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

by Ed Moloney

  Like other Catholic religious orders in Ireland and around the world, the Poor Sisters of Nazareth and the De La Salle Christian Brothers in Kircubbin have both been embroiled in scandals arising out of allegations from former residents of physical and mental cruelty, of neglect and sexual molestation. Legal suits against the Poor Sisters have been filed as far apart as Aberdeen in Scotland and San Diego in California, where in 2007 former Nazareth residents won part of a $198 million settlement against the local Catholic hierarchy. One elderly Poor Sister from Scotland was convicted in 2000 of cruelty, and former inmates of the Scottish homes have been financially compensated for their ordeals. Former residents of the Belfast home are similarly seeking redress for alleged ill-treatment through the courts. The De La Salle Order in Kircubbin has similarly been caught up in scandal. The home was extensively investigated by the RUC in the mid-1980s after allegations surfaced of physical and sexual abuse and a government report published in 1984 strongly criticised management at the home for employing abusers. In 2001 two former residents were awarded £15,000 each in out-of-court compensation for sexual abuse committed when they were sixteen years old and charges were filed but dropped against a former principal at the home alleging buggery and other offences.46

  Frances Reilly was two years old when her mother left her and her two sisters with the Poor Sisters in Belfast and ran off to England. That was in 1956 and many years afterwards, when she read about the court case in Scotland, she decided to write her life story, a heart-rending account of physical, mental and sexual abuse, which was published in January 2009.47 It was a story, she claims, no Catholics in Belfast at the time would believe. What makes her story relevant to events in Cage 5 of Long Kesh in 1973 is that she and Patrick Crawford would have been residents at the Belfast home at around the same time – albeit in segregated sections. There is no evidence that Patrick Crawford experienced the sort of physical and sexual abuse that Frances Reilly claims happened to her – nor that he was ever abused at Kircubbin – but it is impossible to read her book and not wonder if he did.

  As it is, the story of his life and death has to be one of the saddest of the Troubles: abandoned at just eleven days old, he was destined never to know a mother’s love. Instead he was brought up by nuns and brothers, some of whom allegedly ill-treated those in their care, and when he reached twenty-two, his life was brutally ended, hanged in jail by the IRA on disputed charges, and then the truth about his death covered up for over three decades.

  How or why Patrick Crawford joined the IRA are questions that cannot now be answered, but it seems that he may have become a member not long before he was interned. He and seven or eight other young men were stopped on the border near Newry by British paratroopers as they attempted to cross to the Republic in a van in April 1973. Their story was that they were on a fishing trip but when the soldiers searched their vehicle they could find only one fishing rod. It looked as if they were really en route to an IRA training camp, and if so this suggests that Crawford was a relatively new recruit. He was arrested, questioned and then sent to Long Kesh.

  After Crawford’s death, the IRA in Long Kesh had described him as one of the most liked of prison comrades but it seemed this feeling was not shared by the organisation outside the prison. Although an IRA member, he was not given a Republican funeral. There was no Tricolour on his coffin or guard of honour around his cortège and there were no crowds lining the streets around Milltown cemetery to pay respects to or merely gawk in curiosity at this man whom the British had allegedly driven to suicide in Long Kesh. An eyewitness account of the event, given recently to the author by a Sinn Fein member who attended the burial, described a funeral that had been shunned by West Belfast Republicans:

  There were just a few people [there], a couple of Nazareth nuns at it, a hearse followed by a single car, that was all. Just members of the family who had taken him in and perhaps one or two of their neighbours and friends. There was nobody from the organisation at all, not one single person. I thought it would be a Republican funeral. None of the general public who come out to look at Republican funerals turned out. There wasn’t a soul when I went down. It was really a sad funeral, it was so small. I’ll never forget it. I was the only Republican who went. I was the only one there I knew.

  Years later, this Sinn Fein activist was told the truth about Patrick Crawford’s death by a former IRA prisoner: ‘I must have been the only one in West Belfast who didn’t know,’ the source now says.48

  Inquests on victims of the Troubles have often been the occasion for controversy and further conflict. Juries are limited in the verdicts they can deliver, something Nationalists have long believed is intended to spare the police and military authorities deserved scrutiny. They cannot make a finding such as ‘unlawful killing’, while inquests into some high-profile victims, such as people killed in disputed circumstances by the police or Army or where security-force collusion with paramilitaries has been alleged, have still to be held years after the deaths occurred. The inquest on Paddy Joe Crawford happened with remarkable speed. On Friday, 15 June 1973, just twelve days after his lifeless body had been discovered in Cage 5, a jury sitting in Hillsborough courthouse, a few miles from Long Kesh, delivered a verdict in the Coroner’s Court saying that Crawford had ‘died by his own act’, echoing the prison service’s statement hours after his hanging. His inquest file, provided to the author on foot of a Freedom of Information request, contains no evidence that the authorities harboured suspicions about the way he died or that anything approaching a vigorous investigation of the death had taken place.

  Crawford was, his autopsy report said, a young man of ‘strong, muscular build’ and was six feet tall and healthy. He was wearing a blue T-shirt, a green V-necked pullover and a pair of denims, in the back pocket of which was a plastic comb. An RUC Inspector called James Black said that his body was hanging by a linen rope, apparently torn from a mattress cover lying on the floor near by, fixed to an iron strut which was attached to the wall of the hut, some ten feet from the floor. Directly underneath the strut were two plastic chairs with boot marks on one of them and near by a steel locker lying on its side. Inspector Black surmised that Crawford had placed one of the chairs on top of the locker and climbed up to secure the linen rope to the strut. A pair of boots, thought to be Crawford’s, were sitting in the centre of the floor and his coat was draped over one of the chairs. There is nothing in the policeman’s deposition to suggest that any check was made on the boots to determine if they were Crawford’s or if they matched the marks on one of the plastic chairs. Nor were any of Crawford’s fellow prisoners questioned.

  The IRA Commander of Cage 5, whose name has been redacted in the released documents, refused to give evidence at the inquest but on the evening of the hanging he provided a handwritten statement to a senior prison officer which purported to explain why Crawford might have taken his own life. Along with this, the IRA leader handed over a note found in Crawford’s personal belongings which could be read as a suicide letter. The IRA Commander’s account is peppered with anecdotes that reinforced the view that Crawford was behaving irrationally before his death, including a suggestion that he might have killed himself to put a spotlight on conditions in Long Kesh. There is no evidence in the inquest documents, however, that the police attempted to interview the IRA Commander about his statement or any of the inmates mentioned by him, while the question of why the IRA had possession of Crawford’s personal effects instead of the detectives investigating the death was left unasked.

  The IRA Commander’s statement read:

  The day before his death he made a number of gestures to his friends in Hut 28 that he might be leaving them soon. The first gesture he made was when he gave his pipe to a friend and told him to keep it as he would not need it any more. Then in a conversation with his friends he started talking about Long Kesh not getting enough publicity and what it needed was a death to highlight the place. Later on that night he was walking round the cage with a
friend and told him that nobody in the cage would talk to him and that they were all against him. This of course is wrong as he got on well with everyone. According to some of the men in Hut 28 he was acting very strange over the past few days, but at no time did anyone think he was about to hang himself. At about 9.00 o’clock that night he went round to the workshop to work on a plaque and he was the last one to leave that night. According to a number of other men he was in the workshop every day for a week before his death and spent long hours in it for reasons unknown. On the morning of his death the Hut O/C woke him up at the normal rising time of 12.00 o’clock and he told the Hut O/C that today would be the last time he would be wakening him. When the O/C asked him what he was talking about, he told him to forget about it. The last time he was seen alive was about 1.55 that day when he was seen walking towards the workshop. At about 2.30 two men went to the workshop to learn music and they found him hanging by a rope from the first heater on the left when you enter the workshop. They then informed me and I ran round and found him hanging there. I then ran to the gate and told the Officer to get a Doctor as a man had hanged himself. When I got back the men and the Officers in the cage had him cut down and tried to help him but it was to [sic] late as he was dead. In his personal belongings he left a note that read, ‘When I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep and if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless everybody. P.J.A. Crawford’. This is all the information I can find. Signed —— O/C Cage 5.49

  In the context of all that was said in the IRA statement, the two-page note found in Patrick Crawford’s belongings could be regarded as the last words of someone who is about to kill himself. Except that the part quoted by the IRA Commander, which has the word ‘POET’ written beside it, is actually a well-known bedtime prayer said by Catholics, something that he would almost certainly have been taught by the nuns in Nazareth House, and evidence only of a Catholic upbringing, certainly not of suicidal tendencies. It is written at the top of the first page, which is headlined ‘Notes’, and underneath the prayer is listed the sort of information that might be given out during a geography or general studies class: a list of the counties of Ireland, its provinces, the two capital cities and some historical sites in Dublin. On the second page Crawford had made a list of precious stones and the countries whose soccer teams played in the 1970 World Cup tournament. All this prompts a question: why would Crawford add all this to a suicide note? It is of course the signature that makes it look as if self-destruction was on Paddy Joe Crawford’s mind when the poem cum prayer was written. After all, suicide notes are always signed, or at least that is what many people believe. But there are problems with this as well. The signature is written at the side of the prayer, not directly underneath, which is where it should have been placed. The line immediately underneath the prayer is where the list of Irish counties begins and the signature seems to have been written by a different pen, as if it was added later. The question is by whom: Paddy Joe Crawford or one of those who hanged him?

  It has proved impossible to answer that question and the authenticity or otherwise of Paddy Joe Crawford’s signature remains undecided. To determine properly whether the same or a different hand wrote his name, the original note would have to be examined and the signature expertly compared to other writing on the paper. The inquest file released by the Northern Ireland Court Service is a photocopy and, according to one forensic expert consulted by the author, is useless for this purpose. Only the original copy, which lies in the Court Service’s archive, can tell the full story and permission to release the document to the NI Forensic Laboratory in Carrickfergus was denied. For the moment, the truth remains locked away in the file.

  The real story of Patrick Crawford’s sad and miserable death was for decades an open but never admitted secret among many in the Provo community. His hanging was witnessed by several prisoners and, through them, Paddy Joe Crawford’s murder was known about widely, albeit only by Republican activists. Yet for some thirty-five years they kept it hidden from the rest of the world. Now, thanks to Brendan Hughes, a member of the Belfast leadership when the order to kill him was sent into the jail, the truth about Patrick Crawford’s harrowing end can be told.

  Patrick Crawford was, well, I don’t even believe he was a tout. He broke during interrogation and then gave intelligence and information to his interrogators. He was then interned and he was put in Cage 5. He was executed by the IRA in the prison; he was hanged. And the order was given by Gerry Adams … I believed for a long time that it was Ivor [Bell] but it wasn’t … There was no purpose to it. The only reason that you execute someone is [to make] an example and [create] a deterrent to others. To hang someone who broke and then deny it and say he hanged himself was brutal, brutal murder. [During] that period I remember so many … going into the cages, kids who had broken … When other people broke they were just sent to Coventry. No one spoke to them. They were put in a small hut of their own. It was a brutal regime. And that’s the sort of mentality that brought about the death of Crawford. [If he had lived] Pat Crawford probably would have been on the blanket** as well. I mean, I know so many of them who are grown men now. They were brought into the IRA, they were given a weapon, they were given a bomb, they went out and they did the job well. When they were arrested by the RUC, the Special Branch, or whatever, [and] brought into a room, beaten, interrogated and tortured … some of them broke. What do you expect? You don’t hang someone who is going through a war. I mean, if every American soldier or British soldier was hanged for breaking during interrogation by the Japanese or by the Nazis, there’d [have been] an awful lot of deaths. I had this understanding because I recruited so many of these young lads. They went out and they did what they were told to do, but they were never trained in anti-interrogation [techniques] or how not to break when they were caught. So I had a lot of sympathy for people like Pat Crawford, and others. And I know so many others, like —— and so forth, who was ostracised in the jail, who was recruited into the IRA when he was fourteen, and was very, very good at operations. There were loads of others, young ones, and some of them broke.

  Two people, both of them close to Paddy Joe Crawford, have for years harboured doubts and suspicions about his death. One of them is Father Matt Wallace, who told the author, ‘I remember going to the inquest and it was a routine thing, that he died by his own hand. I was so young and stupid I didn’t even question it at that time but I was never satisfied that Paddy Joe did take his own life. I argued that he was in an institution all his life so Long Kesh would have been easier for him than for other young men at the time because he … knew nothing else except institutional life.’50

  The other is Gerry McCann, a fellow orphan and resident at the same time in both the Nazareth and De La Salle homes, although McCann was six years younger: ‘Paddy Joe was one of the older boys and he would be like a protector for me. If you were being bullied as a five-year-old Paddy Joe would have been there for me and I always got on well with him. He was a bubbly, outgoing person, out for a bit of craic but a soft, gentle person. His very presence would lift the atmosphere, full of spontaneous laughter and a teller of jokes. He was a tower of strength to those who knew him well.’ Gerry McCann had suspicions ‘from day one’ that Paddy Joe had been killed in Long Kesh: ‘My gut feeling was that he had been taken out,’ he told the author. But for over thirty years he kept his doubts to himself: ‘I was afraid of going into something that would burn my hands. I was a wee bit gullible [back in 1973] and only later did I realise that this was a minefield.’ McCann made a success of his life and now manages a golf club in Belfast. He got married and had a son and as his boy approached his thirtieth year, Gerry McCann felt the need to tell his life story and so he began writing a book which he hopes one day will be published. It was then that he decided to try to find out what really happened to Paddy Joe Crawford, a mission that would send him knocking at Sinn Fein’s door.

  In January 2008, Gerry McCann contacted Ge
rry Adams via the Sinn Fein website to ask for a meeting and, on 7 March, he and the Sinn Fein President got together at the party’s offices on the Falls Road to discuss Paddy Joe Crawford’s untimely death. While Adams’s role in ordering Crawford’s killing is open to question, there seems little doubt that the Belfast Brigade staff, of which Adams was the leading member, did play a central part in the events. But like Jean McConville’s family before him, Gerry McCann met a wall of denial from Gerry Adams. ‘The meeting was very cordial,’ recalled Gerry McCann. ‘I gave him a working document with questions. Was Paddy Joe an IRA Volunteer, which I knew he was, and Adams said he wasn’t. I didn’t believe he took his own life at the time and I still believe that he didn’t take his own life and I told Gerry that. His reply was that under no circumstances was he killed by his own people.’ Adams told McCann that he wasn’t in Long Kesh at that time and had no personal experience of the event but he would try to contact people who were and they might be able to tell him more.

  The matter rested there but nothing happened for five months until McCann contacted Sinn Fein to ask when Adams would deliver on his promise. After that he got his second meeting, not with Gerry Adams but with Bobby Storey, who was a seventeen-year-old internee in Cage 6, next door to Paddy Joe Crawford’s cage in June 1973. Bobby Storey is, as Gerry McCann put it, ‘Gerry Adams’s right-hand man’, named in the House of Commons by the former Unionist MP David Burnside as the then Director of IRA Intelligence and the alleged moving force behind some of the IRA’s more spectacular operations in the last years of the peace process.51 Among the many tasks Storey has undertaken for the Sinn Fein leadership was handling the delicate issue of the disappeared, in particular the potentially explosive case of Jean McConville. As Adams had done, Bobby Storey denied any IRA hand in Crawford’s death: ‘I asked him’, recalled McCann, ‘was Paddy Joe taken out by his own people and Bobby’s response was decisive and direct: “Under no circumstances could this tragedy be attached to the movement or any inmates.”’ Gerry Adams had told Gerry McCann that Paddy Joe Crawford wasn’t an IRA Volunteer but the Sinn Fein President’s right-hand man had a different answer: ‘Storey said he was,’ Gerry McCann recalled, ‘which raises the question why there were no Republican trappings at his funeral if he had committed suicide. It beggars belief.’52