by Ed Moloney
When I was arrested along with Gerry and Tom Cahill, I was caught with some money stolen in a robbery from Hughes tool factory and all the notes had been marked. I didn’t expect to be charged but all of a sudden, in 1974, I was brought down from Cage 10 to court, given two-and-a-half years for handling stolen money. That was me now a sentenced prisoner. Cage 10 was used to house remand prisoners who they wanted out of Crumlin Road so they put me back in Cage 11 instead … I wanted to get into Cage 11 [anyway] because I knew a lot of the boys [there] like Big Juice McMullan, Wee Danny Lennon, Tom Boy Louden, Bobby Sands, people I had been interned with. There was a much more down-to-earth sort of atmosphere in Cage 11, something similar to what internment was like. It was a relief when I was arrested the first time and interned. It was the same sort of relief getting from Cage 10 to Cage 11 where I felt much more comfortable among people I’d spent time with before. By this time it was late 1974, early 1975 … Gerry Adams was taken out and sentenced to eighteen months for an attempted escape and returned to Cage 11 along with Tom Cahill.
Hughes and Adams had been reunited and although Bell was in Cage 9, from time to time the three could talk ‘at the wire’, as it was called: holding conversations through the wire fences during recreation. It was from this point on that the three began analysing events, devising ways of spreading their subversive gospel and plotting their opposition to the Davy Morley prison leadership, and through that opposing those they regarded as being ultimately responsible for the ceasefire. Hughes was eager to tell Adams and Bell all about the bizarre affair in Crumlin Road involving Heatherington and McGrogan, but the conversations quickly turned to the ceasefire and what to do about it. Their critique was grounded in the view that the British wanted to entice the IRA into a long debilitating ceasefire. That, they believed, is what the British had tried to do in 1972 and now they had a second chance. The evidence was there, in their eyes, firstly in the manipulation of internee releases to facilitate the ceasefire and secondly, in the false if ambiguous assurances the British had given the Army Council about their intention to withdraw. If the British wanted to leave, they asked, why were they building a new prison beside the Long Kesh camp? Then there was the willingness of the IRA to join a tit-for-tat sectarian war with Loyalists, singling out Protestants for assassination in retaliation for a wave of Loyalist killing. The South Armagh IRA’s killing of ten Protestant workers dragged off a bus and machine-gunned to death in January 1976 and claimed in the name of a non-existent organisation, the ‘Catholic Reaction Force’, was particularly chilling example. The same was happening in Belfast and, in that instance, they blamed Billy McKee; he had become the new Belfast Commander and this was happening on his watch. That was a second strike against him. Not only did this suit Britain’s efforts to portray the Troubles abroad as an unreasonable sectarian quarrel that they were trying bravely to referee, they argued, but it also diverted IRA resources away from fighting the British, the real enemy in the trio’s eyes. They began recruiting converts to their cause but, remarkably, one figure they didn’t even try to win over, because of his intense loyalty to Morley and Billy McKee, was a prisoner who would later become an icon of the Adams era: Bobby Sands.
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 t
he 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 …
Brendan Hughes’s story of his experiences with Seamus Loughran and Jimmy Drumm during his brief bout of freedom had clinched the matter as far as Gerry Adams and Ivor Bell were concerned. This was damning evidence that the leadership had conspired behind their backs to produce the ceasefire and that steeled the three in their determination to oppose David Morley. But there were other factors at work. The trio regarded themselves as much more politically radical than the older generation which currently led the IRA. But in one respect Hughes and Bell differed from Adams and that was in their attitude towards Catholicism; in that respect Adams had more in common with the leadership.
… these people [the McKee–O Bradaigh–O Connail leadership] were still living in the 1940s. They still had the mentality of the 1940s generation. People like Billy were about protecting the Catholic people whereas we were developing into … a revolutionary organisation that wanted much more than that. I mean, who gave a fuck if Loyalists blew up a Catholic church … we weren’t there to protect the Catholic church, we were there to bring about a united Ireland. The old Brigade attitude was: ‘We must protect the Catholic religion; we must protect our faith.’ We were developing into an organisation that really didn’t care about such things. Certainly I was, and so was Ivor. Ivor was anti-religion. Gerry was still very much in the religious mould, but a modernised religious mould. And to this day I’m not sure exactly where his thoughts were. I mean, I shared a cubicle with him, and when I was reading Che Guevara and Fidel Castro speeches, he was saying his rosary. There was always that sort of contradiction: here he was a revolutionary socialist, yet he was very much involved in his religion and his Catholicism which conflicted [with] what we were trying to achieve. But I think because of the friendship and the comradeship that had built up [between us] during the early 1970s most of these apparent contradictions were put aside because we were fighting a war. And the main thing was to fight the war.
Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams and Tom Cahill were by mid1975 living in the smaller hut, the so-called half-hut, in Cage 11. Many internees and sentenced men such as Bobby Sands had been released but had gone back into the IRA, been arrested – in Sands’s case during an attempted bombing – and were now back in Long Kesh, some in Cage 11, as sentenced prisoners. Opposition to David Morley’s leadership of the camp, and to the Army Council outside, was expressed in three ways. Adams gave lectures and held debates about the ceasefire strategy and other political topics; Ivor Bell stood against Morley in the election for Camp Commander and Adams wrote heavily coded critiques of the leadership strategy for Republican News under the ‘Brownie’ byline. The ‘Brownie’ articles allowed Adams to make veiled criticism of the ceasefire via comparisons to other, similar phases in the history of Irish Republicanism when a cessation was a prelude to defeat or decline. He also introduced concepts that would later define the era of his leadership, among them the idea of a long war, the espousal of lef
t-wing ideas, and the need for a fusion of the IRA’s military and political strategies which implied a much higher profile for Sinn Fein. He also introduced the idea of ‘active abstentionism’, which was a clever way of both defending and subverting abstentionism by advocating IRA involvement in creating alternative governing structures at community level. In this and the emphasis Adams gave the need to relate to the political and economic needs of the community from which the IRA sprang can be seen traces of the subsequent political and electoral strategy of Sinn Fein. In later years, during the peace process, Adams would deny, through spokesmen, that he was the sole author of the ‘Brownie’ articles, claiming that others in Long Kesh had shared the byline. The reason was that in one article ‘Brownie’ had spoken of his membership of the IRA, something that in the era of the peace process Adams was eager to deny. But Brendan Hughes told Boston College that there was only one author of the ‘Brownie’ articles during this time: they ‘were totally his baby, totally Gerry’s baby’:
What was important about [standing in] the election [for Camp Commander] was that if you did not get into some sort of position in the prison then you didn’t have a voice on the outside – you had to go through army communication lines. There was no such thing as allowing an ordinary Volunteer … to write to the leadership straight from prison. You had to go through the lines. So if you had something to say, it had to be sent first to the leadership within the prison and they … would send it out. You could not do it yourself. There was one way around that and Gerry was able to find it … by writing the Brownie articles. His name was never on the articles but the Brownie articles being published in Republican News at the time provided a way around that. And there were people on the outside who … still had enough influence to get these articles printed in Republican News, people like Ted Howell¶¶ …