Kevin Delaney
He was so thin, with his hair cut short he resembled a young Mahatma
Ghandi on hunger strike. When he let it grow long his wild unruly
mane earned him the nickname `an straillean' (the mop).
Yet frail, humble and self-effacing to an extreme, he was a giant in
his community - feared by the British as much as he was loved by his
people in Ballymurphy.
His name was Kevin Delaney, `Dee' to his friends and when he was
killed on active service on Thursday 17 January 1980 at the age of 26
his reputation as a republican revolutionary and his contribution to
`the struggle' was a legend.
The other day I came across an old photo of him supping
poteen in the company of Bobby Sands, `Tomboy' Loudon, Paddy Molloy,
`Jack the Giant' Toman, et al, at an impromptu session in the Long
Kesh cages and it shook me to realise that it was almost 20 years
since his death.
I had been working on An Phoblacht at the time and was preparing the
Clár for that weekend's Ard Fheis in Dublin when I received an urgent
phone call from Jim Gibney in Belfast. I had heard news of a bomb
explosion on a train outside Lisburn and when Jim said, `There's bad
news', I knew before he had the time to continue that Dee had been
killed.
The Ard Fheis gathering was stunned. We thought of his young pregnant
wife and baby daughter. We thought of `Ma' Delaney who had already
suffered badly with the internment of her three eldest daughters and
imprisonment of her sons. We thought of old `Dal', Dee's father, who
himself had spent time in the Long Kesh Cages with us. We thought of
the civilians accidentally killed in the explosion and of Dee's
comrade who was critically injured.
We thought of Dee. He had joined the Fianna Eireann when barely out
of primary school. He joined the IRA and trained as an explosives
engineer and along with Jim Bryson, Tommy `Todler' Tolan and his
close friend Paddy Mulvenna and many more nameless yet no-less
courageous volunteers instilled fear in the British forces occupying
Ballymurphy.
Arrested at eighteen he immersed himself in the education programmes
in Long Kesh, politicising, debating, studying, honing his
gut-reaction to the injustices of British rule into an articulated
and measured understanding of the Irish revolution. He was a
visionary, advocating a policy of politicisation throughout the
resistance struggle and pioneering republican involvement in street
politics.
On release from prison in the late 1970s he immediately set about
putting his theories into practice within his local community.
I had been released around the same time and I can never forget how
buoyant he was during this period. He was so self-confident in the
contribution he was making. Bearing in mind the antagonisms that
existed at that time towards republican activists `involving
themselves in politics' it was not easy for him. Dee, however,
remained undaunted.
Many times since his death I, along with contemporaries of his,
reflected on how proud he would have been with the way republican
street politics have progressed since then.
On the Saturday night of the Ard Fheis, still stunned by the news of
his death, some of us tried to cheer ourselves up with reminiscences
of the lighter moments in his life.
The story most talked about was the incident at the previous Ard
Fheis when Dee, a little the worse for wear after too many pints of
Dublin Guinness, happened upon the creme-de-la-creme of the Sinn Fein
Ard Chomhairle partaking of a meal in a well known hotel. In typical
Dee fashion he rounded on them for their petit bourgeois delusions,
singling out the `Southerners' and calling them `long-rifles'.
The dinner party unfortunately did not see the joke and a very
hungover Dee awoke next morning to find himself suspended from the
republican movement and facing threatened retribution on his return
to Belfast.
Suffice to say his Northern comrades recognised the `culture' of the
Belfast `insult' and had him reinstated when the atmosphere calmed.
Under pressure from the British the Catholic Church attempted to deny
the Delaney family their right to bury their son as a republican. His
coffin draped in the Irish flag would not be permitted into the
Corpus Christi church.
Fr Des Wilson interceded however, exposed their hypocrisy and
officiated himself in the family home.
Not long after Dee's death someone gave me a copy of a documentary
made by an American ABC news team. They had been filming in Belfast
around the time of the explosion and had included a section on the
explosion and subsequent events, including the funeral.
The song they chose to introduce their programme was John Lennon's `A
Working Class Hero', and I thought, ``how appropriate''.
Codladh samh a chomradai.
From a friend.
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