« Traffic Chaos... In The Sky | Hunger Striker Profile 8: Kieran Doherty » |
Hunger Striker Profile 9: Thomas McElwee
Conviction: manslaughter, possession of explosives
Sentence: 20 years (reduced from life)
Joined Hunger Strike: 7th(?) June
Suicided: 8th August
Thomas McElwee was born the 5th of 12 siblings to a family in Bellaghy. The previous year McElwee's father Jim became the uncle of Francis Hughes, who would later precede McElwee on hunger strike. Growing up, McElwee was an argumentative type and enjoyed listening to rebel songs and causing grief for his neighbours. Its said that few were surprised when he joined the Fianna Eireann at the age of 14, and later the IRA.
McElwee was arrested on several occasions as the IRA campaign of violence in the south of Co. Londonderry escalated, although they police couldn't manage to gather enough evidence to have him convicted and he never went into hiding as a fugitive like his cousin.
In October 1976, the McElwee family received mass in their home, one evening, from a Roman Catholic priest. The very next day, Thomas and his brother Benedict were out planting a bomb in Ballymena when it exploded prematurely. It was their sister Bernadette's birthday, and that afternoon the family got a call telling them the brothers had been rushed by the British Army to Wavery Hospital in Ballymena following the explosion. Thomas lost an eye in the blast, and his other was only saved following transfer from Ballymena to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast for emergency surgery. Even so, he was without sight for 3 weeks.
As well as the bomb that went off prematurely, McElwee was charged over another attack on a shop, the Alley Catz Boutique, also in Ballymena. McElwee was convicted of possession of explosives and the murder of the 26 year old woman, Yvonne Dunlop the owner of Alley Catz, who was killed in that attack, though the murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter on appeal.
In prison he was defiant, and frequently disciplined for his conduct. Having already volunteered for the hunger strike the previous year in 1980, McElwee naturally volunteered a second time in the 1981 hunger strike, but this time he participated. He began refusing food in June and died of self-imposed starvation on 8th August leaving Northern Ireland with one less unapologetic convicted killer able to reoffend.