Decomissioned Provos thrown on scrap heap

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Friday April 21, 2006 22:01

by Donnchadh - none

Wealthy Provo Leadership abandon Ex-Prisoners

"...it's hard to see ex-prisoners destitute when the
leadership are so wealthy and have holiday homes."

Hughes mentions Kieran Nugent, the first IRA man on the Blanket protest
in Long Kesh. "Kieran died in 2000. They called him a 'river rat'
because he spent his last days drinking by the river in Poleglass.

Decomissioned Provos thrown on scrap heap
Newshound

>>Audio clip of Brendan Hughes (BBC)

(by Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune)

"Welcome to my cell," says ex-IRA prisoner, Brendan Hughes, as he opens
the door of his tiny, threadbare flat on the Falls Road. "Sometimes,
I've sat here crying for a week. I think of all my comrades' suffering
and I don't even want to go out. You never really leave prison."

Hughes killed and saw his friends die too. A former 'officer
commanding' the Belfast Brigade, he's a living legend among republicans. Small
and swarthy with a mop of black hair, he was known as 'the Dark'.

His bombs reduced the city to rubble; his gun battles with the British
entered republican folklore; he spent 13 years in jail and 53 days on
hunger-strike. His best friend was Gerry Adams. Hughes, 57, now lives on
disability benefit in Divis Tower – the only part of the flats' complex
not bulldozed.

Over the past 35 years, around 15,000 republicans have been imprisoned
on both sides of the Border. On release, those close to the Sinn Féin
leadership usually fare best. A minority secure paid community jobs; the
rest are employed in IRA owned or supporting bars and taxi-depots.

While some ex-prisoners start businesses independently, the IRA gives
others businesses to run. But many former prisoners who – for personal
or political reasons – are outside the loop, face greater difficulties.

Last week, an ex-IRA prisoner was one of three men charged in
connection with the hijacking of a vodka lorry in Co Meath. Former security
force members and prison officers received generous retirement and
redundancy payments from the state. "We were decommissioned with nothing," says
Hughes. "IRA men and women, who gave everything to this struggle, got
poverty, premature death, and mental problems in return."

It's the untold story of the Troubles, he claims: "People stay quiet
out of loyalty to the movement." Money never mattered to him, he says: "I
was offered £50,000 to become an informer. I told them £50 million
wouldn't sway me. But it's hard to see ex-prisoners destitute when the
leadership are so wealthy and have holiday homes."

Hughes mentions Kieran Nugent, the first IRA man on the Blanket protest
in Long Kesh. "Kieran died in 2000. They called him a 'river rat'
because he spent his last days drinking by the river in Poleglass.

"Why didn't somebody in the movement not see he'd problems and help
him? He was the bravest of the brave. The screws ordered him to wear the
prison uniform and he replied, 'You'll have to nail it to my back.'"

Research suggests a third of prisoners suffer broken relationships.
Hughes had a baby daughter and his wife was pregnant with their son when
he was arrested. "My wife became involved with another man while I was
in prison. The lads inside told me to give her a hard time.

"I called her to the jail and told her there was no problem – she was
young and deserved a bit of happiness. She always said the war was my
number one priority and she was right. I was selfish. I neglected my
family. When I got out of jail, I went to her house and shook her partner's
hand." Hughes is close to his grown-up daughter but has no relationship
with his son.

He was released from prison without skills or qualifications. He began
labouring. "A big west Belfast contractor paid us £20 a day. I tried to
organise a strike but the other ex-POWs were so desperate, they
wouldn't agree. One of the bosses said 'Brendan, we'll give you £25 a day but
don't tell the others'.

"I told him to stick it up his arse, and I never went back. I wrote an
article about it for 'Republican News' but it was heavily censored.
People we'd fought for exploited us, and the movement let them." Hughes
never considered crime – "I'm not a thief" – but doesn't blame those who
do "so long as they target only big business".

Prison left him with arthritis and weakened his immune system. He's had
pneumonia and heart problems, and suffers depression. "After jail,
no-one mentioned counselling. I'd to arrange it myself. They say I've
post-traumatic stress. The hunger-strikers' faces are always before me."

He speaks of dislocation after jail: "Everything was different. I went
for a walk, just to be on my own. The old streets were gone and I got
lost in the new streets. A man had to bring me home. Everything was
noisy. I hate crowds. I only go to the pub in the afternoon when it's
quiet."

Pictures of Che Guevara – laughing, smoking, drinking coffee – dot the
living-room. "My brother is taking me to Cuba. The revolution improved
ordinary people's lives there. It was a waste of time here."

Beneath a picture of the Sacred Heart, is a photo of two tanned,
smiling young men in Long Kesh, arms around each other – Hughes and Adams. "I
loved Gerry. I don't anymore, but I keep the photos to remind me of the
good times."

Willie Gallagher from Strabane joined the Fianna at 13. Two years later
he joined the IRA – "I lied about my age". At 15, he was arrested with
a gun. He spent 18 of his next 20 years in jail.

"I don't feel I lost out because I'd no life to lose. I was the
youngest in jail and my comrades spoilt me rotten. I remember digging a tunnel
for an escape and thinking it a great adventure." By now, Gallagher was
with the INLA.

"At 20, he embarked on a 50-day hunger-strike after beatings by prison
officers: "I lost my eyesight. It took me 18 months to recover. Then, I
watched the 10 hunger-strikers die. Such brutality damaged me
emotionally. I left jail at 25 and wasn't interested in a normal life. I was
full of bitterness. There was no point in killing Brits in ones and twos –
I wanted to kill lots of them.

"I planted a no-warning bomb in a pub the security forces frequented.
Then I went home, got washed and headed into town. Twenty people could
have been killed and it wouldn't have fizzed on me." No-one died but 30
people were injured.

Gallagher went back to jail. His first marriage broke up when he was
inside but he remarried within a year of his 1993 release. "My heart
never hardened in my personal life, but my reputation means my wife's
friends think I'm aggressive. 'Would Willie hit you?' they ask."

Compared to other prisoners, Gallagher, 48, is lucky. His wife owned
her own home – they now have two children – and he secured a paid
community job. It's also harder for those whose don't come from a republican
family, "but my brothers were involved – two did 10 years – so I'd a lot
of support."

He runs a prisoners' group, Teach na Failte. Funding has been suspended
pending an official investigation amidst allegations of criminality
which the group denies.

Gallagher has been arrested and questioned following a bank robbery in
Strabane. The getaway car was bought under the name Robin Banks. "I
wasn't involved but if ex-prisoners were, good luck to them. I've no
problem with cigarette or alcohol heists either. People who made enormous
sacrifices in jail were left with nothing.

"I know one guy who was very fit and always training before he went
into jail but he turned to drink and drugs on release and was found dead
at 40. If former political prisoners' records were expunged, they'd have
far better employment opportunities and life wouldn't be so hard for
many." Gallagher has no doubts about his own past: "It's better to fight
and lose than not to fight at all."

Tommy McKearney from the Moy, Co Tyrone, served 16 years for a UDR
man's murder. One of his brothers was shot dead by the SAS, and another
brother and an uncle were killed by loyalists while he was in jail.

"When I got out my father took me to see my brothers' graves. But what
struck me was the graves of the post-mistress and the baker. I couldn't
believe all the changes in our small community. The world had moved on
without me. Many prisoners feel lost for so long."

McKearney now runs Expac, a Monaghan-based group for ex-prisoners in
Border areas. "There's no ideal time to go to jail, but it's probably
best in your mid-20s. Jail stunts teenagers' emotional development and
prison is very hard in your 40s or 50s because you realise how little time
is left.

"Serving more than four years affects people. They start to lose
contact with the outside world and all but close relatives. After 10, they're
institutionalised. It's like marathon runners 'hitting the wall'. After
a certain distance, the battle gets too much physically and
psychologically."

Ex-prisoners often feel their relatives are strangers and they left
their real 'family' in jail. Those who were single when they went to jail,
then "play catch-up" with children and mortgages in their 40s and 50s,
McKearney says. "At retirement time, when life should be easing,
they're up to their necks in mortgages and debt."

The situation has improved since the ceasefire, but ex-prisoners still
face employment discrimination, he says. They're officially barred from
civil-service jobs and unofficially from many others. "How many become
teachers or journalists?" McKearney asks. "I mightn't reasonably expect
to be able to join the gardai but I think I should be eligible for a
job as local librarian."

Even if ex-prisoners slip through the door, "it's just like with women
– there's a glass ceiling". Neither the Equality Authority nor the
North's Equality Commission recognise ex-prisoners as a vulnerable group,
he says. "An employer can bin an ex-prisoner's application form, admit
it, and the law provides no protection."

Low-paid jobs are no better: "A supermarket can draw up a list of 20
candidates for shelf-stackers and cashiers. Its head of security, an
ex-Special Branch man, says 'get rid of numbers one and seven'."

The Special Branch also visit employers, demanding ex-prisoners are
sacked, he says. "I was labouring and they ordered my boss to get rid of
me. He told them to get lost, but 99% of employers wouldn't be so
principled."

Still, it's easier in Border areas than in parts of country where
there's hostility to republicanism and a smaller black/illegal economy.
Ex-prisoners are usually barred from the US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, where many would like to begin new lives.

Anthony McIntyre, who served 18 years imprisonment, says: "I laugh when
I hear about an 'IRA pension plan'. The IRA offered me a Christmas loan
and nothing else when I was released. I'd two kids and, I'm not ashamed
to say, I had to shop-lift to feed and clothe them."

Today, Brendan Hughes won't attend any 1916 parade but he'll privately
pay tribute at the IRA Belfast Brigade monument. "I keep wondering
'what it was all about?'" he says. "The doctors tell me not to drink but I
do. It eases the pain, it doesn't kill it." A picture of the
hunger-strikers hangs in Hughes' hallway. 'Soldiers of our past, heroes of our
future', it says. Somehow, it doesn't seem that way.

April 20, 2006