I have good reason to remember May Day 1978, for on that Day two of my sons were arrested.
The previous night I attended a meeting of the Derry Relatives Action Committee. The Committee had been informed that the Peace People, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, would be coming to Magee University College, to speak at a meeting entitled Woman and Peace. It was an opportunity for us, the relatives of the protesting prisoners in Long Kesh, to raise the issue before an audience of academics and other supporters of the Peace People. We decided that some relatives, myself included, would attend the meeting at Magee and challenge the Peace women in respect of conditions within the H Blocks.
I never made that meeting, for the following morning, at 6am our house was raided and my son John who was aged 17 at the time, was arrested.
May Day was a Bank Holiday. I tried to contact our solicitor to inform him of John’s arrest, but most solicitors on that day were on holiday. Around noon on the same day, the RUC and the British Army raided my home again and arrested my son Patrick, who was then aged sixteen. Some of my neighbours tried to prevent the police and soldiers from arresting Patrick and an ugly situation developed as British soldiers tried to put Patrick into the jeep. I jumped in beside him but a soldier put his boot to my back and kicked me out onto the street. I landed on my mouth and nose but jumped into the jeep as it was moving off. We were both lying on the floor and I was holding onto Patrick, as the jeep drove down Southway at what seemed to be 100 mph. When we arrived at the RUC Strand Road Barracks we were dragged out of the jeep. I was still holding onto Patrick but an RUC man hit me on the wrist and then pushed me out the gates of the barracks.
In the afternoon I was still trying to contact a solicitor when my friend Billy Gallagher arrived at our home. Billy was a highly respected person in the community and was associated with many charitable organisations. He was concerned at the arrests of my sons who were under eighteen years old. I told Billy that Patrick was in the midst of his O level exams at St Columb’s College and asked him to inform the College of Patrick’s arrest.
The planned interruption of the Peace People event in Magee that night proceeded without me. The relatives wearing the grey blankets associated with the H Block prisoners, interrupted Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams as they tried to talk of peace amid the crisis in the prisons. Betty Williams was later overheard challenging the Provost of the University to explain ‘why that rabble was allowed in here’. The ‘rabble’ she alluded to, the courageous Mothers of Derry prisoners, Eileen Harkin, Lily Doherty, Peggy Mc Cool, Susan Coyle and others, made headlines in the local papers the next day.
Billy Gallagher who was in the audience came to our house after the Magee event. He had done the rounds of Derry’s well known ‘influential and respectable’ citizens, including Mr James Doherty a highly respected businessman, and Mr John Hume, the President of the College, people whom Fr. Denis Faul described as people with clout, to inform them of the arrests of my sons. They obviously used their influence as around 10 pm that night I was informed Patrick would be released so that he could sit his O levels examinations the next morning.
Patrick was brought home shortly after midnight in a British Army jeep, accompanied by British soldiers. The soldiers put everyone in our home including some of my neighbours under house arrest. They would not allow anyone to leave the house. Around 3 am, the British Army brought in a big digger and proceeded to dig up my neighbour Tommy’s garden. Nothing was found.
Around eight o clock in the morning, the soldiers took Patrick in a jeep to St Columb’s College. John was still being interrogated in Strand Road Barracks and a few days later he was charged and sent to Crumlin Road prison in Belfast. It would be ten years before he came home again.
Patrick never came home either. He was taken from the school to Donegal and from there to Dublin, where he was looked after and given shelter by the late Seamus Brady and his wife Josephine, a native of Derry. Seamus was a journalists, author and speech writer for the late Neil Blaney TD. He wrote for the Irish Press and was the author of the definitive book on the Arms Trial in the Republic, ‘Arms and the Man’.
A few weeks later, I read an article in ‘The Irish Press’ which stated that the Garda had arrested two men in Howth. I immediately knew it was Patrick and Seamus. They were held for a number of days before being released.
Years later Patrick told me that during questioning by the Garda, the Irish police, he was told that if he stepped out of line in the 26 Counties, he would end up in Port Laois goal. It seemed that the Garda were being kept well informed on the affairs in the North, by their ‘comrades’ in the British Intelligence services.
John was charged with conspiracy and membership of Na Fianna Eireann. He received a ten-year sentence and went to the H Blocks in Long Kesh where he joined his brother on the ‘blanket protest’.
My neighbour had a good crop of spuds that year.
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