Derry marks 30 years since Devenny
By Deaglán O Coileáin
`Sammy Devenny' - two words. Like `Bloody Sunday'. `Francis Hughes'.
`Long Kesh'. Two words, which have been in my vocabulary for a very
long time. I have no recollection of where I first heard them, or who
spoke them. What I do know is why they are important.
So did 500 other people who crammed into Pilot's Row community centre
in Derry City on Monday night, 19 April - 30 years to the day since
his death at the hands of the RUC.
A video presentation was the first element of the night. Sammy
Devenny's daughter talking in black and white to John Hume in a 1969
RTE documentary. And for the first time I learned the particularly
brutal details that made those two words, Sammy Devenny, so
significant. The video also showed Hume talking to other locals at
the time - yes, advising them not to talk to the RUC and not to hand
over any evidence of their rampage!
Against a backdrop of a painting of Sammy Devenny by his daughter,
his son Harry was determined and honest. ``To the people responsible,
ours was just another Catholic house in the Bog. Once the door opened
they didn't care who they hit. And the litany of lies, the showcase
of inquiries, gave them the one thing that they've used ever since, a
licence to kill.''
He continued: ``The RUC have proved right up to the present that they
can't be reformed, they can't be reshuffled, they can't be given new
uniforms, because they are never going to change. Nothing less than
the disbandment of the RUC is acceptable.''
Paddy Harkin, another man beaten in the Devenny house with Sammy died
on the anniversary of the attack, 19 April 1977, having lain in a
coma for the previous four and a half months after suffering a brain
hemorrhage. Harkin's son Noel said simply, ``These people can never
be allowed to do these things again. they have to be disbanded.''
impromptu history class developed at one stage as John McGuffin
and Joe Quigley formerly of People's Democracy, along with Ivan
Cooper, gave an account of the appalling manner in which information
they collated naming four of the RUC officers, including Inspector
Campbell, was ignored and buried by the subsequent inquiries. Ivan
Cooper summed up the legacy of that experience well. ``Everytime I
have looked at a member of the RUC in the years since, I think of
what happened in the Devenny house that day.''
Also speaking were two Assembly members for Upper Bann, Sinn Fein's
Dr. Dara O'Hagan and the SDLP's Brid Rodgers. Dara's ill-disguised
emotion as she talked about how her friend Rosemary Nelson was
murdered with the collusion and cover-up of the same force that
murdered Sammy Devenny, spoke volumes of her integrity and strength.
Although her party is firmly behind the Good Friday Agreement, Brid
Rodgers personally described the disbandment of the RUC as ``a very
enticing concept.''
A beautiful presentation mirror was presented to the Devenny family
at the end of the evening byt the organisers, The Friends Of `69. But
they too deserve tribute. The atmosphere and the events of the
evening were a poignant reminder of the past and a fitting pathway to
the future. Two words that won't be forgotten - `Sammy Devenny'.
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