Hedley Wright must be the only man to have been a member of both the IRA and the B Specials, writes Brendan Ó Cathaoir. As a Protestant he had no difficulty joining the North's paramilitary police force; why he joined the IRA is a question worth exploring as he turns 80.
He was born in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, on August 20th, 1922. His family were moderate unionists who despised Orangeism. He has been a non-conformist since attending the Royal School, Dungannon, where his father was a teacher. Asked to write an essay in the early stages of the second World War comparing British and German bombing of civilians, he said both were equally bad. The headmaster threatened to report him to the RUC.
On leaving school he got a job in Mackies engineering works in Belfast "through nepotism". He witnessed naked sectarianism in the city. One-third of the workforce of more than 10,000 was Catholic, but none held a position of real authority. For those who accepted the status quo there were prospects of advancement, including trips abroad.
The Dickensian atmosphere at Mackies was "totally humiliating", he says. Going to the fetid lavatories involved presenting one's identification disk to a clerk; being a minute late in the morning meant losing 6d from a weekly wage of 17s.6d. (approximately €1); 30 minutes late cost one half a day's pay.
Cahill brothers
Hedley fraternised with a group outside the factory which included Tom Williams and the Cahill brothers, Joe and Frankie. Through them he was inducted into the IRA.
Although anti-Nazi, Hedley accepted John Mitchel's dictum that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. While this sounds naïve in retrospect, he was not alone in thinking at the time that Germany might win the war.
While attached to IRA intelligence, Hedley was asked by Hugh McAteer - brother of Eddie, the last leader of the Nationalist Party - to join the B Specials. Accordingly, for a short time he strolled down the Falls Road with a legally held loaded Webley revolver in his pocket.
In 1942 he was detained on suspicion of being about to act against the state. Hedley thinks an IRA comrade revealed his identity under pressure during interrogation.
A Church of Ireland bishop tried to persuade him to sever his ties with militant republicanism. Hedley was an embarrassment, as the two other Protestants interned in Derry jail had signed out. He refused all inducements, including the offer of a job in Moygashel Fabrics. The bishop, displaying a gulf of incomprehension, exclaimed: "But I buy Irish clothes myself." Hedley crossed out "C of I" over his cell door and wrote "nothing".
He was imprisoned in Belfast and Derry for three years. He took part in two hunger strikes. He spent six months barefoot. His mother visited him a few times; his father never; his sibling joined the RAF.
There were about 400 men interned, some of them unconnected with any movement. Two went mad.
Another indication of the tensions endured was the comment of a big man from Carrickmore when he saw Hedley with a book by James Connolly: "Reading communists - you should be put out of the yard."
Cultural outlet
The study of Irish provided a cultural and spiritual outlet. In Faoi Glas, Tarlach Ó hUid recalled an "ógánach ard dubh spéaclach a bhí ina Phrotastúnach" borrowing an Irish translation of St John's Gospel. Hedley retains two notebooks which are evidence of his love and mastery of the language.
Released in October 1945, he had difficulty finding a job. He worked initially for a slave-driver of a farmer for 30 shillings (€1.80) a week and a half-pound of butter for his mother. He was employed next by a gombeen man, who sold smuggled bicycle tubes to people reduced to cycling with straw in their tyres.
Hedley required a visa to go to Liverpool. To obtain the visa he had to describe himself as British - which, with his strong sense of Irish nationality, he was unwilling to do. Eventually, he slipped over the Border. After touring the country with a drama company for five years he settled in Bray, Co Wicklow, where he lives today with his wife, Esther.
Hedley had hoped to stand as a Unity candidate for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in the 1966 Westminster election. A youthful Father Denis Faul, whom he met by appointment in Dublin, "was quite happy with me throwing my hat in the ring".
He was told that Patricia and Conn McCluskey - the progenitors of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association - wished to meet him the next time he was in Dungannon. Hedley was reluctant to involve his mother, who still lived in the town: "I knew she had already suffered, as had my father, from my beliefs and actions."
He considered the Northern state so flawed that, no matter what patching was done, it could never be a democratic entity. He was unimpressed, therefore, when Dr McCluskey told him all they wanted was "British justice for British people".
Splitting the vote
Sinn Féin insisted on Ruairí Ó Brádaigh contesting the election, thus splitting the nationalist vote and ensuring a unionist victory. The party issued a bitter leaflet about the Unity campaign, Hedley relates, "and showed ill-will and malice towards me in several obvious references".
He withdrew his candidacy at the selection convention, in the absence of transparent fund-raising arrangements. Unable and unwilling to pay his own election expenses, he "had no intention of being beholden to anyone". While canvassing subsequently for Jim Donnelly, he had to be rescued more than once from loyalist mobs by the RUC.
Hedley Wright remains a socialist republican but the people he now describes as great are John Hume and the Rev Albert McElroy, of the long-forgotten Northern Liberal party.
Hedley has been a vegetarian since 1938, when he kept a pet rabbit. He was put off meat by the sight of a rabbit on the dinner table. In ways this commitment says more about Deasún Mac a' tSaoir than his youthful rebellion against Orange ascendancy. Crossing the sectarian divide involved renouncing the prospect of financial security. This gentle, ascetic, incorruptible man bears some resemblance to the One who became poor for our sake.