I knew Phyllis Devenney. She was a wonderful woman, full of humour and forgiveness. At the time I met her she was suffering from cancer. She spoke of the chemotherapy sessions she’d had and how difficult they were, to the point where she told her family she simply wanted to stop. “And do you know what they said? They said ‘Don’t be so selfish, Mammy!’ “. And she laughed at the irony of it all. Eventually she gave in to the promptings of her family and had further treatment. In the end the cancer claimed her. I still remember her last words as I left her house: “Call again, won’t you? Don’t be a stranger!” She was one of those human beings you felt privileged to have known, however briefly.
So who was Phyllis Devenney and why am I mentioning her? Because she was the widow of Sammy Devenney. He died on 17 July 1969, some three months after he was attacked by the police in his own home in Derry’s Bogside. Harry Devenney, his son who was in the house when the attack occurred, tells how his father was very badly beaten about the head, chest and face. “He was choking when I went into the living room and there was blood everywhere. I had to pull teeth from his mouth”. Samuel Devenney was one of the first if not the first victim of the Troubles.
An investigation into the circumstances of his death was mounted and a report, the Drury Report, compiled. The Drury Report was not published and the Devenney family learnt of its contents only through the press. The report said it could confirm RUC officers had been involved in his killing but was unable to establish who these men were. There is no evidence that the RUC ever communicated with Mr Devenney or with his wife Phyllis after his death or with any of his children regarding what had happened.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Devenney family and the Pat Finucane Centre requested access to files about Mr Devenney’s death. A couple of days ago they were told their request has been denied. “It’s a disgrace that the documents are being kept secret. It’s in the public interest. We are disgusted”, Harry Devenney said.
Phyllis Devenney told me that, in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death, her family were furious, and she was full of fear that they would resort to violence in revenge for what had happened. “I told them all ‘You listen to me. There’s nothing you can do that’ll bring your daddy back. There’ll be no revenge.’ “.
It now looks as though there’ll also be no access to truth, let alone justice for the family. Phyllis Devenney was a generous, loving woman. The people who killed her husband in 1969 and deny her family the truth in 2014 aren’t fit to breathe her name.
Justice was not served in this case and many others in Northern Ireland the question is how do we get justice properly served to those that broke the law from whatever side they came from?
There is one significant difference between such cases as that of Sammy Devenney and other cases from the Troubles: those paid to enforce the law broke the law. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Jude
A terrible wrong was done to the Devenney family. I hope they eventually find truth and justice.
Your point about the RUC is correct in that they should have been expected to uphold the law.
Do not forget that the PIRA were regarded by themselves and their supporters as the legitimate army of Ireland and thus you could equally ask of them;
Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes.
They are equally unfit to utter the names of their victims,as I am sure you will agree Jude?
Hi Jude lovely reading this it brings back great memories for me I was in the house the day you came to interview my mammy in fact I made you tea!would love a copy of that tape thanks for writing this beautiful story about a beautiful Lady.
Christine – thank you for your comments (and that tea..) I haven’t a copy of the tape but I gather Ann has (see below). Go raibh cead maith agat aris.
Some mistake sherley ? The brave RUC indulging in murder and cover up ? As Mike Nessbitt says, there is no narrative, just facts…
Another case to be added to the catalogue of cover ups…
Jude: In the 1950s, as a small boy, I lived in a new -build, post war, mixed estate .Everyone there rented their homes , from factory managers to postmen. My father was a bricklayer and stone-mason and our next -door neighbour was a policeman. We were all good neighbours then . Although from different religious backgrounds ,his son and I were best buddies .
It was in his home that I first saw the” Lone Ranger” serial on this new ” television” thing. They were the only ones with a set and it was a great novelty.Those were innocent times.
Reel on eight years hence and my family had long- since moved away to a different part of town where my father had built our new family home. The next time I really became aware of policemen was when i saw them beating people up on the streets on that same new- fangled television. The brutish behaviour caught on camera has been relayed every time there is an article on Bloody Sunday on the television.The manic faces of those baton -wielding cops tell the whole story.The rest of the world read it the same way.There was something broken inside of them.
Well put, paddyk. Although I wouldn’t subscribe to a golden age (I don’t think you do either) when everybody got along, before those pesky civil righters started stirring stuff up, and then the IRA started killing people. I remember pre-Troubles times and while it is true that we had good Protestant/unionist neighbours who I played with and my father worked with, there were also bigots, discrimination and gerrymander. Orange marches helped foment division – I can still hear the thud of stones on our hayshed – and the unequal state was accepted and enjoyed by those who ran it.
Jude : i suppose I was attempting to juxtapose childhood memories with the cold hard reality of some of my later teenage years. The other truth was that for two weeks of summer there was an unworldly silence, when nary a bird sang. A fortnight of dour, lifeless Sundays, when I suppose a lot of our neighbours went off on holidays in Portrush or Cranfield after communing in the dark arts of Orangeism or whatnot.
That was a time when people would say, offhandedly, that “Their blood is up”,…. from which I deduced that some form of cultural re-inoculation was afoot …as indeed it probably was in some cases. Fiery speeches of blood and thunder and all that old bollocks.
Other than that, childhood was full of the perfume of ladies in many- petticoated dance dresses giggling as they walked past on their way to the local dance , bazooka joe chewing gum[ with the secret signal ring}, cisco gun cap pistols and of course hula-hoops and the Beano.
Paddyk – you plunge me into a time-warp. What about those multi-petticoat skirts and the bobby sox? Ah memory…Paul Simon has marvellous song about growing up and the different kinds of music he heard or made – one of the lines is about hearing ‘a lady laugh/The way some ladies do’. He could have been talking about your perfumed beauties on their way to the dance. Cisco gun – is that anything to the Cisco Kid? He was The Man….
Jude : Yeah ..i meant Cisco Kid cap pistols…mind running ahead of the keypad again! I can still remember the acrid smell of the cap pistols. Remember those little derringer “spud guns “that took single “caps” ,too?
My childhood was ending as the Beatles were breaking and my cousins in Liverpool started sending over copies of “Mersey Beat ” magazine with news of this ongoing revolution in their town….. so I always felt I was then on the cusp between those two worlds. ..The 1950s rock n roll styles that a lot of the girls were wearing as they walked to dances….not too many taxis or cars then….just before the coming of a whole new style.. mini skirts and tights……before my older sister started to cut my hair like John Lennon..!!!
As a child in the 60s I was aware even then that the RUC were not to be trusted However It would be true to say that in my own area the handful of cops in the barrack were more or less ignored rather than treated with any great hostility.That changed greatly post 69 as they became associated with the battle of the Bogside,Divis flats and then internment.There also seemed to be an influx of people who regarded themselves as soldiers more than policemen and were vastly different to the old timers ,many of whom would have preferred a quiet life.It was the actions and attitudes of these people that required the effective disbandment of the RUC before any semblance of peace could be had.
Hi Jude, are you aware of any measures currently being undertaken to encourage the British government to require the London metropolitan police constabulary to release this information to the family of this man immediately?
I am at a complete loss to understand what a 44 year old enquiry report could possibly contain that would have Scotland Yard designate it as to have such importance to the British Crown that it cannot be released as it would not be in the public interest.
I for one would gladly sign and circulate a mass petition to have this material released to the family immediately as I feel they have been punish enough by having their father robbed from them without having the further indignity of having the facts of the matter robbed from them also.
I really appreciate you bringing this matter to the attention of those who read your blog but I sincerely believe that it needs to be brought to the attention of the wider public to determine whether they agree with the Met that it would not be in the public interest.
It is a matter of natural justice that this matter be resolved and it should in my opinion be a matter of National pride that everyone throws their support behind this family in Derry to have this injustice remedied.
I sincerely hope that the family will approach someone from the city like your old school friend Eamonn McCann to champion their cause and embarrass the British Government around the world into reversing this perverse decision.
I never fail to be amazed at the power of the online petition to focus the mind of the unjust!
Judd your picture of the widow is well wrought and moving. But there is something that is amiss. A later statement on what we should expect out of or civil servants….
Why do you expect or rather give supernatural powers to men simply because they are paid via taxes? Powers to be always kind, keep their temper, forestall vengeance and perpetually turn the other cheek all because they are paid via a tax (or for that matter a tithe). That has never been and never will be. Sign petitions, move borders, change church affiliations. We are flawed regardless of our income stream.
Virginia : i suppose there was a time long ago when we collectively assumed that a basic communal morality held sway and separated us as humans from the wildness and bestial tooth and claw existence that purported beyond the boundaries of our cobbled -together civilization.
Yes , I know at heart we are all base brutes howling at the stars, but some of us are obviously trying to hold the whole shaky edifice together by “doing the right thing”. The gatekeepers at the edge of that civilization, our police forces, are paid to protect us ….supposedly the last line of defence against that barbarity.There is no free lunch in those circumstances, although some cops obviously thought there was..
Of course, regardless of life being nasty brutish and short we should strive for more.
The Devenney family are one of the most decent family’s you will ever meet. The people who carried out the brutal attack on Mr. Devenney and his family and any of them with the passage of time who are still alive know this. This case shows up everything that was rotten and corrupt about the Northern Ireland State of the 1960’s. The concept of a liberal democracy was stood on it’s head here when the Unionist ran Northern Irelnd like a one party state.The thugs in uniform who brutally attacked the Devenney Family wanted to beat the concept of equality to death ,that is why the attacked everyone present in the house no matter what their age or gender was ( The late Dr. Raymond Mc Clean in his book the road to Bloody Sunday describes the horrific scene in the Devenney household after the assault by the R.U.C including speaking to Mr. Devenney’s youngest Son Jim who was four years old at the time and was present during the assault and who hid under a table). That is why it is vital that pressure is put on the powers that be to releases the information they hold on this brutal attack on this decent family man and his young family. Other countries that tried to cover up the wrongs that they done such as South Africa and the death of the Human Rights Activist Steve Biko. Britain was one of the first to condemn them for this.Likewise Mr. Devenney’s case will not go away the ghost of this wrong injustice stands accusing Britain of acting in a grubby dirty way in relation to fair-play. The Devenney family did nothing wrong they were a Catholic Family living in a Catholic area who were brutalized in their own home by the very men who were supposed to be upholding the law. These men were a disgrace to the very idea of a Police Force. In the same way that the Officers of the L.A. Police Department beat Mr. Rodney King the R.U.C. beat all present in the Devenney household. Jude your article is spot on in relation to the calibre of the the Devenney Family as opposed to the total absence of any form of moral fibre by the uniformed thugs who carried out this illegal summary punishment as the still skulk away hiding behind the pretense of public interest or national security.
Michael, I couldn’t agree with you more. I didn’t, get to see much TV in the last few days so I do not know if this item was covered on the news or if it was overshadowed by the controversy in the Royal accident and emergency department.
I find it absolutely amazing that responsible media have not given this item more coverage given the relevance to the public interest in denying this family their basic human rights to find out why agents of the state brutalized this man and his family in his own front room resulting in his eventual death.
British and local media were quite rightly scathing in their criticism of the Russian state for its denial of human rights for it’s gay and transgender citizens but there is a deadly silence when it comes to the rights of this decent family on our own doorstep.
From the family’s perspective it could seem that outside a few civil libertiarians that nobody really cares! I am sure at one stage that the families of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford 4 felt exactly the same way.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Constant news often leaves us confused and powerless, unable to pay the attention you demand.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2013/does-the-news-do-us-any-good
What separates the beating of this man, Bloody Sunday, the Ballymurphy massacre etsc is that the perpetrators were the very security forces who are paid to uphold the law. That is the difference. Add the whole context of Anne Cadwalladers book and one can’t help but feel the ‘security ” forces acted outside the law as often as anyone.
I only saw this today for the first time, I see comments from earlier in the month, I am so glad I got to see it.
Jude Thank you so much for you kind words about my Mammy and Daddy. I also want to say that because of you, we have my Mammy’s voice in that interview you did with her, what a treasure it is, we can hear her at any time now its wonderful.
In the comments above people talk about Justice, a word I have come to feel is just that a “word”…. however, for me, justice would be that the policemen who murdered my Daddy, would live forever…..
When the case is mentioned I am always touched by the kindness and support of people we don’t really know, still they care for us. I would like to say Thank You to everyone for that.