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smokingbootis in the news. A mate texted me with a 'Remember him?' type message.
Here he is. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/20/man-jailed-ireland-1976-sallins-train-robbery-claims-police-torture
And yes, I remember him. Many years ago, said friend and I travelled to Ireland, to visit our friend Olivia Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Robertson) We had a wonderful magical time. But it was safe to say that there were folk around us with, what could best be described as opinions about the DUP, the IRA etc. Given where we were, I guess anything else would be odd.
Oh I wish I could remember properly! But for some reason I got the impression he was an IRA member. He talked to me about being tortured by the police, and somehow, from the inferences, I thought he meant the NI police. Clearly not.
I was so green.
'Don't sympathise,' said my friend, all those years ago, because Osgur focused on me a lot by word and eye, and I got the distinct uncomfortable expression that he liked me. 'These people ... You know what I'm saying.' I didn't, everyone seemed to talk a bit obliquely about the various political groups dotting the landscape around us. I didn't ask questions in case I revealed how much I didn't know. That may have been evident anyway from my wondering eyes and baffled silences.
But I looked into this man's eyes and I knew, whatever else he was saying, that he wasn't lying about being tortured. And I didn't know what to do or say, how to sound non-committal in case he was some crazed terrorist, but I knew very well it didn't matter who he was or what he belonged to, he did not deserve torture. Decent people do not do that.
He had the saddest eyes I have ever seen.
The only other real political prisoner I've met was Manolo, thrown in jail in Castro's Cuba for being an intellectual, he claimed. He walked up to me at work one day with a sheaf of papers, his story, and thrust them into my hands. I still have them somewhere, or maybe not. Manolo wasn't sad, wasn't broken. He was angry, spitting. But then I don't think they hurt him physically beyond deprivation. I might be wrong there too. These memories are decades old.
And if you ask me why these people find me, I can honestly answer that I don't know, but they do, or did.
Of Osgur, my travelling companion said 'He just sees a soft touch, a pretty girl listening, that's all. But a lot of these people support murderers of Brits.'
She was much more sensitive in her understanding of the situation than those words suggest, but she never had problems calling a spade a spade. Me, I knew she was probably right but...
I have known many people, R included, with a fury towards the IRA and others like them for the bombings in England. And if you said to them that these were retaliatory for many atrocities, including the wrong we are ready to condemn Putin for, the invasion of another country, if we spoke of religious apartheid in Northern Ireland, of the Easter Rising, of An Gorta Mor, they would dismiss it. Of course none of these things justify murders and bombings and all that s**t. But it does explain the deadly fury behind it. The whole indignation of 'that was decades ago, centuries ago,' has its sense but also its nonsense. Who decides on the shelf life of hatred? Why is it that our enemies are stupid and evil for hating as long as they do, while we are perfectly justified in not only our anger, but our time period for retaining that anger?
In any case, it wasn't the Brits who tortured Osgur, but apparently the Kildare Gardai. I must have misunderstood the story he told me. I didn't push him hard, and will never regret that, he was clearly distressed but let him speak in whatever terms worked for him.
He was in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, sometimes called the political wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Army, and now I do recall him speaking to me bitterly of the graffiti quote he saw on a wall;
IRA I Ran Away. I recalibrate; Those words didn't make him redouble efforts within the IRA, but led him to feel the IRA were inadequate, perhaps wrong headed in their behaviours, and that a different group or approach was needed. And yet, this will not do; I am not reinterpreting his words, I am reinterpreting my past reactions to words I don't actually recall. The truth is I did not know then and I do not know now. All I knew was that he was extremely unhappy. And if this denotes how much of a muttonhead I was, so be it.
On our way back to the airport, we made a true Londoners mistake; we had assumed that public transport would just turn up within the next look-at-your-watch. We got to the stop in time to have convincingly missed the bus. When asked, a passer-by told us that the next one would be along 'tomorrow.' I had no problems staying in Ireland as long as the country could bear me, but obviously it wasn't ideal. There were no taxis. What there was, was Osgur gallantly swinging by in his car. He took us by this interesting if meandering route past Bono's house, but he got us there.
Well now Osgur, I am so sorry I didn't understand, though I listened as best I could. I hope you find justice and peace of mind always.
And that will do for today, DW.
Here he is. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/20/man-jailed-ireland-1976-sallins-train-robbery-claims-police-torture
And yes, I remember him. Many years ago, said friend and I travelled to Ireland, to visit our friend Olivia Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Robertson) We had a wonderful magical time. But it was safe to say that there were folk around us with, what could best be described as opinions about the DUP, the IRA etc. Given where we were, I guess anything else would be odd.
Oh I wish I could remember properly! But for some reason I got the impression he was an IRA member. He talked to me about being tortured by the police, and somehow, from the inferences, I thought he meant the NI police. Clearly not.
I was so green.
'Don't sympathise,' said my friend, all those years ago, because Osgur focused on me a lot by word and eye, and I got the distinct uncomfortable expression that he liked me. 'These people ... You know what I'm saying.' I didn't, everyone seemed to talk a bit obliquely about the various political groups dotting the landscape around us. I didn't ask questions in case I revealed how much I didn't know. That may have been evident anyway from my wondering eyes and baffled silences.
But I looked into this man's eyes and I knew, whatever else he was saying, that he wasn't lying about being tortured. And I didn't know what to do or say, how to sound non-committal in case he was some crazed terrorist, but I knew very well it didn't matter who he was or what he belonged to, he did not deserve torture. Decent people do not do that.
He had the saddest eyes I have ever seen.
The only other real political prisoner I've met was Manolo, thrown in jail in Castro's Cuba for being an intellectual, he claimed. He walked up to me at work one day with a sheaf of papers, his story, and thrust them into my hands. I still have them somewhere, or maybe not. Manolo wasn't sad, wasn't broken. He was angry, spitting. But then I don't think they hurt him physically beyond deprivation. I might be wrong there too. These memories are decades old.
And if you ask me why these people find me, I can honestly answer that I don't know, but they do, or did.
Of Osgur, my travelling companion said 'He just sees a soft touch, a pretty girl listening, that's all. But a lot of these people support murderers of Brits.'
She was much more sensitive in her understanding of the situation than those words suggest, but she never had problems calling a spade a spade. Me, I knew she was probably right but...
I have known many people, R included, with a fury towards the IRA and others like them for the bombings in England. And if you said to them that these were retaliatory for many atrocities, including the wrong we are ready to condemn Putin for, the invasion of another country, if we spoke of religious apartheid in Northern Ireland, of the Easter Rising, of An Gorta Mor, they would dismiss it. Of course none of these things justify murders and bombings and all that s**t. But it does explain the deadly fury behind it. The whole indignation of 'that was decades ago, centuries ago,' has its sense but also its nonsense. Who decides on the shelf life of hatred? Why is it that our enemies are stupid and evil for hating as long as they do, while we are perfectly justified in not only our anger, but our time period for retaining that anger?
In any case, it wasn't the Brits who tortured Osgur, but apparently the Kildare Gardai. I must have misunderstood the story he told me. I didn't push him hard, and will never regret that, he was clearly distressed but let him speak in whatever terms worked for him.
He was in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, sometimes called the political wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Army, and now I do recall him speaking to me bitterly of the graffiti quote he saw on a wall;
IRA I Ran Away. I recalibrate; Those words didn't make him redouble efforts within the IRA, but led him to feel the IRA were inadequate, perhaps wrong headed in their behaviours, and that a different group or approach was needed. And yet, this will not do; I am not reinterpreting his words, I am reinterpreting my past reactions to words I don't actually recall. The truth is I did not know then and I do not know now. All I knew was that he was extremely unhappy. And if this denotes how much of a muttonhead I was, so be it.
On our way back to the airport, we made a true Londoners mistake; we had assumed that public transport would just turn up within the next look-at-your-watch. We got to the stop in time to have convincingly missed the bus. When asked, a passer-by told us that the next one would be along 'tomorrow.' I had no problems staying in Ireland as long as the country could bear me, but obviously it wasn't ideal. There were no taxis. What there was, was Osgur gallantly swinging by in his car. He took us by this interesting if meandering route past Bono's house, but he got us there.
Well now Osgur, I am so sorry I didn't understand, though I listened as best I could. I hope you find justice and peace of mind always.
And that will do for today, DW.
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no subject
Date: 2022-02-21 01:49 pm (UTC)He was someone who (by his own admission) had done some really horrible things, but also someone who had been... well. I would call it "tortured."
Who decides on the shelf life of hatred? indeed...
no subject
Date: 2022-02-26 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-26 08:49 am (UTC)But undeniably smart and charismatic.