Posted by Jim on August 20, 2015
Died August 20th, 1981
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.
Posted by Jim on August 19, 2015
from The Road to Rebellion by Mike McCormack
John F Kennedy said in a 1962 speech that Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable which is why we believe that it’s not the rebel that creates the violence, but the violence that creates the rebel. Early Americans knew that and the American Revolution was the result. The patriots of 1916 also knew that and the Easter Rising was the result. But that rising was different from all others in Irish history.
The desire for independence has always been at the core of the Irish heart, but to understand what made 1916 unique, there are three things to consider and coincidentally, three had always been a special number for the Irish. As far back as the ancient time, the Shamrock was sacred to the Druids because it illustrated why things natural came in threes like sea, earth and sky, and things human like birth, life and death. Saint Patrick even validated that number in the Trinity. Even Irish proverbs came in threes like the three things to be most wary of: the horn of a bull, the bark of a dog and the word of an Englishman! It is significant, therefore, that the Easter Rising would not have happened were it not for three factors; like the three leaves of the Shamrock of Insurrection, you might say.
The first leaf was the political and economic pendulum that swung back and forth from hope to hostility for an entire century from 1816 to 1916. In 1816 the peace of a shared prosperity, created by the Napoleonic War economy, ended and by 1820 post-war selfishness on the part of Parliament provoked the Rockite Rebellion which was brutally put down. Then in 1823 a peaceful attempt by Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association renewed hopes of self-reliance. But, by 1830 it was back to violence as Parliament incited a Tithe War which was again brutally put down. In 1840 peaceful promise was again tried in the Repeal Association, but from 1845 on, official neglect during the Great Hunger gave rise to violence again in 1848 when the Irish Confederation rose and was defeated. Then in 1852 another peaceful attempt was born in the Irish Conservative Party but landlord opposition killed that effort by 1858 at which time the Irish Republican Brotherhood was born and that was violently subdued in a failed Rising in 1867. In the 1880s, another attempt at peaceful accord was made by Charles Stewart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party, but by 1891 Westminster-instigated schemes split his Party until Parnell died. Then in 1913, a peaceful labor movement ended in the Great Labor Lockout and official violence against workers drove James Connolly to start the Irish Citizen Army to fight back. Then came 1914 and another peaceful promise with the passage of a Home Rule Bill. But that Bill was being undermined by Orange Order opposition, the Curragh Mutiny in which British military refused to enforce it and Parliamentary duplicity in attempting to change the Bill to partition Ireland. History was repeating itself. For 100 years, peaceful attempts had always been frustrated, driving the Irish to violence only to be put down after which a peaceful approach was tried again and the cycle was repeated, over and over. But they never gave up and the goal of every attempt – peaceful or violent, remained the same – self-determination. But that frustration was common to all previous risings. What made this time different was the second leaf of the Shamrock of Insurrection.
The second leaf was that behind the repeated frustration of promise and conflict, a dream was born with the Gaelic Revival – a national educational movement that revived a pride in their heritage through history. Indoctrinated by fireside tales in the days before television, few grew up without hearing the seanachie tell of past attempts at eliminating colonial oppression. Those tales were validated by teachers, fathers and grandfathers and a dream took shape with the formation of nationalist-oriented groups. There came Literary clubs like the Ossianic Society, the Phoenix Literary Society and the Dungannon Clubs. They formed societies like the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Ass’n, the Hibernian Rifles and Irish Volunteers; Ladies societies like Inghinidhe na hEireann and Cumann na mBan and youth clubs like na Fianna hEireann. And all the while Newspapers like the Sword of Light, the United Irishman and the Irish Volunteer promoted the nationalist gospel of self-determination. The Gaelic Revival stimulated the longing for liberation. Even Pearse recognized that when he said the Irish revolution really began when the seven Gaelic League members met in O’Connell Street. The germ of all future Irish history was in that back room. But, if it was the Gaelic Revival that put the frustrated Irish on the Road to Rebellion, it was the Irish in America who paved that road for they were the third leaf of the shamrock of insurrection!
The motivation to action came from the Irish who were forced to flee their homeland, but who never fled their heritage. Britain had forced into exile angry Irish rebels like John Devoy, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and Tom Clarke. They had also forced into emigration millions of Ireland’s sons and daughters fleeing hunger and eviction during the Artificial Famine. These displaced Irish formed a desperate Diaspora that I call the Diasperadoes. Americanized-Irish like Devoy, Rossa and Clarke joined with Irish-American sons of exiles, like Judge Daniel Cohalan and others, to influence existing organizations like the AOH to form such committees as the Emmet Monument Association and they created new societies like the Napper Tandy Clubs, Clan na Gael, Friends of Irish Freedom and more. They organized fund-raisers among the Diasperadoes who had overcome American prejudice to become a community of wage-earners – a community whose memories of the Great Hunger created a mentality that supported retribution. And they provided the weapon that would enable the Irish to topple the crown.
Posted by Jim on August 18, 2015
The political crisis in the North deepened this week when a bomb attack
struck the British Army’s Palace Barracks, the headquarters of MI5 in
Ireland.
The bomb exploded inside a van, from which a fire spread to a number of
nearby vehicles and garages. There were no reports of any injuries.
British Direct Ruler Therese Villiers described the attack as “reckless
and futile”, and Stormont politicians were also quick to condemn it.
The Palace Barracks complex in Holywood, County Down is the main
back-up to MI5 headquarters in London and is its largest base outside
the English capital, with over 1,000 agents.
Soldiers from The Royal Scots Borderers have also been stationed at the
base since August 2014, which has one of the highest levels of security
of any British military installation in Ireland. All vehicles entering
are searched, and anyone regularly entering the building must be first
subject to background security checks.
Friday’s attack represents a major breach of that security and shows
that despite the best efforts of the British military, nowhere is beyond
the reach of the breakaway IRA groups. Significant planning will have
gone into such an operation to ensure the device made it through
security undetected.
Although the bomb was not large, it has undoubtedly caused further
embarrassment for the PSNI, British military and intelligence chiefs.
Five years ago, a bomb containing between 40lbs and 50lbs of explosive
was driven to the same barracks and set off. Spy cameras hidden in trees
were later found to have been gathering information on the #20m base.
Following that attack, security was supposed to have been stepped up.
Friday’s attack has followed an escalation in armed actions in the
North, all without causing injury.
A bomb which exploded in a roadside bin in Derry on Tuesday night was
described as having “all the hallmarks” of an IRA attack, according to
the PSNI. The area around the Skeoge Road was sealed off following
reports of a loud explosion in the Galliagh are.
It was initially thought that a gas cylinder had been thrown onto a
bonfire. However, the PSNI later confirmed the noise was the result of a
roadside bomb.
Last week, a mortar rocket was also found during a major two-day
security operation at the graveyard in the Townsend Street area of the
County Tyrone town of Strabane. The PSNI said the bomb was “viable” and
could easily have been used to mount an attack.
