SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Bobby Devlin (born 1941)

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Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Bobby Devlin (born 1941)

Bobby Devlin was born and educated in Belfast where he worked in the Belfast Flour Mills before joining the RAF in which he served for five years.
His elder brother, Paddy Devlin (1925-1999), was a Stormont MP, a founder of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and a member of the 1974 Power Sharing Executive.
Bobby Devlin became a postman in Belfast and was active in the post office trade union before his internment without trial in Long Kesh Internment Camp for two years from December, 1972.
The extract below is from Devlin's An Interlude with Seagulls: Memoirs of a Long Kesh Internee (1982).©

The word internee was one of the first words I could say as a child in the 1940's. This was due to the fact of my eldest brother Paddy being interned in Crumlin Road prison. In that part of the Falls Road, that was Conway Street, Norfolk Street and Cupar Street, there were many young men interned by the British in what has become known in republican circles as the 'forties campaign'. As it was in the seventies, there were people from all over the Six Counties interned for suspected Irish Republican Army membership. I vaguely remember standing outside Crumlin Road gaol holding my mother's hand awaiting admittance for a visit to see my big brother. Those dark green doors looked awesome. All I can remember about the visit was my mother crying as we bid farewell to Paddy through a big wired grill. I could never understand all that. Thirty years later, all this was reversed as my brother came to visit me, only now he was an MP and the Northern Ireland Minister of Health and Social Services, whilst I was on the other side of the wire. As the accompanying screw said at the time, 'It could only happen in fecking Northern Ireland.'
The internees were housed up in 'D' Wing of Crumlin Road gaol in the 1940's. Just as their counterparts did in the seventies, they played pranks on one another and many humourous tales came from within that awesome structure... Whenever I see the majestic movement of a seagull in flight, my mind drifts back in time and conjures up a vivid picture of an awful place called Long Kesh. To anyone who hasn't had the 'pleasure' of seeing Long Kesh, then I must explain that the place was an attraction for those milk-coloured scavengers of the sea. I caught my first sight of those particular birds on the 22nd of December, 1972. It was then that a certain Mr William Whitelaw decided that I should be excluded from society. I was interned on the suspicion that I was a 'terrorist'. How on earth did I get to that place?
A few months earlier I was getting visits at my house by the British Army and on one particular morning, they brought me to Castlereagh police headquarters which was a latter day 'Chiangi'. The interrogation procedure there is really a violent version of 'Mastermind'. There you are seated on a lonely chair facing a barrage of questions such as, 'Who's the PRO of the Aughnafatten Flying Column?' or, 'Who killed Cock Robin?' I went to Castlereagh a poor, humble postman, but according to information received, I was a brigadier-general of the Irish Republican Army. This dramatic promotion must have even eclipsed general George Armstrong Custer's meteoric rise in the American civil war. They threatened to send me to Long Kesh. However, I was reprieved and cast out into the loyalist area of East Belfast. I stood waiting for a bus and I whistled a few bars of the 'Green Grassy Slopes of the Boyne'*. Those times were bad for a 'Fenian' such as I to be caught in loyalist territory.
For the next few months I was really terrified of going back to that place, so I began to stay at a friend's house at night, just to see if the Brits would call to my home during the night or early morning. In the meantime, I was still working as a postman (Her Majesty's mail must get through) and this meant that I had to get up at five in the morning to catch a lift for work. The people I was staying with did not have an alarm clock so I always brought my own to get me up in time for work. I carried this in a heavy coat pocket. On the morning of the 19th of December, I was making my way towards home from my friend's house when this character jumped out of a garden shouting, 'Freeze!'
I said to him, 'I am freezing'. I was immediately flung against the wall as someone shouted, 'We have a right comical bastard here, Sarge.' He started to frisk me as I was placed arms out-stretched against the wall. Suddenly he felt a bulky object in my pocket and I thought to myself, 'Sweet Jesus, I've got that bloody alarm!' As the brave soldier pulled out my alarm clock, he yelled out, 'F____ me, he's a mad bomber.' There was also an unpleasant odour from the chap. I found all this so embarrassing and from here on, it was 'jingle bells' all the way to Long Kesh via Castlereagh, as it was near Christmas.
That was how I got to Long Kesh. As the army and police escorts handed me over to the screws I felt like someone out of a James Cagney movie with my bedraggled appearance and handcuffs to match. It is amazing, the type of thoughts which go through one's mind at a time like that, but all I could do was hold my head in my hands saying, 'F____ that alarm clock.'
I was ushered into the 'hospital' which consisted of four beds, with four walls, and a roof on top. A screw in a white coat informed me that I must have a medical examination before being alloted a cage. I then thought to myself, 'Perhaps if I fail the medical they will send me home.' The doctor was at lunch so I had to wait in the hospital ward. In this room there were several internees sitting on beds. One of them, a big fellow, came over to me holding a crucifix, shouting in Gaelic, 'Sin sin', or words to that effect which mean 'that's that'. I quickly side-stepped him and asked the other fellow, 'Does he bloody think that I am Dracula?' 'Don't take any notice of him, he's mad, sure he's always annoying my rabbit,' said the other fellow, sitting at the edge of the bed. He seemed to be holding an imaginary object in his hands and I asked, 'What rabbit?' 'The one I'm feeding in my hands, blind Alec!' he roared back. I said to myself, 'F____ me, where's the Special Branch, Mea culpa, mea culpa. I'll do anything to get out of this place.'
Just then I was rescued by a screw for my medical, at which I am proud to say, that I was passed fit and led to Cage 3. * A song commemorating the defeat of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008

20th Century Ireland (1947-2000) Irish History Index
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