For several years on my journals devoted to Bobby, I have marked the anniversaries of all the hunger strikers as well as significant events. I would like now to refer people to the archive to look at the daily titles from last year, for example, in order to refresh their memory of the history of that time. If I find new articles or anything current to augment this journal, I will of course post it. For current events in the political situation, please refer to SAOIRSE32. I do monitor comments made here, so please feel free to post them.
Regretfully, I have had to introduce comment screening on this journal. It pains me greatly to discover a visible insult to Bobby or any of the brave hunger strikers, and I will no longer allow that to happen. I do have to approve all comments from non-friends now, but I do NOT screen your IP, and you may still comment anonymously. Your comment, if it is respectful, will appear after being seen by me. I do not have to agree with it, but I would like it to be respectful. If you are an Lj user or would like to make constructive comments without being screened, consider taking a few minutes' time to make an Lj which can be friended.
I am in the process of going over every entry to resize the font and replace any images that are down. I will also be removing the nedstats code. This will take awhile. If you notice any specific entry that needs fixing, please leave me a comment.
This is the Google site search for this particular location of BOBBY SANDS:
You may also read this journal at its alternate site on Blogspot: BOBBY SANDS or at BOBBY SANDS at the new Dreamwidth.org site.
Thank you,
micheailin
Mural photo is a smaller version of the beautiful photograph by Conánn Fitzpatrick and is used with permission
 |
THE HUNGER STRIKE Was there a deal?
By Allison Morris
Irish News
22/10/2009
Former republican hunger striker Bernard Fox says he is deeply distressed by allegations that a deal which could have ended the strike was vetoed in order to maximise electoral support for Sinn Fein.
 The west Belfast man, who spent a total of 22 years in prison, was on hunger strike for 32 days when the protest was ended.
Bernard Fox
Speaking to The Irish News Mr Fox said: “I was a close friend of Joe McDonnell. I was on active service with him on the outside, and later imprisoned with him.
“Under those circumstances you get to know a person’s character very well.
“Joe loved life and had no desire to die but he was determined and pragmatic and was not for settling for anything other than the five demands – that I can say for sure.
“I wasn’t in the hospital at that time and I don’t know what the men were told or not told but I do know that there was no deal.
“Offers, yes – there were plenty of offers.
“Sure wasn’t Kieran Nugent given an offer of a convict’s uniform in 1976, an offer he declined?”
Having been interned twice the former IRA man was returned to the Maze prison as a convicted prisoner in 1977 and immediately joined the blanket protest, before volunteering for the Hunger Strike.
He spent 32 days on hunger strike before the protest, which claimed the lives of seven IRA and three INLA prisoners, came to an end.
“It took me 20 years before I could even speak openly about my experiences,” he said.
“It’s still emotional and raw for me even now. These claims just add to that pain.
“I can only imagine what it must be like for the families of the 10 lads.
“Bik [McFarlane] was chosen to act as our OC [officer commanding]. It’s a job no-one envied – the pressure must have been unbearable.
“Regardless of what I or anyone else may think about the political direction he has taken since, at the time we knew he wasn’t going to let us down.
“To suggest that he in some way colluded with the outside leadership to let his comrades die is sickening to me and does not hold up to scrutiny.
“After the first hunger strike we, [the prisoners] were very clear we wanted our demands in writing and delivered by a representative of the British government so there could be no reneging this time.
“Look, I would never criticise any former blanketman. We all suffered equally and the comradeship we had at that time was the only thing that saw us through.
“But try as I may I cannot understand where some people are coming from or why they would wait all these years to bring this out.
“Thatcher and the British government are responsible for the deaths of our comrades – that’s where the blame lies.”
In 1998 Fox was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
He has since parted company with Sinn Fein in disagreement over its political direction.
“I have no personal or political agenda,” he said.
“My only concern is for the families and how all this must be hurting them.
Addressing calls for a public inquiry, he said: “I have no time for inquiries. What you need is not an inquiry but the truth and it would be naive to think the British will ever tell the truth.
“If there are unanswered questions my advice would be to seek clarification.
“That way the families who have called on all this to stop can be left in peace.” |
THE HUNGER STRIKE Was there a deal?
Irish News
22/10/2009
Richard O’Rawe – former republican prisoner, PRO of the 1981 hunger strikers and author of Blanketmen – responds to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams on claims a deal was available which would have saved the lives of six hunger strikers
There is now no room for doubting that the hunger strikers, by their sacrifice and courage, melted the iron will of Margaret Thatcher.
In doing so they tore asunder the British government’s policy of criminalisation. Not only that, but the hunger strikers forced the British to make a substantial offer, which was passed to Brendan Duddy (the Mountain Climber) on 5 July 1981.
Martin McGuinness said in his September 28 Irish News article that he took the offer from Duddy and passed it on to Gerry Adams in Belfast.
I believe that, had that offer not been rejected by those republican leaders on the outside who ran the Hunger Strike, it would have spelt victory to the Blanketmen, proved to be a massive propaganda coup for the republican struggle and, most importantly of all, saved the lives of six hunger strikers.
I also believe that while other accounts of the period have crumbled under the weight of damning contemporaneous evidence, my version of events has been vindicated: there was an offer; Bik McFarlane and I did accept it; a comm from Gerry Adams came in to the prison leadership which said that ‘more was needed’.
A similar message was sent to the British government.
Besides Martin McGuinness, the former hunger striker Laurence McKeown contributed an article to The Irish News special edition.
In it Laurence made no direct reference to this offer, preferring instead to write about a conversation he had had with a BBC producer in the 1990s.
That prompts the question: had Laurence and the hunger strikers been made fully aware of the details of the Mountain Climber offer?
I do not think they were and Laurence McKeown’s own book, Nor Meekly Serve My Time, demonstrates this.
For example: on July 29 1981, at the request of the families and Mgr Denis Faul, Gerry Adams, Fermanagh and South Tyrone election candidate Owen Carron, and INLA leader Seamus Ruddy visited the hunger strikers, ostensibly to give them their assessment of the situation.
Thirteen years later, in 1994, Laurence recorded the visit in his book. On page 236 he wrote of Gerry Adams having visited hunger striker Kieran Doherty:
“On their way out of his cell Doc’s parents met and spoke with Gerry, Bik and the others. They asked what the situation was and Gerry said he had just told all the stailceoirí, including Kieran, that there was no deal on the table from the Brits, no movement of any sort and if the stailc continued, Doc would most likely be dead within a few days. They just listened to this and nodded, more or less resigned to the fact that they would be watching their son die any day now.”
Kieran Doherty TD passed away four days after Adams’s visit, believing that there ‘was no deal on the table from the Brits, no movement of any sort’.
What Adams seemingly did not tell Kieran’s dignified parents, Alfie and Margaret, was that, actually, there was a deal on the table from the Brits, and it had been there from before Joe McDonnell died.
Moreover, he did not tell them that there had been movement.
Adams did not tell Mr and Mrs Doherty – or their noble son – about the Mountain Climber offer.
According to Laurence McKeown, Adams did not tell any of the hunger strikers about the Mountain Climber offer. Worse still, he told them the opposite of what he knew to be the facts of the situation.
I believe that Adams misrepresented the situation and Bik McFarlane did nothing to correct him. That is hardly surprising since before Adams even set foot in the prison McFarlane told Pat ‘Beag’ McGeown ‘Don’t make your opinions known,’ at the forthcoming meeting.
Subsequently Pat Beag said, ‘When Gerry was in I didn’t say anything to him.’
In the face of all the evidence Sinn Fein has sought to demonise anyone who criticises their version of the Hunger Strike by representing that any condemnation of them automatically means that the hunger strikers had been dupes.
The hunger strikers were never dupes. In reality, like Pat Beag, they were very astute and politically-aware individuals, people who would not be ‘easily deceived or cheated’ by anyone.
Yet, like any of us, they could only make decisions on the basis of the information they had.
If those they trusted withheld vital information from them, their judgements would obviously have been impaired.
Besides Gerry Adams not having told them of the Mountain Climber offer, when he visited them on July 29, Bik McFarlane never told them that he and I had accepted the Mountain Climber offer.
Furthermore, like McFarlane and the rest of the prison leadership, the hunger strikers were never shown a copy of the British government’s offer.
In fact, none of us prisoners in Long Kesh were told that the offer came in the form of a statement from the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, which the British, as documents recently disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act made clear, would have been released if and when the Hunger Strike ended.
So, why was this offer not sent in to the hunger strikers so that they could properly evaluate the attitude of the British?
Who took the decision to withhold it from them?
And the biggest question of all – why? |
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh Interview
By Allison Morris
Irish News
17/10/09
STRATEGY: Ruairí Ó Brádaigh has dismissed suggestions by former republican prisoner Richard O’Rawe, inset, that some of the 1981 hunger strikers were allowed to die in the Maze Prison as part of a Sinn Fein strategy to gain electoral support
Throughout the1981 republican Hunger Strike, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh reigned as president of Sinn Fein. It is also believed he was a member of the IRA’s ruling army council throughout the same period.
Controversy surrounding the publication of Richard O’Rawe’s book Blanketmen, which claims the fast was allowed to continue for political gain, has provoked reaction from a vast spectrum of republicans.
While Ó Brádaigh has said he passionately supported using elections as a strategy to draw global attention to prison protest, he maintains it’s unthinkable that men were sacrificed for electoral success.
“When the first four men had died we had a situation in the 26 counties where Charlie Haughey was hesitating calling a general election,” he said.
“Men were dying and Haughey knew this would do him no favours.
“After the first four died it was thought there would be a space – people generally go about 60 days – so Haughey finally called the election “I pushed for a contest and I have
to say there was a lot of opposition to that, especially from people north of the border who wouldn’t be that familiar with the ground in the south.
“But eventually we got agreement and it went ahead.
“People were very nervous but men were dying. We had to do something.
“Getting reaction from people I knew well and whose judgment I trusted. The feedback I was getting back was that there was great support there.
“In the end two were elected but I would say if we had more time we could have got a couple more elected.”
The election of republican candidates achieved its aim, namely drawing attention to the protest.
However, allegations against Sinn Fein are that a deal, that came close to granting the prisoners’ five demands was rejected in order to exploit gains being made at the polls.
Ó Brádaigh, while no friend of the present Sinn Fein leadership, says he would challenge this version of events, claiming British dirty tricks were responsible for prolonging the protest.
“The Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP) were doing their best, I’m sure of that judging by the talks they had with us,” he said.
“But the Brits were up to their tricks.
“They would always have something else going on – and that is the diversion – while the real thing is going on somewhere else.
“That is what I believe was going on there with the ICJP, they were the diversion.”
As Ó Brádaigh was banned from Britain and Northern Ireland at the time he was only able to cross the border covertly.
It has been suggested the northern leadership could have been acting
autonomously without his knowledge and so rejected any deal without the knowledge of the full IRA army council.
“No, no, no I wouldn’t say that at all. With the situation as it existed at the time, no,” Ó Brádaigh said.
“Or even for the second by-election that has been much talked about, no that just couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened.” |
By Allison Morris
Irish News
17/10/09
A FORMER Belfast councillor who represented the interests of INLA prisoners during the 1981 Hunger Strike has backed calls for an inquiry into controversial claims the protest was allowed to continue for political gain.
Former INLA inmate Sean Flynn said he thought enough evidence had come to light to warrant further investigation into the deaths of 10 republicans, including three INLA men.
During the republican prison protests Mr Flynn was spokes-man for the INLA prisoners.
He was one of two IRSP candidates elected to Belfast City Council in 1981 but served only half of his four-year term after going on the run to the Republic when he was implicated in paramilitary activity on the word of supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick.
Speaking from his north Belfast home the 61-year-old, who is no longer active in politics, said: “I’ve no agenda and I’m certainly not coming at this from a Sinn Fein bashing angle.
“I can only say what I know from my experiences at the time.”
Mr Flynn claimed he received a call on July 5 1981 from the NIO telling him it was imperative that he visited the jail that day.
By that time four prisoners had already died including INLA man Patsy O’Hara.
“The caller said he was from the NIO and that it had been arranged for me to gain entry to the jail,” he said.
“I did see Danny Morrison (the IRA prisoners’ spokes-man) that day and I don’t know if he saw me, he would have to answer that himself.
“They took me through the door the screws used and straight to the hospital.
“I spoke to Kevin Lynch. Micky Devine was at that point still being held in the blocks as he wouldn’t have been sick enough yet to be moved to the hospital.
“What I can say for absolute certainty is that the INLA and the IRSP were not made aware of the Mountain Climber negotiations or any proposed deal.
“I spoke to Kevin Lynch that day and he also didn’t know or he would have mentioned it.
“I have no idea if Danny Morrison told the IRA prisoners of an offer, I can only speak for our men and they didn’t know.
“Something was obviously going on or else why would the NIO have contacted me?”
Mr Flynn said the INLA prisoners had been denied the opportunity of making up their own minds on whether the Mountain Climber offer from the British government was worth accepting.
“There is also no way of knowing whether our prisoners would have been willing to accept an offer. I’ve been told that it was pretty close to the five demands,” he said.
Sean Flynn was to later give an oration at the funeral of Kevin Lynch in Dungiven, Co Derry, following his death on August 1 after 71 days on hunger strike. He was the seventh person to die.
“Look, I know that there is a lot of speculation and misinformation going about,” Mr Flynn said.
“What I will say is that Sinn Fein do need to answer some basic questions.
“Was there an offer and if so why were the IRSP not informed and given a chance to look it over?
“In that respect I would support recent calls for an inquiry,” he said. |
Derry Journal
13 Oct 2009
The mother of a Derry man who died on hunger strike says she fully supports the INLA's move away from violence.
 Peggy O'Hara, whose son Patsy, an INLA volunteer, died on hunger strike in Long Kesh in 1981, says she is happy with the move which was announced at the weekend.
"I am happy with the announcement and happy that the political stance of the movement has not changed," she told the 'Journal' last night.
"The main thing for me is that they still remain implacably opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and the notion of a British police force in Ireland.
"I understand that it is only the tactics that have changed and that the political objectives remain the same as they were in 1981.
"I give my full support to the republican socialist movement," she added.
Mrs O'Hara has a long connection with the republican socialist movement and stood as an independent republican candidate in the Assembly elections in 2007 on an anti-PSNI ticket.
She received more than 1,700 first preference votes but was not elected.
Meanwhile, IRSP ard comhairle member Martin McMonagle says the families of INLA members who died during the Troubles were consulted before Sunday's announcement.
"A series of talks have been going on for the last few years," he said. "Families were happy in 1998 when the ceasefire was announced and that has not changed," he added.
Mr McMonagle insists the move is supported by the "vast majority" of republican socialists and ruled out any possibility of a split in the ranks of the INLA.
"If people were unhappy, this initiative would not have happened," he said. "It was important for us to keep the movement intact." |
Platform
By Gerry Adams Sinn Fein president, West Belfast MP, MLA
Irish News
12/10/09
Twenty-eight years ago, 10 Irish republicans died over a seven-month period on hunger strike, after women in Armagh prison and men in the H-Blocks (and several men ‘on-the-blanket’ in Crumlin Road Jail) had endured five years of British government sanctioned brutality.
 The reason for their suffering was that in 1976 the British government reneged on a 1972 agreement over political/special category status for prisoners which had actually brought relative peace to the jails.
Joe McDonnell
You would not know from reading Garret FitzGerald’s newly-found ‘memory’ of 1981 in the recent Irish News series that in his 1991 memoir he wrote: “My meetings with the relatives came to an end on 6 August when some of them attempted to ‘sit in’ in the government anteroom, where I had met them on such occasions, after a stormy discussion during which I had once again refused to take the kind of action some of them had been pressing on me.”
This came after a Garda riot squad attacked and hospitalised scores of prisoner supporters outside the British embassy in Dublin only days after the death of Joe McDonnell. It is clear from FitzGerald’s interview and from his previous writing that his main concern, before, during and after 1981, was that the British government might be talking to republicans and that this should stop.
With Thatcher he embarked on the most intense round of repression in the period after 1985. Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty of that year the Irish government supported an intensification of British efforts to destroy border crossings and roads and remained mute over evidence of mounting collusion between British forces and unionist paramilitaries.
The same FitzGerald was portrayed as a great Liberal, yet every government which he led or on which he served, renewed the broadcasting censorship of Sinn Fein. This denial of information and closing down of dialogue subverted the rights of republicans. It also helped prolong the conflict.
The men who died on hunger strike from the IRA and INLA were not fools. They had fought the British and knew how bitter and cruel an enemy its forces could be in the city, in the countryside, in the centres of interrogation and in the courts.
The Hunger Strike did not arise out of a vacuum but as a consequence of frustration, a failure of their incredible sacrifices and the activism of supporters to break the deadlock.
Part of the problem was that the Irish establishment, including the Dublin government, the SDLP and sections of the Catholic hierarchy had bought into British strategy.
This was actively supported by sections of the Catholic establishment in the north including The Irish News.
The prisoners, our comrades, our brothers and sisters, resisted the British in jail every day, in solitary confinement, when being beaten during wings shifts, during internal searches and the forced scrubbings.
In December 1980 the republican leadership on the outside was in contact with the British who claimed they were interested in a settlement. But before a document outlining a new regime arrived in the jail the hunger strike was called off by Brendan Hughes to save the life of the late Sean McKenna. The British, or sections of them, interpreted this as weakness. The prisoners ended their fast before a formal ‘signing off’.
And the British then refused to implement the spirit of the document and reneged on the integrity of our exchanges.
Their intransigence triggered a second hunger strike in which there was overwhelming suspicion of British motives among the hunger strikers, the other political prisoners, and their families and supporters on the outside.
This was the prisoners’ mindset on July 5 1981, after four of their comrades had already died and when Danny Morrison visited the IRA and INLA hunger strikers to tell them that contact had been re-established and that the British were making an offer. While this verbal message fell well short of their demands they nevertheless wanted an accredited British official to come in and explain this position to them, which is entirely understandable given the British government’s record.
Six times before the death of Joe McDonnell, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP), which was engaged in parallel discussions with the British, asked the British to send an official into the jail to explain what it was offering, and six times the British refused.
After the death of Joe McDonnell the ICJP condemned the British for failing to honour undertakings and for “clawing back” concessions.
Richard O’Rawe, who had never met the hunger strikers in the prison hospital, never met the governor, never met the ICJP or Danny Morrison during the hunger strike, and who never raised this issue before serialising his book in that well-known Irish republican propaganda organ, The Sunday Times, said, in a statement in 1981: “The British government’s hypocrisy and their refusal to act in a responsible manner are completely to blame for the death of Joe McDonnell.”
Republicans involved in the 1981 hunger strike met with the families a few months ago.
Their emotional distress and ongoing pain was palpable.
They were intimately involved at the time on an hour-by-hour basis and know exactly where their sons and brothers stood in relation to the struggle with the British government.
They know who was trying to do their best for them and who was trying to sell their sacrifices short.
More importantly, they know the mind of their loved ones.
That, for me, is what shone through at that meeting.
The families knew their brothers, husbands, fathers. They knew they weren’t dupes. They knew they weren’t stupid. They knew they were brave, beyond words and they were clear about what was happening.
All of the family members, who spoke, with the exception of Tony O’Hara, expressed deep anger and frustration at the efforts to denigrate and defile the memory of their loved ones. In a statement they said: “We are clear that it was the British government which refused to negotiate and refused to concede their [the prisoners’] just demands.” |
Derry Journal
06 October 2009
Mural photo from CAIN
The children of Derry hunger striker Micky Devine have renewed their call to find out the truth about the circumstances that led to their father's death in Long Kesh in 1981.
 Michael Og and Lousie Devine have called on leading Belfast republican, Laurence McKeown, to explain comments he made in a recent interview when he said there was "nothing new" on offer from the British during the negotiation surrounding the hunger strike in 1981.
Michael Devine, hungerstriker
The Devines are calling for an independent inquiry to be held into claims that a deal which could potentially have saved the lives of six of the hunger strikers was rejected by the IRA leadership, despite having been accepted by republican leaders within jail. The claim, which was made by a former blanketman, has been rejected by Sinn Féin and many leading republicans.
Michael Og Devine said: "Our father was the last of the Hunger Strikers to die and all we ask from republicans is the truth. Due to all the contradictions, new evidence and the ever-changing shifting Sinn Fein narrative we feel that only an independent republican Inquiry can heal this festering sore that has erupted over what occurred during the Hunger Strike," he said.
Mr Devine also said he is confident his father was not aware of any deal coming into the prison through a secret contact known as the 'Mountain Climer.'
"Both Louise and I attended the Gasyard debate and listened to Brendan Duddy claim that the offer he wrote down and communicated to Martin McGuinness on the 5th July '81 contained four of the demands. He also stated that he believed this was a genuine offer from the British.
"We would make this appeal to Laurence to tell us publicly exactly what did happen in the prison hospital and what exactly was my father told, if anything, that he felt he couldn't share with his family or his movement. We would also like to ask Laurence did he see a copy of the offer which Duddy gave to McGuinness who in turn gave it to Gerry Adams," he said. |
THE HUNGER STRIKE
Irish News
29/09/2009
THE go-between working with the republican leadership during the Hunger Strike has revealed that he was never given a written copy of the statement which the British were prepared to release to the hunger strikers.
Brendan Duddy, who acted as go-between between Sinn Fein and the British government since the early 1970s, said information was always given by telephone because then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher had vowed never to talk to republicans.
Known to both sides by the code name ‘The Mountain Climber,’ he continued his work right through to the ongoing peace process.
Mr Duddy, a former member of the Policing Board, spoke about taking part at a meeting in Derry earlier this year where the families of hunger strikers had gathered.
At that meeting at the Gasyard Centre he was questioned at length by members of the audience – which included Richard O’Rawe and leading figures from the time.
The Derry man told the meeting the information he received from the British was always by telephone and never in written form.
He said this was because Mrs Thatcher had vowed never to talk to republicans.
Mr Duddy stressed that it was never his role to interpret or advise on the content of the information he received.
He told the meeting: “What I cannot do is speak for what the past or current leadership of the IRA, Sinn Fein or Provisionals did.”
Mr Duddy said negotiations about the prisoners’ demands continued from the end of the first hunger strike in December 1980 right up until they reached a climax in the days before Joe McDonnell died.
He was asked why he only gave details of the negotiations and possible deal to the IRA and did not pass them on to the INLA. He said his contact work had always been with the IRA.
“It was not a matter of not making the approach to the INLA. My contact was as a result of working with Ruairi O Bradaigh, Daithi O’Connell and Sean Keenan among others,” Mr Duddy said.
He confirmed to the meeting that the documents detailing the British statement as received through a Freedom of Information request was an accurate version -- apart from “one or two minor points” -- of the statement he was given by the British. But he stressed no written form was given to him at the time.
He also confirmed that he supplied the response from the IRA to the British government that the statement was not enough and had to be “added to”. Mr Duddy said he could not recall anyone talking about the “tone” of the statement at any time. |
THE HUNGER STRIKE
Irish News
29/09/2009
QUESTIONS: Gerard Hodgins, left, pictured with Danny Morrison (PICTURE: Seamus Loughran)
THE blanket protests and Hunger Strikes are sacrosanct in republican history. The commitment and courage of the men and women who participated in those prison struggles can never be questioned.
Richard’s [O’Rawe] assertion that the leadership blocked a deal on the Hunger Strike in order to further political ambitions and in the process prolonged the agony doesn’t sit easily in the republican conscience.
So uncomfortable is this fact that most republicans tend to follow the Adams/Morrison narrative that Richard just wants to sell more books and so makes a sensationalist claim about dirty dealings between the Provisional leadership and the British government in order to increase sales.
This despite the fact that a prima facie case exists that Richard’s assertion has validity: Gerry Adams has (writing in one of his books) previously referred to a happy ending narrative rather than a tell-all story now, yet he won’t elaborate on what this cryptic sentence means.
Gerry Adams has referred to the British coming back with the deal again around the July 18/19 1981.
Gerry Adams has referred to how he got into the habit of catching sleep during the daylight hours during that summer of 1981 because the British would contact him via telephone late at night.
Yet Gerry Adams refuses to put meat on these statements. What is he hiding? What was the true extent of contact between the leadership and the British?
For daring to ask questions like this puts one beyond the pale of the dominant republican narrative. Suddenly you find former comrades in the upper echelons are referring to you as a revisionist, a drug-dealer, a dissident, an antirepublican: no slur is too great, no act too low.
When I learned a meeting was to take place in Gullaghaduff I went along accompanied by Jimmy Dempsey whose son John was killed by the British army the morning Joe McDonnell died.
We both had questions we would like to ask, we were both politely but firmly refused entry to the meeting and I personally was subjected to threats and menaces by a senior Provisional, all because I wanted to ask questions about events in 1981.
When this genie was first let out of the bottle in 2005 the leadership figures were adamant there were neither deals, offers nor anything else. Today they are not so certain.
Bik [Brendan McFarlane] categorically denied that any such conversation took place between him and Richard O’Rawe about accepting a British offer.
Today he says different and remembers “a huge opportunity” and “potential” in the conversation he initially didn’t have with Richard.
On the face of it the evidence points to dark dealings going on in the background of the Hunger Strike, dealings of which nobody on Hunger Strike was aware.
Whether we ever will know the truth of those times is doubtful. The acquisition of any level of power and maintenance of that power is rarely a tale of honour alone. |
Families of the strikers are divided over O’Rawe claim
Seamus McKinney
Irish News
28/09/2009
The families of eight of the hunger strikers failed to reach agreement on the new claims when they met in June this year.
A meeting to discuss the Richard O’Rawe claims and the recent controversy was addressed by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, the party’s former publicity officer Danny Morrison and Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, OC of the IRA prisoners in 1981.
The Sands and Lynch families did not attend the meeting.
Michael Devine jnr – the son of INLA man Michael Devine, the last hunger striker to die – said he had walked out of the discussion.
Mr Devine told The Irish News following the meeting that he had walked out although he had made no protest at the meeting. He said he had left the discussion because he had been unable to put his point of view.
The organisers of the meeting – held at Gulladuff in Co Derry – refused to allow IRSP spokesman William Gallagher to attend.
People who attended the meeting said it had been “highly emotional”. Insiders said the discussion had brought back many painful memories for the families present.
At the close of the discussion an effort was made to have the families issue a joint statement demanding an end to the controversy but this failed.
A counter-call for an independent inquiry into the controversy also failed to get full support.
Days after the meeting, some of the families issued a statement calling on those making claims of a deal to stop.
“All of the family members who spoke with the exception of Tony O’Hara (brother of Patsy) expressed deep anger and frustration at the ongoing allegations created by O’Rawe,” the statement said.
It was claimed the statement was supported by all of the hunger strikers’ families present with the exception of the O’Hara family.
This was later disputed when Michael Devine’s son Michael jnr told The Irish News he had neither seen nor given his support to the statement. |
Was there a deal?
By Allison Morris
Irish News
29/09/09
**NIO FOI documents (PDF) from www.longkesh.info
VETERAN reporter Ed Moloney has said that he warned Richard O’Rawe about an inevitable backlash from former republican associates if he went ahead and published his book.
 O’Rawe’s claims that the Sinn Fein leadership sabotaged a possible resolution to the protest in order to further the party’s political fortunes has caused a storm of controversy which has gained momentum ever since.
Having covered the unfolding situation at the Maze prison as a journalist, from the blanket protest through to the first and later the second Hunger Strike on which 10 men died, the former Irish Times and Sunday Tribune northern editor said claims contained in Blanketmen came as no surprise to many.
“I not only read Richard’s book at an early stage I helped edit it and advised him strongly at the time not to publish it,” he said.
“I told him they, and by they I mean primarily the Sinn Fein leadership, would make his life very difficult.
“Knowing Richard, where he lived and the background he came from, I was aware from previous personal experience that it would get very rough for him.
“But I got the impression this had been eating away at him for some time.”
Mr Moloney, who lives in the US, is expected to reveal new material on the republican movement in a book due out early next year.
The book includes a series of interviews with top republican Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes before his death last year.
Hughes had been a former OC of the IRA’s Belfast brigade and was leader of the 1980 republican Hunger Strike in the Maze.
During his conversations with O’Rawe, Mr Moloney said he was aware that he had delayed publishing his book Blanketmen until the peace process was firmly embedded.
“He did this so he couldn’t be accused of causing the Sinn Fein leadership problems,” Mr Moloney said.
“Covering the Hunger Strike as a journalist, even back then at a republican grassroots level, there was a general feeling that it had just gone on for far too long,” he said.
“Ten deaths was excessive and went way beyond anything that they had previously asked their prisoners to do.
“To leave the decision up to the prisoners themselves was thought by some to be a tactical move.
“Each man carried the weight of the dead comrade who went before them on their shoulders and so the protest continued.”
Mr Moloney said it was fairly well recognised that the 1981 Hunger Strike was the Provos’ Easter Rising.
“So many horrendous horrible acts had gone before it that this supreme sacrifice and unfaltering belief was a kind of justification for the IRA’s campaign,” he said.
“It was also the very start of the modern peace process and the beginning of Sinn Fein’s electoral and political strategy.
“More recently, evidence uncovered by Liam Clarke [who reported details of British government documents which were released to The Sunday Times earlier this year following a freedom of information request], if not entirely settles the matter, then takes us to a point where explanations are certainly required.
“There have been changes to some people’s stories that are so significant it begs the question why?
“That is what in my opinion now needs to be cleared up.” |
By Seamus McKinney
Irish News
28/09/09
TONY O’Hara last saw his brother Patsy alive two days before the Derry man died on the 61st day of his hunger strike on May 21 1981.
At the time O’Hara was an INLA prisoner at the Maze serving a sentence for possession of arms.
He died on the same day as IRA hunger striker Raymond McCreesh from Camlough, Co Armagh.
“For the entire duration of the 61 days I got to spend two hours and 15 minutes with Patsy. Even though I was in jail I was brought in handcuffs from H5 to the prison hospital – a short trip,” Mr O’Hara said.
Two days after seeing his brother Mr O’Hara, whose first cell mate was Bobby Sands, heard of his younger brother’s death on a crystal radio set smuggled into the jail.
“Another prisoner came to his window and shouted but I sort of knew. I was waiting for it when news came,” he said.
Mr O’Hara was given 12 hours compassionate parole to attend his brother’s funeral and just two months later he was released.
“When Patsy died I just felt numb. I remembered what it was like when Bobby Sands died,” he said.
“On the night he was elected there was elation. We just, everyone just, celebrated and cheered.
“But on the night he died there was just silence. The whole of Long Kesh went silent.”
Although any deal, real or not, would not have saved O’Hara’s life, the INLA man’s family is one of those demanding an inquiry into the Provisionals’ management of the Hunger Strike.
Mr O’Hara’s concern is that the Sinn Fein version of events has changed too often since Richard O’Rawe published his account of a possible deal in 2005.
He is also concerned that the INLA leadership was never told of the possible deal despite the fact that two of its members -– Kevin Lynch and Michael Devine –- died after it was alleged to have been made.
“It could have been a propaganda coup for the blanketmen and we could have said the Brits reneged on a deal,” Mr O’Hara said.
He believes the Provos tried to manipulate the Hunger Strike to exclude the INLA as much as possible.
“Patsy was to be the second to go on strike after Bobby Sands but Francie Hughes created such a rumpus that he went second,” Mr O’Hara said.
He accepts there could be a number of reasons for the Sinn Fein leadership deciding not to accept the deal.
“There is a lot of speculation and I don’t know the reason but that is one of the big questions that must be asked,” Mr O’Hara said.
He disputes the various statements put forward by the Sinn Fein leadership in recent months, not least a claim that all prisoners were told of the deal in 1981.
Mr O’Hara is adamant that only a full inquiry, chaired by an international human rights figure, will get to the truth. |
Roy Garland
The Monday Column
Irish News
28/09/09
I once attended an evangelical meeting where a “hymn” written by a hunger striker was occasionally sung.
Thomas Ashe was a 1916 leader who died after force feeding went wrong in 1917.
His “hymn” was an amended version of one of his poems written in Lewes Gaol in England. It included the following lines: “Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord: the hour of her trial draws near. And the pangs and the pain of her sacrifice will be borne by comrades dear. But Lord, take me from the offering throng, there are many far less prepared, though ready and all as they are to die, that Ireland may be saved.”
Early last century Dublin-based evangelical Christians Eva and Clara Stuart Watt encouraged people to emulate the resolve of republicans in the service of Christ.
Self-sacrifice was not, however, to be taken literally. They found inspiration in Thomas Davis’s A Nation Once Again especially the words, “and righteous men must make our land a nation once again”. For a righteous person violence was not an option.
Killing for any earthly cause was repudiated. Yet the need for bloodshed was accepted but applied only to the “blood of Christ” whose suffering and death was the sacrifice to end all sacrifice.
The horror of human or animal sacrifice was rejected. The kind of “reasonable service” that evangelicals were called upon to make was, in the words of St Paul, a “living sacrifice”, meaning a life lived for God and one’s fellow man.
In contrast so many animal sacrifices took place in the Jerusalem temple before AD70 that blood spilt into the Jordan River was used by local farmers as fertiliser.
Hunger strikers fasting onto death were sacrificing their own lives. This act may be respected as courageous, revered as an example of dedication or perhaps deemed as wasteful.
On the day Bobby Sands died a deep hush pervaded the whole camp. Loyalists respected his courage. They had also wanted changes in prison conditions and led the way in support of political status in 1972 while some republicans were hesitant.
Loyalist aims were obscured somewhat by their demands for segregation.
The idea that prisoners deserve humane living conditions is of ancient vintage and perhaps derives from the Quaker emphasis on “that of God in everyone”.
Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was a Quaker who dedicated her life to the welfare of prisoners.
Support for humane prison conditions even reached into the heart of the Orange Order.
A friend in my dad’s Orange Lodge was secretary of the Prisoners’ Aid Society who gave occasional talks at Orange functions about prisoners’ needs.
The idea that people might die for the right to wear certain clothes or for certain “privileges” was highly questionable.
The violence of the IRA campaign had caused revulsion while unhelpful rumours that Long Kesh was a home from home did not help. Some students were angry that prisoners should gain qualifications at the taxpayers’ expense while they lived with financial difficulties.
It was not fasting itself that was considered repugnant but fasting unto death that even some republicans baulked at.
Any hint of manipulating people’s deaths for private or political ends was regarded as repulsive.
When some loyalists participated in the early dirty protests and hunger strikes, this went against the grain. They were criticised for “lending support to republicans” and became pariahs, demonised by republicans while demeaned and ostracised by many of their own people. Progressive loyalists were sometimes damned as “rotten Prods”.
This was especially difficult given that it was the oratory of unionist leaders that led many of them to take up the gun in the first place. When militant clergy disowned their proteges, this fostered cynicism. Loyalists usually hailed from the most deprived sections of the community but they could see that hunger strikes to the death were extremely emotive events that could raise dark and deadly ancestral voices.
To associate the dying hunger striker with Christ was a form of dangerous idolatry. This might explain why even progressive loyalists remained uneasy about a museum associated with the hunger strikers’ deaths.
Yet those who died in this way could be seen as in some sense Christ-like. They were victims, even if it was at their own hands. However, to manipulate their deaths for party political ends, if this is what happened, was surely the ultimate abuse of human suffering.
Yet strangely the final outcome proved to be a political path which had the capacity to free us from the ways of death. |
THE HUNGER STRIKE
Irish News
28/09/09
THROUGHOUT Irish history Britain attempted to legitimise its actions by criminalising those native forces who opposed them physically, or in conscience. At one time it was Catholicism which was penalised, later it was nationalism and republicanism.
After 1969 the prison population here multiplied, not from an outbreak of criminality but due to the failure of government, street resistance and, latterly, IRA activity.
The first British secretary of state, William Whitelaw, recognised this political reality within the rising prison population and granted special category status (that is, political status) as a result of a republican hunger strike in 1972 before any prisoner lost his life.
Although tensions remained and republicans continued to attempt to escape and thwart imprisonment, by and large a quid pro quo existed within the jails. No prison officer, in those days, lost his life.
All this changed when the British went for wholesale confrontation and picked on what they mistakenly thought was the most vulnerable section of the republican movement – our imprisoned comrades.
They arbitrarily ended political status on March 1 1976, declaring that anyone involved in physical force after that date was a criminal.
But they had several problems, not least that IRA volunteers were politically and community motivated and, unlike loyalists, would not accept the Orwellian dispensation.
Britain’s other ‘criminalisation’ difficulty was that their own laws recognised IRA activities as ‘the use of violence for political ends’.
As we know, emboldened by the sacrifices of the hunger strikers, the H-Block prisoners went on to establish full political status, eventually acknowledged in the early release of prisoners under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Some weeks ago Gerry Adams met with all but two of the families of the hunger strikers. Bridie Lynch, sister of Kevin, couldn’t make the meeting but telephoned her solidarity for the group.
The meeting was private, though later misrepresented by others. It was the first time that many of the families had met since those heart-rending seven months in 1981.
The allegation that a ‘deal’ by the Sinn Fein leadership was squandered was given short shrift. The families appealed to those who were perpetuating their ongoing grief to cease, though they have persisted, motivated by a variety of reasons.
In 1981 we were dealing with a ruthless, hypocritical enemy, personified by Margaret Thatcher. I find it quite ironic that in their desire to get at Sinn Fein our opponents are attempting to portray Thatcher as someone anxious to resolve the Hunger Strike.
Nothing could be further from the truth. According to our critics, the hunger strikers, on whose behalf we were acting, should have accepted an ‘offer’ which came to the prisoners and us, via a phone-call from a British official in London, through the intermediary (since identified as Brendan Duddy – an honourable man), to myself, to a phone-call to Gerry Adams, and in a verbal message to Danny Morrison to the prisoners.
Clearly, they have chosen to forget of what mettle the hunger strikers were made, of their experiences of British deceit in December 1980.
Sinn Fein had political and ideological differences with the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP).
We and the prisoners suspected that it would sell the prisoners short. Despite being a vehicle for the British government delivering a compromise and avoiding direct negotiations, even the ICJP’s expectations/demands that the British would send in someone to stand over what London was implying in messages was refused six times in the hours before Joe McDonnell died.
This year the British government selectively released documents about this period under the Freedom of Information Act and our critics have seized upon their release, but not their content, as some sort of proof.
That the republican leadership was in contact with the British was revealed long ago, not least in the 1987 book Ten Men Dead.
I would encourage people to read this book and the documents released in 2009 and compare it to the allegations of those who never visited the hunger strikers in the prison hospital, never dealt with the prison administration and the British government or liaised with the ICJP (which, on its terms, to be fair, was attempting to resolve the situation).
Out of the five demands the only thing the British were offering to the hunger strikers after four men had died was that they could wear ordinary clothes, “provided these clothes were approved by the prison authorities.”
The prisoners would have to do prison work or else they would be ‘punished by loss of remission, or some similar penalty’.
Ironically, Thatcher was without human compassion until her own son, Mark, was lost in the Sahara desert during a car rally in 1982 and as a mother begged God to deliver her son from hunger and thirst in the desert. Mark Thatcher was saved but not our 10 men dead. Nevertheless, their stature is unassailable and increases with every passing year, those men whose memory we will always honour, whose sacrifice triggered such a confidence in the nationalist community that things were changed utterly. |
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