From the cages of Long Kesh in the 1970s, to the lecture halls and classrooms of NUI Galway this century, a love of writing and a passionate belief in the importance of education has been central in the life of Paddy McMenamin.
From membership of the Provisional IRA, to car factory worker, to student, then teacher, and now published author, all is chronicled in Paddy’s autobiography, From Armed Struggle To Academia, which will be launched in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, tomorrow, Friday February 25.
Originally from the Turf Lodge area of West Belfast, Paddy is now based in Galway, and has been living in Oranmore since 2005. So what prompted him to write his life’s story?
“I’ve always had a grá for writing going way back. I’ve always loved English literature,” Paddy tells me, during our Tuesday afternoon interview, “but I felt about the seventies, about Belfast, that thing about wars, that it’s the generals and the politicians who write about it, not so much those who fought. I felt there was a need for ordinary people to express themselves and say what it was like. That was always in my mind, and my partner, Mary, encouraged me to just write it down."
Pre-Troubles Belfast
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Photo:- Mike Shaughnessy
Paddy’s memories of life in pre-Troubles Belfast are fond ones. “I nearly compare my book to Kenneth Branagh’s new film, Belfast,” he says. He recalls going to watch Irish League matches with Protestant friends, all of them supporting Glentoran. “It’s 90 per cent Loyalist supporters, and about 10/15 of us used to go to the matches,” he says. “They all knew we were wee Catholic kids, never once did anybody say ‘Boo!’. Sometimes when they started singing ‘The Sash My Father Wore’, some of the young Protestant lads would say, ‘Stop, the young guys are here.’”
Tensions though, were always present under the surface. “I don’t think anybody wants violence,” says Paddy, “and it didn’t happen for 50 years. I always think about it and I give talks to young people in NUIG, yet within 12 months in the late 1960s we were in full scale street resistance and then armed struggle. It’s like Cyprus, Gaza, Aden, Yugoslavia, where it was always under the surface. In the end, when it opened up, all the things were there.”
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Photo:- Mike Shaughnessy
Since the formation of the Northern Ireland state, Catholics had been discriminated against in housing and employment; had their voting rights seriously limited; while a system of gerrymandering ensured a permanent Unionist majority in Stormont. In 1968, Catholics, and liberal Unionist allies, began to challenge this, and a civil rights movement emerged asking that Northern Irish Catholics have access to the same rights enjoyed by any other citizen of the United Kingdom.
The backlash, led and stoked by Ian Paisley, among others, was ferocious. Civil Rights marchers at Burntollet in October 1968 were attacked and savagely beaten by the RUC and loyalist mobs. In August 1969, following rabble rousing and fear mongering by Ian Paisley, loyalist mobs attacked Nationalist areas of Belfast, burning entire streets, and sending people fleeing from their homes.
Joining the IRA
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It was around this period that Paddy became a member of the IRA. “I left school at 15, and within a couple of weeks, a young man approached me and showed me an article in the paper,” says Paddy. “The Loyalists had planted a few bombs but it was blamed on the IRA. He said, ‘What do you think of that?’ I said I didn’t know. He said, ‘I can bring you along to a meeting and people will explain why things are the way they are.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but he was recruiting for the Fianna, the Republican youth movement.
“I went along, met a few people, they asked me if I could recruit a few more, so I recruited a lot of my football mates. We became the local Fianna unit. On August 14, the night before the Loyalists burnt The Falls down, we had a weapons training lecture and one of the head guys told us the British Army would be sent in within a couple of days. We were out on the streets of The Falls doing what we could do, and you know what happened in August 1969. The Loyalists burnt Cooper Street, Bombay Street, Dover Street. The IRA was a very small group at the time. We were manning the barricades, so I became involved in the Republican movement then.
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Cage 18, Long Kesh, 1973 Paddy (right ) and Micky McMullan.
“After August 1969 to Easter 1971 there was a lull. The British Army came in. There was very little trouble in Nationalist areas. There was a wee bit of a welcome for the British Army, there was talk about giving them tea and buns, but it might only have been half a dozen women. After the six month honeymoon period, the British Army became, along with the RUC and the UDR, just another weapon of the state.
“The IRA had the split and became the Officials and the Provisionals. Most of my mates joined the Official IRA, a few of us went towards the Provisionals. A lot of our friends declined. At the time, we thought everybody would join, but when you look back it wasn’t the case. That wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t for everybody.
“In 1970 there was The Falls curfew. We got out of the area just before the British sealed it off, and there were six killed that night, but the Officials and Provisionals were organising behind the scenes, involved in defending The Falls and the Short Strand.”
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In Cage 10, Long Kesh, 1975. Paddy on the right, standing.
Paddy also remembers strong, and very active support among Belfast’s working class Nationalist community, for the IRA. “It was massive,” he says. “Contrary to everything you hear, especially down here, it was massive. You felt that support from everybody. If the Brits were chasing you a wee woman would open the door.
The wee old women kept guns in their houses, helped people on the run. When the riots were going on, women would put out barrels of water with vinegar in them, so if the CS gas was coming over you and you were choking, you could splash this vinegar doused water over you and it would give relief.
“It felt like a whole community resistance against what was happening. Where we lived and in the Bogside, Dungiven, and South Armagh, Stabane, and every Nationalist area, it was the same.”
‘Nor meekly serve my time’
As a member of a paramilitary organisation, time in prison was inevitable, and on New Year’s Eve, 1971, Paddy was arrested by members of The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and taken to Castleregh for interrogation, before being transferred to the Maidstone prison ship.
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Long Kesh, Cage 10, 1975. Paddy is second left, front row.
He was released in May 1972 as part of the ceasefire between the IRA and the British, but after that broke down, Paddy went on active service again, and next time was sent to Long Kesh. It was here his passion for education and writing was truly re-ignited.
“Republicans have a tradition going back to the Fenians in the 1860s, when we go into gaol, there are two things: One is to educate yourself, the other is to escape,” says Paddy. “Every day we were walking around the yard, looking for a weak link. That’s a given. That’s part of your thing. You are still a volunteer, and looking for a way to escape.
“Education is the other thing. We were very disciplined. We’d be in a cage of 80 people, three huts, one hut would be a library. People would send us books, and we’d have Chairman Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Castro, Michael Collins, Tom Barry. For me, that was my thing. I’d always loved reading, and I read everything. We’d have lectures in Irish History and world history in the afternoon.
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“We also had a Cage paper/newsheet. I became editor in 1974 and learned to type on an old black typewriter. There were eight pages and we’d get people to write articles, mostly about what was happening, but there would be a sports page, an Irish language page, a history page.
“I have 12 of them, they survived Long Kesh and were smuggled out into Belfast, and since then they have been to Donegal and are now with me in Galway, and NUIG are interested in adding them to the special collection for students to see.”
A Galway education
In From Armed Struggle To Academia, Paddy details his reasons for leaving the IRA. “There was no guilt. I talked to people in the Army Council, and contrary to what people think, you can just actually walk away, and I did,” he says.
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Photo:- Mike Shaughnessy
He remained active in Sinn Féin during the Hunger Strikes, but found politics “wasn’t for me”. In the years after, Paddy would work in a car factory, but when the factory closed down in 2003, and he took redundancy, that long desire to write, and his interest in education, had a new outlet.
In 2005, Paddy entered NUI Galway, eventually completing BAs in English and History. He then spent an Erasmus year in Malta, did the TEFL course, and, over five summers, worked in one of the many language schools on the Mediterranean Island.
In 2009 Paddy did his teacher training in Garbally College, and qualified as a secondary school teacher in 2010, before returning to NUIG in 2011 to complete a Masters in History. He worked with the State exam commission, and for five years marked Junior Cert papers and invigilated at sittings of the Leaving Cert.
“I got a chance when I passed the Eleven-Plus exam and went to St Mary’s, a Catholic Grammar school. I was the only one of my mates who passed it,” says Paddy. “I was doing well there, but at the end of second year, I don’t know, I lost my focus.
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Photo:- Mike Shaughnessy
“Education is everything. My mum was an innocent wee country woman, left school at 13, used to walk to school in her bare feet, but she valued education. When I passed the Eleven-Plus, she was so proud of me. When I left school early she was disappointed.
“I believe every young person deserves a place in university. I still don’t like the stats where 90 per cent in Ballymun don’t go to Trinity, but 90 per cent in Ballsbridge do. I think that’s unfair. I know there are different reasons, but my grandchildren in Donegal, the first of them are now in third level, and I was the first in our family ever to go to third level. You can’t emphasise enough how education informs us. Going into third level gives you a path in life, a direction. It delivers you into the good jobs, and it’s also good for the mind, it's good for the soul, and you have to put the effort in. Education is everything.”
From Armed Struggle To Academia (Rivers Run Free Press ) will be launched in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Middle Street, on Friday February 25 at 6.30pm. The main speaker will be NUI Galway academics John Cunningham and Mary Harris. Admission is free and all are welcome.
