Recently retired after a lifetime of community service, North Belfast bridge-builder Liam Maskey has has time to catch up on his reading. One book he stumbled upon, first published in 1991, brought him back to his own teen years in the war-torn New Lodge and the extraordinary exploits of one of his neighbours.
That book was 'Standing Proud' by Crumlin Road Jail escapee Joe Doherty’s 1991 who spent ten years in a New York prison cell before being extradited to British authorities.
Liam and Joe have shared history, as they had grew up on the same street together in the late 50s and 60s “between the Republican New Lodge Road and the Protestant Tiger Bay”.
“It’s one of the most honest books I’ve ever read," Liam told the Andytown News. “There’s no bravado, just important things in his life that he talks about. What comes across clearly is that he doesn't see himself as a celebrated revolutionary — and remember his detention was headline news across the USA and ignited a wave of support from Irish America — but as just an ordinary guy”
The book recounts the IRA man's armed breakout from Crumlin Road Gaol in 1981 and his flight to New York, where he was, three yers later, arrested and imprisoned in the Metropolitan Correctional Centre at the very tip of Manhattan. To this day, the street sign outside the jail bears his name - a gesture of support from New York City Council.
For a decade, Joe Doherty fought the American legal system to avoid being unlawfully extradited into the hands of the UK Government.
Joe Doherty won his case on the basis that the offences for which he was wanted in the North of Ireland, a fatal North Belfast gun battle with the SAS in which the IRA deployed an M60 machine gun, was a political offence. Professor Christopher Pyle, one of his attorneys, declared, “Mr. Doherty was not extraditable for the same reason that Britain would not surrender Confederate soldiers who fled to Canada during our Civil War." However this case had ended, the US legal system targeted him again, succeeding in deporting him for entering the country illegally.
“It’s not propaganda. He’s not trying to score points. It’s just from the heart,” says Liam Maskey of 'Standing Proud' which is part-memoir, part-polemic.
“Young people today think these IRA volunteers were supermen,but in fact, they didn’t want to be soldiers. Their lives were completely changed by what happened from 1969 on.”
Liam, a founder of cross-community charity Intercomm, says the book gave him great hope for the future despite the often snail's pace of reform under the Stormont government.
“There’s fantastic hope in the nationalist community but that hope is disintegrating because of the sectarian block being put on progress," he says. "The crux of the problems is that Nationalists saw the Good Friday Agreement as a stepping stone to building an all-island solution. For Unionists, however, it meant the conflict was over and no more work needed to be done. Sadly, Unionist communities are being pulled back because of this attitude.”
Liam said he was deeply moved by the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 - having paid a key role in persuading republicans — and loyalists — to sue for peace.
“When I saw the Good Friday Agreement, I cried," he recalls. "I cried for the future of my children and my grandchildren.”.
By the mid-90s, as a community organiser in the north of the city, Liam met up with Billy Mitchell, a former loyalist prisoner who was doing identical work on the other side of the peaceline. The two ex-prisoners were able to put aside their differences and established Intercomm in 1995, helping ex-combatants and ex-prisoners from both sides of the conflict to work together to build the peace.
Since its establishment, Intercomm has established itself across the world, helping with international peace-building operations in South Africa, South Sudan and Nepal.
Liam says his admiration for Joe Doherty, now a veteran community activist in North Belfast, remains undimmed. "After his return, Joe completed his GCSEs and A Levels and went on to earn a degree in Social Studies just a year after his release," says Liam. "Over the course of his career, he has obtained more than 25 accreditations in Youth and Community Work.
He adds: “Joe Doherty is a beacon of life and hope and this book, which I had never heard of until recently, just affirms my conviction in that regard. He's a hero of our community and I hope others get to read his memoir to understand how vital it is to continue to make progress for all."
Last year, the Andersonstown News reported on a meeting between Joe Doherty and former Black Panther Jamal Joseph who had last met in the Manhattan Correction Facility in 1984.
Standing Proud: Writings from Prison was published in 1991 by the National Committee for Joe Doherty.
