New images of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands emerge after almost 50 years

Posted by Jim on September 23, 2024

The freshly unearthed photographs show the IRA hunger striker taking part in a protest against the withdrawal of prisoners’ political status

By John Manley, Politics Correspondent

September 23, 2024 at 6:00am BST

Fresh photographs of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands have emerged after almost 50 years.

The images from August 1976 show the then 22-year-old taking part in the first protest against the withdrawal of political status for prisoners in Long Kesh.

Sands is photographed carrying a flag as the protest makes its way down the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast.

More: Me and ‘Granda Bobby’ – Erin Sands on family, friends and social media frenzy that followed All-Ireland win

New images of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands emerge after almost 50 years

In a second shot, he is pictured on a platform in Dunville Park off the Falls Road, alongside senior republicans, including Máire Drumm, Danny Morrison and Joe Stagg, whose brother Frank had died on hunger strike in Wakefield Prison six months previous.

Mrs Drumm, the then vice-president of Sinn Féin and one of the speakers at the rally, was arrested shortly afterwards and jailed for 18 days for taking part in an illegal procession.

She was shot dead two months later in the Mater Hospital by gunmen dressed as medical staff.

Pictured next to her at the rally is Sinn Féin member Aindrias O Callaghan from Dublin, who would give the oration at the leading republican’s funeral in Milltown Cemetery.

Sands, who five years later would gain global notoriety whenelected MP Fermanagh and South Tyrone while on hunger strike, had been released from Long Kesh in April 1976, where he had been a political prisoner.

He was arrested in October 1976 and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Along with other republican prisoners, he spent several years ‘on the blanket’, protesting against the withdrawal of political status.

The protest would culminate in the 1981 hunger strike in which he and nine other prisoners died.

He was scanning negatives of photographs donated by Lelia Doolan, a keen photographer and friend of Fr Des, who chronicled life in Ballymurphy between 1974-77, while studying for a PhD in anthropology at Queens University.

Cork-born Doolan, who turned 90 earlier this year, photographed many scenes in Belfast, including Sandy Row.

She later became the head of light entertainment at RTÉ, artistic director of the Abbey Theatre and directed ‘Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey’, the acclaimed documentary about Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey.

When cataloguing the negatives, Mr Cahill first recognised Máire Drumm. When he developed the images, he recalled similar photographs by French photographer Gérard Harlay which were discovered and published in 2019.

Both sets of images are of the same protest, the first of many against the British government’s withdrawal of political status.

Danny Morrison, secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust, said: “These photographs, from almost 50 years ago, are quite evocative, especially when one considers the tragic fates of Máire Drumm and Bobby Sands.

“I had forgotten that I was covering the protest for our newspaper and it was a surprise to see my younger self, then 23, but even then we instinctively knew that the attempt to criminalise the struggle for Irish independence, as in previous periods, would ultimately fail. However, we had no idea of the magnitude of the suffering to come, inside and outside the prisons, for all those entrapped by this British policy.”

Bobby Sands

Despite court ruling, the families of Troubles victims no closer to truth

Posted by Jim on

Allison Morris

Today at 02:40

We have reached an important juncture when it comes to dealing with the legacy of our past.

An Appeal Court ruling on Friday, delivered by Lady Chief Justice Siobhan Keegan, was a damning indictment on the former government’s mechanisms to deal with unsolved Troubles related killings.

The ruling was lengthy and detailed but the shorthand version of the judgment is that the Troubles Legacy Act gives the government too much veto power over the disclosure of sensitive material to the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).

The commission, headed up by former Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, has already started investigating killings after requests by families.

However, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal in its judgment, in a case brought by bereaved relatives, found that the veto over disclosure seriously impeded the commission’s ability to carry out human rights compliant investigations.

As we know this legislation was passed by the previous Conservative government

We can debate at length why they went down this route, but we know this was done over the heads of victims and without local political support.

I was always sceptical of the new Labour government’s manifesto pledge to repeal the legislation.

It seemed much more likely that they would tinker around the edges of it rather than scrap it completely.

A previous court has already ruled that a controversial measure to give an amnesty to suspects was not legally sound and would not stand up to judicial scrutiny.

The Lady Chief Justice said the legislation gave whoever the Secretary of State was at the time “the final say” on disclosure of sensitive state information to the ICRIR, adding that this would risk undermining public confidence in the body.

Sir Declan Morgan said in response that the Secretary of State needs to “respond to the judgment”.

“The Commission has already welcomed his proposal to further enhance our independence and would welcome additional steps by him to address the issues identified by the court,” he added.

However, solicitor Gavin Booth, who represented a number of families in the appeal said, “there is only so much lipstick you can put on a pig”.

His message is clear, that tinkering with the ICRIR will never satisfy those families who have difficult and complex cases, involving layers of allegations of collusion and state intransigence.

The problem going forward is what could help those families who have been failed by successive governments when it comes to legacy and delivering truth and justice in their loved ones murders?

Many had hoped the inquest process would be the answer to decades of waiting.

A positive example of this was the inquest ruling in the case of the Ballymurphy massacre that vindicated those families who had lived with years of stigma that was attached to the deaths of their innocent loved ones.

But with the former government determined to end all legacy inquests that process was less successful for others.

The relatives of those murdered in the Kingsmill atrocity were left disappointed that the inquest did not name any of the suspects involved in the 1976 IRA attack.

When the coroner delivered his finding earlier this year Alan Black, the only survivor of the attack said the inquest had “left us all so dissatisfied”.

“As we progressed through the inquest our questions have not been answered and our concerns have grown.”

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, commonly known as Padre Pio

Posted by Jim on September 22, 2024

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, commonly known as Padre Pio, was a Franciscan friar who lived during the first half of the 20th century. He received the stigmata, the wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion, and manifested other supernatural signs of holiness during his life.

Padre Pio was born in 1887 in Pietrelcina, a small town in southern Italy, and baptized with the name Francesco. His parents were deeply religious—they led the family to daily Mass, prayed the rosary every night, and fasted from meat three times a week in honor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Although his parents couldn’t read, they memorized Scripture faithfully and told stories from the Bible to their children.

Francesco was immersed in a world of faith—he dedicated himself to Jesus at the age of 5 and reportedly related to Jesus, Mary, and his guardian angel as close friends. When he was 10, he met a Franciscan friar who was traveling the countryside asking for donations and he told his parents that he wanted to do the same with his life.

They took him to a nearby Franciscan community to see if the friars would accept him. The friars said that Francesco was suited for religious life, but needed more education than his sporadic attendance at the local public school had given him. His father traveled to New York several times to find better work in order to pay for a tutor for his son.

When he was fifteen, Francesco entered the community and adopted the name Pius—or Pio, in Italian—in honor of St. Pius V, the patron saint of Pietrelcina. He began studying for the priesthood and was ordained in 1910.

In 1917, he was briefly drafted to serve in World War I but was discharged due to ill health. Throughout his life, Pio would continue to suffer from various illnesses.

Upon his arrival in the community, Pio reported seeing visions of Jesus, Mary, and angels. After offering Mass one day in 1918, Pio received a vision of Jesus. As the apparition ended, the wounds of the crucifixion appeared on Pio’s hands, feet, and side. The blood that seeped from these wounds smelled sweet and fragrant, like the perfume of flowers, and the wounds never became infected. Despite the examination of several doctors, the phenomena were medically inexplicable. The stigmata would remain on Pio’s body for the rest of his life.

Pio dreaded the attention the stigmata brought him, and he often wore bandages or mittens over his hands to cover up the wounds. Nevertheless, Christian faithful continually sought him out. Pio demonstrated other signs of great power and holiness—he was known to bilocate, that is, to be seen in two places simultaneously; he could read people’s hearts upon the first encounter, and his prayer was known to heal the sick. As a young archbishop in Poland, the future Pope John Paul II once wrote to Padre Pio to ask for his prayers for a woman with terminal throat cancer. Within weeks, the woman was fully healed.

These signs brought Pio an abundance of attention, and church officials struggled with managing the endless flow of pilgrims. The Vatican needed to be sure that the miracles surrounding Pio were authentic and wanted to reduce potentially dangerous publicity, so they forbade Padre Pio from offering Mass in public. They considered moving him to a different Franciscan community, but, upon hearing the news, the pious locals threatened to riot. Officials decided to let Pio remain where he was, as there were, regardless, few friaries available that were more remote than his.

By 1933, the officials made up their minds in his favor, and the Vatican began to promote Pio’s ministry. His day was filled with hearing confessions for more than twelve hours at a time. Pilgrims spent the night outside in line, waiting for the chance to confess to him and receive his advice. One of his famous mottos was, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

Padre Pio received visitors in person and also corresponded with souls all over the world. After celebrating Mass and attending to correspondence, sometimes Pio only had a few hours to sleep every night. Around the time of World War II, Pio announced a plan to build a hospital near the Franciscan community, and his hospital was completed after the war.

In the 1960s, Padre Pio’s health began to deteriorate. On the fiftieth anniversary of receiving the stigmata, he fell ill and passed away a few days later, on this date in 1968. When his body was examined after death, the stigmata had disappeared.

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina—Padre Pio—you bore the wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion on your body—pray for us!

Mickey Devine – Died August 20th, 1981

Posted by Jim on August 27, 2024

A typical Derry lad

Twenty-seven-year-old Micky Devine, from the Creggan in Derry city, was the third INLA Volunteer to join the H-Block hunger strike to the death.

Micky Devine took over as O/C of the INLA blanket men in March when the then O/C, Patsy O’Hara, joined the hunger strike but he retained this leadership post when he joined the hunger strike himself.

Known as ‘Red Micky’, his nickname stemmed from his ginger hair rather than his political complexion, although he was most definitely a republican socialist.

The story of Micky Devine is not one of a republican ‘super-hero’ but of a typical Derry lad whose family suffered all of the ills of sectarian and class discrimination inflicted upon the Catholic working-class of that city: poor housing, unemployment and lack of opportunity.

Micky himself had a rough life.

His father died when Micky was a young lad; he found his mother dead when he was only a teenager; married young, his marriage ended in separation; he underwent four years of suffering ‘on the blanket’ in the H-Blocks; and, finally, the torture of hunger-strike.

Unusually for a young Derry nationalist, because of his family’s tragic history (unconnected with ‘the troubles’), Micky was not part of an extended family, and his only close relatives were his sister Margaret, seven years his elder, and now aged 34, and her husband, Frank McCauley, aged 36.

CAMP

Michael James Devine was born on May 26th, 1954 in the Springtown camp, on the outskirts of Derry city, a former American army base from the Second World War, which Micky himself described as “the slum to end all slums”.

Hundreds of families – 99% (unemployed) Catholics, because of Derry corporation’s sectarian housing policy – lived, or rather existed, in huts, which were not kept in any decent state of repair by the corporation.

One of Micky’s earliest memories was of lying in a bed covered in old coats to keep the rain off the bed. His sister, Margaret, recalls that the huts were “okay” during the summer, but they leaked, and the rest of the year they were cold and damp.

Micky’s parents, Patrick and Elizabeth, both from Derry city, had got married in late 1945 shortly after the end of the Second World War, during which Patrick had served in the British merchant navy. He was a coalman by trade, but was unemployed for years.

At first Patrick and Elizabeth lived with the latter’s mother in Ardmore, a village near Derry, where Margaret was born in 1947. In early 1948 the family moved to Springtown where Micky was born in May 1954.

Although Springtown was meant to provide only temporary accommodation, official lethargy and sectarianism dictated that such inadequate housing was good enough for Catholics and it was not until the early ‘sixties that the camp was closed.

BLOW

During the ‘fifties, the Creggan was built as a new Catholic ghetto, but it was 1960 before the Devines got their new home in Creggan, on the Circular Road. Micky had an unremarkable, but reasonably happy childhood. He went to Holy Child primary school in Creggan.

At the age of eleven Micky started at St. Joseph’s secondary school in Creggan, which he was to attend until he was fifteen.

But soon the first sad blow befell him. On Christmas eve 1965, when Micky was aged only eleven, his father fell ill; and six weeks later, in February 1966, his father, who was only in his forties, died of leukaemia.

Micky had been very close to his father and his premature death left Micky heartbroken.

Five months later, in July 1966, his sister Margaret left home to get married, whilst Micky remained in the Devines’ Circular Road home with his mother and granny.

At school Micky was an average pupil, and had no notable interests.

STONING

The first civil rights march in Derry took place on October 5th, 1968, when the sectarian RUC batoned several hundred protesters at Duke Street. Recalling that day, Micky, who was then only fourteen wrote:

“Like every other young person in Derry my whole way of thinking was tossed upside down by the events of October 5th, 1968. I didn’t even know there was a civil rights march. I saw it on television.

“But that night I was down the town smashing shop windows and stoning the RUC. Overnight I developed an intense hatred of the RUC. As a child I had always known not to talk to them, or to have anything to do with them, but this was different

“Within a month everyone was a political activist. I had never had a political thought in my life, but now we talked of nothing else. I was by no means politically aware but the speed of events gave me a quick education.”

TENSION

After the infamous loyalist attack on civil rights marchers in nearby Burntollet, in January 1969, tension mounted in Derry through 1969 until the August 12th riots, when Orangemen – Apprentice Boys and the RUC – attacked the Bogside, meeting effective resistance, in the ‘Battle of the Bogside’. On two occasions in 1969 Micky ended up at the wrong end of an RUC baton, and consequently in hospital.

That summer Micky left school. Always keen to improve himself, he got a job as a shop assistant and over the next three years worked his way up the local ladder: from Hill’s furniture store on the Strand Road, to Sloan’s store in Shipquay Street, and finally to Austin’s furniture store in the Diamond (and one can get no higher in Derry, as a shop assistant).

British troops had arrived in August 1969, in the wake of the ‘Battle of the Bogside’. ‘Free Derry’ was maintained more by agreement with the British army than by physical force, but of course there were barricades, and Micky was one of the volunteers manning them with a hurley.

INVOLVED

At that time, and during 1970 and 1971, Micky became involved in the civil rights movement, and with the local (uniquely militant) Labour Party and the Young Socialists.

The already strained relationship between British troops and the nationalist people of Derry steadily deteriorated – reinforced by news from elsewhere, especially Belfast – culminating with the shooting dead by the British army of two unarmed civilians, Seamus Cusack and Desmond Beattie, in July of 1971, and with internment in August. Micky, by this time seventeen years of age, and also politically maturing, had joined the ‘Officials’, also known as the ‘Sticks’.

He became a member of the James Connolly ‘Republican Club’ and then, shortly after internment, a member of the Derry Brigade of the ‘Official IRA’.

‘Free Derry’ had become known by that name after the successful defence of the Bog side in August 1969, but it really became ‘Free Derry’, in the form of concrete barricades etc., from internment day. Micky was amongst those armed volunteers who manned the barricades

Typical of his selfless nature (another common characteristic of the hunger strikers), no task was too small for him.

He was ‘game’ to do any job, such as tidying up the office. Young men, naturally enough, wanted to stand out on the barricades with rifles: he did that too, but nothing was too menial for him, and he was always looking for jobs.

Bloody Sunday, January 30th, 1972, when British Paratroopers shot dead thirteen unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry (a fourteenth died later from wounds received), was a turning point for Micky. From then there was no turning back on his republican commitment and he gradually lost interest in his work, and he was to become a full-time political and military activist.

TRAUMA

Micky experienced the trauma of Bloody Sunday at first hand. He was on that fateful march with his brother-in-law, Frank, who recalls: “When the shooting started we ran, like everybody else, and when it was over we saw all the bodies being lifted.”

The slaughter confirmed to Micky that it was more than time to start shooting back. “How” he would ask, “can you sit back and watch while your own Derry men are shot down like dogs?”

Micky had written: “I will never forget standing in the Creggan chapel staring at the brown wooden boxes. We mourned, and Ireland mourned with us.

“That sight more than anything convinced me that there will never be peace in Ireland while Britain remains. When I looked at those coffins I developed a commitment to the republican cause that I have never lost.”

From around this time, until May when the ‘Official IRA’ leadership declared a unilateral ceasefire (unpopular with their Derry Volunteers), Micky was involved not only in defensive operations but in various gun attacks against British troops.

Micky’s commitment and courage had shone through, but no more so than in the case of scores of other Derry youths, flung into adulthood and warfare by a British army of occupation.

TRAGIC

In September, 1972, came the second tragic loss in Micky’s family life. He came home one day to find his mother dead on the settee with his granny unsuccessfully trying to revive her.

His mother had died of a brain tumour, totally unexpectedly, at the age of forty-five. Doctors said it had taken her just three minutes to die. Micky, then aged eighteen, suffered a tremendous shock from this blow, and it took him many months to come to terms with his grief.

Through 1973, Micky remained connected with the ‘Sticks’, although increasingly disillusioned by their openly reformist path. He came to refer to the ‘Sticks’ as “fireside republicans”, and was highly critical of them for not being active enough.

Towards the end of that year, Micky, then aged nineteen, got married. His wife, Margaret, was only seventeen. They lived in Ranmore Drive in Creggan and had two children: Michael, now aged seven and Louise, now aged five.

Micky and his wife had since separated.

In late 1974, virtually all the ‘Sticks’ in Derry, including Micky, joined the newly formed IRSP, as did some who had dropped out over the years. And Micky necessarily became a founder member of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), formed to defend the IRSP from murderous attacks by their former comrades in the sticks.

In early 1975, Micky became a founder member of the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) formed for offensive operational purposes out of the PLA.

The months ahead were bad times for the IRSP, relatively isolated, and to suffer a strength-sapping split when Bernadette McAliskey left, taking with her a number of activists who formed the ISP (Independent Socialist Party), since deceased.

They were also difficult months for the fledgling INLA, suffering from a crippling lack of weaponry and funds. Weakness which led them into raids for both as their primary actions, and rendered them almost unable to operate against the Brits.

Micky was eventually arrested on the Creggan. In the evening of September 20th, 1976, after an arms raid earlier that day on a private weaponry, in Lifford, County Donegal, from which the INLA commandeered several rifles and shotguns, and three thousand rounds of ammunition.

ARRESTED

Micky was arrested with Desmond Walmsley from Shantallow, and John Cassidy from Rosemount. Along on the operation, though never convicted for it, was the late Patsy O’Hara, with whom Micky used to knock around as a friend and comrade.

Micky was held and interrogated for three days in Derry’s Stand Road barracks, before being transported in Crumlin Road jail in Belfast where he spent nine months on remand.

He was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment on June 20th, 1977, and immediately embarked on the blanket protest. He was in H5-Block until March of this year when the hunger strike began and when the ‘no-wash, no slop-out’ protest ended, whereupon he was moved with others in his wing to H6-Block.

Like others incarcerated within the H-Blocks, suffering daily abuse and inhuman and degrading treatment, Micky realised – soon after he joined the blanket protest – that eventually it would come to a hunger strike, and, for him, the sooner the better. He was determined that when that ultimate step was reached he would be among those to hunger strike.

SEVENTH

On Sunday, June 21st, this year, he completed his fourth year on the blanket, and the following day he joined Joe McDonnell, Kieran Doherty, Kevin Lynch, Martin Hurson, Thomas McElwee and Paddy Quinn on hunger strike.

He became the seventh man in a weekly build-up from a four-strong hunger strike team to eight-strong. He was moved to the prison hospital on Wednesday, July 15th, his twenty fourth day on hunger strike.

With the 50 % remission available to conforming prisoners, Micky would have been due out of jail next September.

As it was, because of his principled republican rejection of the criminal tag he chose to fight and face death.

Micky died at 7.50 am on Thursday, August 201h, as nationalist voters in Fermanagh/South Tyrone were beginning to make their way to the polling booths to elect Owen Carron, a member of parliament for the constituency, in a demonstration – for the second time in less than five months – of their support for the prisoners’ demands.

Thomas McElwee – Died on 8 August 1981 after 62 days on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh

Posted by Jim on August 8, 2024

THOMAS McELWEE, aged 23, was born in Bellaghy, south Derry, on 30 November 1957.

Thomas was arrested following a premature explosion in an IRA operation in October 1976 in which he lost the sight of one eye. His younger brother, Benedict, was arrested in the same incident. Thomas received a 20-year sentence in September 1977.

He spent 62 days on hunger strike from 8 June. He died on 8 August 1981.

The death of Thomas McElwee

• Thomas McElwee’s eight sisters – Kathleen, Mary, Bernadette, Annie, Enda, Nora, Pauline and Majella – carry the coffin of their brother

Thomas McElwee, at the age of 23, was the tenth man to join the 1981 Hunger Strike. From Bellaghy in south Derry, he was imprisoned in 1976 after a premature bomb explosion in which he lost an eye.

Thomas was a cousin of another hunger striker, Francis Hughes, also from Bellaghy. They had been boyhood friends, both going on to join the IRA. On 10 August 1981, for the second time, Bellaghy was visited by thousands of mourners gathered to pay their respects to a deceased Hunger Striker.

McElwee died on 8 August on the 62nd day of his fast. Francis Hughes had died three months earlier, on 12 May.

The RUC and British Army converged on the roads around Bellaghy and six British Army helicopters hovered overhead. Thomas’s brother, Benedict, had been denied a visit with his brother the previous week and was then callously asked to identify the body when he died.

IRA and Cumann na mBan guards of honour lined the path to the McElwee home as the coffin was carried out by his eight sisters. A volley of shots was fired as the cortege reached the road. The crowd in the fields and hillsides cheered as the firing party disappeared out of range of the British crown forces.

Two pipers led the cortege along the five-mile route to the church for Requiem Mass. Thomas’s brother, Benedict, was allowed 10 hours parole for the funeral. In another instance of church interference in the Hunger Strike, the priest at the Mass in Bellaghy Parish Church criticised the Hunger Strikers and called for an end to the fast. Some women in the congregation got up and walked out, disgusted that the priest would use the pulpit on such a tragic occasion to deliver an insulting political speech.

Thomas McElwee’s dying wish was to be buried beside Francis Hughes.

The graveside oration was given by Danny Morrison, then Sinn Féin Director of Publicity.

Thomas McElwee has been described by friends as being “sincere, easy-going and full of fun”. He was also intelligent and determined, something Morrison captured in his remarks on the young Volunteer:

“I know that the McElwee family will understand, just as the families of other dead Hunger Strikers will know what I mean, when I say that their son was invincible from beginning to end, in life as well as in death.”

 • IRA Volunteers prepare to fire a volley of shots over the coffin of Thomas McElwee

Morrison went on to criticise the Catholic Church and the SDLP for cultivating defeatism throughout the Hunger Strike rather than pressurising the British Government to come to a just resolution of the protest. He referred back to the sermon delivered earlier at Thomas’s Requiem Mass.

“Those of you who were able to hear Fr Flanagan’s sermon today will have been struck by what is wrong with the Church’s politics. We were asked to pray for an end to the Hunger Strike, for an end to violence and for peace,” he remarked, adding that certainly people should pray for those things. “But there is a bigger prayer which we have to make, and that is a prayer for an end to the cause of violence: the British occupation of our country. It is time the Church prayed and called for that.”

In his oration, Morrison also called for decisive and effective action at ambassadorial and international levels on the part of the Irish Government, who, he said “like many other influential bodies in Ireland which represent the vested interests, have not got the welfare of the prisoners at heart and would quite frankly like to see the hunger strike collapse”.

Morrison also noted and condemned the increasing tendency at the time to blame the republican leadership for the crisis.

“For some time now it has been open season for apportioning blame for the continuation of the Hunger Strike on the leadership of the Republican Movement.” This was, he said, just a variation of former Secretary of State Roy Mason’s theme in 1976 and 1977, in which the implication was that those on the outside had forced the prisoners onto the Blanket Protest.

Identifying the real cause of the problem, Morrison said:

“The roots of the Hunger Strike were built into the British H-Blocks, into the British policy of criminalisation which forced the men on the Blanket five years ago and which led ultimately to republicans resorting to the traditional weapon of hunger strike as the ultimate means of gaining their demands.”

Nor was Danny in any doubt as to the continued determination of the republican POWs in the H-Blocks.

“Their determination has not waned,” he said, stressing that neither should their supporters on the outside lose resolve. “Despair is easy, our enemies want us to despair; to struggle on is a harder task but the reward is there at the end of the road – and Thomas McElwee will be proud of us, as we are proud of him, if we play our full part in winning this prison struggle, in winning, as he set out to win, Irish freedom from the ruins of British rule.”