Opinion

Jim Gibney: Recognition for heroic leadership and bravery

Clara Reilly co-founded Relatives for Justice 
Clara Reilly co-founded Relatives for Justice  Clara Reilly co-founded Relatives for Justice 

Heroes are not born. They emerge from the circumstances of their lives and their times – circumstances which are extraordinary, challenging and in some cases life-changing and life-threatening.

In the face of such demanding times some people acquire, from deep within themselves, qualities which distinguish them from the rest and which encourages us to believe in them and the cause they espouse.

Next Saturday, at the site of the former RUC barracks in Andersonstown, in West Belfast, two women, who led their communities for decades, in the most dangerous and perilous period, will be recognised for their heroic leadership and bravery.

In tribute to their pioneering, community-based human rights work, Clara Reilly and the late Emma Groves, will have the former RUC barracks site renamed in their honour.

The event is organised by Relatives for Justice which both women helped to set up in 1991.

The site will be named ‘Groves Reilly Corner’.

The choice of the location and its renaming is in keeping with the process of change, created by the peace process, which has transformed a once war zone in west Belfast, into a peace haven.

The RUC barracks was one of many armed and heavily militarised fortifications across the north, most of which have been decommissioned.

It was in these bases the British Army and the RUC planned and prosecuted their war against the nationalist people using the forces of the state and loyalists.

It was in these bases where people were tortured; where raids on homes and arrests were planned.

These bases were in the front line of an aggressive military machine which routinely and flagrantly ignored and breached the human rights of thousands of people during the conflict and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.

It was open season on the nationalist people and the indefatigable pair, Clara Reilly and Emma Groves, regularly stood in the ‘gap of danger’ in defence of the oppressed.

Others, such as lawyers P J McGrory, Pat Finucane, Fathers Murray, Faul and Brady and Anne Murray, and colleagues from the Association of Legal Justice, resolutely exposed the British government’s reign of terror.

A reign which cruelly visited the homes of Emma Groves and Clara Reilly.

Emma was blinded by a rubber bullet fired at her as she stood in the living room of her own home during the early days of internment in August 1971.

A mother of eleven children she never saw them or her extended family again.

Mother Teresa, later beatified as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was at Emma’s bedside and told her the harrowing news that she had lost her sight.

The soldier who fired the rubber bullet was part of a group of Paras, who were later responsible for the massacres in Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday.

Clara’s father was interned in the 1940s. Her brother James ‘Skipper’ Burns was assassinated by loyalists; her cousin Brendan O Callaghan was shot dead by the British Army; her brother Harry was gravely injured and several of her brothers were also interned.

Her home in Turf Lodge was a ‘drop-in’ centre for families whose relatives were arrested. It was the only house in the area with a phone.

Emma’s home on the Andersonstown Road was the first centre for Relatives for Justice.

Emma and Clara were a formidable duo who, nationally and internationally, campaigned for justice and human rights.

They set up the ‘United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets' and brought their message to the US Congress and the Kremlin where they met the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. They won the support of members of the Congress and Gorbachev to ban plastic bullets.

They met Chris Patten, to ensure the new police service did not use plastic bullets and was human rights compliant. They also met George Mitchell and General John de Chastelain with a similar message.

There is cause this Saturday for a double celebration: Clara and her lifelong friend and confidante, Fr Raymond Murray, celebrate their 80th year.

As they do so they can congratulate themselves on a life of success in changing the human rights landscape for the better in the north and across Ireland.

Although Brexit poses a real threat to human rights it faces a new team of human rights advocates guided by the legacy of Clara Reilly and Emma Groves.