Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Happy Birthday, Jim

It was like a scene from the steppes of Russia in the dead of winter, except it was the west of Ireland. The weather had been deteriorating all day. It was freezing cold, followed by a sudden mild turn and the snow began to fall. January, 1982. Jim Gibney and I had caught the last night train from Galway to Dublin and each county through which our carriages crawled was shrouded in white. But we were oblivious to the weather and throughout the journey we talked about the hunger strike. We were obsessive. It was the biggest event in our lives. It had ended just three months earlier but it was to send out waves forever.

Jim had been to the jail several days a week during the hunger strike and visited Bobby Sands on his death bed. (It was Jim who had proposed to Bobby that he should stand in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election.)

I think Jim was about to take up a role as a national organiser of Sinn Fein. I told him that I was being sent to Canada later that week, to slip into the US to update Nor-Aid supporters about the situation.

The train came to a halt some distance from Heuston Station because the points were frozen. Passengers were told they could stay onboard or walk to the station where they could bed down for the night as no transport was running. It was about half one in the morning and since I had the keys to the offices of ‘An Phoblacht/Republican News’, at 44 Parnell Square, about a mile away, Jim and I decided to walk. We had never seen weather like it. Dublin was dead but for the dim eerie glow of lamps. We had to wade through banks of snow of deceiving beauty. After a bit we were totally exhausted, our faces were frosted and we were wet to our waists. Sometimes I got completely stuck and Jim gave me his hand to pull me out.

When we eventually got to the offices I discovered I hadn’t the keys. But a light was lit upstairs and it turned out that some of the staff couldn’t make their way home either and decided to stay. John Hedges made us a great fry and produced a few bottles of beer.

Both Jim and I in the warmth of Number 44 were now exhilarated by our madness, by the little adventure which we both shared, and the memory of it has always stayed with us.

I was in Canada four days later, waiting to cross the border, when I phoned home to learn that Jim had been arrested while visiting Seanna Walsh, his friend and OC of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks. He was taken to Castlereagh and on the basis of testimony from supergrass Kevin McGrady was charged and later sentenced to twelve years. The NIO had banned me from visiting the jail and so I didn’t see Jim again until his release six years later.

I first met Jim when he was eighteen and interned in Cage Three in Long Kesh. I was in Cage Two. Even at that young age he was more than a rebel; he was a revolutionary whose struggle was to do with the world, not just Ireland. Those were the days, thirty two years ago, when we had hair and thirty inch waists! Three years ago he and I returned together to an empty Long Kesh and its ghosts. We visited the prison hospital where the ten men died. We walked down the corridors of H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5. We went to the lower camp, where the internees were held. Jim stood on the foundations of Cage Three, the huts and fencing having vanished, and I stood in Cage Two and we shouted out our reminiscences to each other.

About eighteen months after his release from internment, Jim ended up in jail again in 1976/77 on a documents charge and was acquitted, thanks to the ingenuity of that great solicitor, the late Paddy McGrory. He came out at a time when I was back on the run, and joined ‘Republican News’ as a writer. When we could make time we slipped off to play squash for which we had a great passion.

One day in September 1978 I was going to visit my home in Beechmount when I met Jim on the Falls Road. I invited him to join me for dinner. We had barely crossed the door when a helicopter hovered overhead, Saracens sealed off the street and soldiers began a house-to-house search. I was arrested and jailed, but later got bail and we resumed our squash playing partnership. We later learnt that undercover soldiers had been following Jim when they spotted me. But I don’t hold that against him!

Our squash playing was again interrupted between 1990 and 1995 when I went to jail. During this time Jim regularly visited me in the Crum and in the Blocks, never forgot a birthday, visited and supported my partner and was the truest, best friend one could have. He visited me in June 1992, two days after he had spoken at Bodenstown and two years before the ceasefire was called.

“Well,” I remarked. “Wasn’t that an interesting speech!”

“Don’t talk to me,” he said, as if he had taken flak for pushing out a boat, not all passengers realised we were boarding. In his speech he referred to a Protestant who had spoken to him about attitudes towards republicans within the Protestant community and who had said that “our [republican] appeals to them can’t be heard above ‘the deadly sound of gunfire’.” Jim said that the most pressing need now was for peace and went on:

“We know and accept that the British government’s departure must be preceded by a sustained period of peace and will arise out of negotiations. We know and accept that such negotiations will involve the different shades of Irish nationalism, and Irish unionism engaging the British government either together or separately to secure an all-embracing and durable peace process. We know and accept that this is not 1921 and that at this stage we don’t represent a government in waiting. We’re not standing in the airport lounge waiting to be flown to Chequers or Lancaster House; we have no illusions of grandeur. Idealists we are, fools we are not.”

I wholly agreed with his sentiments about the need for pragmatism and look back upon that speech as being an important contribution to the rethinking which was then in its formative stages.

In 1995 we resumed our squash game and played regularly until January of this year when a serious knee injury forced me to retire. I think he let me win that last game, but he is the true champ. He is that rare being – a man without malice. He is a carer, a giver, rich in friends and company and loved by all who know him and who love the splendour of his infectious laugh.

So, this week a toast to my best man and best friend – who’ll kick me for publicising this – but a big toast to you Jim on this your fiftieth birthday!

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