When I was young, certain people would be pointed out in whispered reverence as having been "on the ship" or "in the Crum". They were few in number, always men, and even though they struck one as being extremely proud and serious, they were also full of purpose. When one heard them speak about the past, the name which cropped up most often, and elicited the greatest emotion, was that of IRA Volunteer Tom Williams. Williams (19) was in charge of an IRA unit in West Belfast on Easter Sunday 1942. The plan was to fire shots over an RUC patrol car as a diversion to draw police away from three banned republican commemorations. The RUC gave chase and Constable Patrick Murphy (48), who followed the escaping IRA men into a house, was shot dead. Williams, who was wounded three times by Murphy, was charged, along with five others, with murder, and all were sentenced to death, even though Williams took responsibility.
Almost 60 years after his death, this is the first time his story has appeared in print. The author, himself a prisoner in the H-Blocks, gathered the material, while on parole, from surviving friends and relatives of Williams and from material only lately available through the Public Records Office. An asthmatic of slim build, Williams was brought up in Bombay Street, scene of loyalist attacks in the 1920s and 1930s (and burned down in August 1969). He joined the IRA shortly after it issued a grand ultimatum to London calling for a British withdrawal and for a reply within days. Not surprisingly, Britain replied with internment and increased security measures.
The judge in the 1942 murder trial was Edward Murphy, a former Deputy Grand Master in the Orange Order. The trial lasted three days and the jury found all six men guilty of murder. Murphy then sentenced them all to be hanged on August 18th. However, after the gathering of a quarter-of-a-million signatures in an international reprieve campaign, the death sentences on five of the men, including veteran republican Joe Cahill, were commuted to life imprisonment.
Williams, however, was hanged on September 2nd, 1942, and the chapter describing the hanging, which quotes from a confidential British government document on how to carry out a successful execution, is spine-chilling. After his execution, black flags appeared across Belfast and there were protests in nationalist areas. The dead RUC officer, Constable Patrick Murphy, was from the Falls Road. Years later, his son, also Patrick, was the headmaster of my secondary school. He showed no bitterness and in 1969/70 often went to court to help secure bail for those of his pupils charged with riotous behaviour. He was an excellent headmaster. He later moved away from Belfast, and was offered and accepted a post on the Northern Ireland Police Authority, but resigned within days after receiving threats. Finally, in a separate incident, his son, John Patrick Murphy, a former RUC Constable, was shot dead by the INLA in Belfast in 1993.
Following a campaign by the National Graves Association the British government agreed to a request that Williams's remains be exhumed and buried in Milltown Cemetery - if his relatives gave the go-ahead. They are now scattered and divided on the issue, and when Crumlin Road Jail was closed down in 1994, his remains remained within its walls, his memory part of republican folklore.
Danny Morrison's fourth book, Then The Walls Came Down, based on his letters from Crumlin Road Jail and the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, will be published by Mercier Press next month