Hunger

Our morning correspondent is Brian Keller:

Today the general wake up time for everyone was seven o’clock, because a bus came to pick us up at eight o’clock in the morning to take us to Derry/Londonderry, where we were going to have a tour of the city. Why Derry “Stroke” Londonderry? Catholics call the city Derry and Protestants call the city Londonderry. The bus ride was fun for me, because I got to see the country side, which looked amazing. It was nice to see some of the Irish countryside, which I thought I would see in Belfast, but didn’t. I have always heard of the green pastures and rolling hills in Ireland and finally being able to see them is breathtaking. We were greeted immediately by our tour guide, and Ruairi Ó hEára, who grew up in the Bogside during the Troubles. He has been doing this tour for the Irish Studies students for the past few years. He took us up on the walls and gave us the history of what happened in Derry/Londonderry and towns that surrounded Derry/Londonderry. Derry/Londonderry is divided by the Foyle River which is an important river in Derry/Londonderry because it divides the Catholic and the Protestant communities; it operates as a natural peace wall.

Ruairi gave us a historical background on Derry and why its importance in history. The wall around Derry/Londonderry was under construction from 1613-1618 and was an important defensive structure for the Protestants during the Siege of Derry. We saw St. Columb’s Cathedral which was both a church and a defensive structure, its walls were 6 feet thick and they put cannons on top of the tower. The city was under siege from the Catholic King James II for 105 days. The Mayor of Londonderry wanted to surrender, but the Apprentice Boys didn’t listen to him and shut the gates of the city so the negotiations could not be carried out and the siege began. During the siege of Londonderry the protestants citizens experienced great hardship and hunger. Many were reduced to eating dogs and rats to survive. After 105 days, the Catholic army of King James II gave up the siege and the Protestants won. Every year now the Protestants have a parade in memory of the Apprentice Boys to celebrate their victory.

The second half of the tour focused on more recent history. Again Derry/Londonderry would become a place of great struggle. Ruairi showed us a monument dedicated to Sean Keenan who was a member of the IRA and Citizen Defense Association. Sean Kennan worked hard for equal rights for the Catholics in Northern Ireland and helped turn the Bog Side into an area for Catholics to live in as a community Sean Keenan was killed on duty. Rauiri also told us his experiences in the Bogside with the police brutality and unfair treatment of the Catholic citizens. We looked at another monument set up in dedication to Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers who died in the H-blocks. While we were having a Q and A with Rauiri and his experiences with the IRA, an old lady, who was also looking at the monument, asked him if his father was part of the IRA. It seemed like a harmless question to me because I did not grow up around the troubles, but Ruairi got very offended at her question and told us that an Irishwoman should know better than to ask questions about people’s associations with the IRA. After the incident with the old lady, we proceeded to the museum set up by a brother of one of the victims of Bloody Sunday.

The museum was very moving because they displayed objects worn by the people who were killed in the streets by bloody Sunday. John Flynn was the museum curator and his brother, Micheal Flynn, was killed on Bloody Sunday. John was a very nice guy and told us he was not trying to make us hate the British army, because if I were him I would hate them for killing my brother. He had video evidence and a recording of what happened on the day of Bloody Sunday that proved the British army fired on the peaceful protesters unprovoked. This evidence was used the Second Inquiry, which was John’s main goal; he wanted to make sure the person responsible for killing his brother was put behind bars.

Our afternoon correspondent is Brendan Keaney:

“They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal…Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” – Bobby Sands

This quote is taken out of a page in Bobby Sands’ prison diary. Although some people will not agree with what Bobby Sands’ methods and politics were, there is no doubting that he held a key role in gaining the members of the IRA that were imprisoned their political prisoner status and moving the IRA down a political path. What Bobby said here is that the prisoners involved in the hunger strikes were not criminals, they were Irish patriots that were arrested for their involvement in the IRA.

After getting on a bus and touring Derry/Londonderry with the Irish Studies group and Ruairi Ó hEára, the group and I went to the Museum of Free Derry. The museum was set up by John Kelly to commemorate those who lost their lives on Bloody Sunday. John’s brother, Michael Kelly, was shot and killed on Bloody Sunday by David Cleary, a British soldier. Michael was only a 17-year-old boy participating in his first march. The only reason why Michael was in the march was because his friends wanted him to join along with them. John Kelly introduced us to the museum and told us what happened on Bloody Sunday. According to John Kelly, The Museum of Free Derry was set up as a “people’s museum”. He also made the group aware that everything in the museum belongs to the people. The museum is not owned by the government. John Kelly also shared with us the level of brutality that the Irish endured during British occupation. He talked about how British troops would insert razor blades and other sharp objects into rubber and plastic objects to inflict more pain and deadly harm. John, above anything else, wants Cleary and all the others who killed Catholics on Bloody Sunday to be prosecuted. He stated that it was obviously premeditated, and an example of this premeditation is that Cleary also killed 3 other rioters in Derry during the civil rights march.

In an inquiry regarding the events that occurred on Bloody Sunday, Lord Widgery concluded that the British troops were fired at first, and so they did not do any wrong in firing at the crowd of rioters in a march for civil rights. Lord Widgery’s inquiry was later referred to as the “Widgery whitewash” because Lord Widgery covered up that the British did not have a right to fire at the crowd. A second inquiry, opened by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, came to a different conclusion: the British soldiers unjustifiably opened fire on the peaceful protestors since they were not fired upon. He said that when Prime Minister David Cameron released the results last year it was a moment of healing.

After visiting the Museum of Free Derry, we hopped back on our bus and went to the Felon’s Club in Belfast. The Felon’s Club is an association of Irish Republican ex-prisoners who have committed crimes against the British Crown in the pursuit of Irish freedom. It is basically a VFW hall for former IRA members. At The Felon’s Club, we watched a movie called H3, which was about the hunger strikes, and we listened to two former hunger-strikers named Seanna Walsh and Pat Sheehan. The movie was very horrifying because it portrayed what the actual conditions were like in the H block prisons that the hunger strikers stayed in. The movie was so disturbing to Seanna that he had to leave and come back after the film was over because it brought back horrible memories of what happened to his other comrades on hunger strike. Seanna Walsh was a political prisoner for twenty-one years on three separate occasions, all of which were for being involved with the IRA. He now works with a bunch of political ex-prisoners from the H-blocks. Pat Sheehan told a story about when he was about sixteen-years-old, someone came knocking at his door late at night, and asked for him. The man fired shots, and soon after, Pat’s family moved because they lived in a loyalist neighborhood where the only Catholic family there was the Sheehan family. Pat enlisted in the IRA a year later. Pat also served time in prison for his involvement in the IRA. While being imprisoned, Pat and Seanna both missed going to university and obtaining degrees, and as a result, it was difficult finding a job when they came out of prison. As Pat Sheehan stated, “It was just as hard outside of prison as in, and if anybody thought life would be easier back home, they would not survive.” After the Felon’s Club, we went for a nice gourmet dinner at a nearby McDonalds, and following our delicious meal, we took taxis to go back to our dorms at Queen’s University to reflect on our day and then get some sleep.