Tiocfaidh ár Mná

Martina Anderson agus Síle Darragh i gcomhrá le Caitlín McCotter

Gender, until recently failed to engage the attention of historians. Looking back on Irish history it’s no secret that Women have always played an integral and crucial part in Ireland’s fight for freedom, however their contribution has not always been recognised. From Betsy Gray, to Kathleen Clarke, to Constance Markievicz, to Mairéad Farrell to our present formidable female leadership of Mary Lou and Michelle. Women have long been the backbone of our struggle for independence. Much well-deserved coverage has been given to our heroes like Tone, Connolly, Pearse etc, however, what has always struck me is how the role of women has been overlooked and downplayed. The image of Patrick Pearse’s surrender has always stayed in my mind as in later versions Elizabeth O’Farrell has been airbrushed out of it. This exemplified to me why we need to make sure to give the great respect deserved to all the Republican women who fought and continue to fight for a free Ireland. 

Question One:
“If you can, could you summarise at which age you first noticed British control and a memory of this which stood out for you?”

Martina Anderson:
“I was a child of the battle of the Bogside, I would’ve been between the ages of 5-7 when all of that was unfolding. I was acutely aware of the battle of the bogside and the riots that had been taking place. My mother would’ve been very much involved in the need for civil rights but unfortunately gender equality was not on the agenda when the demand was made for one man, one vote. As a family my mother was the rebel of my parents. My father had been a protestant when he met and married my mother. He was annoyed and quite shocked at the experience and treatment that was meted out to his children and other children within the republican and nationalist community especially regarding jobs. Discrimination was rife but they try to conceal it, so they didn’t ask them what religion they were, instead they asked what school they went too. This determined one’s religion. It wasn’t based on who was more qualified for the job, it was based on creed not ability.  When people took to the streets demanding their civil rights, I was conscious that something was wrong in the world around me.  People were speaking out and standing up for themselves. I lived in the row of houses that is now the gable wall that proudly displays, “you are now entering free Derry”. My memory of the Lecky Road consists of the Battle of the Bogside. When the riots took place, as children, our role was to ensure a bucket of vinegar and cloth was ready on hand for when the CS gas fired. There were many good bed sheets, and God knows it was not that we had that many, but they were torn up to make ginger cloths to help people breathe.  At a young age we were allocated a house in the “new estate”, we were at the very top so our house was last to be ready to move in; all my neighbours had already moved into their new homes. We were the last family house occupied in the Lecky Road. When a riot had erupted.  The British army parked their saracen at our front door. Rioters were unaware we were still there. My mother and father were desperately trying to get us out safely as stones and bettor bombs bunching off the Saracen. We had no back gate - we had an outdoor toilet so we had to leave through the front door. As petrol bombs were being thrown at the saracen, one came into one of our windows. My mother and father had to make a call and that was to take myself and my younger sister Sharon out of the house. They had to try and notify people that we were in the house. We got out and opened the front door and I remember Sharon and I being frightened. We all held hands however my daddy went in one direction and my mother in the other, going out the door, we were told not to let go of each other’s hands under any circumstances! We ended up moving into our new home sooner than anticipated, as we still had a couple of weeks to wait while they finalised the finishing touches. My sister had previously dated Seamus Cusack, he was one of the first that had been shot in the bogside alongside Desi Beattie. I remember those incidents quite well. I recall operation motorman when the British army came into the no go areas. My younger sister and I were sent up to an aunt, my mother and father always tried to make sure the younger ones were out of the way and protected. We were a republican family therefore we had one of them homes that were always raided. Even prior to that on the morning of Bloody Sunday, my father had a very airy feeling about what was happening that morning and said to my mummy “I’m taking the children out of the way today”so he took myself, my younger sister and my older sister down to an older sisters’ house in Shantallow. My family were at the anti-internment march on what is now known as Bloody Sunday and at that time we didn’t have mobile phones, as reports came through that people were shot. We were somewhat hysterical with worry in case it was any of my family members. When we arrived home that night and we were walking through the estate and there was just such an airy feeling, the place was quiet and there was an atmosphere of shock in the air. My mother took me to the Creggan chapel where all the coffins were laid out and I remember as a child questioning “why? Why were all these people murdered” and my mother just kept sobbing, she couldn’t answer the question. There was no answer for that question. That was the environment as a child that I grew up in, we were aware of a state that didn’t accept us, hated us, rejected everything about us. People were demanding their rights for jobs and home etc to which they retaliated by sending the British forces in to oppress us. we were repressed and oppressed by the British state. As a teenager growing up, I was like most teenagers. Stop and search was a regular occurrence as you tried to go into the town and generally walk the streets. It was simple constant harassment. Republicans at our age all knew when we reached the age of 16, each of us would be arrested and taken from our homes by the British Army and held, screened for a number of hours. I remember the morning when my house was raided which was a regular occurrence, we all would look at the Brit with the clipboard to see whose photograph was pinned to it because whoever it was, that sister or brother was being arrested. That day, it just happened to be mine. So instead of putting on my school uniform, I got dressed. My mother was quite upset that her young daughter was being taken out. I remember reassuring her, telling her, I’ve got this, I’m ok. When I was walking out the door, she put her hand across the door and said to the brits. She’s only a child! And of course, they didn’t care. That’s what happened. That was the norm for republicans at age 16. We were taken in, finger printed, photographed, and questioned. That was the start of many formal arrests from the young age of 16. It could’ve been any of us, at any time, any place, any where.

Síle Darragh:
“It wasn’t British control that I noticed initially, it was the six-county state. It would’ve been around the time of bloody Sunday or even before that; the civil rights marches, Burntollet Bridge, all of that. I hadn’t started secondary school yet and seeing that on tv really engrossed me. I grew up in a small nationalist area in East Belfast and the thing that really stood out to me was seeing the difference in employment between the Protestant and catholic communities. My father was a painter, decorator and sign-writer. He had to travel to Liverpool, the Isle of Man and down south because he found it very hard to get work around here. In our small area we were surrounded by all these industries like Harland and Wolff, Short Brothers, the Sirocco Works etc.; when you delve into the history of East Belfast you will see it was coming down with all these industries, and yet most of the people from my area were unemployed. So it wasn’t a case of seeing British state oppression, it was knowing that there was a difference between Catholic/nationalist people in our small area and those across the way on the Newtownards road, where they were used to having jobs; to walking out of school and into employment, whereas people from my area found it really hard. Growing up in such an endemic sectarian state made me realise there was such a difference, that there was discrimination. The main access we had to shops probably would’ve been on the Newtownards road, and when I reached a certain age where my mammy trusted me to go to the shops on my own to get something, I remember being stopped by other children and asked, “are you a prod or a fenian?”. I was that young that I didn’t even know what those words meant. I remember being stopped a lot and told to sing the words of the Sash, or the Billy Boys, and I can tell you now, I know every word to those songs. We had to learn those songs in case we were stopped by Protestant kids from the Newtownards Road. I also learned how the Protestants ended the ‘Our Father’, because they said “For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen”. These were all the wee ways they caught out a catholic. I and many of my peers were beaten up for being Catholics, living in east Belfast. The history of the shipyards and their treatment of Catholic workers was well-known, way back to the 1920s.  They tolerated Catholics only for so long, but coming up to the twelfth, Catholics were driven out of the shipyards. I remember Catholics came out of that area along the Queens Road, over where the Titanic building is now, and they were pelted with nuts and bolts by the Protestant workers from the Engineering yard. My daddy got a few weeks work sometimes when they needed to decorate the big liners, and I can remember him coming home with cuts and bruises at times, and overhearing the conversation that the shipyards closed over the ‘12th Fortnight’. I grew up with that sectarian oppression. It was through that that learned the history of the state and why it is, how it is. That’s what made me a republican.

Question Two:
“How was the prison conditions and how did it affect your physiological well being?”

Martina Anderson:
“England was a different environment for republicans and their families, because there was the isolation factor in England that generally didn’t exist in the North. Ella O’Dwyer from Tipperary was my comrade with whom I was arrested along with 3 men. When we arrived in Brixton prison that day, we travelled in prison vans with cells inside. There was a slot, it wasn't a window as such, but you could sort of see out of it, so when we arrived at Brixton, we knew where we were. They took out the 3 men then they took me and Ella out. We were surprised because Brixton was an all-male prison.  Ella and I were the only two women in Brixton prison among 600 male prisoners. Every month they seconded female screws into the landing we were held. Their objective was to break the two uppity Irish women.  The abuse was constant. We were strip searched every day, sometimes up to 6 times a day. We were on occasions woken at 6 o'clock in the morning to search the cell and strip us. Family visits were quite an ordeal, especially for families coming into a male prison where only two female prisoners remained captive. Sometime throughout our remand period there was another woman Sonia Schulz who was an alleged East German spy brought onto the same landing. 3 women and 600 men.  We got an hour’s exercise daily. They put a steel roof over the exercise yard which they said was to stop a potential helicopter rescue. Surrounding the yard were 3 Male blocks, as well as the Male prison block we were held in.  The sexual verbal abuse as we walked around that yard was constant. We talked loads and did our utmost not to let the vile abuse get into our heads.  At night-time our 2 comrades below us, the 3rd was kept in another part of the jail, would shout over to other men to get the men to address those men who were being verbally abusive to us. We were in Brixton prison for 13 months. Protesting against the prison conditions, however tempting was out of the question.  Recovering from the 1981 hunger strike and no wash protest, plus the strip searching in Armagh, the last thing our struggle needed was a jail protest. It was difficult not to react and fight back but we knew it was a waste of resources and it simply was not a road we could take our people down. Once sentenced we were moved to another male jail, Durham. In our naivety we sang on the journey there somewhat relieved to be leaving Brixton.  But we went from the fire into the frying pan. Whilst there was a wing filled with women prisoners, over 40 in total. It was like one flew over the cuckoo's nest. Women in desperate need of medical interventions for their mental health. They were cutting and burning themselves with pens, anything sharp and cigarettes. There was one woman in particular who walked around chanting “half past 4”, every day because she thought she was going to be hung at half past 4. Once again there were no toilets, therefore we had to slop out. I spent the first week without speaking much, absorbing everything around me. I remember after a week, brushing my teeth and I looked into the mirror and my eyes looking back at me told me I was in shock. At that moment I told myself to get a grip, we were here for life. I went to Ella and said we have to survive this, and we will – and we did.  We took the system on. The jail had a sweatshop where they wanted Ella and I to go in and part of what they did was make the lapels for the British army uniform in which we refused to do, therefore Ella and I spent a matter of months locked up “behind a door” in punishment. The Governor arrived one day fed up with what he called our stubbornness and informed us that he was governor of Wakefield prison and boosted that he’d “sent Frank Stagg home in a box, and I’ll send you home too” he declared. Elks and I campaigned for better prison conditions. The place was a hell hole. Riddled with clock-roaches and a real poverty of the environment. We wrote to as many prison advocates and MPs as we could. This went on for a good 6 years. Ella and I spent our time fighting the women’s corner. They became dependent on us because they felt broken in the system and couldn’t fight it.  Whatever they did to be in jail we did not pursue, but as human beings they too needed to survive it. Martin Mogg was one of the last governors who arrived at a Christmas time seven years into our sentence. We observed him walk around the wing and then he asked to speak to us. We thought we would get the same old usual utterance. When he sat down he said “how the hell have you survived in here?”. We were taken back. He had been appointed on the back of a damning report which hit the headlines in England after an investigation into Durham Jail conditions by a barrister and phycologist. Refurbishment of the wing commenced. Three cells were made into two with toilets and sinks. Ella and I were never allowed up to the top landing so once the cells were completed, we told them that unless they let us up to the top landing, that we would wreck their pristine toilets and cells. So after 8 and a half years we got into cells where we could see the sky at night. The first morning I woke with a light shining into my eyes and I thought it was the screws at their lark, turning on the cell light to wake me.  So I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to let them think they woke me. But the light seemed to get brighter and it wouldn’t stop. So I opened my eyes and realised it was coming from the window, so I dived up and looked, and it was the first time in years I saw the sunrise. I banged onto the wall for Ella and everyone up on the landing to get up so they could see over the wall as the sun rose. It was like magic. I married my husband Paul in jail which was quite an important event and an ordeal. Not how a woman imagines her wedding day. We loved one another enough to get married. We had a battle royal; they cancelled the first date agreed and set and allowed it to proceed with a new date a year later.  My mother was not enamoured with the hail wedding and even though she disapproved when we were released Paul was special to him – and you me of course.
6 weeks before the 1st IRA cessation, as part of the British sending out a signal of how serious they were they transferred four republican prisoners from England to Ireland. Ella, myself, my husband Paul and another comrade were the first prisoners to be transferred. We were just told to get packing, that we were moving elsewhere. That morning we were taken to the airport under a helicopter and heavily armed security. They closed the airport, there were armed guards on the roof. We were put in a plane with 40 screws. When we arrived in Belfast, we used to joke and say where we were met by 2 screws and a dog who thought the English screws had lost the plot. We ended up in Maghaberry prison, they wouldn’t allow myself and Ella onto the republican wing. However, because they wouldn’t let us onto the republican wing and because we had served over 10 years they were forced to put a small TV into our cells. My husband was moved to the Male part of the jail so Paul and I went from seeing each other once a year to once a week.  Eventually Ella and I were moved into the republican wing with fantastic female comrades and by this stage the negotiations shaping the peace process were underway. Pat Dothery Sinn Féin visited us regularly outlining the details of the negotiations. To this day he tells how chuffed has was coming into discuss prisoner release only to be lambasted by what he called a group of unmanageable  revolutionaries who would not let him start talking about relapse before he explained in great detail about the equality provisions and the all Ireland strand of the agreement that was being negotiated. We told him we did not come to jail for someone to negotiate our release. We had to understand the quality of human rights, Irish Unity. We had to be satisfied with all of those elements which ended up in in the Good Friday Agreement before there was discussion about prisoners release

Síle Darragh:
I was at the protest in Armagh for Political Status. I was arrested in 1976 and on sentencing joined the no work, and subsequent no wash protest and I was there during the hunger strikes. I can’t say that I feel it affected me physiologically, because different situations impact people in different ways. Many people were imprisoned in the 1970s and ‘80s for stuff they didn’t do. They were victims of the British  ‘Conveyor Belt’ policy of arrest, torture, forced confessions, where they were forced to sign statements for stuff they didn’t do, and then sentencing in the no-jury Diplock courts. I, on the other hand, was an active republican when I was arrested. I knew the consequences of my involvement and prison to me was just another side of struggle. What we did in the prisons was just an extension of what we did on the outside. We were republicans, and that stayed the same inside. I think when you have that physiological outlook on things, they might not have the impact that they might have had on someone else; especially those arrested and imprisoned for things they didn’t do – and there were very many like that. There were hundreds and hundreds of people who came through the prison system in all the prisons, even in Armagh, who were genuinely innocent if they were charged with. These people were beaten, tortured and forced to sign statements and to take the blame for things they didn’t do; and back then a signed statement was all the evidence they needed, they didn’t worry about forensics or other evidence; they just needed your signature at the end of the paper. One case in particular stands out to me, where a woman signed a statement just to get out of Castlereagh and she was actually illiterate and couldn’t read what she had signed. But, I have to be honest, physiologically it didn’t have that big of an impact on me because, to me, it was just another area of struggle. It’s not that it all meant nothing, but it just didn’t have the impact on us that they wanted it to. Trying to think of any specific stories of that time is quite hard, I wouldn’t be able just to come off with something off the top of my head, however the hunger striker period was the worst time for anyone that was imprisoned during that time. Prisoners have an attachment to each other, there’s an affinity there. The hunger strike was a very difficult period. As each hunger striker died it was a big blow to us, but at the same time we knew why they were doing what they were doing. We were a very close-knit group; we were a collective group. If the screws came in and attacked one of us, at any opportunity we tried to get our own back on them for it; however, being locked up made that hard. The hunger strikes still have a massive impact to this day; even for people who were on the streets in support of the prisoners. We were getting information from across the world during that time. I don’t think people really understood the impact that we got from that. People were protesting on our behalf, from Palestine, to the US, to Russia; everyone knew about the Irish hunger strike, and for us, hearing that there were protests across the world had a massive impact. There were times I would be sitting in a little cell in Armagh jail thinking nobody knew what was going on and then hear the news that millions of people knew and were protesting for us. There was great affinity between the men in the H-Blocks and the women in Armagh too because we wrote smuggled letters to each other. We always knew what was happening in the Blocks. The prison authorities thought we knew nothing of what was going on outside the prisons, when in fact we probably knew more than they did. Even now to this day, most of the women I was in prison with, I’m still in contact with. I can overhear a name of someone I’ve never met and know that that man was a Blanketman. Those memories and names stay with you. I understand that for you as a young person, it might be a part of your history, but it was a part of my life and it still is to this day. It still drives me to seek justice, equality, and Unity. Those three things are why I became a republican in the first place. 

Question Three:
“What is your view of being a woman in the struggle?”

Martina Anderson:
“Well we come from a society where generally speaking a woman’s place is at home, which is still reflected in the constitution of the south. Women were meant to cook, clean and have babies. As a woman in the republican struggle we are still objected to those kinds of attitudes. Some of the male Republican prisoners participated in educational courses which dealt with feminism and the role of women in society. That helped challenge attitudes. But I must say that many of the men within the republican community treated us to a greater degree of equality than what you would get from wider society. We still had to assert ourselves. We went from handing to fight to fight, fight to be heard. You hear comments about Michelle and Mary Lou that you wouldn’t have heard about Martin and Gerry. Women who stand up and speak out are generally criticised more. There are tuts and comments that we are shrill and that we should tone it down, criticise in a more ladylike manner - that’s a more acceptable tone to men and women who are still not too sure about women politicians.  On the whole, my personal experience is that my male comrades always treated me with equality, human rights and human decency.

Síle Darragh:
“This is always a difficult question, for anyone who is asked it. People talk about male domination within the republican movement, but nobody knows how many women were involved in the republican movement, I couldn’t say there were more women than men or visa-versa. That’s a statistical thing that can’t be defined. I never felt I was treated any less than my male comrades. I wasn’t treated any less than men in the struggle, and in all situations people do as much as they feel they can do. Even within the party now I don’t think there’s a difference. If you have an ability for something, then you’re recognised for your ability and not your gender, and that’s how I’ve always found it.

Question four:
“What advice would you have for republican women now?”

Martina Anderson:
Don’t tone it down, realise that you are entitled to a space in shaping the world you inhabit. You do have to ask for permission to do that and you don’t need a man to allow you to get access to that space.  You have to be an agent for change to change this world, to make it a better world for everyone. Nothing about you without you. Never let anyone condition you, remove the passion in you to stand up and speak out for yourself and for others especially those who don’t have a voice in the room. And no matter what is said – be you and don’t ever tone it down.

Síle Darragh:
For young republicans I think it’s important to learn your history but don't smother yourself in it. Enjoy your lives. Make the most of all the opportunities that come your way. Everything that we did, I did, was because I never wanted any other young woman to go through the situations we faced. I hope that we are far enough on that the discrimination that went on when I was growing up will never be allowed to happen again. I detest sectarianism, I detest racism, I detest sexism. I’m intolerant of intolerance. That’s some of the stuff I hope young people learn. Don’t just check people when they make a sectarian, racist or homophobic remark; explain to them why that attitude is wrong. Challenge society to change. It's great to see young people take opportunities presented today, especially in education. I left school at 16. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want to stay on in school, to do exams, but further education cost money and we just didn’t have it. I’m delighted to see our young republicans become teachers, doctors, lawyers etc., because growing up it was middle-class people in those jobs because working class kids couldn’t afford to go to university. It’s very different now. There are employment opportunities that we never had.  Also, never, ever, forget what people went through so this generation has those opportunities. We lost a lot of young people during the war, 16 and 17-year-old republican activists lost their lives. Bear in mind that I was once your age, and my life was so different from young people today. Be aware of politics, and not just here in Ireland, other struggles like Palestine for instance. Remember that you don’t struggle to make life better just for yourself, you struggle to make life better for others, and that's the whole ethos of republicanism. Race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender don’t matter. Looking after others is what matters.