Republican News · Thursday 27 February 2002

Teasie Cunningham

Teasie Cunningham was almost 83 years old when she passed away two weeks ago. She was born the year Ireland was partitioned and grew up in the Short Strand in East Belfast, a Catholic district whose people endured the worst excesses of the unionist administration.

Her life would have been remarkable by the very fact that she had ten children, that her husband died in the early '60s when she was a young woman, leaving her to rear her family with the help of her older children.

Tragedy struck the family early on when her young son Teddy died of leukaemia in the late '50s and her special child Marie was knocked down and killed by an ice cream van outside her home when she was just five years old. And in more recent times. her daughter Kay died young and unexpectedly.

Her family know the worth of their mother, grand and great grand mother and are rightly celebrating her long life and what she left them.

But 'Teasie', as we all knew her when we were teenagers in the turbulent years of the late '60s and early '70s, was remarkable for another reason: her commitment to the cause of Irish freedom.

The Short Strand in 1968 and '69 was at the sharp end of the violence from the RUC, the 'B' Specials and the loyalists. As teenagers we had one foot in the normal pastimes - music, dances, girls - and the other was on the barricades.

Life on the barricades was made much easier by Teasie and people like her. Coming as I did and most of my friends from a settled family background where one's life was routine and standard, anchors were very important.

But all around us was instability. People were dying on the streets, homes were burning and people were being evicted. The Short Strand and its people were constantly under siege from loyalists. Uncertainty had replaced family stability.

In those circumstances, being a 16-year-old vigilante was both frightening and exciting. And the two most important ingredients, apart from warm clothes and good footwear, was shelter and food. And that is where Teasie came in.

Despite having a large family to feed and shelter, she kept her door open for us; the teapot always on the stove to warm chilled blood in the early hours of the morning.

Her home was a refuge and when the republican struggle moved from being defensive to offensive, it became a 'safe house', a meeting place for those of us bold enough to believe, sitting in Teasie's house in Clyde Street, Lisbon Street or Beechfield Street, that we could free Ireland.

One day, someone will document the role that 'safe houses' have played in the struggle for Irish freedom. In my experience, they are indispensable. Without them nothing can be done.

What I know now and didn't know then was how important it was that we had the validation and approval of our elders for what we were doing. They not only brought the wisdom, which comes with age but moral authority as well.

This was important because we were not only challenging British rule, we were also challenging our Catholic upbringing and the teaching that went with it.

Teasie gave us recognition by allowing us into her home and looking after us as if we were her own children.

I know she didn't think what she was doing was out of the ordinary but it was. She risked her life and her children's every time a republican walked over her threshold. Her home was constantly targeted by the Crown forces.

d her commitment to Ireland's independence didn't stop in her living room; four of her sons went to prison for their republican beliefs. And while there, Teasie looked after them.

Teasie Cunningham was part of a generation of women who made the difference. They made the difference not just because they were there at the start but because they stood up and faced a foe that had proven itself formidable. They willingly became part of a support back up for republican activists like myself.

d when I went off to gaol and was replaced, Teasie treated those who came after me as she did me.

She was loyal to the cause of Irish freedom and helped those who pursued it. I called every Christmas to see her. She always greeted me with a smile, which had an impish quality to it.

It was women like Teasie, her sister, my Aunt Una, Susie, Ceilie, Maggie, Eilish and Betty, all passed on, who made the republican struggle what it is. Without women like them, and they are in every part of Ireland, we would not be where we are today.

BY JIM GIBNEY