and outlined our problems, including my scuffle with him the night before.
McGuinness immediately understood the gravity of the situation and put the baby down on the sofa, keeping a close eye on it. He turned to me and said with a smile, ‘So, you want rid of him, do you?’
I thought for a second and then replied, ‘No! Not until it’s safe for him. But he needs to be told that he can’t go to the pub or be seen in the area.’ I also explained how Shorty had threatened to have me shot for restraining him.
Martin stood up and ushered me to the door. ‘What’s your name again?’ he enquired.
‘Willie Carlin,’ I replied.
‘Anything to John Carlin?’
‘No, but I have heard of him.’
‘So, you’re not in Sinn Féin?’
‘No.’
‘Right, Willie, leave that with me and I’ll see somebody after and get it sorted out for yee, okay? In the meantime, you tell him that if he attempts to leave your house again, he’ll be in deep trouble.’
I realised immediately that McGuinness meant what he said; one word from him and for us the Shorty problem would quickly be over.
At half past ten that night, a man came to our door and asked to speak to Shorty alone. Mary and I sat in the kitchen with Mark, who had become friendly with Shorty because when he was sober and not being cocky, he was quite likeable. After a short while, Shorty and the man came into the kitchen.
Shorty put out his hand and shook Mark’s hand. Then he turned to Mary and said, ‘Mary, I’m sorry about the other night, it was only the drink talkin’.’ He then produced the St Joseph’s prayer from his jacket and asked her if he could keep it. Mary smiled and nodded. He came around to my side of the table and put his arms out to give me a hug. I stood up and put my arms around him. I patted him on the back. ‘You take it easy.’
For a brief moment I thought he was going to cry. The man who had come to collect him thanked Mary, winked at Mark and within minutes they left by the back door. At last we were over our ordeal.
Over the following days, the protests and marches subsided. Jeffrey Agate’s funeral was a very sad affair. The sight of his poor wife standing by his graveside will be ever fixed in my memory. She was just an ordinary working-class girl from Newcastle in the north east of England, thrust into this extraordinary situation and consumed by grief. As I watched, I just couldn’t get my head around the reason for his murder. For a murder it was, and even ordinary nationalists, who whilst not agreeing with the IRA could sometimes understand their rationale, did not agree with this killing. After all, the IRA claimed to be protecting the people of Derry from the British Army and the RUC. However, the reality for Derry people was that far from protecting them from these occasional thugs, anyone in Derry, even unarmed businessmen, were fair game to be murdered so long as it suited whatever screwed-up strategy the IRA thought they had. The IRA never admitted its involvement in Agate’s murder, but later in the year they made a veiled attempt to explain the thinking behind it. The killing only strengthened my resolve to keep working in my undercover role, which was still tentative at this stage.
On 14 March 1977, another business manager, James Nicholson, was murdered as he visited the Strathearn Audio factory, in west Belfast. Like Agate he was English and, like Du Pont, the factory employed mainly Catholics. The outcry that followed led the IRA’s Northern Command to issue a notice in Dublin through The Irish Times, stating, ‘In all cases, those executed by the IRA played a prominent role in the effort to stabilise the British-oriented Six County Economy.’ The notice added, ‘Those involved in the management of the economy served British interests.’ However, there is no denying this was yet another squalid murder in the IRA’s leftist phase, when they behaved like the ultra-left gangs causing mayhem in Europe such as Germany’s Baader–Meinhof group. They imagined that by killing the odd businessman here and there they were somehow striking a blow against the entire capitalist system. It was pathetic, stupid, cruel and insane.
***
In the spring of 1977, the Reverend Ian Paisley – one of the men I personally blame for the eruption of the Troubles – was threatening a replay of the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Strike. Three years earlier, an alliance of unionist politicians, loyalist paramilitaries and pro-British trade unionists overthrew the first ever power-sharing executive at Stormont. Paisley was now leading from the front, whipping up the likes of the Ulster Defence Association for a second general strike. This time it was in response to what he claimed was a deteriorating security situation, though many saw it as an attempt by Paisley for a putsch. Although I had nothing but contempt for Paisley and his sectarian form of politics, his strike would provide the inroad for me into Sinn Féin activism and unintentionally beat a path towards Martin McGuinness.
The strike began on 3 May 1977. The next day Mickey Roddy, who lived beside us on Rose Court, called in to see me, ‘We’re trying to organise cars to go over the border to Buncrana and bring back necessities for the people in the area.’
‘I’m up for that, Mickey,’ I said. Mickey originally came from Bishop Street, on the Derry side. He was an ex-Official IRA member and was now a member of Sinn Féin. He was a decent bloke and I had a lot of time for him. We called on Colm Dorrity, who had also expressed an interest in doing something to help ‘stock up’. Colm had collected money from various families and pensioners who were worried that the power would go off, and a lot of them were scared because of their experiences of the 1974 strike. We visited bakeries and grocery shops across the border in Donegal, buying up reserves of staple foods in case supplies were cut in the North due to blockades by the loyalists. The IRA even saw to it that I was paid for the petrol I used going back to Donegal for torches, batteries, paraffin heaters and candles. I was becoming known in the district as a community activist.
The power workers on the east coast of Northern Ireland pulled the plug on the regional electricity supply. With no power and no television, the residents in Gobnascale became used to sitting around the fire at home trying to find things to talk about. Tommy McGlinchey, the local coal merchant, saw to it that Gobnascale was well supplied with coal and told people they could pay when they could afford it. Out on the streets the residents were already used to having no streetlights and walking around at night in the dark. Even the local bar was open, so you could go there at night and have a drink by candlelight; needless to say that never really caught on. There were intermittent power cuts, but it wasn’t as bad as anticipated and this time the strike didn’t succeed. Roy Mason, the hard-headed Labour MP and Northern Ireland secretary, refused to give in to Paisley’s many demands – as was widely predicted at the time – and the strike collapsed after just thirteen days.
By the summer of 1977, our family life hit an all-time high. Mary and I had decided to try one more time for another baby, though after our experience with the twins I was very apprehensive. Still, I shouldn’t have been because on 3 July at Altnagelvin Hospital, Mary gave birth to a little girl, who we named Maria. Mary and I were over the moon and I remember being so delighted that as I drove back home to tell Mary’s parents, I went around the roundabout at the hospital four times, whooping and yelling out of the window. For the next eight or nine months I was totally dedicated to Maria, and it seemed everybody was really pleased for us given what had happened to Sharon and the twins. Maria was the apple of my eye.
***
By the following summer I was back to my old routine again, and it was in late September 1978 that I was invited to a republican meeting in Gobnascale to discuss the forthcoming march celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Derry riots. The ‘boys’ from the IRA were the main representatives, but it was here that I met Eddy McGowan, a painter and decorator by trade and a committed Sinn Féin activist who lived with his wife Maeve and family on the estate. Also present were John Carlin (no relation), Mickey Roddy and Tommy McGlinchey. Tommy had been the victim of a UVF car bomb attack at his home on Fountain Hill. He had lost both legs, but that didn’t stop him from leading a full life and driving a specially modified car. He was an active member of Sinn Féin, was well respected by the people at the Top of the Hill, and held a lot of sway in the