FIFTEEN THOUSAND people marched from Coalisland to Dungannon in the North of Ireland on Sunday 27 August. They were marking the tenth anniversary of the civil rights campaign.
The theme of the march was one of solidarity with the 350 prisoners in the now world famous H Block, Long Kesh.
Among those 15,000 was the author of this article, a mother of one of the H Block prisoners. Read the article and understand why she and those thousands of others marched.
He was first arrested on a street in the town in December 1976. The RUC Special Branch held him for three days under Section 10.
They said he had left a hoax bomb at a petrol station. He would not sign a statement and he said that he did not do it.
They sent for me then, which is not very usual, and the Special Branch gave me this ultimatum — the mother bit. They said, if you ask him to say he took the car it will be very easy for him, because he's just sixteen.
I said, 'I can't ask my son to sign for something which he obviously did not do.'
The Special Branch man said, 'He's going to go away for a long time.'
I said, 'Better than that to sign a false statement.'
He said, 'Well I'm going to charge him now, and he'll see no more Christmas trees.'
I said, 'That's all right.' It wasn't all right, but I said that.
So they charged him and they took him away.
ARGUMENT
They charged him with membership of Na Fianna Eireann and the bomb thing. The next week at the bail court two policemen started arguing about where he was arrested.
The judge took the ugly — his cirrhosis was probably playing him up. The judge said it was his court and he wouldn't have arguments in it, and he gave Jo bail.
He got bail of £550, and he went about his business as usual. He was only sixteen.
Then in February the bus depot round there was burned. No bombs, just burned. So one morning in April they came for him and they took him away.
I kept on phoning, and three days later they said he was charged with the bus depot.
He was in Crumlin Road Jail till he went for trial in October for the first charges. It was a no-jury trial, so he wouldn't recognise the court. He got two five years to run concurrent.
He went straight to H Block then. We saw him the next morning, and he said that was where he wanted to go, because he did not believe he was a criminal — and he is not a criminal.
Five weeks later he was brought to trial for the bus depot. He refused to recognise that court too.
He said in court they had beaten him for three days solidly. He was badly beaten when I saw him in court when he was charged.
He said at his trial, 'I signed that statement because I couldn't take any more of your beatings. You are the brutalisers. Because we come from an area which is underprivileged, you say that everything my people say are lies.
'You men stand there now and swear to God you didn't beat us, but you are the liars, not us. My comrades and I are not liars.'
So the judge gave him 21 years altogether. I just couldn't cope with the thought of anyone being so cruel.
Because nine UVF men were up the same day for murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and possession of weapons, and between the whole lot of them they only got 59 years and he let one off to join the army. The British army, of course.
He was already in H Block, and away he went. But the Incorporated Law Society asked the judge to amend the sentence, and he changed it to 14 years.
But the five years runs consecutively, which makes 19 years, and now he's eighteen. He's been in H Block ten months now.
When we visited him yesterday, we had to wait a long time. That made me very nervous, because the last time I saw him he was really wretched looking.
That time he was so undeterred. Far better he would die, he said, than accept that he was a criminal. I didn't ask him to stop his blanket protest.
I asked him what would happen if the British Government would not relent.
He said, 'We would come out of here in coffins. We would wreck this place. They have beaten us and beaten us and it doesn't matter to me any more how much they beat me, because I'm a soldier of the Irish Republic and I will not be criminalised.'
STARVING
But he couldn't hardly [word illegible on the scan] because his voice was gone. And he was obviously starving. He couldn't eat. I smuggled in some sweets and he only ate two of them. He was white like a ghost.
Because of that I was really afraid yesterday. I waited for two hours. My friend was with me. She had never been to see anybody in there before, and she knew him from when he was born.
She makes speeches and pretends it doesn't affect her. When we went to go in she turned really pure white, and I said, 'You've turned pure white.'
And the young girl who was in front of us going in to see Peter said to me, 'You've turned really white too.'
GHOST
The door opened and the two of them came in. A fellow came first with a massive beard and thin like a ghost. He was white, wax. We cheered him. He said, 'I don't know you, but thanks.' And we just clapped and cheered.
Then Jo and Peter came. Jo was inarticulate, but very spiritually wonderful. He's only young and he never was eloquent.
'A Patrick Pearse he'd never be', I used to say. But now, maybe he would be. Because I've seen letters from them. In simple words they write what you couldn't make up to write if you were going to write fiction.
He took some cigarettes back for the boys. He doesn't smoke himself. And he said he was going in the punishment block today and he will be there till Friday.
His face was white and his hands were white and his nails... But the rest of him was filth and dirt. He showed me. His feet were so dirty that they had gone green. And his body was all caked with dirt.
LIKE PAWS
He said, 'My friend down there has got two hands like paws.'
Then we heard this great big shout, 'Jo, Jo, are you there?'
And he says, 'Yes, I'm here.'
Then he said, 'Is your ma there?'
And I says, 'Who's that?'
And he says, 'It's Danny.'
I says, 'Yes, I'm here, Danny.'
He says, 'Is your wee Sean with you?'
I says, 'Yes, son.'
He says, 'Send him down to me.'
And he says, 'Clara, Clara, are you there?'
And she says, 'Yes, Danny, son, I'm here.'
He says, 'It's me, Danny, and I'm here and up the Republic!'
I thought it was the most touching thing. But they wouldn't let wee Sean go down to him.
Jo and Peter were next to each other, so we were able to kiss them and hug them and kiss them and hug them.
And we said could we see Danny for just a couple of moments and the screws said, 'No, you can't.' They were angry because we really thought they were so wonderful, that they could suffer so much for so long.
He said, 'What do you think about the Cardinal?'
I said I thought his statement covered everything, but I didn't appreciate that he waited for two years to go there.
I said, 'How are your hands clean, and your face, son?'
He said, 'They made us throw water over them.'
They didn't throw any water over Danny's so he has got, like, paws.
My son was clean all of his life, and, when he was younger, a Rod Stewart fan. And he had lone hair down to here, auburn, all shiny. Now it is all matted and dirty and grey.
PRINCIPLE
His father is sick, and he sent to the Northern Ireland Office that he wanted to see his son. He doesn't understand H Block, because he left a long time ago. He doesn't understand that they won't see anybody.
I said, 'Son, if anything happens to him I'll let you know through a priest.'
He said, 'That's all right. Because if it means going off the blanket, I wouldn't even go to see you, Mummy, if you were dying.'
I said, 'And I wouldn't ask you son. Don't break your principle for anybody.'
He said, 'No, I won't, and never will.'
And he kept on speaking in Gaelic all the time, because he was forgetting, because he speaks in Gaelic inside there.
He said, 'We had a singsong last night.'
I said, 'What were you singing?'
He said, 'I did my Rod Stewart, and then Peter sung and we all sung. But it's cold because there isn't any windows.'
I said, 'Are you lying on the floor?'
He said, 'Yes, I haven't anything to lie on.'
It's about six months now since he has washed himself. They were being beaten constantly. They felt that they just couldn't brutalise them any more.
And therefore they would do something which is abhorrent to any Republican soldier. Their first principle is to be honourable and clean and well-mannered to their visitors, and an example to their own army.
But it has come to the point now that it can kill them. When they get a cut, it gets poisoned. His toenail has grown in, and it's all festered, and his foot was all dirt.
Roy Mason says it's self-inflicted punishment. I say Roy Mason is wrong. The reason for this protest is because the punishment which was being inflicted on those men was out of all proportion for anything they had done, and they had no comeback for it.
A British prisoner doesn't expect to be constantly beaten for nothing. And this was what was actually happening.
They are inflicting it on Roy Mason and his Government. He surely doesn't like a prison full of human waste, excreta, urine.
And I'm sure his very, very highly educated governor doesn't like getting urine thrown round him every time he goes to speak to ordinary Irish boys.
They might be famous now, as a group, but individually they're only boys that say, 'Yes, ma', and 'That's magic', and 'Sound enough'.
Roy Mason's wrong, and he'll always be wrong, and the British will always be wrong as long as they set their feet here and put shackles on my people.
I hate them, for they haven't the right to be here. They came here, to a Gaelic land — we never went to conquer anybody — and they destroyed it.
But they can't destroy these three hundred and fifty men. Since 1916 we've never had men in a group that we could think so much of. Not because my son's one of them. I don't care if he's from Cork, or the Bogside, or Ardoyne, or where he's from.
CHANGE
It's made an awful change in this house. This was always a Republican house, a socialist house. But now... Everybody in the house is really proud of him, really proud.
And I'm his mother, I raised him a Republican, I'd want him to be brave. But I'm afraid now, that something is going to happen to him. I think every mother is afraid.