'As a family, as a club, as a community, we can no longer hold our dignified silence'

A SQUALLY SUNDAY in Derry’s Bogside and hundreds are packed tight into the patch of ground that contains the famous gable at Free Derry Corner.

In a while, they will make their way up the hill to Celtic Park. Their counties are experiencing something a little different, with Derry riding high off the back of consecutive Ulster titles while Tyrone are in a spin since they won the 2021 All-Ireland.

Add into the mix, the oddity that Derry now have Mickey Harte as manager, a man who did more than anyone to put Tyrone on the national stage.

Everywhere you look, there are club and county badges. Two clubs dominate, though.

Bellaghy Wolfe Tones, the first club to claim the All-Ireland club title in 1972.

Trillick St Macartan’s, the current Tyrone champions and a proud people.

Those assembled are there to remember their father, their brother, their husband, their clubmen: Seán Brown of Bellaghy and Patsy Kelly of Trillick. Both men murdered, with nobody brought to justice for the killings.

The British Government will soon effectively close down all ongoing inquests that have not been completed. This is due to the contentious Legacy Act, passed in Westminster last year and due to take effect from 1 May, which will move the legal process to a new body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery.

On 12 May 2022, the 25th anniversary of Seán Brown’s murder, GAA President Larry McCarthy attended Bellaghy’s grounds, Pairc Seán de Bruin, to unveil a memorial stone to the former club chairman.

That very day, the PSNI issued an apology: “The PSNI wishes to apologise to Mrs Brown and her family for inadequacies in the RUC original investigation and continues to engage fully in the ongoing inquest proceedings.”

In April 2023, a report by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland stated that the police investigation into the murder of Patsy Kelly was “wholly inadequate”, with aspects “indicative of collusive behaviour”.

Patsy’s wife, Teresa, is now 83. Seán’s wife, Bridie, is 86. They remain determined that they will find out the entire truth.

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On 24 July 1974, the 35-year-old Independent councillor Patsy Kelly finished his work at the Corner Bar in Trillick and got into his car to drive home to his wife and four children.

He was stopped on the Badoney Road outside the village and vanished.

For three weeks, search parties were organised. The headquarters of the search was Donnelly Park, Trillick’s GAA grounds.

As the hours ticked into days, people from all surrounding areas joined the effort.

Brougher Mountain and hundreds of acres of bogland were searched. Volunteers walked the local rivers, wading up to their chests to find any evidence on the bed.

The GAA county boards of Tyrone and Fermanagh made public appeals for members to join the search.

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On 10 August, a local man drove from his home in Brookeborough to a quaint lake, Lough Eyes, in Fermanagh, 10 miles from Trillick.

In the still of early morning he retrieved his rowing oars from the open shed of a mill opposite the lake, carried them over the gate and rowed out at 7.15am towards the far end, where it was known to be deeper in places.

He noted a strange object and rowed closer. It was the body of Patsy Kelly, floating on his back. He had been shot dead.

The body was sufficiently buoyant that it rose to the surface despite the 56lb weight tied around his waist with new rope. The man rowed to the shore and called police in Enniskillen.

Patsy Kelly’s young widow Teresa called for no retaliation and placed all her trust in the police investigation.

An estimated crowd of 4,000 attended his funeral. Among those who attended were representatives of the GAA, the Gaelic League, dozens of members of the Omagh District Council and politicians from further afield.

In May 1997, with the political atmosphere tense in the aftermath of the UK general election, Seán Brown, a father of six, went to an underage game at his home ground of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones. Afterwards, he chaired a club meeting. With all outstanding matters taken care of, at around 11.30pm he went to lock the club gates – the gates he himself had made as an engineering lecturer at the Ballymena Training Centre.

A carload of men pulled up and assaulted Brown before putting him into the boot of his own car, driving it to a location just off the Old Moneynick Road outside Randalstown.

He was taken out and shot six times and left there beside his car, which was burned out.

Bellaghy provide a guard of honour for the funeral of their chairman Sean Brown 1997.

The Brown family were left distraught and bereft. In time, they felt the police would find those responsible.

Both families believe they are aware of who was behind the killings. However, their pursuit of justice has met with stonewalling and interminable delays.

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4 February 2024, at Free Derry corner. The weather is verging on spiteful. The mood is one of quiet defiance.

It’s just over 52 years since a Civil Rights march was attacked on these Derry streets by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment and 14 people were killed. In over five decades, progress has been achieved.

But nobody has ever been charged with the murder of Patsy Kelly or Seán Brown.

Legal representatives of the Kelly (Aidan O’Kane of Fahy’s, Omagh) and the Brown (Niall Murphy of KRW Law) families make speeches. Peter Canavan speaks. He notes that in a short while, all assembled will continue up the hill towards Celtic Park, where the counties of the bereaved will play a league match.

But that is not the important thing today.

The important thing is that the wider GAA community supports both families in their pursuit of justice and fair inquests.

There is hope. The Irish Government has issued an interstate challenge against Britain over the Legacy Act at the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. Unfortunately, even that act has brought some politicking from quarters.

Patrick Kelly, Patsy’s son, makes a speech. “Now, 50 years later after decades of fighting for truth as family we once again see how, through the recent motions by Tyrone, Derry, Armagh and Antrim, that the GAA community is standing with us in solidarity,” he said.

“And we were so heartened to see those motions being passed by the Ulster Council and look with hope that similar motions will be passed at a national level.”

The motions he references, as Tyrone GAA explain, support families impacted by the Legacy Act “to have access to the justice system which could facilitate the emergence of the truth. This access should not be time limited”.

Patrick Kelly talked of the Patsy Kelly Memorial Cup that was commissioned by Trillick St Macartan’s and is competed for as part of the clubs’ schedule of youth tournaments, how this remains a deep source of pride for the entire family circle.

The Legacy Act overshadows all. “As well as ensuring immunity from prosecution for its own military and police, the Legacy Act is designed to ensure the real truth about Britain’s dirty war in Ireland will remain uncovered,” said Kelly.

“You see, the Legacy Act tells us to draw a line and to just move on.

“We cannot move on, we are not allowed to move on while we remain haunted by the injustices of the past.”

Teresa Kelly at the publication of the Ombudsman’s report.

To conclude, he cites the attitude of his mother who, at the end of another hard day of delay and denial in court, was asked by the press for a reaction to the proceedings.

“She simply said: The fight will go on.

“And so it will – we are never, ever giving up.”

Siobhán Brown, Seán’s daughter, speaks then with palpable emotion and determination.

“As a family, as a club, as a community, we can no longer hold our dignified silence,” she says.

“We are furious at the treatment we are being exposed by those who represent the State. We actively seek the support and solidarity of our wider Association at this time of legal and moral repugnance.

“My father, and our club, represents what is best about our society. However, what we have had to endure in recent weeks and months, indeed years, is the lowest, and which can no longer be tolerated.”

Bridie Brown.

She concludes, “I reiterate the message posed by our own current club chairman, when he wrote to every unit in our Association and asked them to consider the following question:

“Every single club has a hard-working chairman or the last person to lock your club gates. Is this how you would accept your family, your club, your community, your own dignified memory, to be treated?”

And with that, two communities join and march to a game of football.