SKY MAN: MY GRANDA WAS BORDER SMUGGLER
Reporter says North’s ‘Robin Hood’ got buzz from crimes
SKY’S Ireland correspondent held his hands up this week with a very personal family tale of Robin Hood-style border smuggling from times past.
David Blevins’ Co Armagh grandfather Sam Blevins was jailed twice after confessing to an eight-year career spiriting tea, butter, then cigarettes across the frontier. It was the early 1950s and a period of post-war scarcity. He gave away the spoils to hardpressed neighbours but the thrill of the chase and out-smarting the law kept him going. His grandson researched his story during a feature on smuggling for the Sky News broadcaster. Mr Blevins said: “He got a buzz from his clandestine escapades. “Accounts of him out-running police cars, on both sides of the border, have gone down in folklore.” The UK’S plan to leave the Customs Union after Brexit has raised concern about an upsurge in smugglers ready to exploit differing tax arrangements. At one stage it was virtually a way of life, from profiteering by the IRA during the Troubles to the more benign brand displayed by people like Sam Blevins – the man they called Ulster’s Robin Hood. The 1950s was a tough time to bring up a family as wartime rationing was still in place. Mr Blevin lived close to Portadown and worked as a fruit dealer with ambitions. A grocer expecting a raid by Food Ministry inspectors had asked him to sell some tea, with his merchant taking a cut of the profits. The farmer’s son earned a handsome bounty and never looked back. Mr Blevins said at the height of his cross-border game his grandfather made €340 a week, a lot of money back then, but he was losing just as much – €22,500 in fines and in the value of goods seized. He added: “He would say, ‘I am not ashamed of my past. Everyone smuggling when stuff was scarce. ‘If only I had stopped, when making more than losing, I would have been on top of the world’.” Generosity saw him distribute much of the windfall diverted from official coffers to neighbours and, in a twist of irony, they persuaded him to run for a seat at Stormont. Mr Blevins added: “He didn’t win but the honest confession gained him an unexpected admirer. “When Sam died suddenly, aged 54, Ian Paisley turned up and participated in his funeral. “Fifty years after his death, people still talk about Sam the smuggler who stood for election. “His campaign slogan was, ‘Thank heavens, here’s Blevins’.”