Republican News · Thursday 19 December 2002

All the Dead Voices

All the Dead Voices
By Danny Morrison
Mercier Press
€12.95

Danny Morrison's latest book, All the Dead Voices, is his most personal work to date. Dedicated to his late sister, Susan, who died last year, the majority, but not all, of those Danny recalls are deceased, whether friends, relatives or acquaintances. All have touched his life in one way or another.

At his best, Danny is a very evocative writer with an innate ability to capture the humanity of a situation. I enjoyed his reminiscences, scattered about the chapters, of a typical painful and awkward adolescence, which we all recall with a mixture of smiles and cringes - first kisses, embarrassing breakups, broken hearts, idiotic decisions, misread situations etc etc.

Of course, not all of our formative years coincided with the arrival of British soldiers on ourstreets and the beginning of a long and bitter struggle.

Republicans will be particularly moved by Danny's memories of his close friend, Volunteer Jimmy Quigley, who was shot dead by British soldiers in West Belfast in September 1972 while on active service with the IRA. Danny deals well with his inner turmoil as he struggled with the issue of the legitimacy of political violence as his community suffered around him.

There is plenty of reflection here but a lot of humour also, and overall the blend just about works. This is not a morbid book, although most of its subjects are no longer with us. Rather, it is a celebration of the wonderful gift of life.

The following extract is taken from Danny's book, which is available from republican outkets and all good bookshops.

BY MARTIN SPAIN

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Once a Volunteer

Paul was handsome, despite some crooked teeth, and a good footballer, but I didn't like him. I thought he threw his weight around too much, and was too cocky. We were second years in the same form, aged around twelve, and our class was queuing up on the top landing waiting to go in to Latin.

Each landing was inset a little from the main front windows by a rail. Thus, you could look at the landing below and see the schoolboys lining up at the rail there. Paul leaned over the balcony, allowed a big dollop of spittle to collect on the end of his tongue and then snipped it with his lips. A first year down below cried that he had been spat on and Paul laughed.

At that moment Brother Gibbons, our Latin teacher, who was also the vice-principal, a tall, gaunt-faced and violent man, was just passing the first years. He took the rest of the stairs at three at a time and ordered us to our desks. He said that what had happened was despicable and that the culprit should come forward or else the entire class (of about thirty-two pupils) would get 'six of the best' from his cane. He must have lectured us for about thirty-five minutes about the issue, about how the young kid felt, how the boy responsible was really a coward. He said it was impossible that none of us had seen the culprit. He said he would give us a chance. We were told to write down on bits of paper who we knew or thought had done it. It would be completely anonymous.

After lunch Gibbons recalled the class. Gibbons announced that he knew the culprit but would give him one more chance to act like a man. If he didn't come forward, he would regret it. There was silence. Paul grew pale. He was told to stand. Gibbons let him stew for a few moments before calling him to the top of the class. He accused him of spitting on the first year. He brooked no contradiction. Paul cried and said he didn't do it. We knew he knew he was going to get caned. But Brother Gibbons simply said to him, 'Go back to your desk.' Paul returned uncertainly and proceeded to sit down. 'Now,' said Gibbons, 'leave your books but take your bag, and get out of my school. You are a disgrace; you are dismissed. Now, go home and tell your mother and father why I dismissed you!'

I couldn't believe it. To be dismissed was about the worst thing that could befall you. Paul tried to say something but Gibbons raised his voice: 'Out! Get out!'

Afterwards, everybody was speculating about who squealed on Paul. I squirmed in the vicinity of these conversations because it was I who had written down Paul's full name. I don't know if I was the only one. Gibbons had collected this lottery before letting us out to the dining hall. After dinner Gibbons collared me beside the lockers. I was shocked: he had recognised my handwriting, which I had tried to disguise.

He said, 'Are you sure it's him! Are you sure!'

I whimpered, 'Yes.' All that night I was miserable and despised myself. I couldn't sleep. But my agony was relieved the following day when discussions between Paul's mother and the principal saw him back in class. We later became good friends but I never told him, or anyone, that I had been the informer.

I used the incident when I wrote my first novel, West Belfast, which was published just before I was arrested in January 1990 and charged with conspiracy to murder Sandy Lynch, a police informer. Only one reader took any notice of the hero, John O'Neill's informing on his classmate: the OC of the IRA in Crumlin Road Jail, Seanna Walsh. 'Um,' he said with a smile. 'That's interesting. So, it was he who squealed on Paul McShane.'

That experience at school made me distrustful of authority and highly conscious of the consequences of my actions. I determined to keep secret anything that I was told in confidence, a rule I have broken in certain of my writings when I felt that circumstances had changed (usually through a death) and that harm or hurt would be minimal and outweighed by the value of revelation and truth.

When the Troubles broke out and I was first tempted to join the IRA the fear of not being able to withstand interrogation, to be able to keep secrets, stayed my hand. My conversion to physical force came slowly.

I had been at some protests called by People's Democracy. As I said earlier, my transmitter (amongst others) was one of those used to broadcast Radio Free Belfast when republicans got organised after 15 August 1969. A photograph of me and another young person at the controls was published in the Irish News in early September. That autumn at school I sold raffle tickets to raise money for the defence of our area. As the split in the IRA proceeded, I sided with those colloquially known as the 'Provies'.

At the early riots I was a bystander, not a participant. From 1970 I had sold Republican News from underneath my coat outside Mass but it was only after the British army curfew of the Falls Road in July 1970 that I decided to go one step further and hold guns for the IRA on the understanding that they were for defensive purposes only.

A friend approached me. He said that he had been holding a dump for the IRA but that some neighbours had got to know about it. The IRA wanted to move it and asked him did he know anyone who would hold it for a few weeks. I thought about it and then agreed. My family was on holiday in England and I had the house to myself. Two days later a young fella, acting as a scout, came to my back door, which I had opened as arranged, and a minute later a man in his early twenties arrived, carrying a big guitar case. I immediately liked the young fella, and he and I stood talking about politics and pop music. The IRA man decided the best place for the guns was under the floorboards on the landing. We lifted the carpets. The boards had been hammered down so tightly that he needed to saw through them. But even then the rifle was still too long to fit in. I suggested just leaving them in the case and putting them under my bunk bed. My mother allowed me to look after and clean my own bedroom. I had kept diaries in a drawer and knew that there had been no intrusion. I assured them it would be okay, the weapons would be safe. Of course, after they left I had to make a full inspection. Besides the .303 Lee Enfield rifle, there were a Sterling sub-machine gun, a Luger pistol, bags of magazines and loose ammunition, and two hand grenades. I worked out how to assemble and load the weapons and I imagined being in a gun battle, prepared to kill or die. After three or four inspections the novelty of handling guns wore off and I packed them away under the bed, placing various boxes of books in front of the guitar case. I couldn't sleep for the first week or two, but then became accustomed to the presence of the dump and sometimes forgot about it altogether.

We were one of the few families in our area still friendly with British soldiers. None had yet been shot by the IRA. There were weekends when soldiers who were on leave came and stayed with us. They bunked with me, separated by the mattress from an IRA arms dump. It felt odd and exciting being in command of a great secret - and appreciating the irony of the situation. But I also felt guilty, because deep down I knew my father would be driven out of his job in the telephone exchange if ever the house were raided. Still, I took a liberty with his liberty, squared it in my conscience that somebody had to hold these guns, and deluded myself into thinking that my accepting full responsibility for them in the event of a raid would exonerate him.

A greater fear was what I would say under interrogation, because over the following weeks I had learnt the identities of the two IRA Volunteers involved in putting the guns in my house.

One Saturday I boarded a bus on the Falls Road to go into town, and as it passed my street I saw the British army begin raiding houses. I got off at the next stop and walked back, expecting the arms to be discovered. I prepared myself for arrest and kept repeating that I would not give the names of those who had left them. After a few house searches the army stopped short of ours and left the street. I thanked God. One night in January 1971 the IRA came and asked for the guitar case and I was relieved to see it go.

y moral resistance I had to violence was being rapidly undermined by the actions of the British army and the RUC during and after the introduction of internment. One problem I had with supporting war is that in taking the life of an enemy one couldn't be sure that that person was the particular soldier or police officer who revelled in oppression and was personally responsible for violence and death. But that is part of a universal paradox: in most wars good people kill good people for separate and opposite perceived good causes, in a narrative which includes heroism, cowardice, cruelty and rapine, which ends in triumph, or negotiation and compromise - only for a later generation to go out and slaughter again. And this is even before one considers another universal: that it is civilians who by and large bear the brunt of suffering. We know this, yet we are helpless.

That autumn, as I studied less and less, against a background of bombs and gun battles, of neighbours being rounded up and interned, or shot, of soldiers stopping you on the street and abusing you, I still hesitated about committing myself, mainly out of a fear that I would give information under interrogation, that I was a coward at heart.

But I was pulled increasingly towards the IRA and their fundamentalist position, and it was more with relief than fear that I took the plunge. Little did I know that a young local IRA Volunteer, when stopped by British army patrols, was keeping them abreast of events and passing on the names of new recruits. I received word from the prison ship Maidstone that during the interrogation of a prisoner the RUC had asked about me. Two months later the IRA arrested the young suspect and he admitted being an informer. He was banished from Ireland.

Over the years I've been arrested on many occasions, and held for short periods of a few days or a week, and although never tortured I was threatened, abused and punched about. In one barracks a soldier stubbed out a cigarette on my neck and I was thrown down stairs. But I was never beaten so severely as to discover how relatively low or high my threshold for pain was. I harbour a strong suspicion that my life, self-confidence and reputation could but for the grace of God have been very different.