July 1981

Secret go-between shines a light on history makers
By Jim Gibney, The Thursday Column (Irish News)
06/08/09

The names most publicly associated with the Irish peace process are Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, John Hume, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern, Fr Alex Reid, David Trimble,

Ian Paisley, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

The one name which does not readily come to mind is that of Derry man Brendan Duddy.

Yet Brendan Duddy, now 73 years old, is slowly emerging as another important name to add to that list from a period in time when the armed conflict here was at its bleakest.

For more than two hours last Saturday in St Mary’s College on Belfast’s Falls Road, gently nudged along by journalist and author Brian ‘Barney’ Rowan, Brendan Duddy shone a light into a world where history makers live – a world beyond the camera, the scribe and the media sound-bite.

Brendan Duddy was speaking at Belfast’s Féile an Phobail’s first of many debates. The event, ‘The Secret Peacemaker’ is an apt description of a man who kept his counsel about his role as a conduit between the British government and the leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein for more than 20 years until he thought it appropriate to speak.

At first glance Brendan Duddy strikes you as a most unlikely person to perform the role of a go-between, which survived three British prime ministers – including Margaret Thatcher – and the various leadership changes within the IRA.

He is diminutive in stature, soft spoken and unassuming – not the sort of person to inhabit a world where spies from MI6 or MI5 knock on your door, metaphorically speaking, with a request that you contact the IRA leadership on behalf of their masters, the British government.

But on reflection Duddy is precisely the type of person to fulfil that role because he has the qualities required – discretion, dependability and trustworthiness.

Duddy, known to both sides as the ‘Mountain Climber’ (because he ran up and down mountains near his home to keep fit), knew and spoke with leading republicans such as Seamus Twomey, Ruairi O’Bradaigh, Dave O’Connell and Martin McGuinness over a 25-year period.

He did so after receiving occasional requests from a range of British intelligence operatives like Michael Oatley and his successors. These men he described as “servants” of the British government.

His first point of contact with the British crown forces was with a Catholic RUC man based in Derry, Frank Lagan. Duddy owned and ran a chip shop which he described as a “political salon”, frequented by John Hume, Bernadette McAliskey and Eamon McCann, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.

He described Lagan as a “networker” within the broad Catholic community.

Lagan’s first request was for Duddy to ask those organising the civil rights march, which became Bloody Sunday, not to march. He refused to do so.

The second request was to ask the IRA and Official IRA not to have guns on the march. This he did. Bloody Sunday was, he said, “premeditated murder”.

Lagan introduced him to Oatley in the early 1970s. Duddy came to view him as a “vehicle for change”. He told this to leading republicans and he told Oatley: “You have to talk to the IRA”.

He was involved in the background to the IRA’s ceasefire of 1974-75, which he described as “not having a chance because the time was not right”.

When Thatcher came into office Oatley told him: “Put on your long-johns, we are going into the ice-age.”

That ice-age thawed during the first and second hunger strikes of 1980-81 when he was involved in efforts through Oatley and another agent of the British government to secure an acceptable solution. At Saturday’s event he appealed for an end to the ongoing “damaging debate” about the hunger strikes.

British prime minister John Major reopened contact with him (a contact that survived British state violence and IRA attacks).

He accused the Tories of trying to destroy the early moves towards peace when they claimed that Martin McGuinness had sent a message asking for help to end the war.

He said Martin McGuinness was “psychologically incapable” of such a suggestion.

It was a fascinating discussion and in time the people of this country will rightly see Brendan Duddy as a ‘servant of peace’.

Sourced from the Irish News

Friday, July 10, 2009

Updated Timeline and Upcoming Discussion
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole

A new reference website has been created as a archive of material relating to the events of the 1981 hunger strike. Already its archives are extensive, and new items are being added to it on a regular basis. Today, an expanded timeline based upon Danny Morrison’s narrative of events has been released. This time line combines Morrison’s 2006 and 2009 timelines with former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald’s account of the same time period, and merges information from a number of books and the FOI documents released by the British government. It gives a fully fleshed out picture of what went on in the days leading to hunger striker Joe McDonnell’s death and shows the subversion of the ICJP efforts by those negotiating on behalf of the IRA. Garret Fitzgerald described the British approach to Adams and Morrison as ‘disastrous’ and ‘ham-fisted’; for the ICJP, the confusion of the British government’s harder public face, in contrast to its more flexible private one, combined with the Adams committee holding out for more concessions than what the prisoners would have settled for, undermined the efforts to end the strike.

In other news, although Brendan Duddy said at the Gasyard debate in Derry that he would no longer be publicly speaking about the events of the hunger strike, the Feile has secured a discussion between Duddy and Brian Rowan as an event of this year’s West Belfast Feile. Entitled “The Secret Peacemaker”, it is expected Rowan will focus on every aspect of Duddy’s role as a link in the Mountain Climber chain bar the hunger strike. Tickets to the event are free, on a first come, first served basis. Those interested in attending are advised to arrive early to secure a seat.

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

The Secret Peacemaker

Brendan Duddy interviewed by Brian Rowan
St Mary’s University College
Saturday 1st August, 2.30pm

For two decades spanning a period from the early seventies to 1993, Brendan Duddy was the secret link between the British Government and the republican leadership. His codename was the ‘Mountain Climber’ and he was the ‘backchannel’ as the British and the IRA explored peace in the early nineties. In conversation with journalist Brian Rowan, followed by Q & A.

Feile Belfast

Excerpt from Slugger O’Toole comment section discussion, looking at the Sands family objection to the Bobby Sands Trust, and deconstucting the Sile Darragh letter.

Sile Darragh is a member of the Bobby Sands Trust, which has a vested interest in protecting the Morrison narrative, not least because Danny Morrison is its secretary.

The legal firm Madden & Finucane continues to act for the trust, whose original members were Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, the late Tom Cahill, Marie Moore and Danny Devenny. For a time, Bobby’s two sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were members of the trust. Current members are Gerry Adams MP, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, Sile Darragh, Carál Ní Chuilín MLA, and Peter Madden.

5 of the current Trust members are party to the dispute over the prison acceptance of the July offer. A further Trust member then weighs in with a letter supporting their position, and it in turn is flogged by Raymond McCartney on Radio Foyle as the new leadership line, which appears also in the Brian Rowan article about Brendan Duddy.

By the by, the Sands family has long disowned the Bobby Sands Trust and have sought in the past to have it wound up. In 2000,

A spokesperson for the Sands family said that all of the dead hunger striker’s family were united on the issue and would consider any avenue to wind up the trust. “We simply want his property returned and for (Sinn Féin) to cease using him as a commodity”, said the spokesperson.

According to the Sands family version of events it was their unhappiness with the way Bobby Sands’ writings and poetry were being treated by some in the Sinn Féin leadership that led to a new Trust being set up in 1994.

“We came to look closer at the Trust and in turn were concerned at the lack of control or accountability”, said one family source. “There were no records of minutes etc. or proper accounts and it was debatable if they ever functioned as a Trust but rather as an extension of SF. It has been claimed that Marcella was a member of the Trust for instance yet she was never informed of meetings or for that matter who the other members were”.

There was also family concern over an alleged attempt by Sinn Féin to insert a clause in the new Trust which would have made Gerry Adams a financial beneficiary. “It came in the draft version of the new trust documents drawn up in 1994 though Adams said that it should read the president of Sinn Féin of the day. We didn’t agree to either”.

Now, onto Síle Darragh’s letter – which really doesn’t amount to much more than what has already been said by the Morrison crowd; its only value is that it allows them to now say, “Síle Darragh’s letter,” and imply by reference that she is some sort of new authority for having put her name to something Morrison himself likely wrote. No matter – it says:

I have before me, David Beresford’s book Ten Men Dead which was published in 1987 and which presumably Richard O’Rawe has read. Here are some quotes from 1981: “The Foreign Office, in its first offer . . .” (p293); “a vague offer” p294; “parts of their offer were vague” – Brendan McFarlane (p295); “nothing extra on offer” (p295); “what was on offer” (p297); “he [Gerry Adams] told the two men [Fr Crilly and Hugh Logue of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace] what the Government had been offering” (p297).

I have before me Ten Men Dead, too, and so, to look at the pages cited.

Page 293 – the full quote describes the offer made through the Mountain Climber link. This has now been confirmed by Brendan Duddy as the offer obtained by Liam Clarke via FOI requests and can be viewed here.

Page 294 – says that the section on remission is “a vague offer”, but as we see from the NIO document:

III. allow the restoration of forfeited remission at the discretion of the responsible disciplinary authority, as indicated in my statement of 30 June, which hitherto has meant the restoration of up to one-fifth of remission lost subject to a satisfactory period of good behaviour;

(Síle’s letter was written before the NIO material was available and, obviously, before the Derry meeting).

Page 295 – a misleading extract from a comm of Bik McFarlane’s. He is speaking of the offer the ICJP was pursuing:

“I saw all the hunger strikers last night (6 July) and briefed them on the situation. They seemed strong enough and can hold the line alright. They did so last night when the Commission met them. There was nothing extra on offer – they just pushed their line and themselves as guarantors over any settlement.”

So although the word ‘offer’ appears in the line, it confuses things as it is referring to a different offer from the Mountain Climber one.

Page 297 – This refers to when Adams told the ICJP to back off because he had a better offer from the Mountain Climber.

“Adams had decided they had to take a chance and let the commission know about the contacts with the British Government – for no other reason than to explain why the Commission should withdraw. He told the two men what the Government had been offering – more than had been offered to the Commission – explaining he believed the authorities were merely using the ICJP as an intelligence feed, as a cross-check to construct a strategy to win, or at least settle, the dispute. The commissioners were stunned by the disclosure.”

Page 294 and 302 – That Morrison was in the hospital on the day has never been in dispute. However, the reference on page 302 to his visit is worth looking at a little closer. It quotes a comm McFarlane sent to Adams reassuring him that the hunger strikers were accepting the Adams line:

“Now I had a yarn with all the hunger strikers. They are all strong and determined. Very angry about Joe’s death, as we all are. I emphasized the point of staying solid and keeping their clanns (families) in line…‘Pennies’ had already informed them of the ‘Mountain Climber’ angle and they accepted this as 100%. They accept the view that the Brits, in trying to play us too close to the line, made a blunder and didn’t reckon on Joe dying so quickly…”

What this reads as is McFarlane reporting back that he had told the hunger strikers what Adams wanted him to and that they believed him.

Darragh then goes in her letter to say “Mr O’Rawe didn’t speak to the hunger strikers, didn’t visit the prison hospital or meet the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace.” This has no bearing whatsoever on O’Rawe’s role, and his knowledge of the acceptance of the Mountain Climber offer between himself and McFarlane.

So now that we have looked at the Darragh letter in detail, we turn to Brendan Duddy’s endorsement of it as reported by Brian Rowan.

It is entirely consistent with his position at the Derry meeting, and in keeping with what his knowledge would have been at the time in his role as the Mountain Climber link. The difference is that in Derry, he was presented with the NIO document and able to verfiy that as the offer he conveyed to the Adams committee, he was able to clarify that he was never told of the prison leadership’s acceptance of the offer, and he confirmed the response from the Adams committee was to reject the offer. Brian Rowan, who was at the Derry meeting, did not have the NIO document at the time he wrote his article, and apparently did not ask him if he knew of the prison leadership’s acceptance of the deal. A failure to ask relevant questions does not mean ‘the witness is unreliable’; it means the lawyer is shading the examination, or not asking the right questions.

It is because Duddy answered all questions put to him in Derry, and moved the story forward beyond the Morrison offer/deal fudge because of the clarity his answers brought, that he is now being thrown under the bus by those who previously championed him. His account is still consistent with events as we know them and what knowledge he would have in his role as the link. The contention is that the Adams committee over-ruled the prison leadership’s acceptance of the offer Duddy was aware of; why then, would Duddy, who was not in direct contact with the prisoners, know otherwise? He would only know what the Adams committee told him as to what the IRA’s position was. He knew of the offer going in, and he knew that the offer was not accepted by the Adams committee. So of course he would say, “Síle Darragh got it spot on,” because she is describing what the Adams committee told Duddy.

There’s no contradiction; he has remained consistent throughout, given the remit of his role.

Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole, comments 12-14, page 4 of discussion

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Truth is a Heartbreaking Thing
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole

Last night in Derry a significant meeting was held examining the events of the 1981 hunger strike, specifically looking at the negotiations between the British and the PIRA around the time of hunger striker Joe McDonnell’s death. He was the fifth hunger striker to die; five other young men died of starvation after him. Since the publication of the book, Blanketmen, by Richard O’Rawe, a horrible question has been raised: were the deaths of those 6 men a betrayal of unimaginable magnitude? The heartbreaking truth as emerged undeniably last night is yes.

On the panel were Willie Gallagher, IRSP; Gerard Hodgins, former PIRA hunger striker; Richard O’Rawe, former PRO for the prisoners during the hunger strike; Tommy Gorman, former PIRA prisoner and chair of the meeting; Liam Clarke, Sunday Times journalist; and Brendan Duddy, the Mountain Climber link that ferried negotiation messages between the British and the PIRA’s hunger strike committee which consisted of Danny Morrison and Gerry Adams and also, it is believed, Martin McGuinness, Jim Gibney and Tom Hartley.

Richard O’Rawe’s contention that on July 5th a British offer, authorised by Thatcher, came into the prison via Danny Morrison to Bik McFarlane, was discussed by himself and Bik, that it was agreed that there was enough for the prisoners to accept, and that acceptance was to be sent out to the outside leadership, was verified: Willie Gallagher presented excerpts from a recorded conversation between two former prisoners in which one of them, whose identity is known to those who have heard the tapes, confirms the conversation between O’Rawe and McFarlane took place. In addition to that, former prisoner Gerard Clarke came forward last night and also confirmed that he heard the conversation take place as described by Richard O’Rawe.

Liam Clarke presented new documents obtained from the NIO under Freedom of Information requests that contained the British notes of the offer that was made. O’Rawe confirmed that what was in the British documents was what was relayed to Bik McFarlane, and that was what they had discussed and accepted. Brendan Duddy confirmed that the offer in the documents was that which he conveyed in his role as messenger to the Adams/Morrison committee. He had no knowledge that the prisoners had accepted the offer; he confirmed that the response from the representative of the IRA he was in contact with was to reject the offer.

The only question remaining now is why.

The insulting nonsense about the difference between and offer and a deal and all the shifting denials from Danny Morrison and those pushing the Sinn Fein line is meaningless. The revisionist propaganda about the ending of the first hunger strike and its impact on the second is also exposed for the self-serving guff it is.

O’Rawe was right. His account is now verified by prisoners who heard the conversation between himself and Bik McFarlane; by British documents that detail the offer they discussed; and by the messenger who delivered both the British offer and the Provo hunger strike committee rejection. The IRSP and INLA are on record as having no knowledge of the Mountain Climber negotiations, let alone an offer that was acceptable to the prisoners; and members of the Provisional IRA Army Council of the time have also made clear they too were unaware that the members of the hunger strike committee were in contact with the British government, directly negotiating with the British government, and over-ruling the prisoners’ wishes while doing so.

This is devastating.

Tommy McCourt, at the time a representative of the IRSP, spoke to the meeting about the last time he saw Mickey Devine in the prison hospital before he died. They discussed his funeral arrangements; Devine believed that to come off the hunger strike, even with the support of the INLA and IRSP, would be a complete defeat, one he could not inflict upon his comrades. Neither McCourt nor Devine were aware that just weeks earlier, an honourable end to the hunger strike could have been had for all; but for the political machinations of a secret few. “All those weeks before [his death], there was an offer which I could have said to Mickey Devine, ‘Here’s an offer Mickey. This could save your life.’”

Gerard Hodgins quoted Gerry Adams in his address to the standing room only crowd: “A happy ending, finally, eventually, it seems to me is more important than a tell-all story now.” (Gerry Adams, A Farther Shore, 2003) He spoke of how for too long Republicans accepted the ‘packaged narrative’; now, “We need to know the truth…The genie is out of the bottle. There has to be some way of full disclosure, full truth of everything known of them days between leadership and the British and that’s what I would call for, some way of inquiry, some way that we could get at all the facts from all the key players of that day.”

The truth is a heartbreaking, but needed thing. We know the ending isn’t a happy one. This is why the truthful ‘tell all story’ is more important now than ever. Tell the truth, Mr Adams. No one wants nor needs the packaged narrative of false happy endings anymore.

Links to speech transcripts, copies of the British documents, videos, and other reports of the night will come tomorrow.

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

Thursday, May 21, 2009
Upcoming Debate: “What is the Truth Behind the Hunger Strike?”
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole

Briefly: This Saturday, 7:00 at the Gasyard in Derry, an open meeting organised by Republican Network for Unity is to be held examining the events of the 1981 hunger strike, specifically the contention that the prisoners accepted a deal that was overruled by the outside leadership, after which six further men died on hunger strike. Confirmed speakers include Brendan Duddy, Willie Gallagher, Richard O’Rawe, and Liam Clarke. Danny Morrison refused to participate. Invitations were also issued to Bik McFarlane and Gerry Adams, who have not responded. In a taste of what is to come this weekend, earlier today, Richard O’Rawe and former (1980) hunger striker Raymond McCartney were interviewed by Sarah Brett on Radio Foyle. This interview will be available on the BBC website for a week (it is also archived on YouTube: Part 1 & Part 2), and starts close to the beginning of the programme. In yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, Brian Rowan quotes Brendan Duddy and an un-named source with “considerable knowledge of the Mountain Climber initiative” who puts forth the Morrison argument in regards to the controversy – the semantical, chimeric word play of the difference between an ‘offer’ and a ‘deal’ and how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin. Duddy, it seems, holds to the view, initially relayed by Eamonn McCann, that the outside leadership was incompetent, and, like Raymond McCartney in the Radio Foyle interview, endorses Sile Darragh’s talking points, which first emerged, in part, in an anonymous comment on Anthony McIntyre’s blog. Sile Darragh, like Morrison, McFarlane and Gibney, is a member of the Bobby Sands Trust and her letter seems to be the newest leadership line, as it is pushed in Rowan’s article and McCartney also followed it in today’s radio discussion. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer much beyond Morrison’s semantical argument which seems to get destroyed bit by bit as more information continues to come out. Meanwhile, in Rowan’s article, the anonymous source shifts the blame to the prisoners themselves. This shift is interesting as O’Rawe claims that the prisoners accepted the deal, and now a source close to the negotiations claims that the prisoners were naive, inexperienced and incapable of “making a judgment”, which seems to be a backhanded defence of why the outside leadership would have over-ruled them – because they thought they knew better than the prisoners themselves. Inch by inch, are we getting closer to the truth of what happened in July, 1981?

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

A fresh glimpse into the untold story of the hunger strike
The hunger strike still divides opinion after almost 30 years. Brian Rowan believes a conference in Londonderry on Saturday may hold some of the answers
Wednesday, 20 May 2009

The source who spoke to the Belfast Telegraph has considerable knowledge of the Mountain Climber initiative in the summer of 1981 — an initiative linked to the republican hunger strike.

It was a secret contact channel between the Government and the republican leadership through which a verbal and private offer on the prisoners’ demands was communicated.

The source does not talk about a deal back then, but describes a situation that is “dramatically complex” and says whether there could have been a deal “becomes an opinion ? how you interpret it”.

The answers that some are looking for do not exist, he told me.

“There is no new knowledge — no new facts. (David) Beresford in (the hunger strike book) Ten Men Dead wrote where it was at. Nothing was ever communicated on paper to the IRA.”

The source describes the period as the Thatcher era — long before the British and the IRA began to think and talk about peace.

“Thatcher wasn’t thinking about the Good Friday Agreement. Thatcher was thinking about hammering them (the IRA).”

And he has another observation — “a lack of experience (on the republican side) in terms of how a Government worked”.

The prisoners’ demand back in 1981 for the Government to send someone into the jail to explain A, B, C, D and E in terms of their offer represented, in the source’s opinion, “a complete non-understanding of Government”.

“A representative of the NIO going in to negotiate with McFarlane (the IRA jail leader Brendan McFarlane) — not on,” the source said.

There are those who think that Brendan Duddy may be able to help with some of the answers, and this Saturday he will speak in a hunger strike debate in his home city of Derry.

He was the key link in the Mountain Climber chain and he believes the continuing row over the hunger strike is being fought outside all the emotion and the complexities and the doubts of 1981.

Duddy is on the record saying he spent every hour of every day trying to save the lives of the hunger strikers.

One of his daughters, Shauna Duddy, described to me seeing her father, shoulders slumped, a cup of tea in his hand, looking out the window with “tears running down his neck”.

This, in one house, is just one of the memories of that period.

You have to understand the bigger picture to understand Duddy.

He is a lifelong pacifist who wanted the deaths within the prison to stop and the killings outside the prison to stop.

His mission — even back then — was to develop a peace process and achieve a dialogue between the British and Irish.

During the Mountain Climber initiative Duddy was speaking to a representative of the British Government.

Some believe it was the MI6 officer Michael Oatley, but my understanding is it was not.

So what was Duddy’s role in 1981? Was it to make a deal?

He will tell you that was a decision for others — “people at the coalface” — British and republican, the same republicans who felt conned at the end of the first hunger strike in 1980 and feared “they were going to be conned again”. Duddy believes this played into their thinking in the summer of the following year.

And he agrees with those, including a former woman prisoner in Armagh Jail who recently wrote to a Belfast newspaper to highlight the difference between an offer and a deal.

“Sile Darragh got it spot on,” he said.

Ten men died in the prison battle. Could things have been different? Almost 30 years on the argument continues.

“The real question is should they (the republican leadership) have settled,” the Mountain Climber source said. It’s a matter of opinion.

“Were people at death’s door (the hunger strikers) capable of making a judgment?”

Almost three decades later the story of the hunger strike has not faded. It is still being debated and argued and fought over by some who were part of it and others who were not.

Sourced from the Belfast Telegraph