Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Read Online Free PDF Page B

despite his lengthy criminal record, into the Specials. ‘Buck Alec’ was a member of one of several murder gangs made up of RIC officers and Specials that carried out unofficial reprisals during these turbulent years, activity that in his case did not deter the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord French, commending him ‘for his good police work’. 9 Hughes’s father, Kevin Hughes, better known as ‘Kevie’, was active again in the 1930s and in the early 1940s he was interned, ending up in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail alongside Gerry Adams’s father. Growing up, Brendan Hughes rubbed shoulders with men who were IRA heroes in the local community, none more celebrated than Billy McKee, later a founder member of the Provisional IRA in 1969 and its first Belfast Commander. Ironically Hughes and McKee would eventually find themselves on opposite sides during Gerry Adams’s bid to gain control of the IRA.
    … my mother was involved in the 1930s, my grandmother was involved, my grandfather was involved … my father, as I say, was an old Republican; he did time in prison but very seldom would he tell us any stories about his involvement. He never ever talked about any operation that he was on, even though I know he was on operations. He was interned in 1942, during the war years. My father’s great friend was a man called Billy McKee; my father would have spoken more about Billy McKee than about himself. And Billy was a person that I admired and looked up to even though I didn’t know him. He lived in McDonnell Street just across the street from where I lived. We’re talking about the 1960s. My father would bring us all to Mass and we’d walk past Billy McKee’s house on McDonnell Street and we almost felt like genuflecting because my father thought so much of him. Billy McKee was one of those people who spent his whole life in the Republican movement, in and out of jail, hunger strikes, being shot, and I remember picturing Billy McKee with a .45 stuck on his belt … one of my memories of him was in a house in the Falls Road, Belgrade Street – a friend of my father’s, John O’Rawe, his mother had died, and we were all in the back room, in the scullery where the tea was being made, and Billy was there. And I remember purposely bumping up against Billy to find out if he had a .45 stuck in his belt and, yes, he did, he had a .45 automatic stuck in his belt, and I remember asking him could I look at it. I don’t know what age I was; I was young. But later on, in years to come, I saw Billy with more than a .45 in his hand. I was so enchanted by him, and admired him so much, and my father was there as well. I was so sort of romantically involved with the IRA, even before I joined it. It was just something that I believe I was destined to be, and I don’t think my father actually directed me towards this, consciously directed me towards this, [but] he probably unconsciously directed me towards the movement. Well, it was not so much the IRA as the resistance to what was going on; a resistance to, and a resentfulness towards, the way life in the six-county state that I lived in, the way that it was treating my family, treating my father. The stories of the B Specials, of the shootings and of the oppression and of all that was all consciously ingrained. I remember the story of my uncle, my uncle Eoin Hughes. He was on a tram in the 1920s going down to York Street and he was taken off the tram and shot dead in the middle of the street. One of the names mentioned at the time [as being responsible] was a famous Loyalist from down there, ‘Buck Alec’. It was hard to differentiate a B Special from a Loyalist assassin; they were one and the same. And, I mean, we heard all the stories – my grandmother used to tell me stories about the 1920s and of the shootings and the murders and so forth, and I remember being really scared about the B Specials … stories about my Uncle Eoin and of my great-grandfather during the War of