Fógraí bháis: Danny Campbell

BY A FRIEND AND COMRADE

VOLUNTEER Danny Campbell suffered a stroke on 14 March 2005 and died on 9 July 2008. It was a sad day in County Mayo for his wife Phyllis, for the family, for Ballycroy County Mayo and for the Republican Movement. It was also a proud day as republicans and friends remembered Danny as a leader, as an organiser and as a patriot. He moulded Ballycroy into an area of which we all can be proud.
I first met Danny back in the early 1970s, when his small cottage was a hive of activity with the IRA training. The people of the North needed the skills to defend themselves and to fight back against British rule. They found hospitality, help and comradeship in Ballycroy. It was an immense logistical problem to move Volunteers into the area, to house and feed them, and to train them, and to get them safely home again, while remaining undetected by the Special Branch. In those early years, many from the North regarded the South as friendly. Danny was under no illusions about the hostility of the Southern state, based as it was on political parties with a subservient colonial mentality. His wisdom paid off in that Ballycroy never suffered the arrests that took place in other areas.

clockwork
Danny organised things so well that it ran like clockwork year after year. After a hard day’s training outdoors, the Volunteers would arrive at the house to a big warm fire and a good meal.
After the preparations for the night and for the next day’s training were completed, Danny would sit and discuss the war and the latest political developments with us all. He taught us the art of inclusive discussion – everyone’s opinion was valued. Danny had great experience of life, having worked in the USA and in England, and there was a lot of wisdom in what he said.
We only used first names or aliases but, over the years, familiar faces reappeared time and again for training, and strong friendships developed.
As the years went by, Danny married Phyllis and their children were born and grew up in the house, while all the time the Volunteers came and went. The Special Branch came to know that the area was being used for training and they watched Ballycroy and sometimes raided Danny’s home and the neighbours. Because of the great care taken, they never succeeded in catching anyone.

NEIGHBOURS
The neighbours were vital to our survival and Danny kept the neighbours on our side. He always stood by them, in good times and bad, and they stood by him. There was a great spirit of resistance and solidarity there. When a neighbour died, the local men came together to dig the grave, and at the funeral each helped to bury the coffin. That sort of thing gave them the solidarity to resist a state and an empire.
Even the children played a part. I remember when Danny’s Nora was looking out the window at approaching car headlights; she could tell who the driver was by the way the headlights moved, and if not one of us then it was the Special Branch.

quiet heroes
We tend to honour the men and women who fought the enemy and were well-known for their exploits – but they were only able to do so because of the quiet heroes like Danny Campbell.
Danny was intensely proud that Ballycroy had been used as a training area since the Tan War and had been used ever since. For 30 years, under Danny’s leadership, they never lost a Volunteer or a weapon. For that achievement, we remember Danny Campbell with pride.