Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Read online

  ED MOLONEY

  Brought to you by KeVkRaY

  VOICES FROM THE GRAVE

  Two Men’s War in Ireland

  The publishers would like to acknowledge that any interview material used in Voices from the Grave has been provided by kind permission from the Boston College Center for Irish Programs IRA/UVF project that is archived at the Burns Library on the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College.

  This book is dedicated to all those

  who shared their memories

  with the researchers from Boston College.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  MAPS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  BRENDAN HUGHES

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  DAVID ERVINE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  CHRONOLOGY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Plates

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Catholic families in Belfast flee their burning homes in the wake of Loyalist attacks. © Belfast Telegraph

  Curfew on the Falls Road, 1970.

  © Victor Patterson

  Seamus Twomey confronts British troops at Lenadoon.

  © Victor Patterson

  British troops patrol Divis Street.

  © Belfast Telegraph

  ‘Bloody Friday’, July 1972.

  © Pacemaker Press International

  Jean McConville with three of her children.

  © Pacemaker Press International

  Gerry Adams photographed by British military intelligence after his arrest.

  © Victor Patterson

  Ivor Bell photographed by British military intelligence after his arrest.

  © Victor Patterson

  Brendan Hughes photographed by British military intelligence after his arrest.

  © Victor Patterson

  Mass card for Paddy Joe Crawford. Reproduced with kind permission of Gerry McCann.

  Robert ‘Basher’ Bates, one of the Shankill Butchers.

  © Pacemaker Press International

  Brendan Hughes in prison hospital during the failed 1980 hunger strike.

  © Pacemaker Press International

  Brendan Hughes comforts a woman wounded in the Milltown cemetery attack, 1988.

  © Derek Speirs

  Brendan Hughes in his Divis Tower flat with Anthony McIntyre.

  © Kelvin Boyes

  Gerry Adams carrying Brendan Hughes’s coffin.

  © Kelvin Boyes

  McGurk’s Bar, December 1971.

  © Belfast Telegraph

  Explosion on Talbot Street in Dublin, 1974.

  © Belfast Telegraph

  David Ervine poses with Gusty Spence and fellow UVF internees in Long Kesh. From the Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, presented to Hanvey by Gusty Spence, and used with the permission of Gusty Spence, though photographer uncertain.

  Gusty Spence reviewing UVF internees on parade in Long Kesh. From the Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, presented to Hanvey by Gusty Spence, and used with the permission of Gusty Spence, though photographer uncertain.

  Gusty Spence with ‘Buck Alec’ Robinson. From the Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, presented to Hanvey by Gusty Spence, and used with the permission of Gusty Spence, though photographer uncertain.

  David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson after their election to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, 1998.

  © Pacemaker Press International

  Gerry Adams comforts David Ervine’s widow, Jeanette.

  © Kelvin Boyes

  Map of Northern Ireland showing some of the places referred to in the book

  Map of Belfast showing some of the places referred to in the book

  Map of the Lower Falls Road area, c. 1969, showing some of the places referred to in the book

  PREFACE

  This book represents the inaugural volume of a planned series of publications drawn from the Boston College Oral History Archive on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The transcripts of interviews with Irish Republican Army and Ulster Volunteer Force veterans, most of whom were operationally active, are housed at the University’s Burns Library and are subject to prescriptive limitations governing access. Boston College is contractually committed to sequester ing the taped transcriptions unless otherwise given a full release, in writing, by the interviewees, or until the demise of the latter.

  With the production of this initial book in the projected series, the General Editors wish to acknowledge the tireless and fruitful work of the project coordinator, Ed Moloney, whose personal contacts, professional skills, and established reputation as an accomplished journalist and historian were an incalculable asset in this undertaking. Profound thanks are also owed to Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur, formerly activists from opposing sides who each took degrees at Queen’s University, Belfast, and whose contacts among IRA and UVF paramilitary veterans helped make this oral history a reality.

  Paul Bew, politics professor and senior political adviser to a Northern Ireland first minister, together with two historians who remain anonymous, assisted in an assessment of the information contained in the recorded interviews. Lord Bew strongly encouraged Boston College to document and archive the stories of paramilitaries who fought on both sides of that sectarian divide, known more popularly as the Troubles, because it was such a natural fit. Boston College has had a long interest in Ireland and offered a welcoming and neutral venue in which participants felt a sense of security and confidentiality that made it possible for them to be candid and forthcoming. What Bew perceived as the real value of the IRA/UVF accounts was in what they revealed about the motives and mind sets of participants in the conflict, a resource of inestimable value for future studies attempting better to understand the phenomenology of societal violence.

  Ed Moloney’s succinct and instructive introduction further underscores the scope and significance of the extraordinary archive on which this seminal account is based. What may not be as readily apparent to many people is why Boston College was seen as a familiar and trusted institution by all parties participating in this programme. Not only has the Irish Studies Faculty participated in faculty exchanges and appointments at Ulster universities over the past two decades, with professors from those institutions also serving as visiting scholars at Boston College; the University awarded an honorary degree to Irish nationalist leader John Hume of the Social Democratic Labour Party in 1995 and to British Unionist David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party in 1999.

  Moreover, for a period of some twelve years the Irish Institute at Boston College has provided educational seminars for public officials, business leaders, policing authorities, etc., under a programme sponsored by the United States Congress, as a part of its effort to promote peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Under the aegis of the Department of State, the Irish Institute has hosted seminars both at Boston College and at best-practice professional counterparts throughout the United States. The Irish participants come from the Republic and Northern Ireland, including some from both sectarian communities in the North. More than eight hundred people from various professions in Ireland have participa
ted to date, and the seminars, especially those on community policing, cultural diversity and local-government management, have nurtured networking contacts among formerly adversarial groups in Northern Ireland who now perceive Boston College as their enabler.

  It is the Burns Library, however, arguably the crown jewel of the Boston College Centre for Irish Programmes, that provides the ideal repository for this unique archive. The extensive holdings of the Burns have long attracted researchers from all over the globe, including many of the most distinguished chair-holders throughout Britain and Ireland.

  The John J. Burns Library of Boston College houses the largest, most comprehensive collection of Irish research materials in the United States, with more than 50,000 volumes, nearly 600,000 manuscript pieces, and significant holdings of photographs, artworks, recordings and ephemera documenting the history, life and culture of the Irish people. Material on Ireland since the Act of Union is particularly strong, including a superb collection of 138 late eighteenth-century pamphlets bound in nine volumes from the library of Daniel O’Connell dealing with the question of the Union; a rare collection of some 1,500 pamphlets bound in 105 volumes dating from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, many dealing with the province of Ulster; the Canon Patrick Rogers Collection on the Troubles from 1916 to the 1980s, featuring many rare pamphlets and ephemeral pieces; the Thomas and Kathleen Clarke Papers; the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Collection; and the Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, documenting many of the people, places and events in Northern Ireland in the time of the Troubles.

  These collections were developed to further the academic mission of Boston College, founded in 1863 by the County Fermanagh-born Jesuit John McElroy to provide higher education to the children of refugees of the Irish Famine. Over the years Boston College has strengthened its ties with Ireland, North and South, establishing special relations through its various programmes with various institutions in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 1999, for example, Boston College entered into an agreement of understanding with Linen Hall Library to share resources, enhance access to each other’s library collections and promote knowledge and understanding. The Burns Library was the opening venue in 2003 for a nine-city North American tour of the award-winning exhibition Troubled Images from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

  This unique paramilitary archive finds a proper place among the Burns Library’s rich and diverse holdings of Irish books, collections of private papers, poetry, paintings and digitised music relating directly to Northern Ireland.

  GENERAL EDITORS

  Thomas E. Hachey

  University Professor of History

  and Executive Director, Center for Irish Programs

  Robert K. O’Neill

  Director, John J. Burns Library,

  and Part-Time Faculty Member, Department of Political Science

  INTRODUCTION

  There should have been more than one byline on the cover of this book but sadly it could not be. Thankfully the writing of this introduction provides an opportunity to remedy this deficit and to acknowledge that this book would never have seen the light of day but for the foresight, commitment and hard work of other people.

  At the top of the list are the good people at Boston College who backed and funded this project when it was mooted back in 2000/2001. Professor Tom Hachey, the Executive Director of the Center for Irish Programs at the University, and Dr Bob O’Neill, Librarian at the John J. Burns Library, were both quick to recognise the potential of such an archive and they have thrown their weight behind it from the outset and throughout its life.

  The notion of an archive devoted to Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries was inspired by, if not modelled on, the Bureau of Military History established by the Irish government in 1947 and charged with compiling the history of the movement for independence between 1913 and 1921. While both projects had similar goals – collecting the life stories of those who fought in an Irish conflict – the Bureau had certain advantages denied to this enterprise, and it is to Boston College’s credit that, despite these, the decision was made to support it.

  The Bureau started its work some twenty-five years after the Anglo-Irish War had ended, when many of those active in those years were still alive and enough time had passed to cool the passions that earlier had almost certainly helped to seal lips. But time was not on the side of anyone seeking to replicate the Bureau’s work in Northern Ireland. It was a case of doing it now, in less than perfect circumstances but while some key participants were still living, or allowing their untold stories to go to the grave.

  Another advantage enjoyed by the Bureau of Military History was that the Irish taxpayer was footing the bill. That was not the case in Boston. This was not an inexpensive project and while some private funding was forthcoming, the bulk of the finance was provided by Boston College. Not only did Tom Hachey and Bob O’Neill happily canvass funds on our behalf when necessary, but they, and the readers of this book, were fortunate to have, as the target of their lobbying effort, Dr Patrick Keating, Executive Vice-President of Boston College, who understood and appreciated the historical value of this project and invariably received their financial overtures positively. Without his help none of this would have been possible.

  One disadvantage, however, could not be as easily overcome. When this proposal was made, the Good Friday Agreement had not taken root; paramilitary weapons remained available for use, and the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires were still highly conditional. Not only were many passions still inflamed but no one could even say that the ‘war’ in Northern Ireland was over. None the less, it was our collective view that the conflict was on an irresistible course towards an ending.

  The key consideration in going ahead was the willingness of interviewees, even before the smoke of battle had cleared from the field, to open up candidly and comprehensively not only about their own lives and activities but about others’ as well. It seemed unlikely that they would be receptive to the traditional academic researcher – or, in the case of the Bureau of Military History, soldier researcher – and so to maximise trust, and the value of the interviews, it was decided that the interviewers should be people the interviewees could trust, who broadly came from the same communities while being academically qualified individuals with a record of research.

  The other missing bylines on this book therefore are of Anthony McIntyre, a Ballymurphy Republican and Ph.D. who handled interviews with IRA and INLA activists and Wilson McArthur, a Shankill Road, former PUP activist and a political science graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, who interviewed UVF and PUP members. Their contribution went beyond researching and conducting the interviews; they took on extra research for this book and for that and their comments and analysis, I am grateful. Their work for Boston College was overseen by myself and I can testify to their individual objectivity and commitment to the truth. The fault for any deficiency in the final product therefore lies at my door while the credit for what is good resides mostly at theirs.

  A defining rule of the project was that no material could be used until and unless the interviewee consented or had died. As fate would have it, among the first of our interviewees to pass away were two of the most fascinating figures of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and David Ervine of the UVF and PUP. Both men had ringside seats at the making of history and were either close associates of leaders or were leaders themselves who helped shape and determine events during this most extraordinary time in Irish history.

  Their stories overlapped at crucial moments. Brendan Hughes commanded the IRA teams that ferried car bombs into Belfast on the day that would become known as ‘Bloody Friday’ while the death and destruction caused that afternoon pushed David Ervine into the arms of the UVF. Their lives wouldn’t directly cross again until their deaths over thirty years later when their funerals symbolised how differently they had seen the ending of a conflict that had moulded their narratives.

  Hughes died believing the struggle he had wa
ged had been lost and betrayed while Ervine considered that his side, the UVF, had won most of what it had fought for, not least a more secure Union with Britain. Ervine died a successful, respectable politician, welcome in Downing Street and the White House, and fêted as a peacemaker wherever he went. Hughes died amid failure and recrimination, distrusting many of those he had fought alongside in the IRA’s war and mourning the role played in facilitating the endgame by Gerry Adams, the closest of his one-time comrades but at the end the Michael Collins to his Harry Boland. Gerry Adams’s presence at both men’s funerals was the last occasion that the two men’s stories crossed and his appearance provided the metaphor for how their lives had ended: a welcome at David Ervine’s service but a cold shoulder at Brendan Hughes’s.

  The purpose of the Boston College–Burns Library Archive was to collect a story of the Troubles that otherwise would be lost, distorted or rewritten, deliberately by those with a vested interest, or otherwise by the passage of time or the distortion wrought in the retelling. The resulting archive, while small in comparison to that compiled by the Bureau of Military History, provides a rare and valuable resource for historians seeking to explain and understand the Troubles. This book is the first fruit of the project. The stories of Brendan Hughes and David Ervine are very different but between them a captivating and valuable insight into a hitherto hidden world becomes visible. One thing is certain; there is more to come.