Thatcher's Spy by Willie Carlin;

Author:Willie Carlin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785372872
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)
Published: 2019-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

MARTIN OPENS UP

One afternoon in the summer of 1984, I was at Cable Street when Mitchel McLaughlin asked if I fancied taking part in a debate. ‘What’s the issue?’ I asked.

‘We want to hold a debate between both sides of the movement in Derry about the wisdom of taking our seats on the City Council.’

I was taken aback. ‘What, us and the IRA?’

‘Both sides of the movement,’ he repeated, not wishing to use my words.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘when and where?’

He told me he hadn’t yet reached agreement but was hoping for two teams of four speakers on each side. The venue would have to be somewhere away from public view. Over the next week the debate was organised in the safety of the upstairs lounge of The Bogside Inn and would be closed to the public. I was to lead and propose the motion: ‘Sinn Féin believes that we should contest and take our seats at the next city council elections.’ I had three other Sinn Féin members in my team and we were opposed by the ‘other side of the family’ who were represented by two hard-liners from Creggan and two volunteers from Shantallow.

The lounge was packed, with over eighty people gathered from all sides of the movement to witness what Mitchel had called ‘a relaxed discussion with a serious side to it’. He was using the absence of most of the hard-line IRA men to generate the discussion and the debate, which ‘if carried’ could be claimed as the wish of the rank and file of the movement in Derry. If the motion was to be lost, he could claim it to have been a useful exercise in the art of ‘healthy discussion amongst republicans’. Martin McGuinness was conspicuous by his absence. I suppose it wouldn’t have been wise for him to be seen to be taking part. True to form, Mitchel didn’t take part either, instead opting to act as chairman and ‘bell-ringer’, should anyone overrun or get carried away. He, like Martin, was now riding two horses and didn’t want to fall off either of them.

We did have a very special, surprising guest, however. The hereditary peer and senior barrister Lord Gifford was in Derry, visiting and advising the families of volunteers who had been arrested on Raymond Gilmour’s evidence, and he had been invited along as an observer. He sat out of sight in the corner, with few people even knowing he was there. I was called on to open the debate, which I did to cheers of the Sinn Féin cumann from the Waterside and boos from the IRA volunteers in Shantallow. One by one each of the speakers gave their five-minute contribution. The atmosphere was mostly light-hearted, as boos and cheers rang out around the lounge. Each speaker spoke with authority and passion, defending their views robustly. All in all it was a very good debate, which I felt needed to end with a rousing plea.

I was called upon to sum up for the motion.

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