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The SS Al Rawdah
For the first time ever the families of many of the 207 Republican internees held on the Al Rawdah prison ship between 1940 and 1941 met in Belfast. 85 years after their loved ones were interned on the prison hulk the families came together for the launch of Tom Hartley’s insightful account of that period.
At the beginning of his remarks Tom invited the relatives present to stand. There was spontaneous and sustained applause from the rest of the audience. It was an emotional moment, for the relatives and for those watching, in what was an evening of memory and recollection.
Mary McConville whose Uncle ‘Rocky’ Burns was held on the Al Rawdah, introduced the event and Tom Hartley explained to the relatives and audience his motivation for writing the book and the forensic approach he took in collecting information. He also drew attention to the poignant fact that two days earlier was the 85 anniversary of the only prisoner to die on the Al Rawdah, John Gaffney, who fell from his hammock and hit his head.
Tom reminded us all that following partition in 1920 the Unionist Regime at Stormont moved quickly to consolidate its power and to ensure that nationalists and republicans living in the North posed no threat to their domination. Legislation was introduced to gerrymander electoral boundaries, and deny hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly nationalist, access to a vote in local elections. Local Councils with nationalist majorities became unionist controlled. Discrimination in employment and housing was built into the structure of the state.
To control this apartheid system of governance the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act was passed into law. It allowed for the arrest, detention and internment without trial of citizens. Subsequently internment was used in every decade following partition up to December 1975. Tom lists in his book all of those places in the North which held the men and women internees, most more than once during those years.
These included, The SS Argenta, Crumlin Road Prison, Derry Gaol, an RIC barracks in Cookstown, Larne Union Workhouse, Armagh Gaol, the SS Al Rawdah, the Maidstone Prison Ship, the cages of Long Kesh, and Magilligan prison. Republicans were also interned by the Free State government in the Curragh.
Tom’s book, The SS Al Rawdah contains an amazing amount of detail. His comprehensive approach to social history – which is evident in his four previous books on ‘Milltown Cemetery’, ‘The City Cemetery’, ‘Balmoral Cemetery,’ and ‘More Stories from the Belfast City Cemetery’ – is unmatched. His exhaustive investigation 85 years after the Al Rawdah saw him successfully identify all of those imprisoned at that time. He produces short profiles of each of the men and sets the context for internment in 1938 that led to the Al Rawdah.
He records a Belfast Newsletter article that describing the Al Rawdah: “She was fitted as a troopship and only slight alterations were necessary to equip her for her new purpose as a prison hulk.”
On 2 September 1940 the first internees arrived at Killyleagh in County Down on Strangford Lough, where the Al Rawdah was anchored. Visitors had to be taken by small boat out to the Al Rawdah. Seamus Drumm told me how his father Jimmy, had to be taken ashore to the RUC Barracks in Killyleagh, because his mother couldn’t climb to the deck of the ship.
The conditions on board were horrendous. Cold, damp, poor food and inadequate medical facilities. Over a dozen died subsequently from ill health, including some who developed tuberculosis.
Tom also reminded all of us that the political conditions in the 1940s – just twenty years after partition; with unionism dominant, and a world war taking place – were very different from the 1970’s and 80’s when there was widespread public support for the internees and for the men and women later on the blanket, the no wash protests and the hunger strike. The lack of public support in the 1940s must have made the burden of imprisonment much more difficult for the political prisoners and their families.
Many of those who were imprisoned in that time were later interned in the 1950s and 60s and 70’s. My Uncle Paddy, an Al Rawad internee, took pleasure from the fact that the unionist state still thought him such a threat in his 70s that he was interned in Long Keshin the early 1970s. They are part of what Tom described as “that seamless river of experience” that was always there to inform and guide us.
The Al Rawdah in the 40s, like The Argenta in the 20s and The Maidstone in the 70s are all part of our penal history going back 1798, to Robert Emmet’s abortive rising, when prison ships were used to transport political activists to the penal colonies in Australia.
Bobby Sands’ passionate lyrics for ‘Back Home in Derry’ remind us of that time in our history:
In 1803 we sailed out to sea
Out from the sweet town o' Derry
For Australia bound if we didn't all drown
And the marks of our fetters we carried …
I want to commend Tom for this remarkable piece of work. I was very pleased to read the extracts about two of my uncles, Liam Hannaway and Paddy Adams, who were on the Al Rawdah. I’m sure all of the relatives will have the same response. Hopefully this will not be the end of the story. Some of the relatives brought along little mementos that the internees took from the ship. They included plaques, autograph books and little paintings. It would be nice if this Al Rawad handicraft work could be brought together and exhibited– perhaps during Féile an Phobai?
Thanks Tom.
A Space in which Dialogue is Possible
Last week Queens University , Belfast and Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) announced a significant new partnership that will establish DKiT as a University College of Queen’s University. The all-island educational and economic potential is enormous. Last week also, the Good Friday Agreement Oireachtas committee was told that survival rates for children with congenital heart conditions on the island of Ireland now match the best results anywhere in the world. This is because of 15 years of co-operation between the health services North and South.
To add to this good news, the Shared Island Unit announced an additional €50 million for projects and it emerged that a number of MEPs have written to the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola requesting special “observer” status for representatives from the North.
The DUP leader Gavin Robinson immediately opposed the EU move. The perennial default position of the DUP and others within political unionism is to condemn and oppose any positive progress. This resistance to change is evident almost daily in the negative atmosphere that has been created in the Assembly, in the Executive and on local councils.
The reality is that unionism has gone backwards to the ’NEVER, NEVER, NEVER’ stance of past decades. This resistance to change reflects the essential insecurity of political unionism.
None of this is new. Anyone with a basic understanding of unionist history since the plantation, and especially since the Home Rule struggle of the late 19th century and into partition, understands this.
Does this intransigence by unionism mean we should walk away from the political institutions? No. That would mean handing control back to a British Secretary of State. Could we expect better from Hillary Benn? I don’t think so. Could we depend on the current Irish government to represent nationalist interests in the North? No. Certainly not on Micheál Martin’s watch.
The only viable long term solution is ending the Union and partition and building a new Ireland. That’s why the Good Friday Agreement must be fully implemented. Including the unity Referendum. In the meantime, the institutions may expire because of the DUPs inability to adjust to the new dispensation. They need to wake up to the reality that change is happening every day. Better to embrace it. They are certainly not persuading anyone outside of their own ranks that the Union is good for us all. Our responsibility must be to show that a new Ireland will work for all of us. Including our unionist neighbours. So let’s make best use of the Good Friday institutions while building on the growing momentum toward unity.
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