BOOKS: Memoir gives a unique insight into H-Block prison protest
I Only Went Out For The Paper – Memoirs of an Irish Republican Prisoner. By Siobhan Hughes MALACHY Trainor, or Muffles Trainor, was only a name amidst the many men and women prisoners who were on the blanket, no-wash protest in the H-Blocks and Armagh Jail during the 1970s. He feels that their voices are still unheard and has produced his memoir with the writer and researcher Siobhan Hughes. Malachy was from a Catholic family, who originally lived in Lisburn, but their home and business was burnt out in the pogroms of the 1920s. As a consequence they were forced to move to Armagh. Northern Ireland’s Catholic population had lived through marginalised political and social segregation from the predominantly Protestant hierarchy. This was a time of turbulent change in the world’s political and social history. Siobhan gives the reader this historical insight into the lead-up to the Northern Ireland conflict. Malachy in his youth followed the drumbeats of civil discontent of the1960s. His republican baptism came on a day he went out for the newspaper, November 30, 1968. A march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement in Armagh. It was stopped on Ogle Street. It was here that Malachy faced the wrath of Ian Paisley and Ronnie Bunting Senior. Inspired by Bernadette Devlin – his ‘Joan of Arc’ – he joined People’s Democracy, followed by a progression into the INLA. Arrested for possession of arms and explosives in 1976, he served his time in H-Block 5 with Brendan 'the Dark' Hughes. On entering the H-Blocks Malachy joined the blanket protest, which moved on to the no-wash protest as a result of prisoners being beaten up during visits to the washrooms. This protest was also carried out by female republican prisoners in Armagh Gaol. The female role, both politically and from the grass roots, is explored by Siobhan within this memoir. On returning from a prison visit, Malachy endured the brutality of a forced wash at the hands of authorities. Darkie Hughes, a committed republican, was visibly shocked by the physical and mental change in Malachy. Darkie was the Operation Commander of the IRA. Bobby Sands occupied the next cell. Malachy recalls the two men talking through the pipe in Irish. Malachy admits that his own Irish was not good, but “You learnt quickly in prison. It was a code to defeat the screws." Darkie and Bobby hunkered down and discussed starting an inevitable hunger strike. In his memoir Malachy, by his own admission, did not volunteer for the hunger strike as he describes that "he could still smell the sweet scent of cherry blossom". To join the hunger strike was in itself a death sentence.
