Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (27 page)

We discussed [Heatherington–McGrogan] pretty regularly. Certainly
myself and Gerry discussed it because we were in the same
cage [although] Ivor was in Cage 9. We used to meet at the wire,
myself, Gerry and Ivor. There were two football pitches, one facing
onto Cage 9 and one facing onto Cage 11. So Ivor was able to come
up if there was a football match on and we would have debates
about what we should do. But to be honest the biggest debate going
on at the time was what was happening on the outside. What was
happening to the leadership; where were they going? By and large
the discussion took a turn towards what were we going to do about
it. The leadership were starting to tell us that internment was going
to end, there was talk about 50 per cent remission coming in. At the
same time, right beside us, there was this major prison being built.
We had seen the walls going up; they were working twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, and yet we were still being told by
the leadership within the prison that the war was over. People like
myself, Ivor, Gerry and other people began discussing these issues.
I wouldn’t include Bobby Sands in this, because Bobby would have
been seen then as a Davy Morley man. So Bobby wasn’t involved.
Bobby was in Cage 11 along with us but he was more into the
cultural end of things and he was running classes in Cage 11
in the end hut. So Ivor, Gerry, myself and others, we decided that Morley
had to be opposed because he had control of all communications
going out of the prison [to the leadership]. Morley saw people like us
as a threat to himself. What he was being told by the leadership on
the outside I do not know. But he saw us as a threat to his leadership
in the prison and he took measures to try and counter us. The way
he did this was to get people who wouldn’t have been known openly
as Davy Morley men to listen in to our conversations and report
back to him. People in Cage 11 were reporting anything they came
across … and the jail became a cauldron of conspiracy, people
listening and reporting back … A whole gang of informers had been
set up and they were usually the worst type of character … set up
by the camp staff to spy on myself, Adams and Bell … When Gerry
arrived in Cage 11, he gave some direction to our opposition … and
actually it was Gerry who planned and co-ordinated the opposition
to Morley. I would have been probably much more anxious, to just
dump Morley over the wire. One of the first things we did was to
campaign to get Bobby Campbell and Jimmy Dempsey out of the
blocks, where Davy Morley had sent them. As time went on, opposition
grew to the Morley regime. It was a very oppressive regime
and, as I say, based on British military practices
.

…
we believed that when myself, Gerry, and Ivor were [put] in
prison, the British government was releasing people from internment
who they believed they could deal with, people like Billy
McKee, Jimmy Drumm, [and] that sort of … conservative type …
People like Davy Morley were being released every other weekend to
go for private talks with the leadership. Jimmy Drumm was allowed
into the prison. A softening up … was taking place and people like
myself and Gerry, specifically Gerry, realised that it had to be
stopped one way or the other. And that’s when we started to conspire
to get rid of the leadership. This leadership was leading us up the
garden path. We saw the hand of the British in this … I believe they
controlled the release scheme so as to allow selected people out …
to get into positions … in the six counties. And right up to the end,
the last people they let out were those … they believed or perceived
as the biggest danger. Those they didn’t want out were people like
Adams, Tom Cahill, people like that. So Gerry was seen as the
person who could best oppose this regime. Morley obviously was
being told this as well. As I say, I had never met Morley before in
my life … He was obviously being briefed by the [leadership] outside
to keep us under control … Davy Morley was not important;
Davy Morley was only … an idiot with a hat and big boots … he
was following orders. Davy Morley was a safe pair of hands … But
things escalated to such a degree on the outside with a sectarian war
going on, with the ceasefire being called, the incident centres being
opened. There were communications from the outside leadership to
the prisoners … every other day, directives telling us that: ‘We have
fought the British to a standstill, the British want out, we are negotiating
with the British now and it’s only a matter of time before the
boats sail out of Belfast Lough.’ They were advising people not to
[make] escape [attempts] because it was only a matter of time
before they’d be released. At the same time there were bombs going
off in the Shankill Road; there were bombs going off in the Falls
Road; there were Protestants getting shot, Catholics getting shot. But
there were no British getting shot. I was, myself, getting more and
more frustrated at the lack of progress we were making [in opposing
Morley] … at one stage I began to voice my objections and my
perception that it was a sell-out, [and] I was arrested by Dickie
O’Neill, Gerry Rooney and Bobby Sands, taken out and threatened
with court-martial for my open dissent towards the leadership, and
given a caution. I was sharing a cubicle with Gerry Adams at the
time and I packed my gear. By this time the INLA had been formed
and had prisoners in Cage 13, and I was heading there; I was going
to leave the Republican movement and join the INLA. They had just
been formed after a split within the Workers’ Party. I was talked out
of it by Gerry and remained. He convinced me that the only way
to defeat these people was to oppose them from within. That was
always the argument, oppose them from within … they would be
quite happy for me to walk away. That was basically the line he gave
me, that they’d be quite happy for me to walk away. But here we
were in this situation; it was very, very demoralising. We then got
the word that we must prepare for civil war and, Jesus Christ … we
had to start training for that possibility … The British were pulling
out and the Loyalists were going to rebel and we had to be prepared
for that – we had to figure out ways of getting out of Long Kesh and
joining the war against the Loyalists because the British weren’t
going to be there. So we were given all these instructions to start
training and soon we were climbing over huts and marching and
drilling as if we were at war. We also had to make survival kits
which consisted of … a pair of laces, hard sweets, polish for your
face for creeping out of the place. Oh, it was so, it was absolutely
fucking crazy, but we had to go along with it
…

[After ten Protestants were killed in South Armagh] I had arguments
with the camp leadership … I put my name to a couple of
letters going out to the army leadership, complaining about the
sectarian turn that the war had taken … and asking for it to be
stopped … I don’t know whether the petitions actually reached the
leadership. Certainly I don’t believe that they reached GHQ or
Army Council level. I think they were probably stopped in Belfast.
But these were communications sent out officially through the
proper lines because if you didn’t go through the lines they were not
even read. If they went through the lines they were supposed to be
officially responded to. We never got any responses
…

At one time, I actually advocated shooting the Belfast leadership,
which Gerry and Ivor were opposed to … at this time we were
getting so frustrated with the direction that the leadership had
taken. I believed it was being manipulated by British Intelligence
because it suited the British at that time. And we could see … quite
clearly from within the prison that the British were allowing this to
take place and encouraging it actually. Even though some people
were getting arrested, the main operators were not getting arrested.
We knew because when people arrived in the Cage they were
debriefed and most of us … knew the names of the individuals on
the outside who were planting the bombs. Most of the people in
Ardoyne knew who they were because [afterwards] they went
straight into drinking clubs and it was quite obvious who they were
…
This sectarian war that the British were able to manipulate the
IRA into was part of the Ulsterisation of security. The RUC were
moved to the front line, slowly. The H-blocks were being built for the
criminalisation part of it. And then, when the British were ready to
move, they knew all the operators, they knew who were planting the
bombs, and they moved against them. There were major round-ups
with people [being] brought in and charged. I remember Brendan
McFarlane
§§
coming in … Bik would not have been a sectarian
bigot and he was arrested for a bomb that was planted, I think, on
the Shankill, the Bayardo Bar that killed … a lot of people … I
remember him being confused, disorientated and deeply depressed
about what he had done because by the time he got to Cage 11, he’d
had time to reflect on that period … he realised by the time he got
to Cage 11 that the British had allowed this sort of thing to take
place. The policy on the outside was that only defensive action
should be taken and British soldiers were no longer targets. Volunteers
on the outside were not allowed to shoot British soldiers but
they were allowed to take action against Loyalists and defensive
action against the RUC. And the incident centres were there meaning
that there was a hotline between the IRA and the British during
all the time of the sectarian bombing campaign and … when
Catholics and Protestants were shooting each other. When the time
came, the British moved against the IRA, closed down the incident
centres, arrested all these involved, moved the RUC up and pulled
the British Army back … We started to hear words like ‘Godfathers’,
‘Chicago-
type killings’. The British sent a guy, Peter Jay, as Ambassador
to America, and he went there to convince the Americans that
this was a sectarian war here and the British were caught in the
middle. The IRA had facilitated this image … by the time Bik and
others like him arrived in the jail, they realised this. That was the
weakness of the leadership at that time, that they were fooled into
that. At the same time we were getting communications from the
outside telling us that the British were withdrawing, that we’re
going through a phase that would probably finish up in a civil-war
situation. Thus all the preparations in the jail, a ridiculous situation
where men were crawling over huts and along the ground at nights
to practise for night-time combat … it was like something out of a
Mel Brooks film, putting survival kits together for the civil war in
which the IRA was going to come up and break into the jail and get
us all out
…