Family fights for public inquiry

BY FERN LANE

     
``What really gets me, you know,'' says Eoghan sadly, ``is that Diarmuid was killed by a gang of thugs. You can hear it on the tape; they were nothing but thugs.''
Along with all the other anguish suffered by the families of IRA Volunteers who die violent deaths is the additional distress caused by routine dehumanisation and demonization of their loved ones by both the media and the authorities. In death, their public image, such as it is, can become utterly detached from the reality of their lives and who they really were.

And so it is that outside the republican movement Diarmuid O'Neill, like Sean Savage, Dan McCann and Mairéad Farrell, has become defined solely by the manner of his death. In the wider collective memory, the totality of Diarmuid O'Neill is no more than how he died and his identity, like theirs, has gradually been reduced to a single photograph of another nameless `terrorist' taken out by British forces of righteousness.

But even amongst republicans, despite strenuous resistance of this trend, it is easy sometimes to get so involved in the moral, legal and political aspects of incidents such as these that the human individual in whose name the campaign runs, their unique character and personal history, can somehow disappear along the way.

Come what may, Diarmuid would be up and out of their Hammersmith home on a Sunday morning selling An Phoblacht amongst the large Irish community in north and west London
 
Three years after Diarmuid was shot dead by the Metropolitan Police, the essential facts of the case are really no longer in dispute. He was under intense surveillance and could have been arrested at any time prior to the raid on his home. Diarmuid was unarmed, neither he nor those with him offered any resistance to the police; as Diarmuid opened the door to his flat in response to police command one officer urged his colleagues to open fire, he was shot six times and, as noted in the autopsy report, there was the imprint of a shoe on the side of his face where a police officer had stood on him as he lay dying. The police refused him medical help, dragged him down several flights of stairs and then deliberately lied to the press, claiming there had been a shoot-out. Consequently, the Hammersmith Coroner thinks there should be an inquiry and so does the Irish government. The British government has brushed such calls aside.

As I make my way to Diarmuid's brother Shane's London flat to interview his parents, Eoghan and Terry, I try to recall what I know about Diarmuid aside from these facts and conclude, somewhat to my own surprise, that it is very little, despite regular contact with the Justice for Diarmuid O'Neill campaign, writing dozens of articles on the shooting and having met his partner, Karmele, on a number of occasions. I hope that this interview will in some way re-humanise Diarmuid and place his memory in a context of family, friends and his life in west London.

Eoghan is warm and welcoming and introduces me to Terry, who immediately offers coffee, cake and the most comfortable chair. Twenty-six year-old Shane, who looks very much like his brother, is also there and agrees to talk to me about his own experience at the hands of the Metropolitan Police. Prior to this, he has not spoken publicly about his arrest and time in custody.

Eoghan recalls how he came to learn of Diarmuid's death:

``We were back living in Ireland'' he explains. ``It was about eleven o'clock at night and these three policemen arrived - I knew one of them quite well. He came in and started to say `would you come out please'. There were literally tears in his eyes; he couldn't tell me. Then he asked me had I heard the news this morning about there being some shooting going on in London. I said I hadn't paid much attention to it, somebody got shot. He said `well, that was Diarmuid'.''

Although he recounts all of this in a calm and undramatic way, at this point he pauses for a few seconds and glances across the room at his wife and son and then continues: ``Well, it was very difficult. I said, `what happened to him?' And he said `There was a shooting with the police over there and Diarmuid and your other son were involved in it, and they found bombs and bomb-making equipment and guns'.

``So here I was thinking there was Diarmuid and Shane up on these guns and stacks of bomb-making equipment somewhere in north London shooting at the police.''

And he remembers thinking of Shane: `If this is true he might as well be dead, because he's going to get 40 years'.'' It was not until they arrived in London several days later that Eoghan and Terry began to learn the truth, piece by piece. ``We were led to believe that this shoot-out was in a warehouse in north London. Then we discovered that Shane was in his own bed in his own house and could have been killed too. If Shane had been killed, what would everyone have thought? They would have said that he was involved as well, wouldn't they?''

At this point, the discussion turns to Shane and his arrest. He, like his father, tells his story in a straightforward manner and without a trace of self-pity.

``I was in bed and they came through the door. I was in that room there'' - he gestures to the bedroom at the front of the house - ``I came out here and they all pointed guns at me saying `get on the floor, get on the f-ing floor' - they were everywhere. They put me on the floor and put me in cuffs and the white bags and the white boiler suit.''

He was taken to Paddington Green police station and locked in a cell for some time. Then, he explains: ``I was bought into a room and they said `your brother's been shot, but he's not dead'. Obviously he was dead, but they were told he wasn't.'' He was taken for questioning and about two hours later the same senior policeman came into his cell and simply said ``He's dead'', before turning on his heel, leaving Shane alone for several hours to try and absorb this information. In the meantime, the police had been back to the flat and as Shane put it, ``wrecked the whole gaff'', tearing down the ceilings, ripping up the floors and drilling through every door. Every electrical appliance in the house was broken apart and left. They smashed the chimney down and dug up the entire garden.

     
The family has been taken aback by the level of support, particularly from the large numbers of people who did not know Diarmuid personally. The Stephen Lawrence Campaign has encouraged them to keep going
We talk about why the police lied to him about Diarmuid and conclude that they must have believed, wrongly, that Shane could provide them with information but was unlikely to do so if he knew his brother was dead. So they decided to play psychological games with him. He was held for five days and interrogated several times each day for, he thinks, between half and hour and two hours each time, although he says he began to lose track of time. At one point they asked him if he wanted some exercise.

``There must have been about twenty-five police down this corridor. I was handcuffed to another one and taken out to a car park where there were blokes on the roof with guns pointing at me and more with alsations in the car park itself.'' He gives a wry smile and shakes his head. ``I thought, sod this, I'm going back in. All this for a lovely walk in a police car park.''

Afterwards, chatting with Eoghan and Terry, I tell them that I cannot imagine how I would cope with hearing of the death of a sibling in such a horrible fashion. Eoghan nods and explains to me that Shane, despite the circumstances, had the presence of mind to remain totally aware that he could be looking at a huge prison sentence and knew he had to ensure that the police could not falsely charge him. ``He told me that he kept thinking of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four,'' he says. ``And he told me that he just had to, in a way, put Diarmuid out of his mind and concentrate on getting out of there. Then he could start trying to deal with what happened to Diarmuid.''

We talk for a while about the events of 23 September 1996, about the surveillance tape, which must have been unimaginably painful for the family to listen to, and the subsequent court case. ``What really gets me, you know,'' says Eoghan sadly, ``is that Diarmuid was killed by a gang of thugs. You can hear it on the tape; they were nothing but thugs.'' And amongst our discussions regarding the shooting and the ongoing campaign for a public inquiry, they all offer small anecdotes and recall incidents which reveal much about the sort of person Diarmuid was.

For example, the police took all their address books and visited everybody contained within them to obtain information about him. Eventually, obviously exasperated, one policeman said to a friend of Shane's - ``Who is this guy Diarmuid? We can't find anybody who has said anything bad about him.''

Terry, who has been quiet throughout, begins to talk more about her son, telling me about his commitment to his political activism and his total lack of materialism. She tells of the time he gave away his one decent winter coat, and his habit of giving his last penny away to anyone who appeared to need it. One particular incident she remembers with affection and no little pride was the time Diarmuid won a Fortnum and Mason food hamper in a raffle shortly before Christmas. ``I really, really wanted that hamper so badly,'' she says with a laugh. But Diarmuid had other ideas and promptly donated the hamper to be distributed to the homeless, save for a small bottle of whisky. ``He told me, `We don't need it','' she says, ``and I know he was right, but I really was looking forward to getting it.''

She also recalls that, come what may, Diarmuid would be up and out of their Hammersmith home on a Sunday morning selling An Phoblacht amongst the large Irish community in north and west London. It was, she says, very important to him. He was, as well as being Irish and a republican, also a Londoner, and was to die within half a mile of his birth place.

Finally, all three talk about the campaign. They were taken aback by the level of support, particularly from the large numbers of people who did not know Diarmuid personally and said that they would not have known how to mount a campaign in the face of the monolith of the British state without this help. They talk about how they have asked themselves how long they should campaign before accepting that there will not be an inquiry, but then also say that the Stephen Lawrence Campaign has encouraged them to keep going. I ask Eoghan how he envisages the campaign proceeding. He shrugs. ``I think they will announce an inquest quite soon''. He was right. Since the interview, they have received notice of the inquest ,which will open on 31 January next year. However, the Justice for Diarmuid O'Neill Campaign still wants as many people as possible to write to Home Office minister Paul Boeteng, demanding an independent public inquiry. Sooner or later, the government will no longer be able to ignore the calls for justice.