantom spooks” who “Sailed by in deathly gloom” (stanza 83, lines 3 and 4). The demons and ogres of Sands’s vision form a noose “On loom of doom and sin” with which to murder their sacrifice (stanza 84, line 6): The witch and bitch and thieving rich Threw up a scaffold black A Demagogue blasphemed to God In mocking disrespect. The devil’s sons and evil ones Gathered round like fire, And, Jesus Christ, their sacrifice! Was murdered Brian Maguire. (stanza 86) The vision ends with the demons dancing in celebration as the narrator weeps, knowing that his victory in the interrogation room is but a small step toward a greater victory he has yet to claim over a more powerful adversary. “Diplock Court” is the second, and at 36 stanzas the shortest, of Sands’s trilogy of poems. In form, it mimics more closely Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” adopting a six-line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ABCBDB. In content, however, it focuses on the trial itself and thereby differs from Wilde’s poem, which does not describe courtroom settings, focusing instead on their aftermath. In Sands’s poem, the subject is the Diplock court, the juryless court set up for trying Republican prisoners. In the Diplock court (the legal basis of which was renewed in early 2003), the rules regarding habeas corpus are 140

dispensed with, those dealing with evidence are relaxed and the burden of proof is shifted to the accused. As I mentioned in Chapter Two, more than half of the convictions handed down by these courts were based on nothing except the presentation by the prosecution of a prisoner’s confession, generally made during one of the marathon-style interrogation sessions to which prisoners were subjected. The Diplock courts became the second stop on the “H-Block conveyor belt,” with a member of the British establishment handing down verdicts without the bother of input from a jury before sending the prisoner to the H-Blocks, the final destination and the goal of the “criminalisation process.” While the poem is not strictly autobiographical, it is worthwhile here to give an account of Sands’s own arrest which led to his being incarcerated in the H-Blocks. As discussed in Chapter Two, the hunger strike in which Bobby Sands and nine other men died was the second hunger strike of the 1980-1981 period, the first one being called off when it seemed that an agreement had been reached between the prisoners and the British government. When, after no resolution was evident, the second hunger strike was being planned, Sands smuggled a message out of the H-Blocks to the Republican leadership in which he described his own background. After giving basic information on his birth date, his parents and places in which he had lived, he gives an account of his arrest: Anyway, comrade, as I said I got out [from prison after a previous conviction] 13.4.76 and lived in Twinbrook with wife and child and was snared again on 14.10.76, six months later, outside of a furniture showroom in Dunmuray in which were four ticking bombs. You’ll get all the crack on that somewhere, it was pretty fierce — two or three comrades were shot, I was caught in a car with three others and a gun. Anyway I was took eventually to Castlereagh and got very bad time, but gave (this time) only name, address and said I was looking for a job. Anyway, I didn’t sign and at the end of 11 months of remand (four of which were in H-Block) I got sentenced to 14 years for possession with intent. Refused to recognize.

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We beat stack of bomb charges ‘cause we’d kept quiet. Four of us got 84 years between us for one gun. (quoted in Beresford 39) Sands had previously served a sentence in the cages of Long Kesh. As it turned out, he spent his sentence in cage eleven, where, shortly after Sands arrived there, Gerry Adams (who at the time was reportedly the Officer Commanding of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA) was interned. The two became friends as Sands began to rise in the ranks of the imprisoned IRA members, becoming Officer Commanding of his hut and overall Training Officer. Although young (he turned twenty-seven while on his hunger strike), he was highly regarded by the movement and was an eloquent speaker and writer on political subjects. At the time he embarked upon his hunger strike, Sands was Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks. He stepped down upon beginning his strike, and was replaced by Brendan (Bik) McFarlane, who served as Officer Commanding during the hunger strikes. In “Diplock Court,” Sands continues the phantasmagoric depiction of his surroundings that he began in “The Crime of Castlereagh.” He makes abundant use of animal imagery, from the first stanza, in which he compares his treatment to that of livestock: They walked me through the door of doom Like pig to slaughter pen. But pigs are treated better Than prisoners are, my friend. And I in lowly fetters Of captured Irishmen. (stanza 1) While the court proceedings commence, the judge and other officers of the court are transformed into animals.

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“All arise,” said a sharp-eyed rook, And all arose but one. The guest oppressed dropped timid eyes The wretched few fell dumb, For none were left in any doubt The pig-in-wig had come. The fat pig glared and all were sat He moved his beady eyes To fix them upon my worried look In glare of pure despise. And all the pawns fell into line Disdain has no disguise. The grunting pig he sneered and leered And scratched his lofty snout. He mumbled something rather snide That died as it crawled out, But carved a look upon his face That cast aside all doubt. A prosecuting hawk stood up I sat as sparrow prey, His shrivelled beak unleashed a shriek That pinned me in my stay. And ne’er I dared to even speak For this was judgement day. (stanzas 9-12) His use of animals as representations of human qualities is blunt, but effective, just as his use of the lark in “The Lark and the Freedom Fighter” has proved to be emotionally powerful in the decades since the hunger strikes even if the original parable is somewhat prone to overstatement. The law being applied, in Sands’s point of view, is an alien law when applied to the Irish, and the image of the Irish person suffering under the yoke of English law is transformed into the image of Christ’s Passion. They do adhere to law, I mused, But that law is their own. It is a law unto itself 143

Whose face is never shown. But I have seen it, yes I have And brunt of it I’ve known. ... The beady eyes they peered at me The time had come to be, To walk the lonely road Like that of Calvary. And take up the cross of Irishmen Who’ve carried liberty. (stanzas 25, 29) Various British administrations have throughout history used the law to break resistance to British rule in Ireland, with the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century being but the most extreme example. While those laws had essentially made it illegal to be what in fact most of the island was — Irish-speaking Roman Catholics — the laws establishing the Diplock court and the Special Powers Act regulating the acts of arrest, interrogation and sentencing all combined to result in the imprisonment of anyone deemed to be a troublemaker by those in power. It was a tool designed for a very specific purpose and it was used well. Since protesting these laws was one of the best ways to bring them down upon one’s head, little choice was left to those determined to resist. And men asked why men rise to fight To violence to resort, And why the days are filled with death And struggles’ black report. But see they not, these blinded fools, Lord Diplock’s dirty court. Let all men know and know it well That rich men judge the poor. Working man ‘fore bossman’s eyes Is just a sweating whore. And rich men ne’er will bow to words Of that, my friend, be sure.

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‘Tis but working men strong and bold United, tight as one, Who may hope to break the tyrant’s grip And see that splendid sun. The splendid sun of freedom born, A freedom dearly won. (stanzas 36-38) The notion of a new dawn is one which permeates Republican writing and one which has been prevalent for hundreds of years. Frequently the image used is that of the time before the dawn, when the night helps cloak the surreptitious activities of those working to bring about this new dawn. (The title of Adams’s autobiography, Before the Dawn, implies a lifetime of working during these hidden hours.) Other Republican writers refer to the rising of the moon (as Sands will in his diary) as being the important time: the time when resistance begins, when enough light penetrates the blackness to allow revolutionary acts to begin. The closing lines of Sands’s poem above speak to this directly, calling for a united front of the working class to work through the night to bring about a new dawn under which freedom casts out the oppressive laws of the former masters. In the final poem of the trilogy, “The Torture Mill — H-Block,” Sands begins an extended commentary on death and death-in-life by describing the shooting of a “screw” by the IRA: They found him on his own door-step In crimson pool he lay, His deathly eyes in fool’s surprise Stared blankly at the day, For plain it seemed he’d never dreamed That death would come his way. (stanza 3) During the period of the prison protests, the IRA killed a number of prison officers, normally ones whom the prisoners had identified as being unusually cruel. Sands 145

identifies the killer of this man as being “vengeance, . . . that haunting ghost that catches most,” as he describes it (stanza 5, lines 4 and 5). Here, the prison guard is depicted as the criminal against whom the rule of law descends. The prisoners — those whom society has deemed criminals — are far from having changed places with the free, however. In fact, Sands repeatedly portrays the blanketmen as occupying a space between life and death and between sanity and insanity: He sat upon the filthy foam His piercing eyes ablaze. He started as if he did not know Like one within a daze. But all men wear this crazy stare Within the dirty Maze. He stared upon nightmarish walls As if they held the key To some dark secret of his soul That would not set him free, That hidden cleft through which but death May find tranquility. (stanzas 21 and 22) Passing from the old world of oppression to the new world of freedom has its cost: one must survive the night before the new dawn arises. This is the theme of this final poem in the trilogy. The poem shifts from reflecting upon the stagnation of time and the weariness of resistance to focus on the sheer panic of a wing shift. Wing shifts were when the prisoners along one of the four wings which made up the H shape of an H-Block were forcibly moved to another, clean, wing. The excuse given for these wing shifts was that the prison authorities wished to clean the cells, made disgusting from the dirty protests described earlier. However, the brutality encountered by the prisoners during these wing shifts was such that conducting a wing shift became merely another weapon in the prison authorities’ arsenal. Most accounts of life in the H-Blocks during the prison protests 146

discuss wing shifts — the fear they caused as one awaited them and the wild havoc of the shifts themselves. Prisoners knew when to expect a wing shift, and rather than helping them assuage their fears, the knowledge added to the psychological difficulty they faced in preparing for the violence to be encountered. Sands describes a prisoner pacing the floor of his cell in the manner of an animal driven mad by captivity and fear: He ran that floor from wall to door And glared at me quite dumb, And I at him like mortal sin For words just would not come. For this was hell and in this cell A soul was on the run. (stanza 45; repeated as stanzas 59 and 68) Sands’s description of the intense anxiety felt by the prisoners prior to a wing shift is vividly painted. The coming of the new dawn worked for by the revolutionary is perverted into a dawn marked by pain and humiliation. Instead of the new day fought for through the night, the dawn which arises is one belonging to the enemy: The dying night was bleeding white The dark was on the run And dawning day drove it away Before the blood-eyed sun, And by the shadows on the walls We knew that they had come. (stanza 53) The sounds of the beginning of the wing shift terrify the prisoners, who “though we froze for lack of clothes / The sweat oozed out our pores” (stanza 56, lines 5-6). The pacing prisoner becomes even more manic as he continues his endless march: Still keeping time to squelch of slime He marched a quickened pace, Those blazened eyes like angry skies Rolled round his ashen face,

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And on he went like a regiment That fled the battle place. (stanza 58) While the dawn is bringing pain and terror instead of freedom and justice, the birds’ cries also turn malicious. Frequently used by Sands as symbols of liberty, the birds now sing the notes of discord: “somewhere near I chanced to hear / the first bird of the day, / Its dawning tune rang out like doom / And died in disarray” (stanza 69, lines 3-6). Sands describes the hated “mirror search,” in which prisoners were forced naked over a mirror to facilitate a search of the prisoner’s anus (often followed immediately by a search of the prisoner’s mouth, the same hands being used): They grab your legs like wooden pegs And part them till they split. They pry and spy and even try To look in through the split. Both north and south to find your mouth To try look “out” of it. (stanza 64) The wing shift completed, the beaten prisoners make one final act of rebellion by singing “A Nation Once Again,” one of the most popular Republican songs (stanza 86). While this show of continued defiance demonstrates the integrity of the prisoners and their protest, the poem ends on a grim note.15 The prisoners are bleeding and nursing wounds both physical and psychological. It’s clear that the prison protests cannot continue like this. Something was clearly going to have to change and Bobby Sands led the way to this new era in the prisons. Sands’s memory lives on primary because he led the second hunger strike of Republican prisoners, which began on March 1, 1981. The practice of hunger striking is an ancient one, with the tactic being described in the old Breton laws of Ireland as a recourse for those who have been unjustly treated. The ancient laws described 148

circumstances in which oppressed parties could starve themselves at the door of the house of those they felt had treated them unjustly. The oppressors would have to make amends in order to avoid the disgrace of having someone starving to death at their very doorstep. The tactic is based on two principles: ∑

The principle of shame. This is based on the premise that the offending parties will be too ashamed to let the starving party actually succumb to hunger and that they will instead seek to redress the wrongs they have perpetrated against the hunger striker.

∑

The principle of sacrifice, in particular of self-sacrifice.

It is this second principle which I chiefly wish to discuss. Martyrdom is a powerful idea and has been of significance in Ireland since the conflict with England began. The hunger strike is innovative in that it is simultaneously passive and aggressive. It is an action begun by the hunger striker, yet it can only be successfully ended by the one against whom one strikes or by the death of the striker. The death of the striker ensures the person’s martyrdom, an event which then creates the conditions under which more people will wage battle against the power or person against whom the action of the hunger strike was directed. The martyr breeds future martyrs through the very act of death. The English word “sacrifice” is derived, through Middle English and Old French, from the Latin words sacer, meaning “sacred,” and facere, “to make.” To sacrifice is to make the sacrificed thing holy by forsaking one’s own use or ownership of it and making a gift of it to the power or person for and to whom one sacrifices. The holiness of the act of giving is transferred onto the thing being given. While the act of sacrificing may imply the holiness of the person doing the sacrificing, what becomes holy is the sacrificial 149

object and not the person doing the actual sacrificing. Of course, when the sacrificial object is one’s self, the act takes on greater significance as it now involves not only the giving up of something but the making sacred of one’s self. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida and others have written about the ineffable in terms of a gift. For Derrida, this gift is identified as being aligned with death and responsibility. The acceptance of one’s own death (that one will die, not necessarily the specifics or mechanics of the actual dying) is the acceptance of a gift. This gift can be from a god, if one places it in a religious context, or a gift from that which remains unknowable but which holds within it the ideal, the first philosophy, the primary cause, the transcendental signified — the meaning. To accept death is to accept one’s existence in a context, whether that be a metaphysical context defined by religious principles and laws or one defined in phenomenological, linguistic, scientific or other philosophical terms. The gift of death which Derrida describes in his short book of that name is discussed therein as it relates to religion, and it seems appropriate to discuss the notion of death as a gift and as an act of final responsibility in the context of the hunger strikes as existing within the principles of religion (if not specifically Christianity). The particular connections — implicit as well as explicit — between the Passion of Christ and the actions and iconography of the hunger strikers demands examination along these lines. The hunger striker is both accepting a gift (death) and giving one (the striker’s self). The beneficiary of the striker’s gift is of course not the person against whom the action is initiated but the principle or people for which it is undertaken. One question which must be addressed in any discussion of the hunger strikes is the question of agency: for whom and to whom one sacrifices oneself. In the act of 150

sacrifice, one is brought into a relationship with the holy — one makes the thing sacrificed a holy object and one is made holy through this action. With Sands’s sacrifice, there is the potential for the roles to become unclear. Generally in the act of sacrificing, one desires the deity, or that which stands in for the deity, to perform an action in return for the sacrifice (one sacrifices an animal, say, in order that the god to whom one sacrifices it bestows a blessing on the one making the sacrifice). It is vitally important to understand that the role of the deity in Sands’s sacrifice is not played by the British establishment, but by the Irish people (seen here as a singular, metaphysical, notional entity). The power dynamics shift during the process of Sands’s sacrifice. The British establishment is being struck against, yet this does not recognize the granting of power to that establishment: while they have the power to stop the strike, to interrupt the sacrifice before it is complete, it is a mistake to assume that it is they who are being petitioned. Just as, to take an example, if someone were to plan to sacrifice a goat in order to appease a deity from whom one wants rain, it is the deity being petitioned, not the rain itself, though the act of sacrifice could be interrupted were it to begin raining before one has carried out the sacrifice. In Sands’s case, the petitioner is Sands, the petitioned is the Irish people, the desired objects are the five demands of the Republican prisoners in the short term and Irish freedom from British interference in the long term. The British establishment does not enter the equation except insofar as they have the capacity to interrupt the process, the sacrifice. Sands desires the Irish people to take action: this is his dream. While a British withdrawal is a necessary component of the process leading to Irish freedom for Sands, it is the Irish people who must free Ireland, not the occupying British. Therefore, it is to and for the Irish people that Sands sacrifices himself. 151

At the beginning of Sands’s hunger strike, the possibility of the British acting to sabotage the act of sacrifice by seeming to fulfill the desire of the sacrificer (who is here also the sacrificed) is very real — as was amply demonstrated during the first hunger strike the year before. As the strike continues, however, we see Sands move from seeing his death as a possibility to seeing it as a probability and then a certainty. He accepts this very early on in the strike, as we can see in the diary he kept for the first seventeen days of it. He begins to conceptualize his role in this drama in ways which go beyond the immediate: an impressive feat considering that the “immediate” are his final days, the actions of which will lead to his death. Sands is able to see beyond his own death and conceptualize his own sacrifice. Sands’s sacrifice plays a double role: he sacrifices himself for his comrades (he dies in order to improve their living conditions); he dies also for the good of the national ideal — one Ireland — that his death may help bring down the colonialist state and bring about a unification of the people both politically and morally (though specifically not religiously: absent is any intention or allusion to conversion except in a political sense — Sands was personally not particularly religious and lived in accordance with the non-sectarian statements reflected in the Easter Proclamation). His death plays (at least) two roles in the story (myth/narrative) of Irish nationalism: he who dies for his friends16 and he who dies for his nation and his people. On March 1, 1981, the day he embarked upon his hunger strike, Sands wrote in his diary that “I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.”17 In this first entry, he discusses his motivations for embarking on a hunger strike he was nearly certain would result in his death:

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I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the “risen people.” His thoughts throughout the diary are generally on other people: his family and comrades as well as those active in the Republican movement outside the prison and those to whom he has looked for inspiration. There is even a bit of literary analysis as he describes his reading habits, which amusingly include Rudyard Kipling, the poetic voice of British colonialism. His humor is evident, even when discussing food: he mentions in this first entry eating his last meal: “I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.” The bulk of Sand’s diary records the day-to-day events of his life on hunger strike and as such is interesting for historical more than literary reasons. He reports dutifully on such events as the ending of the dirty protest on March 2 and the growing media interest in the events taking place in the H-Blocks. While he discusses food, he does so with a black sense of humor: I can ignore the presence of food staring me straight in the face all the time. But I have this desire for brown wholemeal bread, butter, Dutch cheese and honey. Ha!! It is not damaging me, because, I think, “Well, human food can never keep a man alive forever,” and I console myself with the fact that I’ll get a great feed up above (if I’m worthy). But then I’m struck by this awful thought that they don’t eat food up there. But if there’s something better than brown wholemeal bread, cheese and honey, etcetera, then it can’t be bad. (March 5)

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Interspersed throughout the diary are passages which record his thoughts and experiences in ways which mark the diary as being that of a poet, albeit a highly politicized one: They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal. . . . I can hear the curlew passing overhead. Such a lonely cell, such a lonely struggle. But, my friend, this road is well trod and he, whoever he was, who first passed this way, deserves the salute of the nation. I am but a mere follower and I must say Oíche Mhaith [Good night]. (March 6) The only thing Sands professes anxiety over is the thought that he would soon be taken away from the rest of the IRA prisoners and housed in the hospital unit of the prison. Increasingly, his thoughts turn to his impending isolation, and he tries to steel himself for it by turning his thoughts to his past and to his memories of the outside world: I read some wild-life articles in various papers, which indeed brought back memories of the once-upon-a-time budding ornithologist! It was a bright pleasant afternoon today and it is a calm evening. It is surprising what even the confined eyes and ears can discover. I am awaiting the lark, for spring is all but upon us. How I listened to that lark when I was in H-5, and watched a pair of chaffinches which arrived in February. Now lying on what indeed is my death bed, I still listen even to the black crows. (March 8) Later in the diary, when Sands had shifted to writing mostly in Gaelic, he continued to dwell on this subject. Bhí na heiníní ag ceiliúracht inniú. Chaith ceann de na buachaillí arán amach as an fhuinneog, ar a leghad bhí duine éigin ag ithe. Uaigneach abhí mé ar feadh tamaill ar tráthnóna beag inniú ag éisteacht leis na préacháin ag screadáil agus ag teacht abhaile daobhtha. Dá gcluinfinn an fhuiseog álainn, brisfeadh sí mo chroí. Anois mar a scríobhaim tá an corrcrothar ag caoineadh mar a théann siad tharam. Is maith liom na heiníní. Bhuel caithfidh mé a dul mar má scríobhain níos mó ar na heiníní seo beidh mo dheora ag rith ‘s rachaidh mo smaointi ar ais chuig, an t-am 154

nuair abhí mé ógánach, b’iad na laennta agus iad imithe go deo anois, ach thaitin siad liom agus ar a laghad níl dearmad deánta agam orthu, ta siad i mo chroí — oíche mhaith anois. (March 13) [The birds were singing today. One of the boys threw bread out of the window, at least somebody was eating! I was lonely for a while this evening, listening to the crows call as they returned home. If I would hear the beautiful lark, she would break my heart. Now, as I write, the odd curlew mournfully calls as they fly over. I like the birds. Well, I must leave off, for if I write more about the birds my tears will fall and my thoughts return to the days of my youth, they were the days, and gone forever now, but I enjoyed them, they are in my heart — good night now.] The fact that he was imprisoned, however, was never far from his mind, and while the treatment of the prisoners by the guards had improved somewhat after the cessation of the dirty protest (which Sands speculates is more because the guards are no longer receiving hazardous duty pay than because of any real shift in attitudes), their presence is a constant reminder of why he is on hunger strike and for whom he is fighting. The Screws are staring at me perplexed. Many of them hope (if their eyes tell the truth) that I will die. If need be, I’ll oblige them, but my God they are fools. Oscar Wilde did not do justice to them for I believe they are lower than even he thought. And I may add there is only one thing lower than a Screw and that is a Governor. And in my experience the higher one goes up that disgusting ladder they call rank, or position, the lower one gets. (March 7) I have poems in my mind, mediocre no doubt, poems of hunger strike and MacSwiney, and everything that this hunger-strike has stirred up in my heart and in my mind, but the weariness is slowly creeping in, and my heart is willing but my body wants to be lazy, so I have decided to mass all my energy and thoughts into consolidating my resistance. That is most important. Nothing else seems to matter except that lingering constant reminding thought, “Never give up.” No matter how bad, how black, how painful, how heart-breaking, “Never give up,” “Never despair,” “Never lose hope.” Let them bastards laugh at you all they want, let them grin and jibe, allow them to persist in their humiliation, brutality, deprivations, vindictiveness, petty harassments, let them laugh now, because all of that is no longer important or worth a response. 155

I am making my last response to the whole vicious inhuman atrocity they call H-Block. But, unlike their laughs and jibes, our laughter will be the joy of victory and the joy of the people, our revenge will be the liberation of all and the final defeat of the oppressors of our aged nation. (March 12) Sands’s final entry reflects on the body’s efforts to come to terms with being on hunger strike. Sands discusses how the body retreats and leaves the mind as the primary site of struggle. The desire for freedom, Sands writes, is the last part of the hunger striker to die. Lá Pádraig inniú ‘s mar is gnách níor thárla aon rud suntasach... Bhí mé ag smaoineamh inniú ar an chéalacán seo. Deireann daoine a lán faoin chorp ach ní chuireann muinín sa chorp ar bith. Measaim ceart go leor go bhfuil saghas troda. An dtús ní ghlacann leis an chorp an easpaidh bidh, is fulaingíonn sé ón chathú bith, is greithe airithe eile a bhíonn ag síorchlipeadh an choirp. Troideann an corp ar ais ceart go leor, ach deireadh an lae; téann achan rud ar ais chuig an phríomhrud, is é sin an mheabhair. Is é an mheabhair an rud is tábhachtaí. Mura bhfuil meabhair láidir agat chun cur in aghaidh le achan rud, ní mhairfidh. Ní bheadh aon sprid troda agat. Is ansin cen áit as a dtigeann an mheabhair cheart seo. B’fhéidir as an fhonn saoirse. Ní hé cinnte gurb é an áit as a dtigeann sé. Mura bhfuil siad in inmhe an fonn saoirse a scriosadh, ní bheadh siad in inmhe tú féin a bhriseadh. Ní bhrisfidh siad mé mar tá an fonn saoirse, agus saoirse mhuintir na hEireann i mo chroí. Tiocfaidh lá éigin nuair a bheidh an fonn saoirse seo le taispeáint ag daoine go léir na hEireann ansin tchífidh muid éirí na gealaí. (March 17) [St Patrick’s Day today and, as usual, nothing noticeable... I was thinking today about the hunger strike. People say a lot about the body, but don’t trust it. I consider that there is a kind of fight indeed. First, the body doesn’t accept the lack of food, and it suffers from the temptation of food, and from other aspects which gnaw at it perpetually. The body fights back sure enough, but at the end of the day everything returns to the primary consideration, that is, the mind. The mind is the most important. But then where does this proper mentality stem from? Perhaps from one’s desire for freedom. It isn’t certain that that’s where it comes from. If they aren’t able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won’t break you. They won’t break 156

me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will show the desire for freedom; it is then we’ll see the rising of the moon.] There’s no escaping the messianic tone of some of Sands’s work, just as there is no point downplaying the Christlike symbolism of the hunger strikes in their emphasis on sacrifice and redemption. It is important to note, however, that the Messiah here is not an individual but a community. While Sands is today revered as a martyr, he is also very much remembered as a man, a 27-year-old from Belfast no different from many raised in similar circumstances. His smiling face adorning any number of public murals is the reflected face of the community as much as (or even more so than) the portrait of an individual. A mixture of patriot, founding father and Messiah, Sands was the first of ten to die, but in many ways — and I mean no disrespect to those who suffered and died — the other deaths but confirmed his. This first death was all that was needed, one only needing to die once and only needing this one death to ensure both martyrdom and the success of the doubled role he plays (as he who sacrifices for his friends and for his people). His death not only is successful in bringing about the short-term goal of improving conditions for the other IRA prisoners of war: it also wins the battle for Ireland, the notional nation. Ireland was freed in 1981: history since then has simply been working out the details.

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CHAPTER 4

“UNTIL THAT CERTAIN DAY”: IRISH REPUBLICAN WRITING SINCE THE HUNGER STRIKES

The years immediately following the hunger strikes were a time of rethinking for the Irish Republican movement. Politically, militarily and philosophically, the bitter hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 were a victory for the Republican movement, but that they were a victory was slow to be realized, either by the surviving prisoners themselves or by the Thatcher government. When the second hunger strike was officially ended by the Long Kesh prisoners on October 3, 1981, the mood within the H-Blocks and in the Republican communities outside was one reflecting sustained trauma rather than celebration. While ten of their comrades had died, Republicans could see little that had been won. Meanwhile, the Thatcher government congratulated itself on having refused to bow to “terrorist demands.” What happened over the next two years was of paramount importance to the future of the Irish Republican movement. Republicans gradually moved past their grief, taking the memory of the hunger strikers as an inspiration rather than as a demoralizing depressant. Where the nationalist communities felt shattered in the immediate aftermath of the hunger strikes, they soon began to feel united and stronger than ever because of 158

their shared trauma. The power of the sacrifice began to be felt and a new focus was placed on the strength of the movement, which, after all, had survived even this. Past sacrifices from the Republican tradition also took on increased power at this time, with the case of Tom Williams, an IRA member who was hanged by the British at the age of nineteen in 1942 being a good example. Williams wrote in one of his last letters a message to other IRA volunteers which continues to inspire the movement to this day: To carry on, no matter what odds are against you, to carry on no matter what the enemy calls you, to carry on no matter what torments are inflicted on you. The road to freedom is paved with suffering, hardship & torture. Carry on my gallant & brave comrades until that certain day. (letter to Hugh McAteer) In the months following the hunger strikes, the prison administration, eager to stave off a repeat of the prison protests, was gradually, and with little comment, introducing reforms to the prison regime which by 1983 amounted to granting the prisoners the very rights for which they had struck to the death. Relations between the prison guards and prisoners became much more relaxed, even friendly at times. This proved to be a deliberate tactic when on September 25, 1983, thirty-eight IRA prisoners, some of them wielding firearms, took over all of H-Block 7 and escaped from the prison (Dunne 82). By this time, the IRA was rejuvenated and the community of supporters on the outside was better organized than ever. The hunger strikes and the attention they gained around the world for the Republican movement increased awareness and support of the Irish struggle and were a huge propaganda victory, albeit one that came at an enormous cost. The subsequent prison break removed all doubt concerning the vitality of the movement and proved to IRA supporters that, like the phoenix (a popular Republican symbol), the Provos had risen once again out of the ashes. 159

The reborn Irish Republican movement was not a simple reincarnation of its earlier form, however. As the political and military situation in the north of Ireland gradually cooled from the intensity of the 1980-1981 period, more time was available to discuss the gray areas where political realities could be acknowledged as not being either good or evil, but somewhere in between. The decades of the 1980s and 1990s were a time of contemplation for the movement. Nothing was exempt from often intense examination: the movementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objectives, traditions, means, capabilities and limitations were all questioned closely. The new battlefield required a change in tactics and strategies. This change is reflected in the literature of the period, which shifts not only in content but in form. While the literature emanating from the Irish Republican movement prior to the hunger strikes was primarily concerned with discussing the movementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objectives and justifying the means used in pursuit of those objectives, the literature which began to appear in the years following the hunger strikes is far less concerned with questions of legitimacy and justification than it is with questions pertaining to the linkage of the past and the future. Irish Republican literature prior to 1981 is largely concerned with the past (addressing past grievances in order to justify present actions) and the present (describing what is happening now in order to defeat attempts to control the flow of information). The literature coming out of the movement in the years between 1981 and 1998, however, is far more concerned with the future â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with planning for a future without British interference, one which will have to address complicated political matters which will remain long after a British withdrawal. After 1981, Irish Republicans rarely wrote purely in the voice of the oppressed. They recognized the fact that they were politically oppressed, of course, and fought 160

determinedly for the right to self-determination, but the literature of this period frequently takes the tone of a soldier who has already won the major battle and is simply waiting for the opposing troops to weary of a fight which has already been lost. In the years to come, people would kill and be killed — at times the violence would seem as bad as in the 1970s — but in many ways it seemed that the war had already been won by the IRA. The decision of Sinn Féin to break with their traditional policy of abstentionism (wherein elected Republicans refused to take their seats in the Dublin government, which they saw as illegitimate) in 1986 was also a contributing factor in the change of voice in the literature of the movement in the 1980s: previously, the development of a workable political vehicle for the Irish Republican movement was a distant second on the list of Republican priorities, with the military campaign of the Irish Republican Army being the main focus of the movement’s energies. With Sinn Féin adopting a position which would allow successful candidates to actually serve in the world of realpolitik, the party made itself far more relevant to a much wider array of potential voters. This, in turn, made it necessary for the movement as a whole to more carefully and thoroughly develop its political message and more clearly outline its vision of the future. The writings which I examine in this chapter are more complex than those texts examined in Chapter Three in that they are less firmly rooted in the intensity of the moment — an intensity which frequently requires fast decisions based on necessarily simple questions (is this good or bad for the movement?). This chapter is concerned with tracing the growing complexity of Irish Republican thinking in the literature produced by members of that movement in the period following the 1981 hunger strikes and leading to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It begins with an examination of the literary 161

philosophy of poet Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh, with whom the author corresponded extensively while Ó Conghalaigh was imprisoned in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. The letters which form the basis for the section on Ó Conghalaigh shed some interesting light on the motivations of one of the prison poets of the period following the hunger strikes and leading up to the 1998 agreement. The chapter then examines the trend toward fiction that Irish Republican writing takes during the years following the hunger strikes and the implications of writing fiction which examines the Republican movement. The possibilities inherent in fictional writing and the dangers of writing this type of work are also examined as I discuss the works of Republicans Gerry McGeough, Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison. *

If the aftermath of the hunger strikes brought on a period of reflection on the part of the Irish Republican movement outside the prisons, the situation was amplified within them. After the 1983 escape, the remaining prisoners in the H-Blocks settled down to “do their whack” (do their time) and contemplate the struggle and how they had ended up in prison. The development through the 1980s of Sinn Féin as a significant political party took some of the emphasis in the Republican movement off the military campaign, and prisoners began thinking of how to best shape the future. For many of them, their thoughts were expressed in writing. The H-Block prisoners soon had the means and opportunity to do this openly, and to some degree publicly, establishing in August 1989 a magazine, An Glór Gafa (The Captive Voice) written and designed entirely by prisoners and published by the Sinn Féin POW Department. The magazine ran for ten years and was highly successful. 162

The publication of the first issue of An Glór Gafa demonstrated the degree to which things had changed. It was not the first publication to be put together by IRA prisoners, however. Those IRA members imprisoned in Portlaoise Gaol in the twenty-six counties had somewhat more freedom for much of the period from 1976 to 1981 and had published a small magazine called An Trodaí (The Fighter) for much of that period and for a few years afterwards. The Portlaoise Republican prisoners also published a magazine in Irish called An Réabhlóid (The Revolution) for a few years in the mid-1980s and a collection of short stories in 1987 titled simply Portlaoise Writings. The H-Block prisoners had also experimented with publishing projects previous to An Glór Gafa, publishing Questions of History, a history book from the perspective of Irish Republicanism, in 1987, and Sentenced to Life, a booklet examining how the British justice system had been applied to Irish Republicans facing life sentences, in 1988. However, where in the past these publications were either individual projects or shortlived, An Glór Gafa was regularly published for a decade and drew on the writing talents of dozens of imprisoned Irish Republicans during that time. Smaller, individual publishing projects would continue to be undertaken by Republican prisoners: the 1991 volume of poetry Voices against Oppression, published by the Irish Republican women prisoners in Maghaberry and Durham prisons, and the booklet Issues on Compassionate Parole, by the Long Kesh prisoners, being particularly noteworthy. An Glór Gafa, however, set the tone for Republican prisoner writing projects in the 1990s. In a letter to the author dated June 12, 1997, Micheál Mac Giolla Ghunna, then editor of An Glór Gafa, described the goals of the magazine:

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An Glór Gafa was established in 1989, after a number of years of creative writing and educational projects organized by Republican POWs for themselves. It was a natural development that POWs would require a forum for their writing. The magazine has a number of purposes. It allows POWs, working in conjunction with the editors, to develop their writing skills and to develop their ideas into coherent articles, i.e., it has an educational purpose. It allows POWs a platform for their views and talents. It provides the readership with an insight into the views, concerns and interests of POWs. The editors either solicit or receive unsolicited material, discuss it with the authors and suggest possible changes in regard to clarity of argument and readability; then the material is re-written by the authors and if necessary edited again (and again!) until it is ready for publication. We try to use as wide a range of authors as possible — it would be easy to find a dozen good writers in this jail who could produce a very high-standard magazine, but we prefer to help budding writers to develop their skills and to make the magazine a communal effort rather than an elitist project. We also try to ensure that the subject-matter of the articles is wide-ranging, from political to humorous articles. Then we send all the material to the Sinn Féin POW Department which arranges for the magazine to be printed and distributed. The magazine comes out three times a year (usually). One IRA member who took advantage of the publication was Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh, who was serving four life sentences for an attack on July 24, 1990, near Armagh city, which killed three RUC officers and a Catholic nun who happened to be driving in the vicinity. Ó Conghalaigh had studied at Coleraine and Cambridge universities and worked as a teacher until his arrest. His poetry melds impressionistic language with a stark depiction of reality and a flair for juxtaposition, as in his poem “Féile Mhuire” (“The Feast of Mary”): Night enters with the silent fanfare of orange, pink and red on shades of blue, through rusted coils. The night-watcher huddles in a summer chill. Murmurs in the breeze.

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A gate unlocks, locks. A walkie-talkie blares the breeze. A shadow shifts along the chink between ground and galvanized. Domhan i ndomhan Oíche na hoíche.

[Earth in the earth] [Night of the night.]

The murmur moves to a beach, a drink, a sunset, to grey-haired men firing rockets and machine-guns and helicopter gunships swooping roaring on a car darting through the hedges of an August country lane. The radio snarls again. Tea cools too quickly in our mugs. And tyres pan the motorway, always going somewhere. Agus sise liom, labhairt liom, suí liom, cos ‘s gruaig liom. Súile mar an fharraige, ciúnas na farraige. Gaoth bhog na binne ‘s binneas a glóir.

[And she is with me,] [speaking with me,] [sitting with me,] [together with me.] [Eyes like the sea,] [the stillness of the sea.] [The soft wind of the cliff] [is the sweetness of her voice.]

Gaoth gan ghaoth. Binneas a binnis.

[Wind without wind.] [The sweetness of her sweetness.]

In this poem, Ó Conghalaigh juxtaposes the past with the present, action with stagnation, freedom of movement with captivity, and the sensory impressions of life around him with those which his circumstances make him unable to experience. The first stanza is awash with half-realized images and contradictory language, from the “silent

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fanfare,” to the images of a sunset cut across by a jagged coil of razor wire, to the “nightwatcher” shivering from the summer’s chill (a possible experience given Irish weather, but also an allusion to the cold atmosphere resulting from the prison), to the murmurs (partial words, partially heard) floating on the wind. The second stanza acts to intensify the first: a gate offering freedom only to close again, another murmur (this time mechanized) coming across the breeze, the illusion of a person in the space between the earth and the steel of the prison wall. The following couplet shifts to Irish, taking advantage of the language’s lenition and eclipsion to create words which in English would simply repeat but which in Irish are made very slightly different, reinforcing the poem’s concentration on images and words which seem slightly off-kilter. The poem then moves to the world of imagination, creating a fantasy from the murmurs which shifts between peaceful images (a beach, a drink, a sunset) to the images forced into the consciousness of the poet by his surroundings and his background, images both stark and violent and which imply both struggle and trauma. The image of a helicopter attacking a car is a vivid one for the poet, helicopters being the bane of the IRA’s existence in rural areas such as those in which Ó Conghalaigh operated. The violent image startles the poet, who reemerges into a far more banal world, where his concerns involve the proper temperature of tea and where his surroundings serve to remind him that while people are constantly moving outside the prison, his own movements are strictly limited. Most importantly, the world he inhabits serves to remind him both of what he is missing and what has remained: female contact and religious faith, respectively. The woman described in the penultimate paragraph could be a lover as easily as she could be 166

the Virgin Mary referred to in the title of the poem. Ó Conghalaigh’s wordplay is seen more clearly in the Gaelic portions of the text. The repeated instances of the word “liom” (“with me”) provide a rhythm to the poem which could be both sensual and indicative of prayer (in particular, of the repeated prayers making up the Catholic rosary). The use of the word “farraige” (“sea”) is refracted in its first instance in line 33 by the lenition which makes the word “fharraige” (a change which affects the word’s pronunciation as well as written appearance): much as an image on the water’s surface is nearly but not quite an actual reflection. Likewise the similarities in pronunciation between the words “binne” (“cliff”) and “binneas” (“sweetness”) as well as the latter word’s genitive form of “binnis.” The final couplet continues Ó Conghalaigh’s fondness for using extremely similar, but inexact, words or word forms in close juxtaposition. The wordplay serves to intensify and draw attention to the lack of correlations in the poem: just as the repeated words seem to be, but aren’t quite, exactly the same, neither do his images necessarily correspond to the immediate impressions associated with them. The poem is more richly textured and more darkly associative than is at first apparent. Unlike most prison poets, Ó Conghalaigh had been writing poetry before he went to prison, though it was in prison that he began to take his writing seriously and attempt to hone his craft. “I’ve always been interested in poetry, wrote some stuff before I landed on this particular planet — at school & university &c but fairly consistently since ‘92 when I reached Ceis Fhada [Long Kesh]. Regardless of its merit, people were interested in publishing it, depending on how the ‘peace process’ developed, which says a bit in itself” (letter to the author, May 5, 1997). In a series of letters to the author, Ó Conghalaigh discussed his poetic development, influences and politics in detail. 167

My own poetry: I started writing before I came in here so I’m not typical. I was writing pieces from an early age. . . . Ironically, I could not really have written as I wanted before, in the outside world. Maybe the reason why so many Republicans begin to write [in prison] is because (a) as POWs we don’t work etc., but read a lot & guys who have missed out previously for whatever reason, gain a high level of education, formal & informal, & (b) the nature of the conflict; psychological warfare. (letter of June 10, 1997) The notion of poetry as a response to (and a form of?) psychological warfare summons to the mind the notion that the pen is mightier than the sword. Ó Conghalaigh is adamant, however, that in his case, he turned to the pen as a weapon only because the sword was unavailable: We are portrayed as terrorists & criminals to the world press & at home. To many, it is easier to accept this version than admit another. The IRA is of a population of 800,000 against a major power. Democracy is quoted against us. Yet we know we are right, that England is an occupying power with plenty of Irish collaborators — divide & conquer, dispossess, colonize & then make it into a democracy. There is plenty of reason to feel strongly & I want to express that conviction and being unable to express it physically, the “pen” is the only available option. (letter of June 10, 1997) Noting that Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison both wrote fiction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a time of severe censorship of the Republican movement within the mainstream media, Ó Conghalaigh says that “a large part of my own impulse would be to set down a historical record. . . . we’ve experienced nothing but constant war.” In this, he wishes to distinguish himself clearly from Seamus Heaney and other poets whom he sees as having abandoned the six counties: The 70s poets of the North — Heaney, et al. — stood back, cleared to Dublin, adopted a Brit friendly Cath/Protestant view: “mad Paddies killing each other & Britain as the honest broker.” It was easier for the middle class to do this. It allowed them to get on with their lives with a clean conscience. My problem was always that I found myself writing in reaction to Heaney & it’s only since ‘93 & poets like Medbh McGuckian that I have found the freedom & distance to write. . . . Ironically, Heaney’s 168

attempt to sit on the fence more often leads him, unconsciously, to take sides. “Part of the same set level of resistance?” I don’t know. It sounds nice. I suppose it’s true to an extent, but in a much longer time-frame. If my poetry is good enough poetry it will achieve this. If not, it will not & since it does not accord with the PC of Irish literary circles this side of a settlement, it will not get a fair hearing. So time will tell. (letter of June 10, 1997) The dangers inherent in writing political poetry is not lost on Ó Conghalaigh: I try to avoid banners.... I have written overtly political poems, particularly earlier on, ‘92-’93, but the problem with them is that when you’ve said it & there’s only so much you can say, there’s nothing left to write about so either you stop or you begin writing poems for their own sake — art for art’s sake — & this is where the poetry takes over. In his poetry, Ó Conghalaigh draws deeply on his upbringing and background as well as on his individual experiences as a member of the IRA and as a prisoner of war. He believes that poetry is an art form which can be appreciated by the masses of ordinary people and that this lends to the form’s power. Poetry can be so powerful, is so accessible for the ordinary person. Is immediate. You feel strongly about something, you sit down & write a poem about it. Acquiring the craft & skill is another step, but we are a group of highly motivated, highly charged individuals with a deep sense of grievance both personally & historically & poetry is the most accessible outlet & thus the most effective. Ironically, we are very proud, as a nation, of our Heaney & Yeats. Pearse was a writer & a poet. . . . It [poetry] has traditionally been viewed as “of the people” — the bards who in the 17th c[entury] maintained their art underground among a shattered people & vanquished civilization. (letter of June 10, 1997) Being in prison, of course, limits the activity of a writer and Ó Conghalaigh also discussed the difficulties specific to writing in prison: in the middle of our correspondence, the tunnel which had been under construction by IRA prisoners (which I mention in Chapter Three) was discovered by the prison authorities, and in the aftermath of the discovery, he lost a substantial amount of material:

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Things have settled fairly well after the “tunnel” crack. It gave us all a buzz and a reintroduction to riot squads & all that goes with them. Amongst the retribution were arts & crafts, training facilities & computers & disks on which I had stored a lot of work & poetry, so I’m praying I get them back & that they’re not disappeared into somebody’s boot (car-boot) like a lot of other stuff. (letter to the author, May 5, 1997) On June 10, he noted, “No sign of the disks yet, or computers. Punishment of the petty variety . . .” Medbh McGuckian taught a six-week course as a visiting poet in Long Kesh, an experience she relied upon heavily in writing the second half of her collection Captain Lavender. Taking part in the course was not a decision arrived at easily for the Republican prisoners, as the course was arranged by the prison administration and generally the Republican prisoners have as little to do with the administration as possible. Ó Conghalaigh and another prisoner, Frankie, became particularly close to McGuckian and corresponded with her and exchanged poems after the course had completed. Her interaction with some of the Republican prisoners brought her a certain amount of condemnation from various critics, however, and she, in turn, in an attempt to distance herself from charges of being a Republican sympathizer, has spoken of the prisoners and her experiences in ways which seem to condemn them. As Ó Conghalaigh put it, “Medbh is understandably terrified of being formally linked to us, myself and Frankie and Republican POWs, either politically, in a poetical or literary sense, or in a personal sense, but in her attempts to distance and protect herself and her family . . . she praises those she fears and scorns those she admires and, say, holds affection for” (letter to the author, December 21, 1997). The dangerous power of politics and poetry combined seemingly affects all those who come into contact with it.

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Ó Conghalaigh’s poetry is a good example of the literary productions of an individual Republican prisoner of war and it helps us understand the peculiar interaction between political violence and literature in the modern Irish Republican movement. Other literary productions by prisoners in the years following the hunger strikes were collective efforts, and provide their own commentary on how personal experience can combine with collective experience in a way which can result in a literature of collective trauma and healing, one which manages to bridge the gap between political violence and preparing the way for a future as equals. In 1994, a group of current and former Republican prisoners decided that, considering all that had been written about the prison protests and the hunger strikes, there was very little written from the perspective of those who had taken part in them. These men — Brian Campbell, Laurence McKeown and Felim O’Hagan — contacted others who had played a part in these pivotal years and asked them to write of their experiences. The result is the book Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The HBlock Struggle, 1976-1981. The book is a compilation of the memoirs of twenty-eight men, with the contributions spliced together in chronological order. It is easily one of the most important texts on the subject of the protests. Other projects are currently in development and I suspect that the immediate future of the literature of Irish Republicans will focus partially on establishing a record of the years in which circumstances made the telling of their stories all but impossible.1 While some Republicans have turned their energies in recent years to projects like Nor Meekly Serve My Time, others have taken up fiction as a means of examining and establishing the Republican message. If, as I have argued in Chapter Two, the autobiographies of Irish Republicans tend to subvert the genre of autobiography by 171

focusing on the communal rather than the personal, the fiction of Irish Republicans likewise subverts the tenets of fictional prose by frequently being the site of intense personal and emotional examination by the author. Fiction opens up another area of exploration when it allows the author the requisite distance to ponder questions which may be personally or ideologically uncomfortable. In fiction, Republicans often feel more free to question their beliefs, to pose antagonistic queries and to stage mock battles which blur the distinction between good and evil. Indeed, instead of relying upon dichotomous relationships such as good/evil, Ireland/England, Republicanism/Loyalism, the Irish Republican writer of fiction frequently uses the fictive voice and narrative devices to examine the gray area in between such oppositions. This is not to say that Republican fiction is necessarily more complex than the non-fiction written by members of that movement. It is, instead, to say that the notion of fiction gives Republicans a freedom to experiment that the requirements of personal commitment and ideology can constrain when writing non-fiction. The fiction of Irish Republicans is not necessarily more developed or better written than the fiction written by other Irish authors, but their fiction does examine in interesting ways the thoughts and feelings of what must be acknowledged as being an important group of people in the recent history of Ireland, north and south. In addition, Irish Republican fiction explores many ideas which the majority of Irish writers prefer to shy away from, including the evolving notions of nationalism which have defined so much of Irish culture in the past several centuries. As I demonstrate in my introductory chapter, the history of Irish Republican fiction is a rich one, with roots extending well into the nineteenth century and perhaps 172

earlier. I now wish to examine the relationship between the personal and the ideological in the fiction of three prominent Irish Republicans of the past three decades: former IRA gun-runner Gerry McGeough (born 1958); current Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams (born 1948); and former Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin Danny Morrison (born 1953). All three writers use the Anglo-Irish conflict in their works to both culturally and politically locate their fiction within a society plagued by war (though it should be pointed out that one of Morrison’s novels, On the Back of the Swallow, creates a Belfast of the present in which the conflict has been over for some time). These works are rarely interested in being propaganda, whereas some of the writings I examine elsewhere are blatantly and cheerfully so; while this fiction comes from a Republican perspective, this perspective is continually being questioned and is never as solid as it generally appears in other forms of writing by Republicans. It is no overstatement to say that we can see the Republican mind at work best in the fiction of Republicans; it is in fiction that they wrestle with the questions any human being must ask him or herself when committing to a revolutionary movement which uses force to achieve its aims. Questions of loyalty, of the justification of violence, of the effects of violence in one area of a person’s life on the other parts of that life — all of these are asked time and again in these works. Fiction also gives the authors the opportunity to think aloud on various topics which, until recently, received little attention in Ireland: women and feminism; ideas of race and belonging; homosexuality; power and desire; class structures and dynamics. Fiction opens up new areas for the revolutionary and the results are surprisingly forthright. The literary work of Gerry McGeough is some of the most interesting to come out of the past few decades of the conflict in Ireland. McGeough writes in a time of change, 173

when the Irish Republican movement is moving from a purely military to a more nuanced political approach. Whereas other authors such as Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams tend to concentrate on the political aspects of the Republican movement, however, McGeoughâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is the voice of the military revolutionary, and he serves to remind us that while the contexts of the Anglo-Irish conflict were changing, the Armalite was considered just as important as the ballot-box. While the military campaign of the IRA continued in the years following the hunger strikes, it grew more complex, as did the theoretical underpinnings of it. IRA attacks on British installations or personnel became more focused and were increasingly taking place outside the major cities. There was also a renewed attempt to bring the violence to England itself, a move which had been attempted before. One week following the announcement of the end of the hunger strikes, the IRA carried out a bomb attack on the Chelsea Barracks in London, which killed two people and wounded 40. One week later, on October 17, 1981, Steuart Pringle, the Commandant-General of the Royal Marines, was seriously injured when a bomb planted in his car by the IRA detonated. On October 26, Kenneth Haworth, a police explosives officer, was killed when an IRA bomb he was attempting to defuse exploded (CAIN Web Service, 2003). The IRA were making it plain that the end of the hunger strikes was not an end to the IRA itself. There are four events in the military campaign of 1981-1994 which are especially relevant to a discussion of Gerry McGeough and his writing. These are: â&#x2C6;&#x2018;

the Special Air Services (SAS) ambush of an IRA unit at Loughgall on May 8, 1987

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the assassination of a trio of IRA volunteers in Gibraltar on March 6, 1988, and the events subsequent to these killings

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McGeough’s arrest with Gerry Hanratty on the Dutch/German border on August 30, 1988

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the shooting of four IRA members by undercover British Army soldiers in Dernagh, County Tyrone, on Sunday, February 16, 1992.

The Loughgall and Gibraltar incidents are related, in that the IRA’s plans for Gibraltar were to be a retaliatory attack of sorts for what had happened at Loughgall. The events at Loughgall and Dernagh are mirrored closely by events in McGeough’s novel Defenders, and it is significant that both events occurred in rural areas, one of them in County Tyrone, the county McGeough is from. The most devastating military actions for the IRA in the 1980s stemmed from the SAS ambush of an IRA unit in Loughgall, County Armagh, on May 8, 1987. The SAS is a special forces unit of the British military, somewhat akin to the American Delta Force, Green Berets and Navy Seals. Eight IRA volunteers and one civilian (who happened to be driving by) were shot and killed by the SAS outside of the RUC station in Loughgall. Four of the IRA personnel were senior members, with Patrick Kelly being the principal leader in County Tyrone (Coogan, The IRA 437). The IRA unit was planning to detonate a large bomb outside the front door of the RUC station, which would have completely destroyed the building. Due to the infiltration of an informer in the IRA’s ranks, the RUC and British Army learned of the attack and planned to ambush the active service unit and kill them on the spot. Coogan notes that the planned attack on the Loughgall RUC barracks was significant in that its aim was to destroy the building, not to kill RUC 175

members (438-439). The barracks was located in a rural area where the stations did not remain open around the clock and the operation took place after the station had been closed for the evening and would ordinarily have been unoccupied. The IRA was committed to a strategy of driving the RUC and British Army out of the rural areas of the six counties, and this attack would have been in line with this policy. In the ambush, five IRA men in a van were killed almost immediately. Two others, driving a mechanical digger with the bomb in it, managed to crash through the barrack’s protective fencing, plant the bomb and successfully detonate it. They were then rounded up with the sole remaining IRA volunteer, ordered to lie on the ground, and were shot in the head (Coogan, The IRA 439). The ambush was a huge setback for the IRA and the eight volunteers are remembered by supporters worldwide as amongst the most significant martyrs for the cause.2 On the other hand, the SAS operation was a huge victory for the British intelligence organizations and military, who had even allowed the IRA unit to assassinate a UDR member, William Graham, only two weeks prior to the Loughgall attack, not wishing to make their knowledge of the unit known at that point (438). Both an SAS ambush of an IRA unit and the prior shooting of a UDR man by the same IRA unit find their way into Defenders. The coda to Loughgall became one of the more gruesome and extended ordeals of the modern conflict in the north of Ireland. The IRA planned what is generally known as a “spectacular” in response to Loughgall. A “spectacular” is an attack which is especially noteworthy either for the damage inflicted, number of enemy personnel killed or symbolic importance. Specifically, the IRA decided to carry out a large attack in Gibraltar, an outpost of the British empire which had so far been ignored by the 176

organization. A changing of the guard ceremony was targeted, with the aim of killing those taking part in the (deeply symbolic) ceremony and sending a message that the IRA could attack the British empire when and where it would. However, due to a mistake made on the forged passports of the trio, the presence of the IRA unit in Gibraltar became known as early as November 1987, with the information being passed from the Spanish authorities to the British almost immediately. The decision was made at the level of the British cabinet to assassinate the unit (Coogan, The IRA 440). On March 6, 1988, the three were killed by the SAS as they walked down a Gibraltar street, unarmed. One of the three, IRA Volunteer Mairéad Farrell, was probably the most important woman in the IRA at the time and had been in command of the women IRA prisoners in Armagh Gaol during her time there (McAuley 14). The other two, Dan McCann and Seán Savage, were known volunteers, with McCann having served a prior prison term on an explosives charge. The aftermath of the Gibraltar killings shocked people around the world. At the funeral for the three IRA members, on March 16, a Loyalist named Michael Stone attacked the thousands in attendance, wielding both guns and grenades. The funeral was being filmed by the international media, who ended up documenting one of the most harrowing attacks in the modern conflict, as mourners ducked behind tombstones and ran for their lives. Others tried to stop Stone and some were killed in doing so. All told, Stone’s attack left three mourners dead and fifty injured. One of the dead was an IRA volunteer named Kevin Brady. Three days later, at Brady’s funeral, the situation was extremely tense, with mourners on the lookout for a possible follow-up attack. When two plain-clothed British soldiers drove their car nearly into the crowd, probably by simple 177

accident, the crowd’s fury was both immediate and intense. Quickly surrounded, the soldiers foolishly brandished a gun at the crowd. This confirmed the worst of the crowd’s fears and the two were dragged out of the car, beaten, bundled into a car and taken to a piece of wasteland where they were shot dead. Much of the attack on the two was caught on British surveillance cameras and dozens of arrests were made in connection with the incident. The Loughgall and Gibraltar incidents were disasters for the IRA, and the use of both informers and the SAS was to continue through the 1990s. On February 16, 1992, four members of the IRA were shot dead by undercover British Army soldiers in the parking lot of St. Patrick’s church in Dernagh, County Tyrone. The IRA unit killed were responsible for an attack on the joint RUC/British Army base in nearby Coalisland. This incident would have been fresh for McGeough as he conceived of his book. At the time of the ambush, however, McGeough was in prison in Germany, awaiting his extradition to the United States to face gun-running charges. Gerry McGeough was born on September 2, 1958, in County Tyrone. The year of his birth means that he would have been raised through the early years of the conflict and would have been coming of age at a time following the disastrous IRA ceasefires of the mid-1970s and at a point coinciding with the IRA’s prison protests and renewed campaign of the later 1970s. By the early 1980s, McGeough was not only a member of the IRA, but had already found his specialty: arms procurement. McGeough traveled the world arranging for arms shipments to the IRA and was filmed by the FBI in the United States attempting to arrange the purchase of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in 1982, something which would play a significant role in his future. McGeough was the center of 178

an important court case in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Germany and then the United States. With another IRA member, Gerry Hanratty, McGeough was arrested on August 30, 1988, on the Dutch/German border. His trial, on an initial charge of arms possession later broadened to include a variety of related charges, was the first trial of an Irish Republican in Germany. The IRA had carried out attacks on British military installations in Germany, and there was significant government pressure on the prosecutors to make this a successful case. For the first two years after his arrest, McGeough was held in what amounted to solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. All instructions to him were in German, a language with which he was not familiar and which the prison rules forbade him from studying (the letter declining McGeoughâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s request for German lessons was written in German). His trial began on August 16, 1990, in a courthouse which had been constructed inside a military installation as a fortified bunker able to withstand a full military assault. For the next 18 months, the trial was held for two days a week. At the end of July 1991, a bomb charge against him was dropped, though the German authorities were still charging him with taking part in an IRA attack on a British installation in Germany which had taken place in March 1987. The outcome of the trial was not promising in the eyes of the prosecutors, and when the United States entered an extradition request for McGeough based on an August 1982 arrest warrant relating to the gun-running activities the FBI had caught on camera, the German government was quick to cooperate. In May 1992, the German trial was abandoned, McGeough having spent nearly four years in prison in what was the longest trial of an Irish Republican ever.3 He was extradited to the United States, where he was freed on bail while awaiting trial. He 179

was eventually convicted of the U.S. charges and spent April 1994 through February 1996 in prison in the United States, after which he was deported to Ireland. He remains a dedicated Republican, closely watched by the security forces on both sides of the Irish border.4 McGeough’s German experiences weighed heavily on him. Both of his parents died within a few weeks of each other while he was in prison there. He was denied the right to attend mass (McGeough is deeply Catholic) and routinely denied letters, opportunities to exercise, and other rights generally extended to the prison population in Germany. Confined to his cell for most of the time with little to do, he worked on some short fiction (which he was unable to actually write down, not having access to writing materials) and tried to continue a novel he had begun some time ago. While still in prison in the United States, he published a collection of his writings, The Ambush and Other Stories, in early 1996. The collection consists of a few short stories as well as (despite the title) some poetry and essays as well as columns written for the U.S. Irish Republican newspaper, The Irish People. The fiction is uneven in quality, with the most well-crafted being the title story. Of this, McGeough writes in his introduction: The lead story in this collection, “The Ambush”, is adapted from the opening chapter of a novel I was working on some years ago. Life on the run, unfortunately, tends to scatter one’s possessions and the manuscript, so far as I know, is in either a Belgian or German police vault, having been seized during an Interpol raid in Scandinavia. Devoid of reference material, I can only but thank God for having bestowed upon me the good memory of the Celts. (7-8) The novel in question is Defenders, which was published in its entirety in 1998. A far more polished publication, Defenders is one of the more important novels to come out of the Irish Republican tradition in recent years. It is primarily the story of Turlough 180

Gallagher, a County Tyrone man in his early 20s with a job as junior manager in a local engineering firm. Single, he lives at his family’s farm in Cregroe, a small rural community of mixed nationalist and unionist traditions. The novel begins in 1980, a year which saw the intensity of the prison protests develop into the hunger strikes which would come to a head the following year. Turlough is the Officer Commanding of the local IRA active service unit, a unit which has been very successful in continuing operations despite a recent wave of arrests. The plot of Defenders centers on the aftermath of a high-profile attack on a British convoy by the IRA unit led by Turlough. The novel also focuses much of its attention on the various British intelligence and security agencies, being deeply concerned with the stories of Robin Chandale of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), Ian Kyle of the Special Branch (and possibly MI6), and Richard Parker of the MI5. All of these characters are defenders of one sort or another: of Ireland, of England, of “Ulster,” of themselves, of their own agencies, of their spies, and of those affiliated with whatever organization they belong to. Stranded in the middle of these adversaries is Ciaran Quigley, a Cregroe native who had been arrested on a drugs possession charge in England and who had been coerced into becoming an informer on the IRA for Parker. Quigley’s character is more complex than the standard “tout” of Republican fiction; having no political views of his own, he only cooperates with the MI5 man to make his drug charges disappear, not even being concerned with Parker’s threats to have his family killed by Loyalists if Quigley fails in his mission to join the Cregroe IRA unit. Shortly after the IRA attack, Turlough is sent to Germany on a work-related task. While he is out of the country, a number of raids are carried out on suspects in the IRA 181

attack, with Brendan Doherty, a comrade of Turlough’s in the Cregroe IRA unit, being taken temporarily into custody. On Turlough’s return to Ireland, Quigley attempts to join the IRA unit but is told that he will have to wait for several months before being accepted, a waiting period which frustrates his British handlers. Finally accepted into the unit, Quigley informs Parker of a major attack on a British Army/RUC base which the unit is planning. While the attack is made impossible due to the subsequent security increases in the vicinity of the base, an SAS ambush is planned for the IRA unit when they move their weapons from the site of the attack back to their arms dump. Quigley is told to find some way of not assisting in returning the arms to the dump: instead, Parker tells Quigley to ask Turlough to take his place. He does so, and Turlough agrees to help. Only after Quigley has left does Turlough realize that he has a prior commitment that will make his assistance impossible. He, in turn, asks Brendan to fill in for him. The SAS attacks the IRA unit as they haul explosives and weapons back to their arms dump, killing everyone present with the exception of Brendan, who trips immediately before the SAS open fire and manages to avoid being seen by the British troops. He returns home and finds Turlough, who immediately realizes that Quigley must have set them up and, with the help of Tyrone IRA Officer Commanding Connell O’Neill, races to Quigley’s home in an attempt to find him. Quigley is found before he can leave town; his dead body is found later by the side of a road near the border. Furious at having missed their chance to take Turlough out, British intelligence gives his information to Loyalist paramilitaries, who attack his home, killing his fiancée Cathy. In the aftermath of the murder, Turlough is sent to the United States by O’Neill, which is where the end of the novel finds him. 182

While the plot of Defenders is occasionally formulaic and predictable, McGeough’s character development helps in depicting Irish Republicans and others living in the six counties in a more complex fashion than they are often portrayed by writers from outside the movement. The military campaign of the IRA is viewed favorably, as one might expect, yet even it is not immune from difficult questions regarding ethics and responsibility, made most apparent through the character of Brendan, who is struggling with the question of studying to become a priest. Turlough is also facing problems relating to his increasing difficulties in balancing his familial and social life with his IRA commitments. While the beginning of the book finds him wanting to go “on the run” and become a full-time IRA volunteer, his developing relationship with Cathy Ryan, a Tipperary native living in Dublin, makes him uncertain about his future plans. The revelation that some of his family members have realized his IRA status also unnerves Turlough, who understands that his Republican activities could put his family in danger. Family is one of the main themes of Defenders. Turlough’s Republicanism is as much an inheritance from his grandfather as it is a result of his own experiences living in the six counties. While Turlough’s grandfather McRonan had played an important role in the IRA of his day, his involvement had come at a cost, and Turlough’s mother had grown up poor and frequently unhappy. While some in the family had considered the grandfather’s stories about the old IRA to be tiresome, Turlough had hung on them while growing up, and his memory of his grandfather is one of a noble and powerful man who refused to yield to the pressure to accept and try to make the best of the political situation.

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When Turlough’s older brother Michael confronts him about his IRA membership, Turlough’s protestations about the oppression they face fall on deaf ears: “That’s great,” Michael came back. “You fight them even if it means us being driven off this farm that we’ve held for generations and that Daddy built up into something worthwhile. You be the big hero like Granda McRonan and the rest of us can go down in flames with you. What do you care as long as it’s for good old Ireland.” “Don’t ever, the longest day you live, mock Granda McRonan,” Turlough said with real anger. “If half the fuckers in this country were men like him the British would have been out long ago. And don’t use Daddy as an argument. Leave the dead out of it . . .” (42) The dead, of course, play a very real role in the transmission of Irish Republicanism from generation to generation, as they do in the dissemination through time of all ideologies. The opening of the novel finds Turlough with Brendan and another IRA volunteer, Fintan McGilloway, in a trench halfway up a hill, surveying the road below and the mine they have set underneath it. As the three quietly wait in hopes of a British convoy passing by, Turlough reflects on the history of the landscape. He notes “a clump of gnarled thornbushes in a nearby field [which] was said to mark a pit filled with the bones of the dead” from a battle which had taken place in the area nearly 400 years ago between local Gaelic clansmen and an English army: He imagined the roar and clash of the battle for a moment before occupying himself with more philosophical thoughts. Could one of my own ancestors be lying amongst that pile of bone dust, he wondered, making out the silhouette of dark thorns. The idea of such a thing being possible evoked a deep emotion within him, a strong sense of attachment to the land and its people. It was this awareness of belonging and tradition that motivated him. A pride in the stamina and tenacity of his countrymen who had preserved their national identity despite centuries of oppression and defeat. A people who in each successive generation had reasserted the nobility of their claim to freedom. It wasn’t just a splendid ideal as far as he was concerned. It was an ideal to be vigorously pursued and realized, and he, for one, was prepared to endure any hardship or sacrifice necessary for its attainment. (4-5) 184

The notion of continuity through time is essential to Irish Republicanism. As I stated in my first chapter, in the claim to nationhood, it is not enough to have a national culture merely in the present — it must be shown to have existed all along. For Turlough, he is but one person fighting at one point in history for the national ideal. The reference above to a “people who in each successive generation had reasserted the nobility of their claim to freedom” mirrors the statement in the Proclamation of the Republic that “in every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms.” Many had come before and he realizes that more will likely have to fight in the future. While there is certainly an element of classic Romanticism in this, there is also an important sense of being historically and culturally located: history and culture are both notions Turlough thinks about intently; he questions, analyzes and comes to understand the ways in which social forces have shaped the man he has become and the degree to which he has the ability to shape those forces themselves. Family is important to other characters in the novel as well. Brendan finds himself in the IRA due to the fact that in the early 1970s, his brother Dominic was interned by the British and subjected to brutal interrogation techniques including the “hood treatment” I discuss in Chapter Two. Cathy’s character is interesting in that she is not from the northern counties, but instead has grown up and lived only in the twenty-six counties. She is forced to confront her own history and that of her family as she realizes that while Republicanism is an important part of the history of her Tipperary homeland, it is treated as something which is historical in the sense of being dead. As her relationship with

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Turlough develops, though long before she begins to suspect his IRA activities, she has to come to terms with a northern Republicanism which is very much alive for the people in the six counties. Contrary to these characters, Ciaran Quigley’s willingness to risk the lives of his family in order to make his own life more comfortable by escaping the clutches of both the IRA and the British intelligence agencies which have him under their control simply intensifies the degree of his betrayal: he betrays his family just as easily as he betrays the national ideal. Equally important to notions of family in McGeough’s novel are those of faith and betrayal. Religious faith is a significant theme in Defenders, as is faith in the Republican movement and its leaders. While Turlough’s faith in Catholicism is nearly as absolute as his faith in the Republican movement, the question of religious faith is dealt with most vividly in the novel through Brendan’s struggle to accept his own vocation to the priesthood. Torn between a religious calling and service in the IRA, Brendan attempts to find a way to become both a revolutionary and a priest. After one of the two Cregroe parish priests preaches a sermon condemning IRA violence, Brendan approaches the other (more well-established) priest, Father McCann, in order to draw him out on the subject of politics and religion: “Would you say that these troubles will take a toll on the church here in the long run, Father?” “Oh yes, definitely. But that might not be a bad thing.” “How do you mean,” Brendan asked, puzzled. “Well, vocations to the priesthood are falling off quite dramatically and some of this has to do with the fact that a lot of our young people are disgusted with the church’s apparent weak-kneed attitude toward the British and so forth, just like you said. The overall drop in vocations however has more to do with consumerism and the materialistic society that’s developed in the west, but that’s another issue which doesn’t concern us right now. As a consequence of the troubles though and the 186

church’s attitude, etc., I believe that many of those with vocations, who would otherwise be candidates for the priesthood, have dedicated themselves to the national struggle and have become deeply involved with the IRA instead.” (153) If faith in religion has at times been cast aside for faith in the Republican movement, the two are mixed more closely in McGeough’s writings than in most of his contemporaries, a reflection of differences not only in the authors themselves, but in their backgrounds. Where authors like Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams are writing from the secular urban areas of the six counties, McGeough’s Catholicism reflects the far more pious rural nationalist areas from which he comes. The differences between the urban and rural writers extend beyond religion, however, as I discuss below. One striking difference between the Republican characters in the novel and those representing the various British intelligence and security agencies is the faith these characters have in their leaders and in their own organizations. The Republican characters are generally portrayed as intensely loyal to both their cause and to the leadership within that movement. While differences of opinion are raised in the novel, sometimes loudly, in the end the volunteers follow the advice of their leadership and this advice is generally shown to be good. On the other hand, McGeough portrays the British intelligence and security agencies as constantly fighting among themselves, with MI5 and MI6 refusing to share information with each other, the RUC and the British Army not getting along and the Special Branch considering the regular RUC beneath them. McGeough emphasizes the fragmentary nature of the British administration by presenting the Republican movement as a unified front. No mention is made of the INLA, the “Officials” or any other Republican splinter group. As the INLA took part in the 1981 hunger strikes, this

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being one of the brief periods of cooperation between the IRA and the smaller, more heavily Marxist offshoot, the lack of any mention of the organization is all the more apparent. Ciaran Quigley’s character is interesting not only because he fills the seemingly essential role of the informer but because he is presented with something close to pity by McGeough. As we will see to an even greater degree with Danny Morrison’s The Wrong Man, it is understood within Republican circles that those informing on IRA activities are frequently doing so because they have been victimized themselves. Quigley is betrayed by the British even while they are setting him up to betray the IRA: he is told originally that as long as he helps the London police orchestrate a drug bust, the charges he faces will be dropped. When Quigley successfully helps them with the drug bust, he is handed over to MI5’s Parker, who informs him that his forced role as double agent is only beginning. He is powerless to refuse the order to infiltrate the IRA, and McGeough acknowledges this, even while Ciaran’s inevitable fate of a bullet in the head is portrayed as righteous retribution when the time comes. Ciaran is killed because of his lack of loyalty; others in the novel, most notably Cathy, are killed because of their loyalty (in Cathy’s case, her loyalty to Turlough, which results in her moving to Tyrone, where she is murdered by Loyalists). When loyalty combines with history, there is little which people can do but act the role assigned to them: a deeply fatalistic view, perhaps, but one which seems apt in describing many personal histories of people in the six counties. The world of politics manages to tie together these traits of family, faith, loyalty, betrayal and history. Yet McGeough’s novel is at its least effective when trying to discuss the political situation. Part of this is a lingering difficulty he seems to have with forming 188

convincing dialogue. McGeough realizes that for any novel on the Irish/English conflict to be intelligible to readers not already steeped in the subject, the author must provide a fair amount of background history. He tends to want to do this through dialogue, however, which is a mistake resulting in stilted conversations on topics which would be so obvious and well-known to the characters speaking that they would never bother having the conversation. A discussion between Turlough, a local supporter and the IRA’s Officer Commanding of County Tyrone, Connell O’Neill, regarding the conditions under which IRA prisoners were being forced to live in the H-Blocks (177-178), is a good example of characters telling each other information any five-year-old from a Republican family in County Tyrone in 1980 would already be cognizant of. Even this, however, is subtle compared to a seemingly endless lesson in Irish history Turlough inflicts upon a hitchhiker in response to the hitchhiker’s perpetually-eager questions regarding the situation in the north of Ireland (this section, Part Three of the novel, is appropriately titled “Captive Audience”). While the information conveyed may be necessary to fully understand the novel, the presentation of it fails utterly as narrative. The novel does succeed, however, both in portraying the Republican mood in the days of the hunger strikes and in revealing the anxieties facing Republicans in light of the significant political changes taking place in the movement at the time the novel was being written and published. At the end of Defenders, we have Turlough Gallagher walking the streets of New York a shattered man both personally and politically. Bobby Sands has died, putting an end to any question of his election to the British Parliament being able to help the prisoners. Cathy has been killed as a result of her connection to Turlough. His career in the IRA is at the very least on hold. To echo a song about the hunger strikes, 189

this is a time when “everything seemed lost and nothing won.” While this despair refers to the situation in 1981, it also accurately conveys the anxiety of many Republican militants about Sinn Féin’s commitment to the peace process at the time Defenders was actually published in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement. The national struggle had not been won, yet Republicans were moving to the negotiating table: a move which deeply troubled many Republicans. While McGeough is a supporter of the Sinn Féin plan to work toward a political solution, his novel accurately reflects the misgivings many Republican supporters have about this change of strategy. The IRA’s military campaign continued to play a major role in the broader Republican movement throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In addition to the events at Loughgall, Gibraltar and Dernagh already described, other IRA actions acted to define the shape of the Republican movement in these years. On July 20, 1982, the IRA carried out a double bomb attack at Hyde Park in London, which killed eight British soldiers outright, with three more dying later of injuries sustained: a successful attempt to bring the war to the British “mainland.” Tuesday, May 24, 1983, saw the IRA plant a massive bomb, estimated as weighing about 1,000 pounds, outside the RUC station in the heart of Republican Andersonstown in West Belfast. The bomb claimed no lives, but it caused an estimated £1 million in damage and was a presage of things to come in the 1990s, when the IRA would focus on enormous bombs designed to cause as few casualties as possible while inflicting massive economic damage. That a mere two weeks later, Gerry Adams, then Vice-President of Sinn Féin, was elected to the British Parliament for the first time, must have been a bitter pill to swallow for many.

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Easily the most enthusiastically received IRA action of the 1980s was the bomb attack on the Grand Hotel, Brighton, England, on October 12, 1984. The hotel was being used as the base for Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party’s annual conference. The entire British Cabinet was in the hotel at the time of the bombing. Five people were killed, with Thatcher having used the bathroom in which the bomb was concealed only minutes before the explosion. The bomb had been concealed in a wall months previously and equipped with a very long time-delay device. The IRA afterwards issued a statement directly addressing Thatcher, stating, “today, we were unlucky, but remember: we only have to be lucky once — you will have to be lucky always.” While the bombing was unsuccessful in the sense that it had failed to kill the target most desired by Republicans, the very fact that the IRA had come within an inch of wiping out the entire British cabinet provided the IRA with an enormous boost in morale and public support. The mastermind behind the bombing, Pat Magee, was eventually arrested and sentenced to eight life sentences and has since been released from Long Kesh as part of the Good Friday Agreement. His own dissertation project — on the portrayal of Irish Republicans in mainstream novels — has recently been published.5 Other important IRA attacks of the time include a mortar assault on Newry RUC barracks on February 28, 1985, which killed nine RUC members: the highest death toll suffered by that organization in a single incident. The homemade mortars used in the attacks implied a growing sophistication in the IRA’s engineering skills and made the point that they were no longer reliant on imported weapons. Indeed, the attack showed that the weapons necessary for an attack could be constructed at will, alleviating the necessity of transporting weapons from place to place — always a risky proposition. This 191

was shown on February 7, 1991, when the IRA launched a similar missile attack on 10 Downing Street. While the attack was unsuccessful, the sheer audacity of the incident, coupled with the fact that the IRA unit responsible managed to get away, provided a significant morale boost for the IRA. Later IRA attacks in England focused on inflicting serious economic damage rather than killing military or political targets. The April 10, 1992 bombing of the Baltic Exchange caused nearly £800 million in damage; by contrast, the entire conflict in the six counties since 1968 had cost about £615 million (CAIN Web Service, 2003). Even this paled in comparison, however, to the enormous losses suffered one year later, when the IRA detonated a massive truck bomb in the heart of the London financial district on April 24, 1993: the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Easter Uprising. Like the 1992 bombing, this was caused by a homemade bomb made of fertilizer and diesel fuel: easily found ingredients and rather inexpensive. The explosion caused between £1 and 2 billion in damage (Coogan, The IRA 446). These attacks made certain that the IRA’s capability was continually kept in mind during the ongoing political negotiations which would lead to the IRA’s cessation of military operations on September 1, 1994. An IRA Army Council member summed up the situation for Coogan: “We can’t be beaten; [but] there is no question of us winning in the sense of driving the British Army into the sea. But we always maintain the capacity to bring the situation to a crisis at some stage” (393). The ability of the IRA to sustain their campaign for over a decade after the hunger strikes demonstrated to whoever needed convincing that the strikes had not broken the back of the Republican movement as the Thatcher government had originally claimed. Indeed, as

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Coogan put it, “things would have been different had Mrs Thatcher allowed Bobby Sands the right to wear his own clothes while he was a prisoner in Long Kesh jail” (390). While the military campaign continued, the real changes to be seen in the Republican movement were on the political front. The hunger strikes had shown the Republican movement that there was real potential in electoral politics — something which had not existed before. Prior to the fall of the Stormont government in 1972, gerrymandering and sheer electoral fraud was so rampant and blatant that dabbling in electoral politics was seen as a waste of time for Republicans. Indeed, the impossibility of achieving social change through the election process was one of the traditional justifications for Republican violence. The lessons learned from the election of Bobby Sands to the British parliament and Kieran Doherty to the Dublin legislature implied that while real change would continue to be impossible through constitutional means, the publicity to be gained through taking part in electoral politics could be a wise investment for the movement. While Sinn Féin barely existed in the 1970s, it would become a formidable political party in the 1980s and a very real threat to the nationalist SDLP in the 1990s. In the elections of 2001, Sinn Féin for the first time became the dominant nationalist political party in the six counties. Developing Sinn Féin into a viable party, however, took significant effort on the part of those Republicans who recognized the strategic necessity of having a legal, public, political voice. It was at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that Danny Morrison asked his famous question about the Armalite and the ballot box, implying that while constitutional methods would on their own not result in national unification, a combination of constitutional and military methods could.6 In 1983, Gerry Adams, the 193

most prominent of the northerners devoted to increasing the power of the party, was elected to the British parliament, taking a seat which had previously been held by the SDLP. That same year, Adams and his northern cohorts took control of the Sinn Féin leadership, which had until then been largely under the control of Republicans living in the twenty-six counties. The main difficulty facing the development of Sinn Féin as a serious political party, however, was its policy of abstention. While refusing to take seats in the British parliament was seen as acceptable by northern Republicans, the party’s refusal to take seats in Leinster House crippled the party in the twenty-six counties. The abstentionist policy had its roots in the Civil War, and arose from the Republican belief that the government of the twenty-six counties was illegitimate. Knowing that the only way Sinn Féin could fully develop was as an all-island party, Adams was determined to convince his fellow Republicans to drop the abstentionist policy: a very serious matter to traditional Republicans. When the policy was dropped in 1986, a minority faction broke with the party and established Republican Sinn Féin, a small political party which went on to become insignificant. On the other hand, the 1986 split left Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison and the other northerners completely in control of the party. Adams, now known the world over for his role in establishing the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998, and as the charismatic leader of Sinn Féin, began writing when he was a relative unknown outside of Republican circles or the British intelligence community. His earliest published works appeared under the penname “Brownie” in Republican News, the Republican newspaper of the time (since combined with An Phoblacht to create An Phoblacht/Republican News). These were essays and short stories written while Adams was interned in Long 194

Kesh and smuggled out through visits. The stories are simple and frequently sentimental, meant to give one a general feeling of the life of those interned in Long Kesh. They are surprisingly humorous, and their depiction of his fellow travelers is warm and often poignant. Many of these short pieces were later collected under the title Cage Eleven (1990). Also published while Adams was in Long Kesh was Peace in Ireland: A Broad Analysis of the Present Situation, a pamphlet which appeared in 1976 and which constitutes his first serious venture into political analysis. Adams continued to write upon his release from Long Kesh, publishing Falls Memories: A Belfast Life (1982), a collection of contemplative essays on his home town; The Politics of Irish Freedom (1986; later updated and reprinted as Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace [1994]), a book-length essay analyzing the historical, economic, sectarian and political origins of the conflict in the north of Ireland; and A Pathway to Peace (1988), a shorter but vitally important essay which discussed the ways in which a genuine peace process could be initiated. The history of his city continued to fascinate Adams, who published Who Fears to Speak?: The Story of Belfast and the 1916 Rising, a booklet on Belfastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in the Easter Uprising, in 1991. His second collection of short stories, The Street and Other Stories, was released in 1992 and was followed by his autobiography, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography, in 1996. Subsequent publications included: An Irish Voice: The Quest for Peace (1997), a collection of newspaper columns; Selected Writings (1997), a compendium of his work; and a second collection of newspaper columns, An Irish Journal (2001).

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Adams’s fiction tends to blur genres. While he has written short stories which are clearly just that, a number of his other stories are infused with strong autobiographical overtones or include such copious amounts of historical detail that they read more like essays. If my contention that Irish Republican fiction subverts the tenets of fictional writing by frequently being the site of intense self-examination by the author is correct, then this “genre bending” makes sense. Adams’s stories cannot be divorced from the social context in which they were written any more than one can forget that they were written by the most important Irish Republican of our time. His constant concern is for helping people realize where they fit into the creation of political realities and what steps they can take to seize some power over their own political situations. To assist in this act of self-knowledge requires significant political and historical knowledge, an ability to draw connections between what may seem to be unrelated events or forces and the willingness to examine the development of one’s own life from the perspectives of those social formations which construct our realities. Adams’s tools, then, are history, narrative and self-examination. The Street and Other Stories is the closest thing to a “typical” short story collection that Adams has written. Despite its title, the stories which constitute the collection focus almost exclusively on examining the people of Belfast,7 showing how the conflict has affected people who are not particularly involved in it except that they happen to live in the city which has become the conflict’s primary battlefield. In particular, Adams emphasizes the ways in which the political situation in Belfast affects the relationships between the city’s inhabitants: not simply the relationships between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, but between siblings, parents and 196

children, neighbors and co-workers. Frequently, the actual Anglo-Irish conflict is only distantly in the background, but it is rarely forgotten. In other stories, the conflict is so palpable that it may as well be considered a character. Adams opens the collection with a story titled “Civil War,” about a brother and sister, both in their 70s, who are retired and who have lived together for their entire lives. The story begins in 1969, and the world of politics, which has never played a conscious role in either of their lives, begins to break into their experiences through the black and white television the brother, Willie Shannon, was given as a gift upon his retirement. Neither Willie nor his sister Catherine have ever discussed politics, though Willie votes nationalist almost as an instinct. When the civil rights movement begins to make the evening news, Willie assumes that Catherine, like himself, appreciates the efforts of the younger generations to bring about political change and he is greatly surprised to find that, on the contrary, she considers the protesters to be “only interested in creating trouble” (5). As the civil rights movement is attacked by the six-county government, Willie’s sympathy for the cause increases even as his sister’s resentment of the marchers grows more apparent. When a protester is killed by the police, Catherine puts the blame on the protesters themselves and people like Willie who support them. Her relationship with her brother becomes progressively more bitter and distant as Willie begins actually to attend demonstrations and become politically active. It is only when the British Army opens fire on unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday that Catherine can admit that the civil rights movement was correct. She apologizes to her brother, but is shocked to find that his fury at the killings in Derry is turned on her attempts to make up for her behavior

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during the past three years. She dies heartbroken, with Willie following a few months later. Catherine’s inability to admit that she is oppressed is mirrored by Willie’s inability to forgive his sister when she apologizes to him. The conflict has made them both inflexible and unable to separate differences in political opinion from other differences between them, so that what used to be personality differences which would not have bothered (and may even have amused) the other are now taken to be signs of the other’s overall weakness as a human being. This unyielding approach to the world of politics is the type of thing one normally outgrows as one becomes older and accepts a more complicated world view. However, as Willie and Catherine’s political development doesn’t even begin until they are senior citizens, they are at their least forgiving and most intractable at the wrong time, and the permanence of their separation after Catherine’s death leaves Willie a shattered man. In “Civil War,” the conflict in Ireland has an immediate and direct effect on the political and personal development of the characters. In other stories, the influence is still felt, but it is less direct, if no less important. In “The Rebel,” Adams tells the story of Margaret Hatley, a Belfast woman with a husband and nine children. The story begins, “Margaret became a rebel when she was fifty-three years old. She remembers exactly when it happened. It was July 2, 1970, at about half-past two in the afternoon. Up until then Margaret had been no more rebellious than anybody else” (28). While the series of events which culminate in Margaret’s political transformation are related directly to the Anglo-Irish conflict, the transformation itself affects far more than simply Margaret’s attitudes towards British imperialism and the treatment of nationalists in the north of 198

Ireland. On the day on which Margaret’s son Tommy is arrested for “riotous behavior,” Margaret barely has a political consciousness to speak of: she is simply too busy taking care of a very large family to give politics a thought. Even after seeing her son go through the court system, her instinct is to trust the police and others in authority. It is only when she is refused the right to see her son after his court date and is smilingly told by an RUC officer that “Missus ... you have no fucking rights,” that she stands up for herself (33). While Margaret’s rebellion takes the initial form of resisting the oppression of her people, the more striking change is in the way she begins to think of herself. Generally deferential, she begins to take control of her life and demand that others take responsibility for their own. When internment is introduced, she helps set up a coordinating committee to look after refugees from burned-out streets and distribute food to those in need. She becomes politically active and extends her political thinking to encompass herself, insisting on making time for herself and making her husband promise to stop calling her “mother” (35). The catalyst for her political development is the injustice her people face in the six counties, but her incipient Republicanism extends quickly past mere nationalism to incorporate the struggle for women’s rights and the fight against the oppression of the working class. It is vitally important to Adams that Republican thinking not be seen as single-minded nationalism: one of the main difficulties Sinn Féin has faced in expanding its constituency is in convincing voters that it is not a single-issue party, but rather that it has a broad platform which addresses numerous issues and problems. This is reflected in Adams’s fiction, with characters’ acceptance of Republican ideals on the national issue being quickly followed by a political awakening regarding other social ills. One feels that one can trace Adams’s own 199

political development throughout the years by examining the political transformations of his fictional characters. This political transformation includes a growing sophistication regarding the unionist population. “The Mountains of Mourne” is an autobiographical story about a part-time job Adams took during the holiday season in 1969, as the situation in the north, particularly in Belfast, was deteriorating rapidly. The job involved delivering cases of alcohol to bars across the north, and the driver whom Adams was assisting was not only a unionist, but an Orangeman as well. Adams was heavily involved in the Republican movement already, and while the driver, Geordie Mayne, didn’t know this, he did know that Adams was a nationalist (though Adams was careful not to use his real name and didn’t discuss politics with Geordie at first). Ignoring the reality of the political situation surrounding them proves impossible, however. Entire streets of nationalists had been burned out by Loyalist mobs, something one could hardly fail to notice while driving through the interface areas bridging nationalist and unionist neighborhoods. The tension inherent in their relationship comes to a head when the driver informs Adams that their day’s deliveries will take them to the Shankill, the most notorious Loyalist street: In the middle of the second week Geordie broke our mutual and instinctive silence on this issue [that they came from different sides of the conflict] when with a laugh he handed me the morning’s dockets. “Well, our kid, this is your lucky day. You’re going to see how the other half lives. We’re for the Shankill.” My obvious alarm fueled his amusement. “Oh, aye,” he guffawed. “It’s all right for me to traipse up and down the [Republican] Falls [Road] every day but my wee Fenian friend doesn’t want to return the favor.” I was going to tell him that nobody from the Falls went up the Shankill burning down houses but I didn’t. (42-43)

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The trip to the Loyalist area goes smoothly, with Geordie poking fun of Adams’s discomfort the whole time. It is only when, after a delivery, Adams stands contemplating the sight of Bombay Street, a nationalist street which had been burned to the ground by a Loyalist mob, that the tension becomes personally evident. “Not a pretty sight,” Geordie said as I climbed into the van beside him. I said nothing. We made our way back through the side-streets on to the Shankill again in silence. As we turned into Royal Avenue at the corner of North Street he turned to me. “By the way,” he said, “I wasn’t there that night.” There was just a hint of an edge in his voice. “I’m sorry! I’m not blaming you,” I replied. “It’s not your fault.” “I know,” he told me firmly. (45) This confrontation is as close as the two come to any real political argument or discussion until later in the story, when the two agree to give an old man a ride home from a bar to which they had made a delivery. The old man, as it turns out, is a nationalist who, upon learning that Adams comes from a nationalist area of Belfast, assumes Geordie is nationalist as well. He makes several derogatory comments regarding the unionist population and speaks to Adams in Irish after finding out that Geordie is an Orangeman. This genuinely angers Geordie, who, after dropping the old man off at his home, deliberately breaks a case of whiskey and props it in a bucket so that whiskey will leak out the corner and into the bucket, allowing him to have a drink while preserving the appearance of an accident. They drive to a scenic overview and stop to drink. Geordie has several drinks, and foists them onto Adams, who has never drunk hard liquor, as well. Soon, their drunkenness makes their differences come to a head in an emotional outburst that reveals much of the complexity of their relationship.

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“Do you not think you’re drinking too much to be driving?” I asked. He exploded. “Look son, I’ve stuck you for a few weeks now, and I never told you once how to conduct your affairs; not once. You’ve gabbled on at me all week about every bloody thing under the sun and today to make matters worse you and that oul’ degenerate that I was stupid enough to give a lift to, you and him tried to coerce me and talked about me in your stupid language, and now you’re complaining about my drinking. When you started as my helper I didn’t think I’d have to take the pledge and join the fuckin’ rebels as well. Give my head peace, would you wee lad; for the love and honor of God, give’s a bloody break!” His angry voice skimmed across the water and bounced back at us off the side of the mountains. I could feel the blood rushing to my own head as the whiskey and Geordie’s words registered in my brain. “Who the hell do you think you are, eh?” I shouted at him, and my voice clashed with the echo of his as they collided across the still waters. “Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are is more like it,” he snapped back, “with all your bright ideas about history and language and all that crap. You and that oul’ eejit Paddy are pups from the same Fenian litter, but you remember one thing, young fella-me-lad, yous may have the music and songs and history and even the bloody mountains, but we’ve got everything else; you remember that!” His outburst caught me by surprise. “All that is yours as well, Geordie. We don’t keep it from you. It’s you that rejects it all. It doesn’t reject you. It’s not ours to give or take. You were born here same as me.” (53-54) In a way, the question of “who do you think you are” is the key question posed by the conflict in Ireland, regardless of one’s attitude toward the active participants in the struggle. Ultimately, much of the question of nationalism comes down to a matter of selfidentity; rather than a matter of the literal possession of land, the metaphorical and perhaps metaphysical possession of the knowledge of one’s self is the theoretical basis of nationalist discourse. Hence, the liberation of one’s land without the liberation of oneself is an empty victory. In Adams’s fiction, he continually returns to questions of self-knowledge and self-identity as the sites of real struggle. The battlefield is within, and possession of the land without possession of oneself is an illusory possession:

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“I don’t need you to tell me what’s mine. I know what’s mine. I know where I was born. You can keep all your emotional crap. Like I said, we’ve got all the rest.” “Who’s we, Geordie? Eh? Who’s we? The bloody English Queen or Lord bloody Terrance O’Neill, or Chi Chi, the dodo that’s in charge now? Is that who we is? You’ve got all the rest! Is that right, Geordie? That’s shit and you know it.” I grabbed him by the arm and spun him round to face me. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me. I was ready for him. But he said nothing as we stood glaring at each other. “You’ve got fuck all, Geordie,” I told him. “Fuck all except a twobedroomed house in Urney Street and an identity crisis.” (54) Part of growing to understand oneself requires growing to understand one’s neighbors. In the north of Ireland, this is a difficult requirement and one which Adams clearly feels he needs to address in this work. The divisions between the nationalist and unionist communities are self-perpetuating and allow minimal mingling. In “The Mountains of Mourne,” Adams describes coming to terms with the fact that, although he was already involved with the Republican movement, he barely understood those in the six counties whose sympathies were on the other side. More calmly wrapping up their argument, Geordie tells Adams something which deeply resonates for Adams: “just remember, our kid, I love this place as much as you do.” (57). “The Mountains of Mourne” is one of the most developed of Adams’s stories and its relevance extends beyond the environs of Belfast to encompass the whole of the north. However, there are important differences in the way nationalism is perceived by Republicans throughout the north, differences which become apparent when comparing the works of urban authors with those from the countryside. Comparing the nationalism of McGeough’s Defenders with the nationalist sentiment found in Adams’s stories sheds light on the differences between rural and urban approaches to Irish Republicanism in the

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modern conflict, differences which (as we will see) are even more strongly emphasized by Danny Morrison’s novels. For McGeough, coming from a rural background, nationalism seems more a matter of being able to live with one’s neighbors in peace and free from outside interference than any sort of grand scheme resulting in a centralized government. The Irish nation here is a loose grouping of small, fairly insular places like Cregroe. McGeough uses the word “clannish” on more than one occasion to describe the people of Cregroe, and his usage of the word is not in any way derogatory. Those in the IRA from this area are fighting for their particular homelands, for their local history and for their families. There is much less of a sense of fighting for Ireland as a whole or fighting for a Republic, socialist or otherwise. Dublin and Belfast are as alien to them as London, and neither city is important when considering why they fight. Indeed, none of McGeough’s characters seem concerned with the idea of building a state government: they simply want the British military forces to leave their land. To Adams, on the other hand, nationalism is very much connected to events in Dublin and London, to efforts to build a just and effective nation-state and to the responsibility of determining what form of government should be constructed. Toward the end of “The Mountains of Mourne,” he tells Geordie, “you’ve nothing in common with the English. We don’t need them here to rule us. We can do a better job ourselves. They don’t care about the Unionists. You go there and they treat you like a Paddy just like me. What do you do with all your loyalty then? You’re Irish. Why not claim that and we’ll all govern Dublin?” (55). The resolution of the conflict to the urban mind requires the establishment of a national government. To the rural mind, it requires peace and freedom from outside interference more than the right to establish a government. 204

The urban mindset is most clearly seen in the novels of Danny Morrison: his fiction is also the most well-crafted and modern of the works I am examining in this chapter. Morrison’s world is entirely urban and lacks the sentimentality of Adams’s fiction. It is colder, more stark, more realistic. It is uninterested in making Belfast appear prettier, nicer or more romantic than it is. The love for the people which is so strong in Adams’s work (to the point where it is doubtful if he is able to create a convincing character who is not, at heart, a decent person) is not found in Morrison’s work. Adams celebrates the north and Belfast in particular. Morrison would never want to live outside the city, but suffers no illusions as to the types of people it contains. In his three novels,8 he has created a world increasingly alienated from ideology, despite the fact that for many in the north, ideology is all that keeps their lives together. Ideology seems at times almost a form of faith, and it is a faith that is lacking in Morrison’s novels. Danny Morrison was born in January 1953 in the Andersonstown section of Belfast. Although his father’s side of the family was not political and largely lived in England, Morrison’s family was well-connected within Republican circles on his mother’s side: My mother’s uncle, Harry White, was the OC of the IRA, the Chief of Staff I think of the IRA, or the OC of the Northern Command in the 1940s, and he was once sentenced to death for killing a Special Branch man9 and he was illegally extradited from the north to the south [in 1946]. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. And then his barrister happened to be Seán MacBride, and when the government fell in 1948, MacBride became Minister of Foreign Affairs and helped to introduce an amnesty, so he was only in jail maybe four or five years. He then married and stayed in Dublin. (interview with the author, 1999)

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The constitutional side of nationalism was also represented in Morrison’s family, with another uncle being a Republican Labour MP in Stormont for a period during the 1940s and early 1950s. Morrison is clear, however, that whatever role these relatives played in his own political development was minimal: In my opinion, neither of those two men would have played a major role in influencing me towards any particular political outlook. For example, my uncle Hugh Doherty, who was the MP, he died before I was even of an impressionable age. My uncle Harry, I met my uncle Harry during the troubles and I used to stay with him when I was down in Dublin, but by that stage my politics were already formed. And basically, you got your politics from the street and from the individual experience. Morrison was fond of reading as a child and began writing early in life: “I would have been reading and writing small pieces, mostly for myself, keeping a diary and that kind of thing, but in 1969, when I was sixteen, the politics just took over here with the pograms and it just got absorbed that way. Fiction was my main interest, though, not politics. Always was” (interview with the author, 1999). He applied his fledgling writing skills to the Republican movement and began to find that he had a flair for publicity. Interned in 1972, he continued his schooling in English literature and passed his A-level exams while he was in Long Kesh. Republican activism and writing became strangely intertwined in Morrison’s life: I got out of jail in September 1973, and after about six weeks I was back on the run again. And I wasn’t able to relax until the ceasefire was called in 1975, January 1975, and that’s when I became editor of Republican News. But even before that I would have written letters to the Irish News under pseudonyms and things like that and wrote pieces for Republican News, nothing serious, nothing analytical. Well, I became the editor of Republican News in 1975 during the ceasefire, when I was twenty-two years of age. And then when the ceasefire broke down, I still kept my thumb in that pudding although I only just gave directions for people who were actually handling the editorship.

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Morrison’s role in the Republican movement rapidly became more important, with his being chosen as a spokesperson for Bobby Sands during the hunger strikes, elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 and appointed to the position of Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin. Meanwhile, he was charged with and acquitted of IRA membership and other conspiracies on two occasions. While continuing his work for the movement, however, Morrison began writing a novel, West Belfast. The novel took the conflict in Ireland as its subject matter, a risky choice for the Sinn Féin officer. Acknowledging now that the novel is overly political, he notes, “in my defense, it was a first book and also in my defense I wrote it while I was the Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin so I had a constituency that I had my eye on and I also quite consciously was politicizing the story” (interview with the author, 1999). The novel was written between 1986 and 1988 and was published in November 1989 to mixed reviews, some of which condemned the book for seemingly glamorizing the IRA.10 Other reviewers were more constructive in their criticisms and suspected that, while West Belfast was weak in parts, Morrison had considerable promise as a writer. I wanted to write a book which showed what the nationalist community had come through in the ‘60s and ‘70s and that the IRA came out of the civil rights movement and that people moved very reluctantly towards armed struggle. So I had a political agenda but I also was experimenting with writing. I wanted it to be a human book, and not an apologia, but it was reviewed as if it was nothing but a political tract, which it wasn’t. I learned a lot. So West Belfast is still in print, as a book it sells well, but I would see it now as having been too much of a polemic and wearing its politics too much on its sleeve. Only five weeks after the novel’s release, Morrison’s life underwent a serious upheaval when he was arrested on January 7, 1990, while present at the interrogation of Alexander (Sandy) Lynch, an IRA member who was informing on the organization to the 207

RUC. Charged with IRA membership, illegal detention and conspiracy to murder, Morrison spent the next five and a half years in prison. While in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, Morrison completed an open university program in October 1992, after which he began work on his second novel, On the Back of the Swallow. The novel focuses on the experiences of a young gay man, Nicky Smith, who befriends a 15-year-old boy, Gareth Williams. Gareth reminds Nicky vividly of a childhood friend who had died when they were both 15. Nicky and Gareth’s friendship grows more complex and develops into love. When the relationship turns sexual, however, Gareth’s wealthy father sees to it that Nicky is arrested. In solitary confinement following an attempt by other inmates to kill him, Nicky finds a way to get out onto the prison’s roof. Knowing that scaffolding is temporarily connecting the roof with the outer perimeter wall, he decides to escape from the prison. His escape is discovered, however, and when the alarms sound, Nicky falls from the high wall. The fall breaks Nicky’s back and kills him. The novel is unclear about whether Nicky was simply startled or if he allowed himself to fall when he realized that his escape would be unsuccessful. The novel took a year to write and was published in 1994, while Morrison was still in Long Kesh. On the Back of the Swallow avoids the pitfalls of West Belfast by positing a Belfast in which the conflict has been over for many years. This isn’t to say that the novel isn’t political, however: What I’d decided in that case was that I was going to pretend that the conflict had ended in 1920 or 1930 and I set it in the East Belfast that I knew as a teenager when we went cycling. So I had this recreated place — I’m writing it from jail — so I have to imagine the streets, imagine the territory. What I did was I just imagined it had all ended in some way it wasn’t up to me to explain back in the ‘20s or ‘30s, so there’s no RUC, there’s no IRA, there’s no Stormont. And the discrimination which takes 208

place is the prejudice against gay people. And of course, that’s political, as well. (interview with the author, 1999) After finishing On the Back of the Swallow, Morrison quickly began his third novel, The Wrong Man. Written partly in prison and partly after his release in 1995, The Wrong Man is the most successful and the most complex of Morrison’s fictional works. Significantly, it returns to Republican politics, despite the fact that West Belfast had seemed to suffer from the author’s proximity to the subject matter. Morrison had accepted this critical judgment when developing On the Back of the Swallow, a book which surprised many on its release due to both its subject matter and its setting. By forcing himself to withdraw from the conflict as a site of personal intellectual and emotional struggle, Morrison was able to focus on the broader applications of liberationist philosophy and the ways in which a liberal, modern philosophy of rights affects the development of the individual and applies to a continually changing society. The philosophical universe of West Belfast is black and white, with phenomena being good or evil and decisions right or wrong. The world created by Morrison in On the Back of the Swallow is far more complicated, with Nicky inhabiting the accepted social world in some ways, but remaining an outsider in others. With The Wrong Man, Morrison manages to blend the Republican idealism and determination of West Belfast while acknowledging the complexities of a world defined less by ideologies than by the situational variables of history, psychology and chance. The narrative shifts evident between West Belfast and The Wrong Man reflect changes in Morrison’s personal life and intellectual development. The creation of a world in which the conflict had been resolved in the past had given Morrison the space

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necessary to reevaluate some of his earlier ideas concerning the interplay of art and politics. Originally my big ideas about politics and literature would have been that the community comes first, so I would have seen writing in terms of a campaign. And now I think I can say that not only am I not so sure about that, but I’m very sure it should not be like that. Even if you do have a political agenda, it’s far better doing it through the individual. I’m more toward the position now that the more explicit the political nature of a work of fiction the less artistic it is and the less creative it is. And the more important it is to tell the story, the human story, not a political story. (interview with the author, 1999) The political developments taking place outside the prison walls of Long Kesh were also holding out the possibility of a political settlement to the conflict, one which would allow Republicans to use political instead of military means to work towards their objectives. While no longer a major voice within Sinn Féin, Morrison had long pressed for the creation of a political field of play wherein Sinn Féin could take center stage within the Republican movement and the IRA could withdraw. After completing his second novel, Morrison saw that the creation of such a political field of play seemed to be occurring. Two weeks after [On the Back of the Swallow’s] publication in August 1994 the IRA declared a ceasefire. I was now into the last nine months of my sentence and I dared wonder for the first time in twenty-two years if I could give up the commitments I had sworn myself to — now that there was a real chance of peace and the conflict being resolved — and become those magic words — a writer! I doubted if I could. My doubts increased as I watched the peace process flounder. I was in mental turmoil, torn in two directions. I really wanted to write but I couldn’t write creatively and be a political activist. It wasn’t just a problem of needing time to write, to perfect, to read others and read widely. I required a radical change in my psychology and I knew I was going to disappoint friends and comrades. I was now middle-aged, divorced, a grandfather and homeless! In prison I had began another book [The Wrong Man], a modern treatment of Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer. I applied to the Arts Council in Dublin for a grant to help me keep my head above water when I was released. They gave me £3,000 — but it was their expression of faith in me that was just as important.11 210

Choosing to become a writer instead of a political activist in many ways felt like a betrayal to Morrison, but close observation of the changes taking place both in the Republican movement and in the wider world of international politics suggested that the changes taking place could be extended to himself. The transition to full-time writer caused me an awful lot of soul-searching because I felt, obviously, a responsibility and I’d been involved for 26 years. But when I came out of jail in 1995, I was middle-aged with three grandchildren and there was a ceasefire on. Sinn Féin looked like they were doing pretty well without me. I just agonized for several months over what to do and I realized, you know, you’re only on earth once and I said if I didn’t do this now I was never going to do it. I would end up back in Sinn Féin and up in Stormont, and fair enough. (interview with the author, 1999) The complexity of The Wrong Man, a thriller about an informer within the IRA, is in the ways in which Morrison chose to approach his subject. In this novel, attitudes towards the Republican movement are considerably more complicated than they were in West Belfast. Doubts are allowed to exist and be expressed, as are frustrations, anger, resentment and criticisms. While the novel’s main characters are Republican supporters or members of the IRA, their politics and attitudes range over a considerable ideological range. Part of the explanation behind this increased complexity of character has to do with the political developments within the peace process which allowed Morrison the opportunity to write about the Republican movement without feeling the need to be on the defensive. However, tying his ability to write freely to the topsy-turvy world of Anglo-Irish politics had its risks. The ceasefire and my growing sense of independence had allowed me to write much more freely. I felt an ability to be more objective. I wasn’t out to defend a cause. I didn’t feel the need to write an apologia. I was halfway through my third book and eight months out of prison when the IRA ended its ceasefire with the explosion at Canary Wharf in London. I 211

was shattered. I felt that we were in for another 25 years of conflict but believed that dialogue was the way forward, the only way forward. (“Role”) While the political process eventually stabilized and the IRA subsequently renewed their ceasefire, Morrison began to understand that he could no longer let outside politics interfere with his writing. Reaching this decision in the world of the nationalist six counties, however, held out risks of its own. Morrison was determined not to fall into what he sees as the trap of imaginary objectivity which ensnares so many other Irish writers. No artist functions in a psychological vacuum. But at least in times of peace, the pioneering artist who breaks with cultural convention and attempts to establish new bridgeheads only risks the wrath of the critics for being dissonant, and, perhaps, poor sales. Whereas, in a divided society, which demands that the sons remain true, the serious artist who attempts to transcend history, loyalty and communal solidarity in the search for fresh expressions of truth and beauty in life is in an impossible or almost impossible position, which explains why many artists simply flee — often only to enjoy illusory objectivity. (“Role”) This “illusory objectivity” generally results in either taking a “plague on both your houses” approach to the conflict in the north or dismissing the conflict as something which can never be solved. The choice to attempt to rise above the world of politics is a political choice, though it is often held out to be something else.12 Morrison wrestled with questions regarding literature and politics for quite some time before being able to move forward with his work. The questions he asked himself echo those of Joyce nearly a century earlier: Must the serious writer flee to write truly? Can he or she write creatively (and with universal application) and still participate in the society and politics of his or her country? Can the artist transcend the division within homeland and still feel at home? These are questions I have had to ask

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myself as I moved away from politics and into the world of literature, a world to which I had long aspired. ... We cannot wholly escape our roots, conditioning and upbringing. Nor do we necessarily need to. The political culture in our divided society hammered and tempered every one of us. But underneath everything we have a sovereign soul and a conscience. The true artist strives to discover, and offer for discovery to the beholder, a clue to a more universal identity and purpose, or a clue to the clue. (“Role”) The Wrong Man is largely the story of two men and one woman, all of whom are caught up in the conflict in the six counties during the early to mid-1980s. The novel begins in early 1981, before the second hunger strike has begun. Raymond Massey is being released from Long Kesh prison after having served seven years in both the cages and (after an unsuccessful escape attempt) the H-Blocks on the blanket protest. Bobby Quinn, Raymond’s cellmate, is due to be released that summer. Raymond is a highly committed IRA member who has been active in the organization since the early 1970s and who reports back to the IRA for active service the very evening of his release. By chance, Raymond runs into Róisín Reynolds, an old girlfriend, the day after his release. Róisín has married, had a son and divorced in the past several years. She is planning to return to college to study English and French. Raymond and Róisín quickly begin dating again, though Raymond tells her that he has rejoined the IRA and that his Republican commitments have to come first. While Róisín shares Raymond’s Republicanism in principle, her commitment to the Republican movement is nowhere near as intense as Raymond’s. For Róisín, politics are one small part of her life; for Raymond, they are his life. A few months after his release from prison, Raymond meets Tod Malone, an eighteen year old who wants to join the IRA. Tod’s desire to join the IRA is genuine, 213

though he is highly susceptible to romanticizing the struggle. He is quick to share stories of his IRA activities with Sal O’Rawe, his girlfriend, and includes information about others, including Raymond, that in the wrong hands could compromise IRA security. His admiration for Raymond is both intense and authentic, but this leads him to tell others about Raymond’s accomplishments in order that they too might share in his admiration for him. Tod is oblivious to the fact that he is putting Raymond at risk by sharing this information. He is not unthinking about his IRA involvement, however, and he does not take his actions within that organization lightly. This is made especially apparent the first time he accompanies Raymond and the recently-released Bobby on an operation which Tod knows will result in the death of a person: a member of the Ulster Defense Regiment. Tod . . . was aware of souls hanging in the air like dew, witnessing all, and he shivered. This was the first time he was going to take part in killing someone and he was aware of its importance, how profound an act it was. Every minute or so he needed to steel himself somewhat but he also found that fascination with the deed itself and his reaction had a momentum outside his will, and he knew that he wanted to follow Raymond Massey everywhere and anywhere because Raymond Massey was so confident that he made you feel invincible and immortal. (55) Raymond is far from being unthinking about his IRA activities, either, but much of his thinking about ethical and political justifications was done far in the past and he is capable of going about operations in an efficient, almost mechanical way which belies their significance. The relationships between the men and women in the novel are the sites of especially interesting commentary by Morrison. Tod is unusually good looking and occasionally sees other women besides Sal, whom he later marries. Róisín and Raymond

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also marry, though their engagement is fraught with constant worry regarding Raymond’s commitment to the IRA and the degree to which that will affect their relationship. Róisín occasionally disagrees with IRA actions and openly resents the intensity of Raymond’s commitment to the Republican movement. She is insecure about their marriage as her previous marriage had ended because of her husband’s routine cheating on her: something which had badly wounded her self-esteem. While Róisín is worried about her relationship with Raymond and the effects his activism is going to have on her and her son Aidan, Raymond has other problems on his mind. While preparing a bomb with another IRA member, Pat Doyle, the warehouse in which the members of the IRA unit are working is raided. Tod and Bobby are arrested quickly in a van in front of the warehouse, while Raymond and Pat manage to escape out of a back window. Raymond is arrested while sitting having coffee in a nearby cafe. The three are held for several months before the charges are dropped on a lack of evidence. The hiatus in their relationship causes Róisín to wonder how well she would cope were Raymond to be imprisoned for several years again, and while she derives some comfort from socializing with other women in her situation, she continues to resent the degree to which Raymond’s Republicanism affects her life and that of her child. At the same time, she feels guilt over this resentment, knowing full well the reasons why the IRA fights and the sacrifices (often much greater than hers) which others in the community have made. The arrests outside of the warehouse are only the first in a series of problems Raymond’s IRA unit begins to experience. After constructing a powerful car bomb, the unit finds it nearly impossible to penetrate to the heart of the Belfast city center in order to place it. Several days go by in which unsuccessful attempts are made to find a way into 215

the city which is not blocked by military or police checkpoints. When the unit, in desperation, finally manages to slip the bomb into the city through hiding it in an ambulance (a move they are quickly ordered by the IRA leadership not to make again), it is promptly found and disarmed. Other problems have been arising as well. A house in which the unit was assembling weapons was raided by undercover military, with the unit escaping only minutes beforehand after having spotted a suspicious van in the vicinity. Raymond becomes increasingly convinced that he is being followed and, on one instance being certain of his suspicions, leads a team of undercover agents into a trap which results in the IRA unit opening fire on them. This counter-assault by the IRA unit causes the British forces to develop a plan to take out the unit’s leadership. Tod is arrested soon after the assault on the undercover agents, but as he is released relatively quickly thereafter and successfully debriefed by IRA security, this doesn’t cause particular concern. Róisín and Raymond’s marriage is meanwhile steadily deteriorating. As police and military scrutiny of Raymond’s activities increases, their home is frequently raided, suffering intensive damage. Róisín’s son Aidan begins having nightmares and her performance at school declines. When she fails her college exams, she blames the chaos brought about through Raymond’s Republicanism and calls him a murderer. Tod’s marriage to Sal, on the other hand, is becoming closer, though largely through Tod’s increasing guilt over his infidelities. Tod decides to resign from the IRA, though he realizes that the transition from soldier to civilian will be difficult for him. Privately, he wonders if he will be able to resign, though his reasons for this fear are not explained at this point. 216

The climax of the book occurs during what seems to be a routine scouting mission. Acting on information that three undercover British agents are living in a certain house, Raymond and Bobby carry out surveillance on the house, unarmed. As Raymond observes the house from the edge of a woods through which they have trekked, Bobby moves closer to the house to examine the fencing surrounding it. Suddenly, two masked men rush from the woods and shoot Bobby in the leg. A flare goes off in the sky, illuminating the entire area as the masked men search for Raymond and open fire on him when they spot him. Although shot, Raymond manages to escape through the woods, hearing Bobby’s execution as he runs. The intricate detail needed by the British intelligence forces in order to carry out the operation against Raymond and Bobby convinces Raymond that the unit has been infiltrated by an informer. When Tina is arrested with a gun on her soon afterwards, she is able to confirm through a smuggled message to Raymond that, based on the questions put to her, the informer is definitely Tod. Morrison subverts the conventions of linear chronological arrangement on a number of occasions throughout the novel, beginning with the book’s prologue, which portrays Tod, hooded and bound to a chair, being interrogated. He isn’t certain if he is being held by the IRA or one of the Loyalist paramilitary groups. As it is, he is being held by the IRA on suspicion of being an informer, though they are pretending to be Loyalists in order to trick him into revealing his role as an informer within the IRA. He does so and his captors reveal themselves. He quickly changes his story but is informed that he is being courtmartialled. If found guilty of informing, he will be shot. The prologue ends here, with the events of this scene not being returned to until the end of the book. The 217

final chapters of the novel gradually give the reader the information that Tod is in fact an informer. Indeed, we find that he is informing to keep secret the fact that he was found by British soldiers having sex with Róisín in his car. Although when questioned, Róisín gives Sal’s name, she is identified by the British and Tod is forced to reveal what he feels is minor information in exchange for keeping his betrayal of his hero, Raymond, quiet. When the IRA determines that he is probably an informer, he is taken into custody. Knowing there are British forces in the area, the IRA unit decides to move him to another location. While moving him, British agents attempt to arrest the unit and Raymond kills Tod before being killed himself by the British. The theme of betrayal is one which obviously resonates within Republican literature, and it has been used to good effect by both McGeough and Morrison. As I discussed earlier in relation to Ciaran Quigley, the informer in McGeough’s novel Defenders, the informer is treated with a certain degree of pity by these authors, who try to imagine the situations in which someone may feel forced to become an informer. Neither author tries to form a purely evil character who informs on his comrades out of sheer malevolence. In both cases, the informers are simply trying to get out of a bad situation by passing along what they generally believe to be unimportant information. Again in both cases, the informer tricks himself into not noticing when the caliber of information grows from minor to life-threatening and convinces himself that he has to continue to inform in order to help his own life. Morrison has told me that “I deliberately didn’t take sides in it, so that you’re actually, in a sense, attracted to the informer, because it’s a tragedy how this person ends up being compromised through human weakness” (interview with the author, 1999). The reader pays close attention to the 218

development of Tod’s character throughout the novel, knowing from the prologue that he is at the very least under serious suspicion of being an informer. Morrison acknowledged this as being a risk: You weren’t too sure if he was an informer. Although, obviously, I was taking a risk at the outset by using time to frame it in the way I did: declaring at the outset that here we have a suspect and also he says things that are incriminating. But there’s enough doubt and ambiguity in the rest of the book to make you think it’s someone else. I thought it would be interesting for the reader to be tantalized in that way and not know what was what. Also, I wanted to show how an individual could be corrupted and there’s a lot of doubt in it and certainly there’s a lot of realism in it, in terms of the way the UDR man is killed, in terms of the way Tod is interrogated, in terms of the bombings in the town and that, in terms of the interrogations. Choosing to write the novel as a thriller is a significant risk for Morrison for more than one reason. To begin with, the genre lacks literary respectability: there are few thrillers which can be said to interrogate important ideas or ponder significant questions of politics or philosophy. Second, a plethora of thrillers already exist which take as their setting the fractured politics of the north of Ireland, most of which depict the IRA as a gang of psychopaths with no real political agenda. As Laura Pelaschiar puts it, “the thriller, with its stereotyped generic mechanisms (‘goodies’ against ‘baddies’) does not allow for any open interplay between characters and circumstances and leaves very little space for an articulated contextualisation of the Northern Irish reality” (20). It is perhaps significant that while Morrison wrote the book at a time of great change in the Republican movement and in his own life, the novel takes place entirely during a period of war, of no real change. The risks which Morrison runs by framing his novel in the genre of the thriller are risks which he alleviates through characterization. The actual proportion of pages of The Wrong Man which involve shoot-outs and explosions is rather 219

small compared to most thrillers. Instead, long stretches of the work are devoted to developing the character traits of the people involved, investigating their interpersonal relationships and examining their motivations, beliefs and uncertainties. It is this complexity of characterization which saves the novel from falling into the simplistic generalities of most thrillers. The character of Tod is not the only character in the novel who seems to break from his expected role. Róisín’s character reflects the difficulties of maintaining a relationship with an active Republican in ways few writers have even tried to approach.13 Perhaps even more surprising, however, is Raymond’s character. As Morrison put it, “Some people read Raymond Massey as a hero, but in fact he’s a very dull individual” (interview with the author, 1999). Morrison portrays Raymond as nearly one-dimensional in the way he has allowed the Republican movement to dominate his life to the exclusion of most other interests, beliefs or stimulations. Raymond cannot balance his commitment to the Republican movement with his commitment to Róisín, and Morrison makes it clear that this is a failing of Raymond’s. This is another risk for Morrison, who is well aware of the danger of alienating the community which naturally forms the backbone of his readership. Indeed, he mentioned to me that while the book had received positive reviews even in conservative newspapers such as the Sunday Times and the Belfast Telegraph, its reception by Republican reviewers was more guarded. *

Works written by Irish Republicans after the tragic events of 1981 are remarkable for the ways in which they interrogate areas of politics and personal development which were left unexamined during the tumultuous years of the 1970s. Where Irish Republican 220

literature was an immediate and pragmatic body of writing in the earlier years of the conflict, devoted to explaining the political problems facing the north of Ireland and justifying the actions of the Republican movement taken in response to those problems, the works which were written by Republican authors after the prison protests and hunger strikes are able to examine matters with a view towards the future. Rather than merely reacting to the situation at hand, these later works are engaged with developing a path for the future of the north of Ireland, a future in which the historical problems which have confronted Ireland can be resolved peacefully. Many questions which had been elided in the earlier years of the conflict â&#x20AC;&#x201D; about individual rights and political development, about the connections between the tenets of Irish Republicanism and the beliefs of other liberationist struggles, about issues of race, ethnicity and identity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are dealt with explicitly in Republican literature of this period. That fiction became a dominant form within Irish Republican literature at this time is readily explained by recognizing the distance which fiction allows between author and character, a distance which makes possible the interrogation of discordant beliefs and actions while maintaining the integrity of the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s political viewpoint. Indeed, taking advantage of the opportunity to examine different points of view becomes a hallmark of Republican literature after the hunger strikes, with these writings frequently being the site of intense personal, emotional and political examination by the author. Fiction allows the Republican author to imagine the motivations of an informer, of a Loyalist, of a member of the British intelligence community, in ways which the requirements of non-fiction simply do not allow. That Republican authors seem eager to investigate questions which may be personally or ideologically uncomfortable is a credit both to their fiction and their 221

political development. Indeed, the increasing complexity seen in the literature emanating from the Irish Republican movement mirrors the increasing complexity of the political viewpoint of the movement itself. Attempting to balance political and artistic principles has always been a struggle for Irish Republican writers. While the motivations of these writers has varied considerably over the years, as has the quality of their output, many of the goals of Republican writing have remained the same, especially those concerned with establishing a link between the past and the future. In the years following the hunger strikes, Republican writing has turned increasingly toward the future, more assured that their goal of a united Ireland will be reached. As they reflect on the possibilities of the future, however, Irish Republican writers do so with a sense of grief for what has been lost, both in the lives of the communities they represent and in their personal lives. The sacrifices made throughout the years, in terms of people and time, are felt very keenly, and one wonders what the literature of the north of Ireland would be if, as in the world created by Danny Morrison in On the Back of the Swallow, the conflict had ended in the earlier decades of the twentieth century. As I spoke with Morrison in a community center in the Broadway area of West Belfast in 1999, he reflected on the interrupted development of his own life as a writer: â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I was a kid, my dream was to become a writer. When I was 16 or 17, I was always interested in reading and I just knew, instinctively, that that was what I wanted to do. But then the troubles came along, and that was it for the next 26 years.â&#x20AC;?

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AFTERWORD

The five years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement have seen many cosmetic changes implemented but have done little to affect substantively the political climate of the six counties. The Royal Ulster Constabulary is now the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Most members of the IRA and Loyalist paramilitary organizations who were in prison at the time the Agreement was signed have long since been released. Inquiries have been launched designed to investigate allegations of collusion among Loyalist groups, the RUC and British military intelligence. However, fundamental change has been successfully resisted by Unionist political parties backed up by a British administration whose commitment to reform in the north of Ireland seems genuinely questionable. Social change based on electoral politics is not being allowed to happen: the Northern Ireland Assembly rarely functions, due to the maneuvering of the Ulster Unionist Party (under Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimbleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership) and other unionist parties which makes the establishment of a quorum impossible. Cross-border bodies, long promised by the Agreement, have been systematically sabotaged by some of the same people supposed to take part in them. An all-island body, comprising representatives of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland (north and south), remains on the blackboard. One thing must be made clear: if the social changes necessary to make the six counties a functioning part of the world cannot be made through electoral politics, 223

then we do not have to look very far back in history to see what type of activism will be increasingly considered the only viable agent for change. What form Irish Republicanism will take in the future is being determined now. The amount of material being published by Irish Republicans since 1998 has been considerable, with new voices being added to the public conversations which will form the basis of Republican political philosophy in the twenty-first century. This literature takes different forms and reaches varied conclusions. Perhaps surprisingly, a strong academic trend is developing within Irish Republican literature. This literature reverts to the basis of Republican writing in non-fiction and examines the discourses and histories of the past 35 years and the ways they have been analyzed, utilized and politicized. Ella O’Dwyer’s The Rising of the Moon: The Language of Power (2003) is based on her doctoral work at the University of Ulster, which she conducted while serving a life sentence for IRA activities in England. In this wide-ranging work, O’Dwyer considers the writings of Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad and others while developing a theoretical approach to the study of twentieth-century language and political discourse in an Irish context. She is particularly interested in exploring how years of systematic incarceration, murder and other acts of violence have affected the political development of Irish Republicans in the six counties and in determining what needs to happen in order to ensure that the traumas of the past do not blunt the potential for change in the future. Another important academic contribution comes from none other than Brighton bomber Pat Magee, whose Gangsters or Guerrillas: Representations of Irish Republicans in “Troubles Fiction” explores an area of popular literature which has hitherto evaded

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critical attention. Magee’s work is based on the doctoral work he conducted while serving multiple life sentences in Long Kesh. Other works take the form of attempts to fill in the blanks of history caused by the almost-constant lockdown of the 1975-1981 prison protests and the generally restrictive atmosphere in nationalist areas during that time. Laurence McKeown, one of the editors of Nor Meekly Serve My Time, has made a similar contribution to the development and preservation of Irish Republican history with his volume Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh, 1972-2000. As with the earlier publication, Out of Time is primarily based on the recollections of former IRA prisoners of war and is an important work on the role of the prisoners within the Republican movement. Once again, it is based on McKeown’s doctoral work conducted while serving life in Long Kesh. Another important contribution to Republican historiography is Danny Morrison’s All the Dead Voices (2002), a reflection on those he knew who were killed during the conflict and on his own role in the IRA and in the Republican movement in general. Almost surprisingly, this isn’t based on doctoral work undertaken by Morrison while in prison, he having preferred to spend those years writing novels. Other forms of historical analysis of the Irish Republican movement being published at present include local histories examining the role of specific neighborhoods during the 1968-1998 period. The communally-written Ardoyne: The Untold Truth, published by the Ardoyne Commemoration Project, is one example. This volume traces the deaths of ninety-nine residents of this small neighborhood in North Belfast during the conflict, providing photographs and detailed information regarding each of those killed and the political circumstances which surrounded their deaths. Based on over three 225

hundred interviews, the amount of primary source material published in this volume runs to several hundred pages. Autobiographies and biographies by or about important figures in the Republican movement are another form current Republican literature is taking. Most significant perhaps is Brendan Anderson’s biography Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (2002), which examines the remarkable life of one of the most important figures in the Irish Republican movement. The book is based on numerous interviews with Cahill, who had been active in the IRA since the 1930s and was Chief of Staff of the IRA for some time. Cahill’s reflections are important not just for the light they shed on previous IRA activities but because he uses these reflections as a springboard to discuss the current peace process and the path Republicanism is trying to take. While there may seem to be a danger in focusing so closely on the past in these recent works, closer examination of them and their authors reveals that this focus is tactical. Wayne Hall has written in his Shadowy Heroes: Irish Literature of the 1890s that “if we would understand Irish literature as history, we must know the prejudices and limitations of the writers as historians” (210). Part of the examination by Irish Republicans of their recent history is driven by a desire to understand their own prejudices and limitations — as historians, writers and revolutionaries. These authors focus on the past not simply to glorify it, reveal it in its complexity or try to determine what went right and what went wrong, but in order to learn from both the history itself and from the process of writing about it. Clearly, Irish Republicans have their own prejudices and limitations, but it is through casting a critical eye upon these attributes that Republicans are attempting to use the past to help them look toward the future. 226

ENDNOTES

Chapter One: 1. All references to texts published in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (ed. Seamus Deane et al.) will be cited in the text as FDA followed by the volume and page number. 2. Fanon’s comments on Algerian storytellers and singers in The Wretched of the Earth (240-241) are highly appropriate to the Irish situation, where nationalist discourses predate widespread literacy. 3. “From 1815 to 1914 European direct colonial domination expanded from about 35 percent of the earth’s surface to about 85 percent of it” (Said, Orientalism 41). 4. George Bernard Shaw makes exactly this argument in a letter to the Freeman’s Journal dated October 17, 1910 and reprinted in The Matter with Ireland (59-61). 5. In a case like Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s An t-Oileánach (The Islandman), about half the manuscript was edited out of the final text: sections dealing with sex, courting customs, drinking — anything deemed as not corresponding to the romantic notion of the noble and pious islandman. 6. Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, introduction to his translation of Ó Cadhain’s collection The Road to Brightcity and Other Stories (12). 7. See Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland for a thorough discussion of this (520-529). 8. There are those who would argue against my inclusion of Beckett here as he had already been living in France for some time by the 1950s. While that is the case, his selfidentification as an Irishman and his extensive, if often subtle, references to Ireland in his work lead me to include him in my discussion. 9. Laura Pelaschiar has commented on this same part of Smyth’s analysis in her Writing the North: The Contemporary Novel in Northern Ireland (10).

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Chapter Two: 1. For a discussion of the assassination attempt on McAliskey, see Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace (194, 229, 235). See also Kevin Cullen, “The Name of the Mother: Ulster Figure Alleges Frame-Up” (A1). 2. Fasting for fifty-nine days is enough to cause the hunger striker to die, though some have lasted for over seventy days. The effects such an extended fast has on the body are extremely serious and have resulted in early deaths and medical problems for strikers who for one reason or another have survived their strikes. Pat McGeown, who took part in the 1981 hunger strike, died in September of 1996 from health problems stemming from his strike. MacStiofáin suffered a stroke in April 1993 which was certainly partly attributable to his strike. He died on Friday, May 18, 2001, in Navan of a subsequent stroke. For more on hunger striking, see Chapter Three. 3. The IRA has never ordered one of its volunteers to go on hunger strike, though they have on occasion ordered people to cease a strike for tactical reasons. MacStiofáin was one of the very first in the modern struggle to attempt a hunger strike, and the criticism he suffered for coming off (whether or not of his own authority) was perhaps the criticism of a people unfamiliar with the horrors of this particular kind of protest. MacStiofáin complicated matters, however, by accelerating his hunger strike with an unauthorized thirst strike for the final few days, a move which was not welcomed by the Republican leadership as it increased the pressure on them just as it increased the pressure on the Irish authorities. 4. I should point out that Ó Conghalaigh has some reservations about my thesis concerning the communal nature of Irish Republican literature. While he acknowledges, as in the above quotation, that anything written by Irish Republicans (particularly prisoners) is necessarily political and thus connected to a broader community in ways different than most literature, he writes in the same letter that “I have problems with ‘communal’ when it comes to a negation of individuality. Poetry is an individual, solitary act. I am a POW & a Republican POW. Anyone [who] reads my poems knows where I am coming from so I don’t feel I need to shout it out.” The conflict between the ideas of the individual and community are obviously difficult to untangle; I will simply reiterate my belief that the individual and the communal cannot be easily separated, and thus my thesis could in all probability be read backwards — that the communal is always the individual in many ways. For the purposes of this study, I believe that this seeming paradox not only does not conflict with my thesis, but in fact reaffirms it. 5. The term “Provisional” was used initially because the IRA had to leap into action immediately and could not afford to bring all of the (disorganized) units together for a general election. However, an election was held soon after, after which the term “provisional” was disposed with. However, the media (especially the British media) still tends to call the IRA the “Provisional IRA” (or even PIRA), and many people refer to them as the “Provos” or “Provies.” Since the development of dissident Republican 228

organizations in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, more people have taken to using the “Provisional” tag to differentiate the organization from groups like the “Real IRA” and the “Continuity IRA.” 6. In fact, he has told me that “I do not like fictional books” (letter to the author, January 17, 1997). 7. Statistics for the years 1971 to 1975 (when MacStiofáin’s book was published) record a total of 22,411 shooting incidents and 4,466 explosions having taken place in the north of Ireland (these figures include incidents for which the IRA were responsible in addition to other paramilitary groups, the police and the British Army). Death counts are very difficult to establish, particularly because of the problems in establishing responsibility. 1972 (during which MacStiofáin was Chief of Staff) was the most violent year of the modern struggle (Coogan, The IRA, 287). 8. For more information on anti-Irish caricature, see L. Perry Curtis, Jr.’s Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature. 9. While the Irish language is seen as being a very important part of the struggle for national liberation, it is an extremely difficult language to learn, and many Republicans end up learning it in jail, where they have the time. 10. While the Royal Ulster Constabulary was officially reorganized as the Police Service of Northern Ireland in November 2001, most nationalists consider the change to be in name only and are as wary of the new force as they were of the old RUC. 11. Walter Goodman, “Holding Life Together in Belfast.” New York Times 4 Mar. 1997: B7. 12. Maurice Burke, a Catholic priest, has compiled some interesting evidence on cases where IRA bomb warnings were ignored: Seven civilians and two soldiers were killed by bombs placed by the IRA in Cavehill and Oxford Street, Belfast, on July 21, 1972. The Public Protection Agency and the Samaritans have both confirmed that they received advance warnings which they passed on immediately. While nothing was done to clear civilians from the area, the British Broadcasting Corporation was alerted in time for on the spot coverage of the explosions and aftermath (2). Publications like Burke’s, which was published in 1981, were generally held to be Republican fabrication until just recently. British government inquiries into collusion between members of the “security forces” and Loyalist paramilitary units have shed much light on groups like the Military Reconnaissance Force and Force Research Unit, with the Stevens inquiry into the murder of lawyer Pat Finucane (ongoing as I write) in 229

particular bringing to light much evidence that Republican claims about undercover operations in the north of Ireland were valid. 13. For the best description of the events of Bloody Sunday, see Don Mullen’s Bloody Sunday: Massacre in Northern Ireland. 14. Matt Morrison, phone interview with the author, February 23, 1997. For more information on IRA structures in prison, see Chapter Three. 15. I discuss the prison protests in detail in Chapter Three. 16. See David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Hunger Strike and Tom Collins, The Irish Hunger Strike in particular. The best account of the protests leading up to the hunger strikes is Tim Pat Coogan’s On the Blanket: The H-Block Story. 17. Morrison’s exact words to the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (annual conference) were: “Who here really believes that we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone object if, a with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in this hand, we take power in Ireland?” An Armalite is an American automatic rifle often used by the IRA. Though the political situation in the north of Ireland has changed since 1981, this comment of Morrison’s became something of a motto to the Republican movement in the 1980s, as it put equal emphasis on the political and military campaigns of the Republican movement. See White, 144. Chapter Three: 1. Tim Pat Coogan, in On the Blanket, his overview of the prison protests, quotes a section of Thomas Clarke’s Irish Felon’s Prison Life discussing the use of comms in English jails in the late nineteenth century: Throughout the whole time we [Clarke, John Daly and James Egan] stood loyally by each other and as I have said, were in close and constant communication with each other. Never a week passed but I received a note from John Daly — and some weeks two or three notes — and he received the same from me. This went on for 11 years. As with Daly as with Egan for the eight years he was with us. Tell that to the prison authorities and they would say that it was utterly impossible. (19) 2. That the intelligence upon which the lists of people to be interned were drawn up was often ridiculously out of date has been commented on elsewhere (Coogan, The IRA 261). Joe Cahill, who served as IRA Chief of Staff for significant periods of the time covered by this dissertation, has recalled one example in particular: “There was one old man arrested who had not been active since the Rising in 1916. He must have been the only person lifted that day who was pleased. He was delighted to be still considered a threat to the state” (quoted in Brendan Anderson 224).

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3. The organizational structure of the IRA in the internment camp at Long Kesh can be confusing if one is not familiar with the terms used to denote various officer positions. A Battalion Officer Commanding, a sentenced prisoner, oversaw the entire IRA population, and directly under him was a Battalion Adjutant (executive officer). There were also individual cage/company Officers Commanding (there being one company per cage). A Company Adjutant actually dealt with most of the day-to-day dealings of the company: drawing up work schedules, organizing classes and lectures and so forth. A full staff was kept, including a Quartermaster (who oversaw issues dealing with food and other provisions), Intelligence Officer, Training Officer and Educational Officer. Civilians could be accepted into the IRA cages if the RUC or another military or police force had tortured or heavily interrogated the person because of an IRA action and if they agreed to abide by IRA rules and accept the military structure. There were eventually UVF and UDA cages at Long Kesh, and at least one Official IRA and one INLA cage. There were four IRA companies in Magilligan prison, six in the sentenced Long Kesh areas and at least five in the internee end of the Kesh. 4. Matt Morrison, telephone interview with the author, December 6, 1996. Morrison was Battalion Adjutant in the cages for a time. 5. All quotations from Martin McGuinness’s testimony to the Bloody Sunday inquiry are taken from Dan McGinn and Ruth O’Reilly, “I Did Not Fire on Troops at Bloody Sunday — McGuinness,” Press Association (PA) wire article, January 22, 2002. 6. John McGuffin died in April 2002 in the United States, where he had been living for a number of years. He had remained an outspoken and active member of Republican support groups. 7. One example of a suppressed Republican text is a booklet by the IRA titled Freedom Struggle. As stated in the introduction, This book is banned in Ireland, both North and South. It was seized in July, 1973 by the Dublin Government. Both the firm, Drogheda Printers Ltd., Bolton Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, and its two printers, Donal Casey and Gerard Byrne were 1) found guilty of publishing an incriminating document and 2) refused their right to appeal by the presiding judge. The firm was fined £100 and the printers £25 each or 3 months prison term. The court ordered all copies of the book be forfeited and the plates be melted down in the presence of the police” (1). The booklet was later printed in the United States and smuggled into Ireland. 8. This source spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, as did two others in this chapter. I have given each person a pseudonym in order to acquiesce with this request.

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9. The hardships faced by prisoners attempting to tunnel out of prison were emphasized in 1997 when IRA prisoners nearly escaped by tunneling out of the H-Blocks. In an astonishing feat, they managed not only to penetrate the outside fence but took photographs of themselves building the tunnel, which had even been fitted with electric lighting. While the tunnel collapsed shortly before it was going to be used, the photographs (successfully smuggled out of the prison and published) clearly show the difficulties the prisoners faced in their attempt: groundwater which could rise in the tunnel surprisingly quickly; stones falling out of the perpetually wet mud and onto the prisoners; and the danger of knocking loose the makeshift supports used to prevent a potentially fatal cave-in. In fact, the electric lights which they had managed to string along the tunnel offered yet another risk, the risk of electrocution through contact with the water. 10. The blanket protest had been used by IRA prisoners before, as in the years immediately preceding the Second World War (Coogan, On the Blanket 26). Nugent died of a heart attack in early May 2000. 11. Cassidy was released in early 1981, just before the beginning of the second hunger strike. Asked by the Republican movement to go to the United States and conduct a speaking tour about his experiences, he entered the country illegally and spoke to audiences across the country. Cassidy fought deportation from the U.S. for many years before finally being deported back to Ireland in 2003. Much of the information in this section was gained through conversations between the author and Cassidy. 12. Sands is buried in the Republican plot at Milltown cemetery. 13. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was imprisoned in 1895 on an “indecency” charge. 14. It is also in accordance with the descriptions of interrogations published by more objective observers: see, for instance, Raymond Murray’s Hard Time: Armagh Gaol, 1971-1986, which examines the treatment of Republican women prisoners, and the report written by Murray with Dennis Faul, The Castlereigh File: Allegations of RUC Brutality, 1976-1977. 15. Sands’s trilogy of poems has been adapted for the stage by former Republican prisoners. Recently released prisoners and those in their last year of sentence and eligible for occasional release on license performed the play both in the H-Blocks and outside in community centers and church halls (Micheál Mac Giolla Ghunna, letter to the author, June 12, 1997; Mac Giolla Ghunna served the play as narrator). The play received outstanding reviews from both Republican and non-Republican sources, including a producer of radio drama for the BBC. Presented in a risky, but ultimately successful surrealist form, the play blended narration with mime and more traditional acting (Campbell, “Power and Confidence”). Sands’s family approved of the production, with Marcella Sands (Bobby’s sister) writing that “I realize that it must have been very difficult for many of those who took part in this play, to relive such memories of pain and 232

terror. However, the very fact that it was prisoners acting out this incredible mental and physical torture, gave an added depth to the production” (quoted in Campbell, “Power and Confidence”). 16. John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This verse was alluded to frequently by commentators during the hunger strikes. 17. All quotations taken from Sands’s diary are taken from the text printed in Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song. Translations of Sands’s Irish are based on the translations found in this volume with some revisions by the author. Chapter Four: 1. For information on recent publications which attempt to construct a history of the past years during which history could not be written, see the Afterword.. 2. Róisín Kelly, sister of IRA Volunteer Patrick Kelly, killed at Loughgall, has told me of her shock of walking into an Irish bar in the midwestern United States only to find herself staring at a larger-than-life painting of her dead brother, part of a mural commemorating those killed in the attack. 3. McGeough’s trial was also one of the most expensive trials of a Republican, costing approximately DM 20,000,000. For an overview of McGeough’s prison experiences, see his introduction to his collection The Ambush and Other Stories as well as his essay “Germany: Overview, 1988-1992” in the same collection (pages 83-99). 4. As this writer learned in July 1999, when he was taken into police custody in Kinsale, County Cork, and held under Section 31 of the Offenses against the State Act. The Special Branch interrogation which followed showed considerable interest in the contents of a notebook I was carrying relating to my dissertation project, particularly those notes related to McGeough, whose phone number I happened to have on me at the time. Although I was released the same day, the fact that I had been held at all, coupled with the fact that (as I later learned) five roadblocks had been erected to catch me, points to some of the difficulties facing those pursuing such a project. 5. Patrick Magee, Gangsters or Guerrillas: Representations of Irish Republicans in “Troubles Fiction” (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2002). 6. See Chapter Two, note 17. 7. As opposed to his Falls Memories, which focuses far more on the history of the Falls Road. 8. While interviewing Morrison in 1999, I had remarked that there had been very few novelists to come out of the Republican tradition, a tradition replete with poets and short 233

story writers. He remarked, “well, I’ve written some poetry and short stories but I prefer the length of a novel — it’s a much broader canvas — although short stories are very challenging as well. I don’t think I write good short stories. A lot of people think I don’t write good novels, either, but that’s besides the point” (interview with the author, 1999). 9. White was charged with the killing of Special Branch Detective Officer Mordant in November 1942. Maurice O’Neill, who was with White, was executed for the shooting. White is discussed in Tim Pat Coogan’s The IRA, pages 143-145. 10. The cover art on the U.S. edition of the novel, showing a masked man holding a submachine gun, does little to allay such concerns. 11. Danny Morrison, “The Role of Creative Writing in a Divided Society,” manuscript, 12 September 1997. An edited version of the essay was published in The Observer in December 1997, but all quotations from it herein are taken from the unedited manuscript with which Morrison provided me. 12. Tarlac Ó Conghalaigh’s comments on Seamus Heaney in his letter of June 10, 1997 (quoted earlier in this chapter), make much the same argument. 13. Morrison has had to confront these problems with his own life and has used his literary work to do so. In 1999, he published Then the Walls Came Down: A Prison Journal, which is a collection of his letters written to his girlfriend while he was in prison. They focus on the ways in which their relationship changed and developed throughout his years in prison and her responses to his situation.

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GLOSSARY

Anglo-Irish Treaty: signed December 1921, ended the Anglo-Irish War. Anglo-Irish War: war fought between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army. Irish forces successfully forced the British to withdraw from twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. An Glór Gafa/The Captive Voice: magazine produced by Irish Republican prisoners, 1989-1999. An Phoblacht/Republican News: weekly Irish Republican newspaper, frequently abbreviated AP/RN. Combined the earlier newspapers An Phoblacht (The Republic) and Republican News. AP/RN: See An Phoblacht/Republican News. Ard Chomhairle: leadership or “high council.” The national committee of a political party. Ard Fheis (plural ard fheiseana): annual convention, usually of a political party. BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation. B-Specials: paramilitary police force in the six counties, disbanded 1968-1970. Bogside: a nationalist ghetto of Derry which for some time in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a “no go zone,” an area which the British Army could not penetrate and which was governed internally. Site of the “Battle of the Bogside,” August 12-14, 1969. Civil War: see Irish Civil War. Conradh na Gaeilge: the Gaelic League. Organization devoted to the preservation and promotion of the Irish language. Cumann (plural, cumainn): local chapter of a larger organization. Sinn Féin is divided into cumainn. Cumann Lúth Chleas Gael: see Gaelic Athletic Association. 246

Dáil Éireann: parliament of the twenty-six counties. Democratic Unionist Party: Loyalist political party led by Ian Paisley. Abbreviated DUP. DUP: see Democratic Unionist Party. Easter Uprising (a.k.a., Easter Rising): attempted rebellion in April 1916 which, while unsuccessful, is largely credited with being the catalyst behind the Anglo-Irish War. Éire: Irish Gaelic name for Ireland (the island in its entirety). Also the official name of the twenty-six county state from 1937 to 1949. Fianna Fáil: one of the major political parties of the twenty-six counties; moderately nationalist. Fine Gael: one of the major political parties of the twenty-six counties; conservative, generally unionist. Free State: see Saorstat Éireann. GAA: see Gaelic Athletic Association. Gaelic Athletic Association: organization devoted to promoting traditional Irish games, such as hurling, Gaelic football, and handball. Abbreviated GAA. Also known in Irish as Cumann Lúth Chleas Gael. Gaelic League: see Conradh na Gaeilge. Gaeltacht: Irish-speaking area. Galltacht: English-speaking area. Garda (plural, gardaí): the regular police force in the twenty-six counties. Abbreviated from Garda Siochana (“guardians of the peace”). Good Friday Agreement: political agreement signed by representatives of the nationalist and unionist political parties as well as the British and Irish governments in 1998 and which attempts to provide a pathway for peace in the six counties. Supported by the IRA and Sinn Féin, the latter of whom was a signatory to it. H-Blocks: the components of Long Kesh prison, site of 1981 hunger strike. Also known as the Maze prison. INLA: see Irish National Liberation Army.

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IRA: see Irish Republican Army. IRB: see Irish Republican Brotherhood. Irish Civil War: fought between the Irish Republican Army and the forces of Saorstat Éireann from 1922 to 1923. The IRA was defeated and driven underground. Irish Free State: see Saorstat Éireann. Irish Northern Aid: North American Irish Republican support organization. Often referred to as Noraid. Irish National Liberation Army: small Republican socialist paramilitary organization. Abbreviated INLA. Irish Republican Army: the main Republican paramilitary organization. Made up of volunteers, they have been engaged in armed struggle against the British forces in Ireland for many years but are currently on ceasefire. Abbreviated IRA. In Irish, Óglaigh na hÉireann. Irish Republican Brotherhood: precursor to the Irish Republican Army. Abbreviated IRB. Irish Republican Socialist Party: a small, Republican socialist political party, supportive of the Irish National Liberation Army, and based primarily in Derry. Abbreviated IRSP. IRSP: see Irish Republican Socialist Party. Leinster House: the seat of Dáil Éireann. Long Kesh: the site of the H-Blocks. At times, an internment camp. Known as the Maze by the British. Loyalism: A subset of unionism which supports and approves of the use of force to bring about a unionist political agenda. Loyalist Volunteer Force: a Loyalist paramilitary organization founded in the 1990s in opposition to a Loyalist ceasefire. Broke away from the UVF in the mid-Ulster area. Abbreviated LVF. LVF: see Loyalist Volunteer Force. Maze: British name for Long Kesh. See H-Blocks. MP: Member of the British parliament.

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Nationalism: the philosophy which holds that all of the island of Ireland should exist as one nation and that the English colonial rule of part of Ireland should come to an end. NIO: see Northern Ireland Office. Noraid: see Irish Northern Aid. Northern Ireland Office: the administrative headquarters for British administration of the North, headed by Britain’s direct ruler and a team of British government ministers. Abbreviated NIO. Oireachtas: Irish term covering the entire government, including both houses of the twenty-six county parliament (the Dáil and the Seanad) and the President. Orange Order: extreme anti-Catholic religious/political organization in the six counties. Progressive Unionist Party: a small Unionist political party associated with the UVF. Abbreviated PUP. Provisionals (a.k.a. Provos): the Irish Republican Army. The term originated when the IRA had to establish a provisional (temporary) Army Council after splitting with the Goulding-led faction in 1969-1970. Though its technical accuracy ended upon the establishment of a formally-elected Army Council, the name has stuck. PUP: see Progressive Unionist Party. Radio Telefis Éireann: the government-owned broadcasting network in the twenty-six counties. Abbreviated RTÉ. Red Hand Commandos: Loyalist paramilitary organization. Red Hand Defenders: Loyalist paramilitary organization created since the advent of the peace process and opposed to the Loyalist ceasefires. Republic of Ireland: for Republicans, a yet-to-be-established nation consisting of all thirty-two counties comprising the island. Since 1949, the official name of the twenty-six county state. Republicanism: the political philosophy that holds to the tenets of nationalism, but also believes that the use of force is justified in pursuance of the nationalist goal of a unified Ireland. Republican movement: describes the modern incarnation of the Irish Republican tradition which draws on eighteenth-century French Republicanism and historical Irish influences, including the United Irishmen, Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the 1916 Easter Uprising. Includes Sinn Féin and the IRA. 249

RIR: see Royal Irish Regiment. Royal Irish Regiment: British Army regiment formed in 1992 combining the UDR and Royal Irish Rangers. Royal Ulster Constabulary: British militarized police force in the six counties. Reorganized as part of the Good Friday Agreement as the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Abbreviated RUC. RTÉ: see Radio Telefis Éireann. RUC: see Royal Ulster Constabulary. Saorstat Éireann: the Irish Free State; from 1921 to 1937, the official name of the twenty-six county state. SAS: see Special Air Services. SDLP: see Social Democratic and Labour Party. Seanad: the Senate (or upper house of parliament) of the twenty-six county government. All legislation must be approved by it before becoming law. Sinn Féin: The main Irish Republican political party. It is also the oldest political party in Ireland and the only one to have representation in all thirty-two counties. Six counties: term frequently used for the six counties composing Northern Ireland: Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone. Nationalists are quick to point out that the British government left out the other three Ulster counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal simply because to include them would have resulted in a Catholic (and therefore presumably nationalist) majority. Social Democratic and Labour Party: the largest nationalist political party in the six counties. While nationalist, they are anti-Republican. Abbreviated SDLP. Special Air Services: an undercover wing of the British Army, some of whose members operate in the six counties, often above the law. Abbreviated SAS. Stormont: seat of the various governments of the north of Ireland throughout the years, it is now the location of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Taoiseach: the Irish Prime Minister, the head of government. Tanaiste: the Irish Deputy Prime Minister. 250

TD: see Teachta Dala. Teachta Dala: a member of the Irish Dรกil, or parliament. Abbreviated TD. Twenty-six counties: frequently encountered term for the Republic of Ireland. UDA: Ulster Defence Association, one of the largest Loyalist paramilitary organizations. UDP: Ulster Democratic Party, a small unionist party, often associated with the UDA and UFF. UDR: Ulster Defence Regiment, a regiment of the British Army which operated in the six counties. UFF: Ulster Freedom Fighters, a Loyalist paramilitary organization, generally seen as a covername for the UDA. Ulster: a province of Ireland, comprising the six counties plus Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. Often misused to refer to the six counties. Unionism: political philosophy supporting maintenance of the union with Great Britain. UUP: Ulster Unionist Party, the largest unionist party. UVF: Ulster Volunteer Force, a Loyalist paramilitary organization. Allied to the Progressive Unionist Party.

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