Freedom of city for Jon McCourt

“It was a challenging enough day.”

These were the words of Derry’s Jon McCourt the morning after he was awarded the Freedom of the City by Derry City and Strabane District Council Mayor Patricia Logue.

Jon grew up in Derry and was a member of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.

He has been a community and peace activist since the 1970s and has campaigned in those areas for decades working with victims of Troubles violence and in youth and community relations projects.

The decision to confer the Freedom of the City and District was made at a Council meeting earlier this year following a notice of motion by People Before Profit councillor Shaun Harkin.

Jon McCourt awarded the Freedom of the City by Mayor Patricia Logue and Council Chief Executive John Kelpie.

The enormity and emotion of Tuesday’s ceremony was evident in Jon’s voice when he spoke to Derry News.

“I am still, in a way, a wee bit shocked at the magnitude of this,” he said.

“To get this accolade from the Council and from the people of this city, considering the list of people who have gone before, is just an amazing, amazing tribute, not just to me but to the work of all victims and survivors that have struggled for this.

“We have overcome many challenges to get to this point. I showed the Council a photograph yesterday of me in Termonbacca at nine years of age, standing with short trousers and looking absolutely confused because I had just got out of hospital after having my head shaved and a needle stuck in the top of my head every day for six weeks.

“It was to relieve the pressure of a subdural haematoma, caused by a nun, who hit me with the wooden roller from the middle of the old fashioned towels, right across the top of my head and cracked my skull.

Jon with members of his family following the ceremony in the Guildhall.

“I showed that photograph. That experience was unique to me but, I know, right across the North, right across this island and particularly among the child migrants who were stolen from here, that were people who suffered far, far worse abuse - physical, sexual and emotional.

“My heart went down when I thought about them yesterday,” reflected Jon. “I brought two photographs in the Guildhall. One of them was a group of 31 children, aged between five and 14 years of age, taken outside Termonbacca, in August 1947 and it said, ‘Emigrating to Australia’.

“This sounded as if a great experience was going to be had by all and the caption at the bottom said: ‘With the blessing of the Catholic Hierarchy’. Children were literally shipped out of this country, labelled, ‘Not our problem’.

“I meet and talk with some of the people who were taken. I sat in the [Historical Institutional Abuse] Inquiry and listened to their evidence. What happened here, not that it wasn’t horrific, but when you listen to those people talking - 12,000 miles away, out in a desert, where they literally had to build the home themselves and the girls who ended up in Perth and Sisters of Nazareth Homes around.

“They were told they were orphans, told nobody cared about them and they were suffering that abuse.

Jon McCourt together with members of Survivors North West at the Guildhall in Derry.

“Our people we can deal with here. We can reach out and we can talk and they know they can come and talk to us. There were services put in place by the Inquiry, through legislation. They are available to anybody who has been in any of these institutions. It must be really difficult for people who are out of here to reach out to anyone for help,” said Jon, “particularly as that history is something you have blocked from your memory since you were 16 or 17 years of age and you are now in your late 70s.”

Jon dedicated his award to those ‘child migrants’.

“We can look after our people here but I also want to make sure that the children who were stolen from here years ago, no matter how much they might think they were forgotten, they weren’t.”

Jon also expressed his wish that the full Council would have attended his Freedom of the City award ceremony. No Unionist elected representatives were present.

“I would rather have had the open and full endorsement of every member of that Council irrespective of party. If people chose not to be there, that was their choice.

“But, the one thing I would recognise is the work of guys like Willie Hay in Westminster, who worked for us. Also, Gregory Campbell at Westminster. Mike Nesbitt in Belfast.

“I would hesitate to use the word ‘pettiness’ but it may seem there was pettiness involved. In the big picture, I am grateful and glad for the work and the contact I had with senior members of any Unionist grouping who helped us get this legislation through.”

Jon was also highly critical of the religious orders which had run the institutions.

He vividly recalled: “When we first set out to get this legislation, I remember sitting in Stormont Castle and being told by a senior civil servant that approaches had been made to the religious institutions to make preparations for what was coming down the road.

“In other words, they were told, ‘Get yourselves ready because you are going to have to pay out’. That was in 2009. We are now in 2023. They have had all that time to make preparations to meet their obligations to victims and survivors and, at this point, there is no sign of anything forthcoming from the religious.

“The redress - which to date stands at £75 million - is currently being paid by taxpayers, in spite of the fact there is currently a black hole in the economy at Stormont. 

“The excuse is that each one of these institutions is a separate, autonomous organisation and no one particular person can order them to do anything. Most of their assets at this point have been sold. They haven’t been sold. They have been turned into residential care homes for older people, which they are making a fortune from. 

“In addition, a few of the orders have gone out of business - they don’t exist any more. There are always loopholes. That is what they did in New York and Calgary in Canada, in Australia,” said Jon, who added that the Religious showed no empathy or compassion during the Stormont apology to victims and survivors of historical institutional abuse, in March 2022.

Concluding, Jon paid tribute to the “courage” of the people he worked with.

“The victims and survivors who put their trust in me and in Survivors North West, to get delivered for them what they really needed. The services from WAVE and Victims’ Support are there now for people. Reach out, reach out.”