That evening there was some kind of Republican celebration scheduled. It was a celebration of the hunger strikes and those who had been involved in them. There were parades and marches up and down the Falls Road, at the side of which had been built a mock up of a prison cell. Various IRA men took turns to symbolically spend time in the ‘cell’, just wrapped in a blanket.
I walked with Anne through the packed streets and, even though I was the only Englishman there, I never felt under any kind of threat. The locals blamed the British Government for their problems, not the ordinary man in the street.
Anne was everywhere. Shaking hands with this group and having a joke with that one. Often I was left for a while with a group of women from her street. Suddenly one of them put her hand to her mouth in surprise and muttered an involuntary, “Oh my God, it’s him.”
“For fuck’s sake don’t let her see him”, cried another as they milled about in confusion.
I looked in the direction they were looking and saw a big, rangy guy of about fifty, standing with a group of men next to the mock up of the prison cell. Suddenly I was back in prison mode. I had come to like this Anne and the ‘chaps’ rules state quite clearly that should any man worthy of the name be in the company of a woman who is menaced by another man, then he must fight.
I looked more closely at the man in question. He was about the same age as myself, but a good six inches taller and three to four stones heavier. Yet, in seconds, I was contemplating rolling about in the dust of the Falls Road with him. Coupled with the fact that he was quite obviously a local IRA hero and was standing with several of his mates, the prospects were daunting to say the least.
I was just wondering how I would explain it all to Gerry in the morning when, suddenly, the problem solved itself. As the group of Anne’s friends rushed over and engaged her in earnest conversation about where they were all going next, the big guy and his mates drifted off in the other direction.
The following morning I set off early for my meeting with Gerry. A twenty-minute walk along the Falls Road brought me to the Press Office. Lots of bars and grilles covered the doors and windows. I pressed the bell and waited patiently.
The door opened almost immediately and an attractive young woman, her face wreathed in smiles, motioned me inside. I gave her my name and showed her my press card. “Oh we’re expecting you”, she said chirpily. “You’re Gerry’s friend from England. He won’t be long. Please take a seat.”
I sat in a small reception area and passed a few minutes reading the posters and newspaper cuttings hanging on the walls. I looked up quickly as a group came in, recognition dawning as I saw a familiar face. As the tall, heavily-bearded man walked up to me, my mind struggled to accept that Gerry could have changed so much. I instantly rejected the notion though, because I had seen recent photos of Gerry and he looked nothing like this.
The puzzle was soon solved when the man introduced himself as Gerry Adams. I had seen the leader of Sinn Fein many times on TV, that was where the recognition had come from. He obviously knew who I was because, as we shook hands, he said that Gerry would be along in a minute.
The door opened again and suddenly Gerry was standing before me. The passage of nearly 25 years had added several kilos to his tall frame, but his still-youthful, well-nourished face belied his 47 years. We had never been close prison pals and Gerry had never subscribed to the criminal ethos, so there was no embracing and slapping of backs. There was a certain gravitas to Gerry Kelly now, legacy no doubt of his present role as a politician. He greeted me warmly though, whilst shaking my hand quite formally, almost ritually.
He ushered me into his office and asked me if I would like tea. As we waited for the girl to bring it he asked me how I was and where I was staying. In truth, the pause before the interview proper gave me time to consider my approach. I wanted something more than just a formal interview. Any journalist could get that and, no doubt, Gerry did a dozen of those every day. He was friendly enough and his open, easy-going nature came across quite clearly. I would have to hope that, as we got into the subject matter, a more intimate Gerry would emerge.
When I told him I was staying with Anne, up the Falls Road, he looked interested. He told me how she had everybody’s respect, that she had great spirit and had been a tireless fighter for the cause over many years. I told Gerry about how she had been showing me around and introducing me to people. When I got to the episode involving the previous evening, I asked who the man was that Anne’s friends had been so keen to keep her from seeing.
Gerry looked thoughtful for a moment, then serious. “It’s a great shame, Norman, a tragedy really. Another way that the troubles have wrecked lives and families. That man was Sean M……… He was one of the original hunger strikers and an IRA volunteer over many years. He was married to Anne. She traveled all over the country to visit and support him. However, through his countless legal actions against the government, he became very close with his solicitor. She was a younger, quite well-to-do woman from the South. They fell in love and, when he got out, he divorced Anne and married her. Anne took it quite badly. Apart from anything else it was a very public humiliation. It was a bad business altogether.” For a moment he was lost in thought, gazing into the middle distance.
At that point the arrival of the tea made for a welcome interruption. As we settled down with our respective cups Gerry asked me what it was I wanted from him.
I explained the theme I had in mind, that we had both once been ‘men of war’ and were now ‘men of peace’. The story would be one about what we had been through to get here. I mentioned that a good starting point might be when we had last met. I had just been shipped out of the Scrubs, leaving Ian and himself to carry on with the escape.
It was a good conversational ploy, because, within seconds, Gerry was lost in the details of that adventure those 25 years previously.
“It came as a shock, of course, you’re being moved. Luckily though, we knew where you had hidden the key. We stole two warder’s uniforms from the laundry and altered them to fit Ian and myself. How is Ian, by the way?” he paused as the memory of his old friend intruded.
I explained that partway through his 25-year sentence Ian’s mind had snapped and that he had never recovered. He lived in much reduced circumstances in North London now. I still saw him regularly, but he wasn’t the same man.
“It happened to many of ours, Norman , and it’s always a great tragedy. Please give him my best regards when next you see him. Now where was I? Oh yes, one Saturday afternoon, with several of our friends looking out for us, we changed into the uniforms in Tommy’s cell down on the ‘ones. You know, it was close to the end of the wing. We came out and had to walk past all those prisoners watching TV, before we could let ourselves out of the gate at the end of the wing. Of course, several people recognized us. A couple actually got up out of their seats, probably to go and tell the warders. But our friends made them sit down again until it was all over.”
“Anyway, we crossed the yard to the laundry with no problem. Ian quickly knocked the padlock off the gate with a hammer and we let ourselves into the laundry with the key.”
“Where you found the ladder”, I interjected quickly.
“Hell no”, said Gerry animatedly, “that was the first thing to go wrong.” He was caught up in the story now and had relaxed considerably with me. This was precisely what I had intended.
“We broke into the Works store and there was no ladder. They must have left it somewhere else that weekend. So we had to improvise. We broke struts off the big laundry benches and nailed them to a pair of step-ladders. It wasn’t ideal, but we thought it would do the job. Then we let ourselves out of the laundry again and ran at the fence.”
He paused momentarily as the memory of that fear-charged moment was with him again. They were running blind. There could have been a dog patrol, with two warders and two dogs, just around the corner and they would have run smack into them. But there was no way of knowing that. This part was left purely to chance.
“But our luck was in”, he continued. “Wherever the dog patrols were, they weren’t in that area. We slammed the ladder up against the fence to make good contact. We knew that the slightest touch would set the alarms off anyway and we wanted to get up first time. But as I went up, I saw a dog patrol come running round the corner. I had just reached the top when they got to the bottom of the ladder. They pulled it and it snapped and Ian, who was only halfway up, fell to the ground. There was nothing I could do for him.”
He looked directly at me, then paused, just as he must have paused in the heat of the moment, perched on top of the wire-mesh fence all those years ago. A man as loyal as Gerry would have considered the plight of his fellow escaper and friend. But, as he said, there was nothing he could have done and, in fact, Ian himself had confirmed as much to me.
“Ian shouted for me to carry on, so I dropped to the floor, between the fence and the wall now. Over in the corner, where the two walls met, a cable hung down from the CCTV camera. I knew that I could reach it. It took a couple of tries, but at last I grabbed it. I pulled myself up and scrambled on top of the wall.”
“So all you had to do now was to drop down and run to the car we had arranged to be left in the hospital car park”, I observed.
“No, that was the final thing to go wrong”, responded Gerry. “I had estimated that I would take less than a minute from the time I got over the fence to the time I climbed the wall, but I had taken more than three times that. Now there were twenty warders between me and the car.”
“So you enjoyed the view whilst it lasted?”, I added.
“I certainly felt more free than I had for a long while”, said Gerry, smiling broadly.
“So what happened next”, I asked?
“I climbed back down quickly enough and they took me over to the segregation block and beat me up.” He screwed up his face at the memory.
“We should have warned you about that bit”, I said, laughing. “Now I don’t feel nearly so bad about missing the escape. So where did you go next?”
Gerry was laughing too now. “To Long Lartin, but not for very long”, he continued. The IRA had declared a cease-fire and the fate of my co-defendants and myself had become part of the negotiations with the British Government. It was all very hush hush. They were saying one thing publicly about not negotiating with the IRA and doing something quite different in secret. The Price sisters had already been sent back to Ireland. They were still only young girls really and their health was very poor. Hugh Feeney and I weren’t long behind them. We were taken to Heathrow and flown to Belfast. We spent a week in the old Crumlin Road jail, then we were granted political status and put in Long Kesh, what the British called ‘The Maze’.”
“But thanks to me you had a bad case of permanently itchy feet”, I said, laughing.
Gerry laughed with me. “I was always going to try to escape, Norman, with or without your initial encouragement. You see, as a member of the IRA, I saw myself as a prisoner of war and it was my duty to try to escape. In 1977 I tried to escape from a military hospital. In 1979 I tried again at Long Kesh and also failed to get away from another military hospital in 1982.”
“I suppose that having political status meant that they couldn’t do much to punish you. There was no remission to take away”, I observed.
“No but Thatcher did something much worse”, replied Gerry animatedly. “She was determined to portray us as common criminals rather than political prisoners, so she took away our political status. It was something we couldn’t take lying down. We had to make a response. Fortunately we had been planning a big escape from Long Kesh for a while.
It was never going to be easy, because the ‘Kesh’ was Europe’s most heavily guarded prison. Warders manned the inside and the British Army guarded the outside. Each of the top security H blocks could only be opened from the outside, with a key held at the gate.”
Gerry paused, no doubt to mentally fortify himself against the memories of the dramatic event, before launching himself into the story again. “We smuggled in guns and knives and took over the wing. Then we grabbed the next shift as they came on. Now we waited until the meals lorry came to the wing and we grabbed that. By now, of course, many of us were dressed in warder’s uniforms.”
“Mind you, it wasn’t as simple and as smooth as I’ve just described it. Already, a warder had resisted and been shot in the head. Then, as we drove the meals lorry towards the gate with all the lads in the back, a warder coming on duty recognized a couple of us in the front and pulled his car in front of the gate. At the last minute we managed to ram the lorry through a side gate and then a pitched battle broke out between us and the warders in the gate-house. That’s when the warder was killed. Although he was stabbed he actually died of a heart attack. He’d had a heart attack previously.”
“”I wouldn’t have fancied your chances of proving that if you’d come to trial in an English court”, I remarked.
“No, neither would I”, continued Gerry. “It was all very unfortunate and not intended. We wanted to get away with as least fuss as possible. Anyway, 38 of us got away, 11 were recaptured almost immediately and several more were caught over the next few weeks. I got clean away. At first I was on the run in the border areas, then I went abroad. I was free for just over 30 months, then a special Dutch unit arrested me in Amsterdam.”
“I suppose there are worse countries you could have been caught in”, I broke in. “The Dutch are very fair in their interpretation of international law, aren’t they?”
“ Not that fair”, responded Gerry, “In fact they were very pro the British Government. However, they refused to extradite me on the basis of my conviction for the Old Bailey bombing on the grounds that it was a political act, but they still sent me back. Then it all became very strange. In Ireland I was placed on remand over charges arising out of the escape. Then one morning the prison Governor summoned me to his office. He was trying hard to be civil, but you could see that he was very annoyed about something. Suddenly he got out a big, official-looking parchment and began to read from it in very old-fashioned language. The gist of it was that I was being given a free pardon for my role in the Old Bailey bombing and my life sentence was set aside.”
“I’ve known men in English jails who have lodged appeals for 20 years and never got that”, I said in surprise.
“Yes I suppose I was very lucky, Norman. And my luck continued to get better. For my role in the escape I was sentenced to only five years and sent back to the ‘Kesh’. As I had already served a couple of years on remand I only had about 13 months left to do. So I immersed myself in studying politics. When I got out in 1989, I joined Sinn Fein, rather than the IRA. It was an option open to Republicans who wanted some kind of life for themselves, as opposed to a life on the run all the time.”
“So the ‘man of war’ really did turn into the ‘man of peace’, Gerry?”
“It was a time for peace, Norman. In 1990 I was involved with Martin McGinnis in conflict resolution. We were negotiating with Loyalist gangs who were killing Catholics. At about this time the British Government insisted that, rather than being appointed by Sinn Fein, us negotiators had to be elected. In 1996 I was elected to a negotiating body called ‘The Forum’. Within two years we had helped to produce the ‘Good Friday Agreement’. In 1998 I stood as a Sinn Fein candidate for the ‘Legislative Assembly’, the devolved Government for Northern Ireland, and was elected.”
“So it’s ‘Assemblyman Kelly’ now is it Gerry?” I asked, laughing.
“Plain Gerry will do from you, Norman”, he was laughing too.
“You’ve come a long way from Wormwood Scrubs all those years ago. Any regrets, Gerry?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Lots of regrets and I wouldn’t know where to start if I had to list them. For the Nationalist community it has always been viewed as a war. And in a war there are always casualties, on both sides. I regret all the dead and all the injured on both sides. All we can hope is that some good will come out of it now and Ireland will finally find some peace.”
We had been talking for quite a while now and I was rapidly running out of questions. I remembered one last thing though. “Talking of peace, President Clinton visited recently to assist the peace process and you spent some time talking to him. Do you feel he was sincere, or was it a cynical move on his part to try to influence the Irish vote back in the US?”
“Clinton was very well briefed, Norman, and he has used his influence in a very positive way. He has opened up the White House to us in a way that no other US President ever has. Not even Eamon De Valera was invited to the White House, but Gerry Adams has been in and out of the place regularly.”
At this point the phone rings and, suddenly, Gerry is doing a down-the-line interview as part of a nationally broadcast, live radio program. I listen to him speak, articulate, knowledgeable, the consummate politician now. Then it is the unseen Unionist’s turn. I watch Gerry’s brow furrow as he shakes his head in frustration. Then he stares wistfully out of the window as if wishing himself far away. And he is far away as far as I am concerned. I have lost him to his electorate, which is as it should be.
Seizing my opportunity I tap him on the arm to get his attention and motion towards the door to signify that I am leaving. He quickly shakes my hand and mouths a silent ‘Goodbye’. Gerry Kelly, Nationalist politician, Irish rebel, has certainly come a long way since the last time we met.