On Tuesday afternoon, Sean Mac Eachaidh had taken Maureen Strotmeyer and myself up to the Rathenraw Estate for a Rathenraw Community Recognition Event. Here we enjoyed a meal and met some of the residents of the estate. We also took a walk around the estate and ventured on to one of the 'raths'. We were informed that this 'rath' was most likely from ancient times, and probably where the estate acquired its name 'Rathenraw'.

Later we journeyed over to Paddy Murray's home where I was able to chat with him for a while. Paddy Murray is on the loyalist ‘hit list’, they want him dead. The British Government had to install extensive security equipment in his home for protection.

DVB: I am here with Paddy Murray, former POW, released from prison two years ago as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. Paddy, where are we?

PM: We are in Rathenraw Estate, County Antrim.

DVB: The other day when we met, you had a marvelous story that was so interesting. We could have talked for many more hours. Tell us a little bit about your story.

PM: Where would you like me to begin my story? Before I went into jail, while I was in jail, after I came out of jail?

DVB: Why not start while you were in jail? That is half way between.

PM: I went to jail January 1993. I was arrested for explosives. When I was captured, I was going to blow up the oil tanks at the Belfast City Airport. For that, and a couple other explosives charges, I got over 500 years, but you only serve 25 years. When I went into gaol, I went in as an IRA prisoner, because I was a member of the republican movement. I went in the republican wings. You go in the Crumlin Road Gaol first, where you stay on remand until you get sentenced.

I went to Court in April 1994 and pleaded not guilty. The way I looked at it, I wasn’t guilty of committing a crime. I was a soldier, I was fighting for my country. My beliefs are that I was correct in doing so. To go to court and plead guilty to a lessor sentence, was totally alien to me. I would have had to say I was a criminal, I was sorry for what I had done, and that I was wrong. I still don’t believe that anything I had done was wrong. All the actions I carried out, on behalf of the Irish Republican Army, I can still maintain my pride. There had been people injured due to the explosions, and my sympathy goes out to these people. We always gave warnings for any bombs we had, we always gave a half hour or forty minute warning. Now, if the police refused to clear the area sometimes, for whatever reason, that was the police’s fault, as opposed to the army. We gave the warning, and we covered ourselves. Any soldiers or peelers that were injured were injured because we were fighting a war.

DVB: Were you ever injured in any of your actions?

PM: No, I was never injured. Our bombs never went off prematurely. They went off on time, or they didn’t go off at all. I lit the fuse, so there were no injuries that way, either to myself or any other volunteer.

DVB: Are out of gaol as a result of the Good Friday Peace Agreement? How was that beneficial for you?

PM: Yes, most definitely. When the IRA called a cease fire in 1994, we had only been in gaol since 1993. We knew the consequences of that. At some stage we were going to get an early release, we didn’t know when. We knew the IRA was never going to let us down, and they were going to push to get their prisoners released. That is what happened. On the 20^th July, 2000, I was released on the GFA, after serving just over eight years of a 25 year sentence.

DVB: What is your life like today?

PM: Before I went into gaol, I was married and had two kids. My daughter was only six months old when I went to gaol. My first wife left me because she didn’t believe in what I was doing, she couldn’t take the pressure. I met my current wife when I was in gaol. Relationship wise, I have a stronger relationship now, more so than when first I went to gaol. When you go to gaol, you learn to get more in touch with yourself. You become more aware of little things, like when someone sends you a card, a wee letter, or a kiss on the cheek, and the way they tell you, I love you, on their visit. That makes all the difference.

Gaol is a routine, nothing changes. You get up at the same time every morning, you get your breakfast at the same time, lunch, and evening meal at the same time. You are used to lock up at eight o’clock or half eight each night. Nothing changes. You see the same faces because all your comrades are with you. You discuss the same topic you discussed a million times before. You rely on the wee letters and cards, and you learn to open yourself up. Before I went into gaol, I would have never discussed my personal life with anyone. You learn there are comrades to whom you can open your heart. We have sat in the cell, three or four of us at a time, and we all had been sitting and crying and hugging each other. Which you wouldn’t do outside in the ‘real world’, as we call it. I mean, you just wouldn’t sit and hug another fellow, it’s just not a done thing. But in gaol with the pressures coming, you do need an outlet. You do have your friends, who become more than friends, more so than what your friends are on the outside. Friends you have before you go into gaol, you don’t lose them, but you don’t have the same feelings for them as you did with the comrades that were in gaol with you.

DVB: While you were in gaol, were you subject to wearing a prison uniform, and performing prison work?

PM: Because of the Hunger Strikers, we were classified as republican prisoners. As a republican prisoner, you wore your own clothes, you also did no prison work. Although the administration of the gaol ran the H-blocks in Long Kesh, the Brits call it The Maze, they actually ran it as a gaol within a gaol. They patrolled the outside gates and the perimeter, but the republican movement controlled the wings and the structures. We all obeyed the structure. We had a gaol OC, who was in charge of all republican prisoners, regardless of what block he was in. We also had a block OC who was in control of the block he was in. I was in H-5, then I went to H-7. I was moved after the tunnel was found out. We went from H-7 to H-8, then we went to H3. My job in the gaol, it wasn’t a job, but a task I said I would do, was a Camp Shopman. I did the Shop for all the republican prisoners.

DVB: What is ‘The Shop’, could you explain that?

PM: If you were in gaol, you didn’t have to deal with the ‘screws’ to buy tins of food, biscuits, sweets, or anything you got. You never dealt with ‘screws’. You would deal with a ‘wing shopman’ There was a ‘block shopman’ and a ‘camp shopman’. My job then was to make sure your wing shopman got you what you needed.

If you needed stuff that the ‘screws’ didn’t sell, at the start they didn’t sell tin stuff, it was my job to lobby the ‘screws’, the Governors, and whoever else, so that we got the tin stuff that you asked for. Some people wanted moisturizing cream and stuff like that. The doctor wouldn’t prescribe it for them, any chemist would sell over the counter, but the gaol refused to give it to us. It was my job to campaign until we got for you, what you asked. We were very successful. At the very end, when the gaol was closing, although the administration ruled the outside, it was the republican prisoners that got what you needed within the wings, within the blocks. It was the ordinary man on the wing who decided what food he wanted, what TV program he watched. It used to be controlled by the ‘screws’, but we got it changed so that we got our own TVs. You used to have to go out and ask the ‘screws’ for everything. If you needed a toilet roll, he might have decided to give you four or six pieces of toilet roll. That changed also with a long campaign.

The ‘screws’ then gave us a budget for the block. What they might say was ‘you have a hundred pound for a month’ (abstract number). Out of that hundred pound, you have to buy your own toilet rolls, your own floor polish to polish the floor, your own paint to paint the cells, anything it took to run the cells. Just like running a house. They gave us a budget and we had to keep within it. It was the same with the food budget. They gave us so much in which we could spend. Rather than getting steak every night of the week, we budgeted. The loyalists bought food that was expensive, their budget ran out, and they couldn’t cope. The republicans, we budgeted, you could have salad tonight and steak once a week. We always budgeted so that we looked after the poorest man as opposed to looking after the richest or the hardest man.

DVB: Didn’t the prison provide you with breakfast, lunch and dinner?

PM: What the prison did provide you, was one hot meal a day, they were required by law. What they didn’t do, came out of our budget. We bought cereals for breakfast, whatever we wanted. When your hot meal came up, nine times out of ten, it wasn’t eaten because you didn’t know who cooked it. We preferred to cook our own stuff. Sometimes the boys did eat the meals, but not the majority. We would buy our own meat and other stuff and cook it ourselves.

DVB: That sounds like a pretty unique experience, I don’t know that other prisons permit such an operation.

PM: Although the H-Blocks in Long Kesh was a mixed prison (one block was republican, one block was loyalist), the loyalists didn’t run it at the same standard as we did. On loads of occasions they would have men starving because their hardest men ruled their wings. As a republican, your beliefs are quite simple, you look after the poorest man. When we did anything, we went at the slowest pace. When we were teaching each other, we went with the slowest person in the class. There was no point in flying with the high flyers and leaving the rest of us out of it. At the end of day, we are all republicans, in for the same thing. We all have a duty to look out for each other. The rest of the prisons don’t have that, because they don’t have that structure. They don’t have that built up where they can rely on each other.

I can go to someone and say ‘Look, I need a yarn, I need to talk to you’, regardless of what they were doing at that particular time, they would have stopped. If I needed a private talk, I would have closed the door and had a yarn. No other gaol, that I’m aware of, would ever, give you that amount of time. That is only because it was our own people, although we were from different parts of the country, we all share the one goal. We were all republicans, and we all shared the same beliefs.

DVB: I know there are still political prisoners in gaol, but, are they still considered political prisoners with the same benefits you had? Or are they considered criminals now and don’t receive the same benefits?

PM: The administration and the British government classify them as criminals now since the Good Friday Agreement. They had a so called ‘cut off date’, so that, as they classify it, any crime committed outside the state, you then became a criminal. Before that date, they were accepting you were a republican, you were fighting for your country. After the cut off date, you then became a criminal.

DVB: As of today, there are no more political prisoners?

PM: Not in the eyes of the British state. There are still republican prisoners in the six counties and in the 26. The Free State government also doesn’t recognize them as republican prisoners either. They recognize them as criminals as well. As long as there are republican prisoners, whether they are IRA, Continuity, RIRA, or NLA, you have a duty to stand by the prisoners regardless of what your political beliefs are. I feel that anyway. Because being a prisoner, I know what they go through. I wouldn’t make a difference in them or any republican prisoner.

DVB: With your time in gaol and the things you learned, has that experience helped you in your community dealings, or the potential of employment?

PM: Before I went into gaol, I wouldn’t have known how to turn a computer on. Since I went to jail, I have learned how to do all my exams on computers. Even with all of the education I have, it hasn’t improved the prospect of getting work. From day to day, when I go to an employer, they ask you ‘have you a criminal record’. Which I would say, I don’t have, because I don’t have. When they go through the place and everybody else, they say ‘this guy has a record.’ For that reason, it is very hard for me to find a job. Within the community, I work But I do what I have always done, I work for the community, but it’s voluntary. Everything I do is voluntary, for the betterment of our community. As a republican, the community is for the betterment of our children, regardless of who they are, color, creed, religion, that’s immaterial. The fact is, if they belong at Rathenraw, if they live here, the onus is on me as a republican to look out for them.

DVB: The other night when we were talking, you were saying, you are on a ‘hit list’, tell us what that means?

PM: The police have been to me twice to tell me that I am on a loyalists hit list, meaning they are trying to shoot me or kill me. At the minute I would be the most prominent one within the Antrim area.

Why? Because I am a republican, first and foremost. I’m an ex-prisoner which doesn’t bow down too well to them, and also, I’ll stand up and be counted when need be. At the present moment we have an incident at St. Malachy’s High School where my son goes to school. It started off with a crowd of loyalists coming up to the school, signaling out the Catholics and hitting them. It then escalated into crowds of between five to 20 coming up to the school on a daily basis. What I would then do is, get out of my car and put my son in the car. But then I went over and crossed the road where the rest of the Catholic kids were, and stood in the middle of them. They would give me the verbal abuse, but leave the kids alone. And when I stood there, they didn’t cause any physical harm to them. Then the crowd grew because of my presence there. At one stage, the crowd grew up to 150 people, and we are talking about adults now. Although the police are there, they are not prepared to do anything about it. These loyalists have carried baseball bats and sticks. At one stage they had a knife and the police did take it off of them, but they wouldn’t arrest them or move them on. The last time I tried to cross the road with the kids, eight policemen pulled me back across. They said they wouldn’t allow me across the road with the kids because I was intimidating the 70 loyalists that were on the other side.

DVB: You were intimidating 70 people? Now, doesn’t that empower you?

PM: Well this is the problem. This is why they have me on their hit list. We don’t fear them. You can only be intimidated as you allow them to intimidate you, and I don’t. I want our kids to do the same thing. If I can do it, they can do it also. At the end of the day, it is more intimidating for 13 and 14 year olds to walk into 70 men, than it is for me. I want to teach them, they are Catholics first and foremost, and they are Irish citizens. They have a right to go to school, they have a right to come home from school. They also have a right to wear the uniform of the school, not to hide it or be ashamed of who they are.

DVB: And that is what you have to endure here?

PM: Yes, that is what we have to endure. Because you do not want to lie down, you don’t want to take it, you then become a target for them. I am a target here. If they really want to get me, which I believe at some stage they might do, it is not going to stop me from standing around and saying ‘you are wrong’. To pick on children is wrong.

DVB: How does Patrick deal with this at age 14?

PM: He finds it hard because, unlike the rest of his friends, we live in areas which are mixed (Protestant and Catholic). Patrick’s wee friends, although some are Protestant, they go into each others houses in each others estates, and they have no problem with that. Because Patrick is named after me, and he known as my son, there are certain estates that he can’t go into. I fear for his safety. Unlike the other kids, they are at risk because they are Catholic, but they are not at immediate risk. If they couldn’t get to me, they would take it out on Patrick.

DVB: Does that frighten you?

PM: Oh, that frightens me more than what it does them picking on me. I have a four week old baby. That frightens me that they would actually throw a pipe bomb through the window.

DVB: How does your wife deal with all of this?

PM: There is no doubt about it, that it is harder on her. She not only has the worry of the kids, she has the added worry of myself, which I don’t take into consideration. She would fear for it. At the end of the day, I have only been out of gaol two years, she wants at least another ten years with me. Her fear is that our life is going to be ruined, not only the kids, but hers as well. It is an added pressure on her.

DVB: Let’s talk a bit about defending your community. If you were attacked with the landrovers and fire machines, you would defend your community just like anyone would defend their community?

PM: Oh yes. Across the road is a mixed estate, where the bottom half is mostly Protestant and the top half is mostly Catholic. The loyalists came up into the Catholic part of it last night and burned a car, and then they came across the road and tried to come into Rathenraw. There were me and four others, who were actually there first. We went out and chased them off, and then the rest of them came over. If it happened again tonight, it would probably be the same. We would stand together where we could defend our own area.

DVB: Would you anticipate them coming again tonight?

PM: Oh, definitely. I would say, if they are not here before the end of the night, they will be here before the weekend. The problem is we are coming up to what is called ‘the mad season’. July is their marching season, and this is all hyped up. They want to be able to march and do whatever they choose to do. Just a few weeks ago, they burned twelve Catholics out of the estate just across the road, because they are trying to push the peace line further and further. All that stands is a couple of burned houses and a main road then me and them. If they move a couple of houses up, there is only a main road between us and them, which means you could come under attack on a daily basis.

You can never take it easy and relax, you never turn your mobile off. It always has to be on because you can always expect someone to phone you and tell you there is something happening somewhere.

DVB: I can only wish you good luck and hopefully, one day soon, positive things will happen so that you won’t have to live, like you have to live.

PM: If I can do anything it will be so that my kids can benefit from all of this. I don’t expect to benefit much because this has been my life for so long. But I expect it for my kids. I expect my son to go to university and get a good job because he has the brains to do it. Not because of any other reason. If he doesn’t have the brains, then don’t give him the job, give it to someone else who has it. As it stands right now, regardless of whether you have the qualifications or not, you will not get the job. So I am hoping that that changes.

DVB: You are hoping that it changes, but do you believe in your heart it will change?

PM: It has to change, I don’t know how long it will take. I really do hope it is sooner rather than later

DVB: If the Lord Mayor, Alex Maskey, gets the Tricolour to rise above City Hall, what do you think it will do for the citizens?

PM: Well, if the Tricolour flies in Belfast, the six counties as a whole will be brilliant. It’s like a Tricolour going on Stormont. As my Granny used to tell me, the only way you would ever get a Tricolour on City Hall is when you have a United Ireland. To get a Tricolour at this stage would be fantastic. Not only for me as a republican, but for nationalists on the whole.

DVB: If something like that were to happen, would you anticipate a rise in violence?

PM: Most definitely. You see, anything that happens to improve the esteem of the Catholics, the hard line unionists will always try to put you back down. And by putting you back down, they will blame it on the fact that you asked for a Tricolour to go on City Hall. Unfortunately, you will have nationalists who will believe them.

DVB: Well good luck to you Paddy Murray. I hope things move in a positive light as time goes on.

NOTE: Since my interview with Paddy Murray, the loyalists attacked him and broke into his home. Fortunately, his neighbors and community workers came to his rescue. Paddy was not injured and he and his family are fine.