By Dr Anne McCloskey
In Loving Memory of my Father.
My daddy, Jimmy, died twenty-five years ago today 25th February 2025. He was born in 1914 and left this world at the dawn of the new millennium. He lived through the seismic events which shaped the world we live in – two World wars, one cold war, the rise and fall and rise again of Communism, the Easter Rising in Ireland and the mayhem of what were called “The Troubles”, which ravaged the north of Ireland for most of his adult life.
I grew up through the years of conflict and misery that the state violence inevitably ignited. Some of my school friends, neighbours and even relations spent the best years of their lives in prison – and they were the lucky ones. The “Republican Plot” in Derry City Cemetery contains rows of Irish tricolours above graves of young men, most of whom died in their teens and twenties. The “Loyalist” community suffered similarly, albeit in smaller numbers. By and large, these were the children of good, decent families, with no history of criminality or social problems – a completely atypical prison demographic. Prisoner’s children were raised in poverty, often with the added chaos of frequent house raids and arbitrary harassment by the agents of the state. They travelled – many from infancy – by bus (often a day’s journey) to dismal prisons to visit daddy and indeed, sometimes mammy...READ MORE
