The late Jim Moyne.
“If this takes one generation or ten, we will be instilling in our family, this is something important and needs to be fought for because the British Government had no respect for Jim’s rights when he was living, and we are going to fight to restore them in his death.”
The defiantly powerful words of Rónán Moyne, nephew of Long Kesh internee, Jim Moyne, as his family prepares to commemorate his 50th anniversary.
Derry man and IRA volunteer, Jim Moyne, was 29 years-old when he died of an asthmatic attack whilst being interned in the cages of Long Kesh.
A ceremony organised by the Moyne family will take place on Monday, January 13, at 7.00pm at the Republican monument on Derry’s Lecky Road and Ronan Moyne said everyone was welcome.
Speaking to The Derry News, Mr Moyne said his uncle had been interned from April 1973 until his death on January 13, 1975.
“Whenever Jim died, he was one of the longest serving Derry men in the Kesh,” he added. “Micky Donnelly had been released just before Christmas 1974 and he had been the longest serving. I think there were only four or five Derry men who had served as long as Jim.
“Jim was involved in the burning of Long Kesh, during which he was exposed to CR gas - the British army using chemical warfare.
“On the night of Jim’s death, the screws failed to respond to the alarm bell. They actually sent in the dogs.
“He had asthma all his life. His GP was Dr Raymond McClean. However, the family never thought asthma was going to take his life and it shouldn’t have.
“The reality is, Jim was medically neglected throughout his internment in Long Kesh. He had previously been airlifted to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he spent two days in an oxygen tent, and was taken straight back to the prison without any rehabilitation or recovery.”
According to Mr Moyne there were other men in the cage with Jim who tried in vain to save his life.
“Francie Brolly described it as the ‘most horrific experience’ of his time in Long Kesh.
“Francie Brolly, Gerry Harte and Martin McNulty tried to give Jim mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Martin McNulty, Fintan O’Hagan, Frankie O’Neill, Micky McCafferty, Sean Mullan, Joe Carlin and others aided Jim; they broke down the hut door and carried Jim to the wire on a makeshift stretcher.
“He was then taken to what passed for a hospital in Long Kesh - which wasn’t a hospital at all. There was a British army medical officer there wearing a white coat but he wasn’t trained.
“He could have administered adrenalin to Jim at an earlier stage but didn’t. Adrenalin would have saved Jim’s life but he said at Jim’s inquest he was a military medical officer with no responsibility for detainees, so he failed to treat Jim.
“Effectively, Jim was denied medical treatment at the point of death. He died on January 13 inside the concentration camp.”
Jim died during an IRA ceasefire and his death was given as one of the reasons for its collapse.
“That is not where the injustice ends,” added Mr Moyne. “The injustice continued because there was a cover up - the inquest, which took place in February 1975, in Lisburn Courthouse.
“Jim’s inquest was a whitewash. It returned a verdict of death by natural causes. There was nothing natural about Jim’s death.
“The governor didn’t even turn up. There were three other prisoners who died from medical neglect in Long Kesh prior to Jim: Francis Dodds, Teddy Campbell and Patrick Teer. They died of illnesses which should never have caused their deaths.
“My family said even the coroner was shocked at the time. To make matters worse, the jury members asked if they could come back the next day to give the verdict because there was a cattle market to go to. The coroner said, ‘No, I need the verdict today’.
“They left the courthouse and came back a few minutes later and delivered the verdict of death by natural causes. It was clear that they had more important things to do!
“It was a stitch up from the start and it has been a stitch up ever since.”
IRA volunteer Jim Moyne died in Long Kesh in January 1975 of an asthmatic attack.
Clearly emotional when speaking about his uncle, Mr Moyne said the British state treated Irish citizens as ‘nothing’.
“The degrading treatment continues with the way the British have treated families since,” he said.
“The reality is Jim was murdered in Long Kesh. People there who had a duty of care to him, ensured that he didn’t live. They didn’t protect life. They didn’t stand by the Hippocratic Oath. Jim was a nothing to them.
“It really is imperialist techniques which the British have exported all over the world because if you look at Palestine now, the Palestinians are nothing to the Zionists.”
According to Mr Moyne, his uncle Jim was steeped in their family’s Irish republican heritage.
“Jim was my father Pat’s older brother. By all accounts he was a funny, humourous, happy-go-lucky character. He would have been well known in dance halls in Derry and Inishowen. He was intelligent. He was very socially aware and socially conscious,” he said. “He got actively involved in republican politics at the end of the 1960s.
“Jim’s uncle William was in the IRA in 1917. He almost drowned in the River Foyle during an arms raid documented in the Bureau of Military History. William fought on the anti-Treaty side right up until 1923.
“His younger brother Pat, was involved in the Battle of Skeoge House, between Burt and Bridgend - the last stand against the Free State forces. His comrade, a man called Hugh Morrison was killed a month earlier in an operation at the same location when a grenade went off in his hand.
“They were taken to Letterkenny Court House, which they proceeded to burn out. They were then taken to Newbridge Internment Camp. So, Jim’s uncle Pat was actually interned before him. He wasn’t the first internee in the Moyne family.
“They had a third brother, Columba, who was beaten to death by the B-Specials at a border crossing at Lenamore, in the mid 1920’s after partition.
“He suffered a bad beating and then got lockjaw within a couple of weeks and died. He is buried in Ardmore Cemetery. There was republicanism in our family and Jim followed the path.”
The Republic for the Moyne family was about “improving the lot for normal people, regardless of religion”, Mr Moyne said.
“That’s where our republicanism was embedded and rooted and that’s why Jim was who he was.
“He suffered for it. He ended up on the run. He ended up interned but for us, when we remember him on his 50th anniversary, we are proud that he stood up for his principles and his ideals.
“We are also looking back on 50 years, during which there has been no accountability, no justice.
“As a family, for Jim, for his right to life and protection of human rights, we have the right to a full investigation. It has to be independent, effective and prompt, with public scrutiny and victim participation.
“That's the Article 2 compliant Human Rights that were hard fought for and won in the European Court of Human Rights by the likes of the family of Derry’s Dermot McShane and other families.
“What has happened since is that politicians have bartered and sold those rights through the Stormont House Agreement and through subsequent agreements and now the Legacy Act has done.”
Mr Moyne described British Secretary of State Hilary Benn as “duplicitous”.
“He has given Sean Brown’s family a slap in the face. The reality of the situation is impunity is the name of the game. Lack of accountability is the name of the game.
“All these different processes and agreements and deals, which are largely political, are bargaining off human rights that are not for sale.
“Merlyn Rees was equally duplicitous. When he was Shadow British Secretary of State, he visited Long Kesh. The other internees nominated Jim to speak to him at the wire of the cage. Rees pretended he was interested. He told Jim, and this is documented, he thought internment was ‘evil and disgusting’ and he would end it within six weeks of Labour getting into power.
“Eleven months later, when Merlyn Rees was 11 months in the job, Jim suffocated in Long Kesh. Both Rees and Benn were members of Labour governments.
“Benn is the Viceroy to Ireland. He has no interest in justice for those killed by the state, they are waiting for people to die off.
“The thing Jim believed in and gave his life for was better conditions for the ordinary people. He was not exceptional. He was an ordinary person from humble beginnings who volunteered to become involved in an effort to restore the Irish Republic.
“He was intelligent. To us he was everything. To the family he was everything. He has defined our family to an extent.”
Jim Moyne pictured before his imprisonment.
The Moyne family is currently writing a book about Jim, which will “outline a life cut short by state violence”.
“It is about us telling our own story, countering the official narrative,” Mr Moyne said.
“Jim was not included in Brian Feeney’s ‘Lost Lives’ book. We don’t know why. Exhibitions have taken place for the victims of state violence and his name and image have been excluded.
“If the official narrative is not going to record Jim, we will. But we also want to humanise him. The reality is he was a human being. He was a son, a brother, a nephew and an uncle.
“By all accounts he was great craic. Full of divilment. He was fun loving. He spent time at the Christian brothers. He was a dental technician. He was well known in his community. He was articulate and he was always well dressed.
“For the purposes of the book we are also doing a call out to the community that if you have any photos of Jim to bring them forward because the British army took a lot of the photos that the family had.
“We have very few photos of Jim. We are also looking for anybody who would be willing to come forward with personal accounts of Jim as a person - reminiscences, humourous times, things that would be of interest or any good turns he did anybody.”
The Moyne family has hundreds of letters which Jim Moyne wrote to his sister, Margaret, from Long Kesh - poignantly, two in the last week before he died.
“In them he mentions people who were released that week and how he was one of the longest serving and you never know, he might get lucky and get released.
“Essentially, whenever Jim’s uncles were involved in republican activity it was for the creation of a Republic. Partition didn’t exist.
“From our perspective, when we are remembering Jim, we will remember he was a republican, and what he believed in was a Republican solution - an end to sectarianism and British interference in Ireland.
“Whatever constitutional change takes place, it has to improve the conditions for ordinary people on the whole island.
“There is plenty of inequality. If we are not fighting to improve the lot of those at the bottom then it will have all been in vain.”
A commemoration, organised by the Moyne family, will take place on Monday, January 13 at 7.00pm at the Lecky Road republican monument.
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