July 1981

Icon

Uncovering the Truth About the 1981 Hunger Strike

Irish News: Hugh Logue, ICJP

Honour of those who died needs explanation
THE HUNGER STRIKE
By Hugh Logue of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace
28/09/09

The image of those eight hunger strikers for me has never dimmed. Clothed predominantly in the white attire of hospital, the weakest sitting at a table, water jugs and mugs in hand, the strongest seated on higher tables, or standing behind.

That scene has stayed with me over the last 28 years and will remain imprinted in my brain as long as I live. They had been brought together as a group from their hospital beds to meet us in the canteen of Long Kesh.

Bright articulate young men, some reserved and quiet spoken, others defiant and inquisitive, eyes accentuated, all in various stages of physical decline, eager to live, ready to die. Like their image, respect for them has never dimmed.

I met them as part of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP) as we sought to explore the possibility of squaring their five demands by stretching the British prison regime to a more enlightened, humane, innovative and educationally positive system. The Irish government gave us their full support.

After much coming and going, a best offer was finalised involving new rights on clothes, work, recreation/education, remission and association.

The hunger strikers were positive but cautious, wanting the wider view of their comrades. The prisoners on July 4 issued a statement indicating that a settlement along such lines should be considered.

We were meeting with the relatives and some H-block committee members when the prisoners’ statement reached us. With good reason, the meeting finished with the view that the choreography of concluding the Hunger Strike without further loss of life was being set in place.

Next day we met again with the relatives and on this occasion Sinn Fein representatives were present. The relatives made clear their wish to go for the ICJP-brokered offer.

A senior IRA representative left the meeting early, without saying where he was going, and went in to see the hunger strikers.

When we later visited the hunger strikers that night, their mood had hardened but a number of them clearly indicated that what was on offer was acceptable.

Eventually all agreed that if the British government sent a delegate into the prison and read out the offer it would be accepted.

This condition, we were told, had been demanded as a minimum by the IRA representative who had visited them. Double dealing on the earlier botched hunger strike was given as the reason for this demand.

We went back to the British and it was agreed that an envoy would visit the hunger strikers to read out the offer. As we all know, the British prevaricated and Joe Mc Donnell tragically died before any visit was made, triggering a whole new scenario.

The ICJP next day railed against the British government for its unpardonable complacency and indicted its utterly callous conduct.

That indictment remains.

Four years ago – when I reviewed Blanketmen [by Richard O’Rawe] – I asked that a sane debate take place on its principal assertions, instead of the vilification of its author.

I also suggested that were the Mountain Climber, the British and the republican leadership to spell out what they knew, it would be possible to reach informed conclusions.

The British, via the Freedom of Information Act, have now put new material into the public domain. Mountain Climber has now stated that he passed the British offer to his IRA interlocutor. In what form did the offer come?

Was British secretary of state [Humphrey] Atkins able to sign off if he got an affirmative reply from the IRA? It now appears he was.

Did those in the republican leadership understand that? Parallel Republican writing that Margaret Thatcher wished a settlement suggests they did.

This exchange was at least a day before the hunger strikers were told to demand, via the ICJP, verification from the British authorities.

If the IRA had the British offer , why were the hunger strikers being put through a ritual? The hunger strikers, on the instruction of the IRA, were demanding that the ICJP deliver the British to deliver an offer statement. And the British, whilst agreeing to deliver the statement, apparently were waiting on the okay from the IRA before delivering the statement to the hunger strikers that they had already delivered to the IRA.

And all the while, a hunger striker was slipping in and out of consciousness, edging closer to death. Too grotesque to contemplate. But it happened. Why? Truly, in the name, honour and dignity of the hunger strikers, explanation and clarification is needed.

This is not said for any reason other than that I genuinely do not know for sure, to this day, where the motivation of others lay.

I do know that we in the ICJP had an honourable resolution that would have saved the lives of six hunger strikers and that it was acceptable to the hunger strikers.

It appears from the British statement, given to the IRA via the Mountain Climber, that the British were ready to stand over all that had been agreed with the ICJP.

But were they only ready to go public on it if they got thumbs up from the Republican leadership?

Was there procrastination on the IRA side where a clear affirmative response would have sealed the deal and saved those lives? Was there a rejection?

Did the IRA genuinely overplay their hand believing that once the British were into dialogue more could be extracted?

The high regard that many serious political leaders now have for the republican leadership relates to their focus on ‘the long game’. Did ‘the long game’ focus come into play on this occasion?

Republican leadership has been assiduous in having its tale of ‘the struggle’ committed to history, but the Hunger Strike has been given a wide berth.

Some years ago, as the 20th anniversary of the Hunger Strike approached, I was told by a senior republican that the reason for staying away from the Hunger Strike was ‘because of the range of views, feelings and passions it could arouse within the movement – not all of them positive.’

He was right about that, but whatever those views feelings and passions, it is time for truth to shine.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Richard O’Rawe

Search for truth a sacred duty
THE HUNGER STRIKE Was there a deal?
By Richard O’Rawe
28/09/09

Former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe caused huge controversy in republican circles when in his 2005 book Blanketmen he claimed that the British government had been ready to offer a deal which could have ended the hunger Strike after four deaths…

As one of the 300 Spartans who spent years on the blanket protest and as the prisoners’ PRO during the 1981 Hunger Strike, I have drawn great inspiration and strength from my 10 heroic comrades who died on hunger strike.

Some years ago I published a book entitled Blanketmen in which I recounted my first-hand experiences of that time.

It was instantly slated as ‘scurrilous’ and ‘slanderous’ by some republicans, who, instead of engaging in a respectable debate about the issues I had raised, demonised and vilified me. One leading republican said that I “should hang my head in shame” and that my book should have been called, ‘On another man’s hunger strike.’ It is not I who should hang my head in shame. I have told no lies.

In my book, I said that on July 5 1981 Danny Morrison came to the prison and made our OC, [Brendan] Bik McFarlane aware that someone called the ‘Mountain Climber’, a contact with the British government, had delivered an offer to the IRA leadership.

McFarlane denied this saying: “No offer existed.” I said that McFarlane and I were enthusiastic about the British offer, and had a conversation out our windows, during which we accepted it. McFarlane denied this saying: “That conversation did not take place.”

I offered that a communication came into the prison from Gerry Adams on July 6 1981 which said that the Mountain Climber offer did not validate the deaths of our four comrades and that more was needed.

McFarlane denied that this occurred. Matters stayed like that for about four years. Then in May 2009, at a Hunger Strike conference in Derry City, things changed dramatically.

The journalist Liam Clarke had obtained, under the Freedom of Information Act, a copy of the July 5 Mountain Climber offer.

For the first time in 28 years, I found out that the offer was, in fact, a statement from the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, which was to be released in the event of the Hunger Strike ending. Brendan Duddy (the Mountain Climber), who had been a panellist at the Derry City conference, confirmed that he had passed this statement on to the IRA leadership.

The importance of this cannot be overemphasised because here was the document which determined the fate of the last six hunger strikers. No evidence exists to say that the hunger strikers ever set eyes on this document. Certainly, it was never smuggled in to Bik McFarlane or me.

Who took the decision to withhold this decisive document from the prison leadership? Did they also keep it from the hunger strikers, and if so, why? Brendan Duddy also confirmed that the message the IRA sent back to the British was that “more had to be added”.

Former blanketman Gerard ‘Cleaky’ Clarke then affirmed that he had heard the crucial conversation between Bik McFarlane and me. These revelations prompted the collapse of Bik McFarlane’s position.

In a newspaper interview on June 4 2009 he admitted the British had made the approach I had written about but claimed that they had failed to “expand the offer”. He also said: “And I said to Richard this is amazing, this is a huge opportunity and I feel there’s a potential here [in the Mountain Climber process] to end this.”

So, in the space of a couple of sentences, Bik confirmed that what I had always said was true – there had been an offer after all, he and I had liked the look of it and we had a very positive conversation about it.

I had been looking forward to a healthy public debate with Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison and Bik McFarlane at the Derry conference in June but unfortunately they declined the offer to attend. Instead they chose to convene a closed meeting with some families in Gulladuff, south Derry in July and no-one with an alternate account to theirs was invited. A motion that Willie Gallagher of the IRSP and I stop any further probing into the Hunger Strike failed to get unanimous support.

Not to be outdone, however, the next day Sinn Fein members visited the families throughout the north and asked them to sign a pre-prepared statement which incorporated the failed motion from the night before. Some families did sign the statement and those who did not released their own statement publicly asking Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Bik McFarlane and myself to support an independent inquiry into the events of 1981. Having nothing to hide, I responded positively. The others have not.

Despite the viciousness of the attacks on me, and despite the intensity of the ongoing debate, nothing in my approach is intended to, or could ever detract from the heroic sacrifice of the Hunger Strike martyrs.

Regardless of what people may choose to say or think, I have no political agenda.

My intention has always been to seek the truth and nothing less – something which the hunger strikers and their legacy deserve as a matter of respect.

That, I suggest, is the sacred duty of all of us who bore witness to this momentous event in Irish history.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Laurence McKeown

Unionists in NIO scuppered deal
THE HUNGER STRIKE: Was there a deal?
By Laurence McKeown
28/09/09

Laurence McKeown is a former IRA prisoner who took part in the Hunger Strike. He joined the fast on June 29 1981 after the first four prisoners died. Following the deaths of six more hunger strikers his family authorised medical intervention to save his life on September 6, the 70th day of his hunger strike…

WHEN Richard O’Rawe first made the claim that the British had been prepared to reach a deal during the 1981 Hunger Strike but that it was rejected by the leadership of the republican movement, I believed the claim to be totally unfounded.

I still believe that.

In the intervening period it has been disproved by documentation from the period and by a broad spectrum of individuals involved at the time.

Nevertheless, the controversy has rumbled on, fuelled by an assortment of disaffected former members of the republican movement and political opponents of Sinn Fein.

The ‘debate’ has therefore more to do with contemporary political machinations and allegiances than it has to do with the Hunger Strike.

Trying to ‘answer’ the claim is a bit like trying to convince an alcoholic that they’d be much better off not taking that next drink.

There will never be an answer that will suffice, a response that will be adequate.

So why bother?

For the families of the six who died later that summer and for the thousands of ordinary people who did so much for us during that period.

The Tory government of Maggie Thatcher is infamous for the trail of suffering, death, social upheaval, destruction of communities, and removal of civil and workers’ rights that it wreaked not just in Ireland but in Britain itself.

But let’s just suppose for a moment that it wanted to end the Hunger Strike.

Britain acts only in Britain’s interest so if it was decided that it was in their best interest to concede some or all of our demands it would not have been out of some humanitarian sentiment but because not to do so would be damaging to Britain’s long-term interests.

So, this Tory cabinet of Maggie Thatcher, having decided that it was in Britain’s best interest to act to break the Hunger Strike, comes up with a list of concessions they are prepared to make, presents this to the leadership of the republican movement, who supposedly reject them and what do the Brits do?

They walk away with their tails between their legs.

Is this the same government that cold-bloodedly slaughtered the Argentinean sailors on the Belgrano?

That smashed the powerful National Union of Mine Workers and left whole mining villages and communities desolate?

If the British had thought it was in their interest to end the Hunger Strike then they would have done so regardless of what the republican movement did or did not do.

They would simply have gone to the media – having first confided with and secured the support of the SDLP, the Catholic hierarchy and the Dublin government – and announced concessions they were prepared to make.

We on hunger strike would then have been faced with either calling it off or trying to continue with a now deeply divided support base, not to mention internal and family divisions.

It’s not rocket science.

So why did the Brits not do that? If indeed they ever had any real intention of doing it.

A BBC Timewatch programme produced in 1994, a full 11 years before Richard O’Rawe’s claim, possibly holds the answer.

I did an interview for the programme and the producers got access to many senior British government officials from the time.

In casual conversation with the producer I asked if the civil servants, particularly in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), had felt a bit like ‘piggy-in-the-middle’, forced to hold to Thatcher’s uncompromising line while having to deal with adverse publicity from around the world.

The producer replied that everything they had discovered indicated that Thatcher at one point was going to make concessions but that when the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) got wind of it top civil servants, including the governor of the prison, Stanley Hilditch, threatened to resign.

As soon as he said it I realised it made absolute sense. Of course the civil servants in the NIO (unionists) would be more opposed to any concessions to republican prisoners than the British would.

It was personal for them. They lived here. They ran the place. They were the ones who formulated policies and how they were implemented on the ground including the criminalisation and Ulsterisation policies.

Stanley Hilditch had actually cut short a holiday at Christmas 1980 to return to the prison and personally handle the aftermath of the first hunger strike.

So, the producer of the programme added, threatened with rebellion on their doorstep it appears the British government decided it best to weather the storm (of the Hunger Strike) rather than follow through with their ‘offer’.

That was his version of events. What we know for definite is that during the Hunger Strike there were always offers from the British but never a deal.

And given that four comrades had already died and the hunger strike of 1980 had ended with not the merest crumb of concession there was no way we were ending ours without a concrete, copper-fastened deal witnessed by guarantors who could stand over it.

And anyone who was on it or involved with it, including Richard, knows that to be the case. Such was our suspicion and distrust of the British.

In the peace and tranquillity of 2009 it’s easy to forget that. To de-contextualise events. To forget the power of the emotions then and the strength of convictions.

It’s also easy to wish it could somehow have been different. What is unforgiveable though is to attempt to make cheap political gain from those events and in the course of it to cause hurt.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Martin McGuinness

mcguinness)Stature of ten men unassailed
THE HUNGER STRIKE
By Martin McGuinness
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.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Deal with British government vetoed by IRA says FitzGerald

Deal with British government vetoed by IRA says FitzGerald
THE HUNGER STRIKE
By Seamus McKinney
28/09/09

Dr Garrett FitzGerald is convinced that, if the IRA had allowed them, the 1981 hunger strikers would have accepted either of two deals on offer to them in the days and hours before Joe McDonnell became the fifth man to die.

The former taoiseach bases this belief on, among other things, intelligence supplied to him by a heretofore-undisclosed Irish government source in the Maze prison in 1981.

Now 83 years old, Dr FitzGerald admits the 1981 Hunger Strike changed his view of relations with Northern Ireland in a way that ultimately led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

Elected to the Dail in 1969, the future taoiseach was already the intellectual driver of Fine Gael when he first took his seat.

His two major areas of expertise were the Irish economy and foreign affairs through which he had a special interest in the north.

He served two periods as taoiseach, leading coalition governments from July 1981 to February 1982 and later from December 1982 until March 1987.

On his first day as taoiseach he was thrown into the maelstrom of northern politics and one of the defining periods in Irish republicanism.

After receiving his seal of office from President Patrick Hillary on June 30 1981 Dr Fitzgerald and his Labour tanaiste Michael O’Leary were faced with the prospect of further hunger strike deaths.

At the time the Catholic Church’s Irish Justice and Peace Commission was working towards a possible solution to the standoff between republican prisoners in the Maze and the British government.

“Despite an IRA statement [describing a British response to an Irish government statement as arrogant] the prisoners wanted the commission to continue its involvement,” Dr FitzGerald said.

While there was contact between the British government and the republican movement, Dr FitzGerald is adamant that his government never spoke to the IRA.

“The only contact ever with the IRA was at the Europa hotel when one of the IRA stopped one of our officials and talked to him, looking for us to let them run free – they were having some negotiations about a ceasefire – to let them do what they want and not arrest them to which we paid no attention,” he said.

Dr FitzGerald believed it was a mistake by the British government to maintain contacts with the IRA.

He believed that any contact with government encouraged the IRA to believe that its campaign of violence would eventually lead to negotiations.

“Unless they were willing to have a settlement they should not have been involved,” he said.

On taking up the position of taoiseach Dr FitzGerald was briefed about the situation in the north.

He believed the efforts by the Irish Justice and Peace Commission (IJPC) would lead to a solution before the next death –  that of McDonnell.

At Dr FitzGerald’s request the IJPC was granted a meeting with NIO minister of state Michael Allison who gave the impression that he wished to be conciliatory.

Mr Allison cleared the way for the IJPC to visit the prisoners who afterwards issued a more conciliatory statement than the messages coming from Sinn Fein outside the prison.

The prisoners said they were not seeking special privileges over other inmates.

Dr FitzGerald said at this stage on July 3 he believed events were moving towards a solution to the Hunger Strike without any more loss of life.

Around this time Dr FitzGerald said Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was contacted by Britain’s MI6 and a deal parallel to the IJPC was worked out.

“He was delighted the British were running to him and he did get an additional offer to the IJPC offer. It is my recollection that he got an offer on [access for prisoners to] the Open University which wasn’t in the IJPC offer,” he said.

Mr Adams contacted the IJPC to notify it of his talks and urge that it contact the NIO to cancel a planned meeting, clearing the way for him to continue negotiations. The commission refused to do this, believing they could achieve a protest-ending deal, Dr FitzGerald said.

“I felt that the deal which had been worked out [by the IJPC] we were talking about finishing – and which the prisoners accepted – that should go ahead and I kept on to the British about that,” he said.

“But [the British] had interfered with that and I didn’t trust the IRA about it.

“The fact was once the prisoners had a separate position from the IRA and were not pressing for the fulfilment of all five demands there was clearly a chance of moving.

“If the British had not intervened and brought the IRA back in again a deal could have been done.”

Even after the IJPC pulled out, the former taoiseach believed the prisoners were ready to accept the new deal if they had been allowed to do so by Sinn Fein.

“They were keen to accept that. We knew that. We had our sources within the prison,” he said.

“As well as from the commission, we knew something was happening in the prison from other sources.”

Dr FitzGeral added: “[Richard] O’Rawe’s account seems to me to be, within his framework of knowledge, honest and accurate.”

Dr FitzGerald said he would co-operate with any official inquiry although he felt it was pointless as he believed the leadership of the IRA would not provide an accurate account of what happened.

Following the death of McDonnell, Dr FitzGerald still believed a solution could be found because the prisoners had indicated a willingness to accept the ICJP deal.

For 10 days he pursued the ICJP deal with Britain but no agreement was reached. All negotiations over a possible solution ended and in total 10 men died before the Hunger Strike was ended.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Eight families meet but not all back statement

Eight families meet but not all back statement
Families of the strikers are divided over O’Rawe claim
Seamus McKinney
28/09/09

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.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: INLA man’s son calls for inquiry

INLA man’s son calls for inquiry
Families of the strikers are divided over O’Rawe claim
By Seamus McKinney
28/09/09

MICHAEL Og Devine was just eight years old when his father, also Michael, became the final hunger striker to die on August 20 1981 after 60 days without food.

The INLA prisoner told Tommy McCourt, a friend who visited him just days before his death, that he could not come off the Hunger Strike.

Mr McCourt has recalled how the two men discussed Devine’s funeral arrangements.

His dying friend told him if he came off the Hunger Strike and thereby ended the protest his life would not be worth living in the H-blocks.

His son, Michael Og, recalls that although very young he was fully aware he was seeing his father for the final time during their last visit days before his death.

Had the British government’s offer to make a statement conceding some of the hunger strikers’ five demands been accepted by the Provisional IRA leadership and had the protest ended, Devine (26) would not even have gone on hunger strike.

He commenced the protest on June 22. But like his fellow INLA prisoner Kevin Lynch and the INLA leadership, he was never made aware of the negotiations prior to the death of Joe McDonnell on July 8.

Michael Og believes the version of the deal and events put forward by Willie Gallagher of the IRSP.

“I believe Willie would not tell me lies. He has been working on this for three years,” Mr Devine said.

As to whether his father would have declined to go on hunger strike if he had known a deal was offered and rejected, the Derry man says that is too difficult a question to answer.

“If there was a deal there, I don’t know how he would have reacted,” he said.

Following a private meeting between Hunger Strike families and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in Gulladuff a statement was issued saying most of the families, including the Devines, accepted the Sinn Fein version of events.

But the statement was signed on behalf of the Devine family by members of the hunger striker’s extended family.

However, Michael Og is adamant that he did not and does not support the statement.

He said he is not angry at present about the controversy but he believes all the facts should be revealed and that this can be done only through an independent inquiry.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Provos ‘kept rivals in dark’

Provos ‘kept rivals in dark’
Families of the strikers are divided over O’Rawe claim
By Seamus McKinney
28/09/09

Top from left, Michael Devine’s children Michael Og and Louise, former blanketman Dixie Elliott, Patsy O’Hara’s mother Peggy O’Hara and the hunger striker’s brother Tony O’Hara, Willie Gallagher of the IRSP, Richard O’Rawe and former hunger striker Gerard Hodgins.

Top from left, Michael Devine’s children Michael Og and Louise, former blanketman Dixie Elliott, Patsy O’Hara’s mother Peggy O’Hara and the hunger striker’s brother Tony O’Hara, Willie Gallagher of the IRSP, Richard O’Rawe and former hunger striker Gerard Hodgins.

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.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Deal allegations hurtful to family

Deal allegations hurtful to family
Families of the strikers are divided over O’Rawe claim
By Allison Morris
28/09/09

Kieran Doherty’s parents Alfie and Margaret with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

Kieran Doherty’s parents Alfie and Margaret with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

Kieran Doherty, known as ‘Big Doc’, was on hunger strike for 73 days before his death on August 2 1981, the longest of any of the 10 men who died.

He was 25 years old.

Elected as a TD to Cavan Monaghan in June 1981, for the last 16 days of his life members of the Doherty family kept a round-the-clock vigil by his bedside in the hospital wing of the Maze prison.

His mother Margaret, now 82, said until the very end he remained adamant that he was not to be taken off the protest until the five demands were not only achieved but copper fastened.

A convert to Catholicism, Margaret Doherty had moved from the staunchly Protestant Shankill Road to Andersonstown after marrying her now late husband Alfie.

She says that her son’s belief in what he was doing left the family with no option other than to give him their support.

“Kieran knew he was likely to die. He told us that from the start,” Mrs Doherty said.

“He was a great son, he had a very strong faith, he never missed his Mass no matter what.

“When he knew he was near the end he told his father not to worry. ‘It’s only a wee step over to the other side’, he said.

“And he made us give our word he wouldn’t be taken off unless the demands were met.

“Up until then you should have seen the way they were being treated. As a mother it just tore at your heart.

“Before the Hunger Strike started he had spent a week in hospital, he had been beaten so badly during a search.

“Kieran knew the Hunger Strike wasn’t going to benefit him because he was going to die. He did it for the other lads because they couldn’t have survived much longer in conditions they were living in.

“I feel him all around me every day. God love him, he’s always been there.”

Representatives of the Doherty family attended a recent meeting in Co Derry with Gerry Adams and Bik McFarland to discuss the controversy surrounding the Hunger Strike.

In a statement, they told The Irish News: “These totally untrue allegations have caused untold hurt and anguish to our family and we feel sully the proud memory of Kieran and his comrades.

“What hurts more is that the nasty and spiteful allegations come from people who should really know better – former comrades and people who claim to be republicans.

“We were at Kieran’s side throughout what was a traumatic time for our family.

“Kieran was determined to see the protest through until the five demands had been achieved. ‘Set in concrete,’ were his very words.

“Due to the position of Margaret Thatcher and the British government a deal was not secured, we knew that at the time and we know it now.

“We would like to state this is hurting our family, especially our elderly mother, and call on those responsible to stop pushing this agenda for whatever personal reasons they may have and allow Kieran to rest in peace.”

The other families

The families of Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee (who were cousins) from Bellaghy declined to take part in this investigation. Following individual family discussions, they said they believed the issue had been dealt with.

The families of the five other hunger strikers who died were approached by The Irish News but also declined to take part.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Hunger Strike freed us all from cycle of deadly ways

Hunger Strike freed us all from cycle of deadly ways
By Roy Garland 
The Monday Column
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.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Conflict is over but the battle for truth goes on

Conflict is over but the battle for truth goes on
By Tom Kelly
28/09/09

Nineteen-eighty-one was a seminal year. It didn’t just radicalise northern nationalism – it radicalised much more.

I was in lower sixth preparing for summer exams and my family, like many others, were worried about keeping teenagers out of trouble and ‘The Troubles’.

Most succeeded.

It’s funny the things we remember from that year but Newpoint Players had a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (insanity was not an inappropriate theme back then).

Also, long before we both worked for Seamus Mallon, the late John Fee and I were in an after-school project called the St Francis’s Youth Group.

Spurs won the FA Cup.

That was May, the same month Bobby Sands died.

Long before 1981 I decided the IRA and so-called republicans were doing nothing for Newry. Well let’s be honest; the remnants of Newry still standing.

In 1981 the scars of the conflict were all around. Hill Street and Monaghan Street were puckered with inexplicable architectural gaps courtesy of the IRA’s economic war. The town centre was a no-go area and the human cost was well evidenced by the thriving trade at the misnomer known as the Newry Labour Exchange, where thousands of people waited with their labour – with little in the way of any exchange going on.

But the Hunger Strike was not something to be ignored.

As a history buff, I knew of the most famous Irish hunger striker, Terence MacSwiney.

His memorial card was among the memorabilia of my grandfather who himself was a political prisoner in Crumlin Road Prison a mere nine months after MacSwiney died.

MacSwiney said that “victory is not won by those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most”. (He was subsequently invoked by Indian nationalists like Nehru).

But MacSwiney was no pacifist resistance fighter.

He had the messianic zeal of Pearse. He understood not only the principle of personal sacrifice but the impact too. MacSwiney’s death no doubt would have impacted on the emotions of my 17-year-old grandfather.

But just as the madness of the Great War milked the life blood of an entire generation who fought in a conflict neither of their making nor in their interests, the rhetoric of zealots held no truck with me in 1981 and notwithstanding my emotional ties to my grandfather – who as his subsequent election posters said “has in civic affairs and national rendered valuable services” (sic) – to me Provisional Sinn Fein were like monkeys on backs of the nationalist community; with one hand on their throats and the other in their pockets.

But then there was Bobby Sands.

And to be honest, I too, got swept up in the emotion. I had not reckoned on my almost genetic and primitive antipathy against the British.

I even agreed with the then reported comments of Provisional propagandist Danny Morrison that Thatcher was “the greatest bastard ever”. Like many others, I was motivated enough to attend the funeral of Raymond McCreesh.

Reflecting on that day, I reckon until the Good Friday Agreement that was, politically speaking, the closest I ever got to Sinn Fein.

Having been given the greatest propaganda coup of the century, the reach of IRA recruiters was never far away for attendees of that funeral.

The most active recruiter in the vicinity was referred to locally as having neither “chick nor child”. That saying stuck with me for it meant they would never know the loneliness of widowhood, the vacuum of lost sons or the rearing children without fathers.

Yet the Hunger Strike struck a raw nerve in the psyche of nationalists generally and teenagers in particular. That Provisional Sinn Fein was the main beneficiary of the sacrifice of those hunger strikers and their families, there is no doubt.

In fact it launched careers.

I agree too with Sands’s sister that Bobby most likely did not envisage dying for cross-border bodies and a devolved UK administration in the north.

Nonetheless as iconic a figure as he is to republicans, modern Sinn Fein could never live up to Bobby’s Irish utopia of 1981 by 2009.

The British/Irish war is most definitely over.

What is not over is the truth about that period as former Provisionals now question whether the sacrifice not only of the hunger strikers but the hundreds of other victims who died between 1981 and 1994 was worth it, for a political settlement which was always on the table.

 

Sourced from the Irish News

Irish News: Chain of events that led to deaths

Chain of events that led to deaths
THE HUNGER STRIKE
By Seamus McKinney
28/09/09

Between May 5 and August 20 1981 10 men died on hunger strike at the Maze prison in a protest which attracted worldwide media attention.

On the surface the Hunger Strike, and its 1980 predecessor, was in pursuit of five demands by republican prisoners.

However, it is accepted it was about much more than that. It was about a refusal by republican prisoners to allow the British government to officially criminalise them.

Prisoners started their protest for ‘special category status’ when it was removed in 1976.

Refusing to wear prison clothes, they wore blankets and fashioned blankets into clothing, earning approximately 350 inmates the title ‘blanketmen’.

In 1978 the protest was escalated after some prisoners were attacked when they left their cells to slop out.

Prisoners subsequently refused to leave their cells to wash and spread excrement on the cell walls in a dirty protest.

The IRA and INLA prisoners made five demands which they considered vital to re-establish their political status.

These were:

– the right not to wear prison uniforms

– the right not to do prison work

– the right of free association with other prisoners and to organise educational and recreational pursuits

– the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.

– full restoration of remission lost through the protest.

In 1980 seven prisoners went on hunger strike in pursuit of the demands.

The protest was called off after 53 days with Sean McKenna close to death.

The prisoners believed a British government document – which they had not seen – had conceded the essence of their demands.

However, when the 34-page document was studied the prisoners found it fell far short of their demands.

This was realised within days of the end of the hunger strike when prisoners were issued with civilian-style prison uniforms instead of their own clothes.

Some observers believe that the British government had genuinely thought it had dealt with the problem but that subsequent problem arose in its implementation by prison management and staff.

The second Hunger Strike began when former IRA prison OC Bobby Sands refused food on March 1 1981.

This time prisoners joined the Hunger Strike at staggered intervals.

In April 1981 Sands defeated Ulster Unionist candidate Harry West to win a seat as an MP in Fermanagh and South Tyrone following the death of sitting Independent MP Frank Maguire.

Despite Sands’s election causing a diplomatic crisis for Britain around the world then prime minister Margaret Thatcher refused to give in to the prisoners demands.

In a now famous speech, she said: “We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime. It is not political.”

Sands eventually died on May 5 after 66 days on hunger strike. In a huge protest by nationalist Ireland tens of thousands of people lined the route of his funeral.

In the next four months nine more men died while on hunger strike before the protest began to break down following interventions by hunger strikers’ families.

On October 3 1981 the Hunger Strike was officially ended.

Four days later, new Northern Ireland secretary of state Jim Prior conceded four of the five demands.

The final demand, the right not to do prison work, was conceded when the British government agreed to allow prisoners to undertake educational study during prison work time.

Blanketman’s deal claim

THE controversy over the 1981 Hunger Strike began in 2005 when former prisoner Richard O’Rawe, above right, published his book Blanketmen.

He alleged that a possible deal which could have ended the Hunger Strike was rejected by the Sinn Fein committee which was managing the protest outside the prison.

O’Rawe, a publicity officer for the prisoners, believed there could be a number of reasons for this, including a strategy to make political gain from the protest.

He said the deal was offered after the death of Patsy O’Hara and just two days before the death of Joe McDonnell.

He said then OC of the IRA prisoners, Brendan Bik McFarlane shouted “Tá go leor ann” (There’s enough there) to him when he heard the details.

Both McFarlane and the Sinn Fein leadership have denied this version of events. Former Sinn Fein publicity officer Danny Morrison initially denied that any deal at all was offered.

However, through Freedom of Information a number of documents have since emerged which appear to support a possible deal.

These documents indicate that then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was willing to give concessions on three and possibly four of the prisoners’ demands.

At the time the offer was released verbally to the IRA leadership by Derry businessman and go-between Brendan Duddy who was known by the code name The Mountain Climber. Nothing in writing was ever offered.

The offer was made after a statement by the prisoners in which they appeared willing drop the words ‘political status’ from their campaign while maintaining their five demands.

The Freedom of Information documents claim a draft statement was given to Sinn Fein to be released after the prisoners had called off thee Hunger Strike.

But Joe McDonnell died unexpectedly early and following serious rioting the Hunger Strike continued.

Sinn Fein claims a close reading of the documents shows the British were not willing to agree to a settlement favourable to the prisoners. The party says people should not confuse a deal with an offer.

Seamus McKinney

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: Violence of the year left 118 people dead

Violence of the year left 118 people dead
Was there a deal?
By Suzanne McGonagle
28/09/09

THE explosive events of 1981 saw violence erupt on the streets of Northern Ireland on a scale not seen since the early 1970s.

The year was regarded as a Troubles watershed with the Hunger Strike inflaming tensions outside the Maze Prison. In that year 118 people lost their lives.

Of those killed, civilians accounted for 54 of the deaths, with 21 RUC officers, 11 soldiers and 13 UDR members among the dead.

Sixteen republicans and three loyalists also died during 1981.

According to the book Lost Lives, republican activity resulted in 75 deaths.

Loyalists were responsible for 14, the British army for 13, the RUC for three and the UDR for one.

When Bobby Sands became the first hunger striker to lose his life, news of his death quickly led to violence and further death.

Just a day after he died a policeman, Philip Ellis (33), was killed at Duncairn Gardens in Belfast as officers tried to prevent rival factions from clashing following Sands’s death.

School children accounted for many of those who lost their lives during the turbulent year.

One of the first to die was Protestant teenager Desmond Guiney.

The 14-year-old from Rathcoole died after a mob stoned his father’s milk lorry on the New Lodge Road in north Belfast.

Missiles were thrown at the vehicle causing it to crash into a lamp-post. His father Eric died almost a week later from his injuries.

In the aftermath of the death of hunger striker Francis Hughes, another child became a victim of the spiralling violence.

Julie Livingstone (14), who was a Catholic and from the Lenadoon area of west Belfast, was hit by plastic bullet fired by British soldiers on the Stewartstown Road.

Another Catholic schoolgirl to lose her life during 1981 was Carol Ann Kelly (11) who was also killed by a plastic bullet fired by soldiers as she walked home in the Twinbrook area of Belfast.

Father-of-seven Henry Duffy from the Creggan area of Derry was also killed after being hit by a plastic bullet fired by soldiers on May 22 1981.

His death came during serious rioting throughout the Bogside following the death of Derry hunger striker Patsy O’Hara.

That year also saw the death of the first Northern Ireland MP to be killed during the Troubles.

The Rev Robert Bradford (40) was shot by IRA gunmen at a community centre in the Finaghy area of Belfast on November 14.

The IRA claimed he was “one of the key people responsible for winding up the loyalist paramilitary sectarian machine”.

His death triggered a security crisis and was followed by the killings of a number of Catholics including Stephen Murphy, Thomas McNulty and Peadar Fagan, who were killed in separate gun attacks.

INLA member James Power was also killed during 1981 when a bomb exploded prematurely as he attempted to disarm it.

The bomb had been intended to kill members of the security forces.

He remains the only INLA member to have been killed while handling explosives.

And on May 16 Patrick Martin – a Catholic father-of-one – was shot six times by the UDA/UFF while lying in bed at his home off the Crumlin Road in Belfast.

The UDA/UFF claimed he had been at the funeral of Bobby Sands.

Later in July 1981 John Dempsey, a member of the IRA’s Fianna youth wing was shot by soldiers at the Falls Road bus depot during disturbances.

Sourced from The Irish News

Irish News: THE HUNGER STRIKE: Special Investigation

THE HUNGER STRIKE: Special Investigation
By Staff Reporters
28/09/09

THE LIVES of six of the 10 1981 hunger strikers could have been saved in a deal which was acceptable to the prisoners, according to former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, left.

In an interview in today’s Irish News, the architect of the Anglo-Irish Agreement also reveals for the first time that the Irish government had a mole within the Maze prison.

The then Fine Gael leader says he believes a deal proposed by the British after the death of the fourth hunger striker in 1981 was vetoed by the Sinn Fein leadership – a claim rejected by Martin McGuinness.

“[The prisoners] were keen to accept [the deal] – we had our sources within the prison,” Dr FitzGerald says.

However, he did not elaborate on the status of the mole and whether he/she was a prisoner or a member of staff.

In today’s special investigation, Mr McGuinness also reveals for the first time that he was the conduit for the offer from the British government which he says was passed to him from the intermediary Brendan Duddy.

Mr McGuinness, who has never previously confirmed if he played a role during the hunger Strike, reveals that the message was then passed to Gerry Adams in a phone call and on to Danny Morrison who took it to the prisoners.

However, Mr McGuinness disputes claims that there was a deal on the table that was acceptable to the prisoners and accuses Sinn Fein’s political opponents of attempting to portray Margaret Thatcher as being someone who was anxious to solve the dispute when she was “a ruthless, hypocritical enemy”.

A bitter divide has developed within republicanism since the publication of the book Blanketmen by former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe, in which he suggested that the Sinn

Fein leadership blocked the deal for political reasons.

The strike resulted in not only the death of 10 IRA and INLA prisoners, but led to serious street violence which caused dozens of deaths.

 

Sourced from The Irish News

“Rusty Nail”: A Case to Answer

Monday, September 28, 2009
1981 Hunger Strike: A Case to Answer
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole


WAS THERE A DEAL? ask the Irish News in its two part special on the Hunger Strike. Today’s issue is damning, featuring commentary by Deputy First Minister and, according to the Ed Moloney’s Secret History, Chief of Staff of the IRA at the time of the hunger strikes Martin McGuinness, who admits to his role as the Derry messenger between Mountain Climber Brendan Duddy and the Belfast cadre of Adams, Morrison, Gibney and Hartley. Former Hunger Striker Laurence McKeown also weighs in, shedding little light on the details but muddying the waters on the rhetoric. More significant are the contributions from former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, who believes the IRA vetoed the deal with the British despite the prisoners’ willingness to accept – which he reveals the Irish government was aware of at the time because of a mole they had inside the prison. Hugh Logue of the ICJP, who were at the time of Joe McDonnell’s death negotiating a parallel offer similar to the one between Thatcher and the Adams committee, also weighs in, asking why the outside leadership held out at the expense of the lives of the hunger strikers. Richard O’Rawe, whose book Blanketmen opened up this appalling vista, gives an overview of how the debate has progressed and supports the call for an independent inquiry into events, describing the seeking of truth as a “sacred duty”. The contributions that focus on the families of the hunger strikers are very emotional, as the anguish of their loss is palpable. The Dohertys are hurt by the allegations of the needless death of their son, and want the issue laid to rest, while the O’Haras and Devines, also upset by the issue, want to get to the bottom of things and know the truth of what happened. The late Brendan Hughes, who led the first hunger strike in 1980, touched on this when speaking to Spanish academic Rogelio Alonso: “I’ve spoken about this to people and I’ve always been advised by people like Jim Gibney, Danny Morrison and others that it would be too hurtful for the families of the dead hunger strikers to tell the truth. But that was the other attempt to bury the truth.”

As Sarah Brett concluded on Radio Foyle this morning, after interviewing Irish News Editor Noel Doran, “This isn’t going to go away.”

This special investigation by the Irish News contains a huge volume of material, which Slugger will be sifting through more in depth in the coming days.

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

Irish News letters page: (S)he who paid the piper

(S)he who paid the piper
Irish News letters page
Manus McDaid, Derry
16/09/09

SAM Greer of Belfast asks ‘Who killed the hunger strikers?’ (August 28).

Mr Greer says: “It is common knowledge that six lives [of the hunger strikers] could have been spared in a deal offered by the British”.

I, as a life-long republican, never heard of this.

Britain double-crossed the first hunger strike, I know.

And, when Bobby Sands died on the second hunger strike, Britain’s premier said he was a terrorist convict and chose to take his own life.

The people of Cappagh know better now – you either accept the integrity of the hunger strikers or you don’t.

Mr Greer asks ‘What was it all about?’ – What planet has he been on for the last 50 years?

Sourced from the Irish News

Irish News letters page: Who killed the hunger strikers?

Who killed the hunger strikers?
Irish News letters page
Sam Greer, Belfast
28/08/2009

If the people of Cappagh in Co Tyrone love the hunger strikers as much as Francie Molloy says they do, they should ask what those men died for.

It is common knowledge that six lives could have been spared in a deal offered by the British which was turned down by the leadership outside to garner votes for the future British administration in Stormont. Like the loyalists, the republican leadership was bought out.

To the people of Cappagh, I ask: What was it all about?

Sourced from the Irish News

Pádraic Wilson in Andersonstown News

You can’t rewrite history, says leading republican
Andersonstown News,Thursday 21st of August 2009
By Anthony Neeson

A leading Belfast republican has told a hunger strike commemoration in the West of the city that you can’t rewrite history.

Pádraic Wilson was speaking at a gathering of several hundred people in Whiterock Leisure Centre on Sunday evening.

Earlier that day republicans had taken part in a march commemorating the 1969 pogroms as well as a hunger strike rally in County Tryone.

Mr Wilson said that while republicans were used to being demonised by political rivals and the mainstream media, now some “former comrades” had “aligned themselves” with revisionism.

Speaking about the former he said: “They vilified and demonised our comrades, their families and each and every one of us.

“They provided a rationale for the murderous attacks against the Relatives’ Action Committees and others.

“In recent times there have been attempts, led by some of the same people, to rewrite the history of that period.

“If we didn’t know better we could be forgiven for thinking that these people actually cared about our comrades or their families.”

He said people needed to be clear about a number of things.

“The British government, led by Thatcher, was not an honest broker trying desperately to find a solution to a situation for which they had no responsibility.

“Thatcher had shown quite clearly in December 1980, when the opportunity for a solution to the situation in the H-Blocks and Armagh arose, that she had one intention and one only, and that was to demoralise us, crush us, and to deliver a death blow to republican resistance. According to her we had played our last card… the game was still going in Brighton in 1984, Maggie.

“She and her allies failed inside the prisons and they failed on the outside.

“They failed because we, and that means those of us who were in prison, those of you who fought and campaigned on the outside, and those of you who provided the resources for that, all of us refused to be intimidated, refused to bow down and refused to be criminalised.

“While we expect it from those quarters, there are others, some of them former comrades, who have aligned themselves with this revisionism. The logic of their position is that our comrades were like sheep being led aimlessly along.

“That is an insult and it needs challenged.”

Mr Wilson spoke about Andersonstown hunger striker Kieran Doherty, a man he knew well, and recalled the punishment that he and others endured in the H-Blocks.

“I’ve been asked at various times over the years if it was all worth it,” he told the audience. “I’ve always responded that everything that I’ve experienced and all that I’ve been a part of were necessary and worthy.

“Mindful that some people might think that’s an easy answer to give because I’m alive and well, I can only say that any other response would be a lie and a betrayal.”

Sourced from the Andersonstown News

Sinn Fein spokesman: No evidence exists to prove ‘bogus claims’

SDLP and SF clash over H-Block GAA club event
GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times

Thu, Aug 20, 2009

THE SDLP and Sinn Féin have clashed over the holding of a H-Block commemoration on Sunday in the grounds of the Galbally GAA club in Co Tyrone.

SDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell accused Sinn Féin of “hijacking” the commemoration, while Sinn Féin accused him of attempting to demonise the memory of the 10 men who died in the 1981 hunger strikes.

Dr McDonnell made his criticism after he and a senior party delegation met top GAA officials yesterday. Holding such events on GAA grounds is against the rules of the organisation. Dr McDonnell said that “like thousands of fellow members of the GAA” he was angry the “Provos had hijacked a GAA premises to cynically deflect attention from Sinn Féin’s internal problems”.

He said it was also part of Sinn Féin’s attempt to divert attention away from Sinn Féin “allowing a number of the hunger strikers to die” to serve the party’s electoral ambitions in 1981.

“GAA grounds should not be prostituted or used politically,” he said. He added that he respected the rights of family and friends of the hunger strikers to commemorate them but that it should not be done in GAA grounds.

A Sinn Féin spokesman said that in relation to the hungers strikers that Dr McDonnell would not be able to “produce a shred of evidence to back up his bogus claims about the circumstances surrounding the men’s deaths as none exists”.

The Sinn Féin spokesman added, “republicans are justifiably proud of the hunger strikers and their families. We make no apology to McDonnell or anyone else for commemorating their sacrifice. The Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee event on Sunday saw up to 10,000 people gather to pay tribute and to remember. That is what the focus needs to remain on, rather than deliberately constructed arguments by anti-republican elements in the media and elsewhere aimed at taking away from the purpose of the day.”

When contacted GAA headquarters referred the matter of the commemoration at its ground in Galbally to the organisation’s Ulster Council which said it had no comment to make on the matter at this time.

GAA sources acknowledged, however, that holding the commemoration on its ground in Galbally is contrary to rule 7 (a) of the organisation.

A similar situation arose in 2006 when a major commemoration was held in Casement Park in Belfast on the 25th anniversary of the hunger strikes.

The instruction from Croke Park not to hold the commemoration in Casement Park was ignored. Subsequently, the GAA refused to make tickets available to senior Sinn Féin members for the 2006 hurling and football All-Ireland finals, a decision Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness described as “childish”.

In the past year or so the GAA has made a determined effort to engage in “outreach” with the unionist community and unionist politicians. In June DUP First Minister Peter Robinson and the GAA leadership broke new ground when they met at Stormont.

Sourced from the Irish Times

Pádraic Wilson Hunger Strike Talk & Disco with Full Bar

NOTE: Text of Speech

H-Blocks former O/C to speak at Hunger Strike event in Whiterock
An Phoblacht, 13 August 2009

Padraic-WilsonLEADING Belfast republican Padraic Wilson is to speak at a Belfast Hunger Strike Commemoration night in the Whiterock Leisure Centre on Sunday, 16 August.

Padraic, from the Andersonstown area, has been involved in the republican struggle for almost 40 years.

The former Blanketman was in jail at the time of the 1981 Hunger Strikes and knew many of the Hunger Strikers personally.

Padraic’s republican involvement began in 1972 when he joined Fianna Éireann. In 1976, he was arrested and charged with possession of explosives and was remanded to Crumlin Road Jail.

He was sentenced to six years in 1977 and went straight on the Blanket, spending the period of the Hunger Strike in the H-Blocks.

Released in 1982, he became active again immediately and was Sinn Féin’s west Belfast organiser for a number of years in the 1980s.

OFFICER COMMANDING

Padraic was arrested again in 1989 but charges against him were dropped in 1990. While on bail he was again arrested in 1991 with Jim ‘Flash’ McVeigh and Tony O’Neill and sentenced to 24 years.

He was IRA Officer Commanding the H-Blocks from 1996 to 1999, during which a tunnel escape was narrowly averted and Republican prisoner Liam Averill escaped dressed as a woman.

Padraic was released to attend the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and a number of briefings in the run-up to the 1998 Agreement.

hunger-strikeAfter being released in 1999 he became active again in Sinn Féin and currently holds the position of Director of International Affairs.

Doors open for the commemoration night in the Whiterock Leisure Centre at 7pm on Sunday 16 August and admission is £5.

Live music will be provided by Tuan folk, which will be followed by a disco.

There will be a full bar in place.

People are advised to come early to avoid disappointment.

 

Sourced from An Phoblacht

Pádraic Wilson: The hunger strikes of ’81 and what they mean today

The hunger strikes of ’81 and what they mean today
Andersonstown News
Thursday 14th of August 2009
by Francesca ryan

The 1981 hunger strike is to be remembered at an event being held at Whiterock Leisure Centre this Sunday.

Leading Belfast republican Pádraic Wilson will share his memories of his time on the blanket and the dark days of 1981.

Pádraic, Sinn Féin’s Director of International Affairs, spent three separate stints in prison and recalls vividly the effect both the hunger strike and the hunger strikers had on him.

Pádraic told the Andersonstown News that the talk will focus on his time in Long Kesh from 1976 to 1982.

“I was in Long Kesh during the blanket protest and the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981,” he said.

“I knew most of the hungerstrikers, some from the outside and others I got to know while inside. I will be talking about the hunger strke in general and what it meant for me.”

Pádraic says it was Kieran Doherty who gave him the morale boost he needed to get through the bleakest of times in Long Kesh.

“Of all the hunger strikers, I knew Kieran Doherty the best,” he said.

“He lived a few streets away from me and was just a few years older than me.

“Kieran was someone everyone looked up to, literally, because of his height, but also because he was an inspiration.

“Big Doc just instilled confidence in everyone, he was practically fearless. Just standing beside him at Mass on a Sunday – the only time we were allowed out of our cells – was enough to boost my morale.

“Even the screws were afraid of him and would never take him on one-to-one like they would have done with the others. He was the one who kept my morale going.”

Pádraic is also ready to address the current debate surrounding the hunger strike.

“There is no way I could talk about that time without mentioning that there is some controversy at the minute regarding the hunger strike.

“For anyone to suggest that Margaret Thatcher and her government wanted to offer a deal that republicans rejected, well, they need their heads examined.

“I intend to talk about this in reference to the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981.”

Pádraic will also touch on the path republicanism has taken in the years following the hunger strikes right through to today’s peace process.

“I’m going to speak about the relevance of the hunger strike in terms of where we are now.

“For me, it is the same struggle with the same objectives, the only thing that has changed is the way of achieving the objectives.”

Pádraic will be speaking at the commemoration night in Whiterock Leisure Centre this Sunday (August 16).

Admission is £5 and the doors open at 7pm.

Sourced from The Andersonstown News

“Rusty Nail”: Gerry Adams speaking with Kieran Doherty, 29 July 1981

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Gerry Adams and Kieran Doherty, 29 July 1981
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole

Writing on his blog, Gerry Adams relates an anecdote from his 29 July 1981 visit with Owen Carron to the hunger strikers in Long Kesh. This anecdote is sourced from his autobiography, Before the Dawn. It is important to put the account of this conversation into context, in order to fully appreciate its meaning. Firstly, Kieran Doherty’s condition was dire; he was nearly blind, had considerable difficulty hearing, and was demonstrably ‘delirious’, hallucinating and unaware of his surroundings. At this stage, when he was conversing with Adams, he was in no position to be making any strategic decisions. He was hardly fit to process any information about the negotiations with the British, had he been fully informed, being conducted on his behalf by Adams. As told by Adams, Kieran Doherty was blind and confused, despite being described as ‘firm’ on the five demands; he lost track of who was in the room with him, greeting Bik McFarlane only to ask not much later where Bik was, and to ask after the boys repeatedly, even after his questions had already been answered. Yet it seems today Adams is holding up this conversation as some sort of defense against the charge that the hunger strikers were sacrificed for Sinn Fein’s political gain.

What is really significant about this piece is that it shows the hunger strikers were unaware that they had already broken Thatcher. From at least early July and possibly before, if some accounts are to be believed, she was offering Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness four of the five demands and by the time Gerry Adams was sitting with Kieran Doherty, the offer from the British that Adams had been negotiating was what the prisoners got when the hunger strike ended in October.

Although already having won the concession of letters and parcels, only 10 days before the 29 July meeting with the hunger strikers Adams was still stalling the British, seeking clarification over what could be in the parcels. (“Association during leisure hours was not enough and in addition they would need specific assurances as to what they would be allowed to receive in parcels.” Beresford, Ten Men Dead, pg 325.) The hunger strikers’ commitment was used by Adams as leverage in the negotiations with the British, although by this point the hunger strikers, according to Pat McGeown, whom Bik McFarlane was striving mightily to keep in line and silenced, were more committed to each other and those who had preceded them in death than they were tied down to the details of the five demands. “When Gerry was in I didn’t say anything to him,” [McGeown] says. “Bik had already said to me, ‘Don’t make your opinions known,’ to which I had given my commitment. I just accepted [the situation].” (O’Malley, Biting at the Grave, pg 83.)

To Brownie from Bik Sun 26.7.81

“…had a long yarn with Pat Beag [McGeown] this morning and impressed upon him the necessity of keeping firmly on the line. I explained that independent thought was sound, but once it began to stray from our well considered and accepted line that it became extremely dangerous. He accepted what I said alright. Also I stressed the need for all of us to have confidence in you lot.” (Comm quoted in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, pg 333.)

By August, after having had the visit from Adams and Carron, McGeown and Devine were discussing coming off the strike; neither wanted to be seen as saving himself but both recognised the futility of carrying on – except for one strategic gain: the election of Owen Carron. “I [McGeown] said to him [Devine], ‘Hold out for ten days. After the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election, I don’t see any political point in us continuing the hunger strike and I’ll be saying that quite openly.’ To say to him [Devine] to come off it before it [the by-election], politically I did think we needed to stay until the whole process had been completed with Owen Carron.” (O’Malley, Biting at the Grave, pg 84.) Devine died the day of the election; he was the last hunger striker to die.

patbeag

I nDíl Chuímhne

To the memory of PAT (Beág) McGeown

A Soldier, politican, community worker and bridge builder
who died October 1 1996 as a direct result of
being on the 1981 Hunger Strike in the H Blocks

“To live in the hearts of those left behind, is not to die”

– Plaque outside Sinn Fein headquarters on Falls Road


 

An Bean Uasal from Bik 28.7.81

“…Was up in hospital tonight. […] Doc was able to talk, but became delirious and told me he was ‘talking to Bik earlier on and had a yarn with Bobby’. He’s practically blind and has great difficulty in hearing. His spirit is strong and he is very determined.” (Comm quoted in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, pg 338.)

 


Gerry Adams, Leargas blog:

I thought of the last time I saw Kieran. In the prison hospital in the H Blocks of Long Kesh. By this time he was the TD for Cavan Monaghan. It was the 29 July 1981. Kieran died on August 2.

‘I’m not a criminal.’ He said
.
‘For too long our people have been broken. The Free Staters, the church, the SDLP. We won’t be broken. We’ll get our five demands. If I’m dead … well, the others will have them. I don’t want to die, but that’s up to the Brits. They think they can break us. Well they can’t.’ He grinned self-consciously: Tiocfaidh ar lá.’

We shook hands before I left, an old internee’s hand-shake, firm and strong.

‘Thanks for coming in, I’m glad we had that wee yarn. Tell everyone, all the lads, I was asking for them and … ‘ He continued to grip my hand.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll get our five demands. We’ll break Thatcher. Lean ar aghaidh.

Talking later to Kieran’s father Alfie, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, in the quiet cells in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, I felt a raw hatred for the injustice which created this crisis.

I am glad to say that I still feel the same today 28 years after Kieran’s death.

Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn, pages 308-310:

“Brendan [McFarlane] arranged for us to go and see Kieran Doherty. I told the lads that I wouldn’t tell Doc of their position.
‘He knows it anyway,’ someone said.
‘We saw him last night after Father Crilly’s visit.’
‘I know,’ said I.
Doc was propped up on one elbow; his eyes, unseeing, scanned the cell as he heard us entering.
‘Mise atá ann,’ (‘It’s me’) said Brendan McFarlane.
‘Ahh Bik, cad é mar atá tú?’ arsa Doc. (‘Ahh Bik, how are you?’ Doc said.)
‘Nílim romh dhona, agus tú féin?‘ (‘I’m not too bad, and yourself?’)
Tá mé go hiontach; tá daoine eile anseo? Cé…?‘ (‘I’m great; are there other people here? Who…?’)
Tá Gerry Adams, Owen Carron agus Seamus Ruddy anseo. Teastaíonn uatha caint leat.‘ (‘Gerry Adams, Owen Carron, and Seamus Ruddy are here. They want to speak with you.’)
Gerry A’, fáilte.‘ (‘Gerry A’, welcome.’) He greeted us all, his eyes following our voices. We crowded around the bed, the cell much too small for four visitors. I sat on the side of the bed. Doc, whom I hadn’t seen in years, looked massive in his gauntness, as his eyes, fierce in their quiet defiance, scanned my face.
I spoke to him quietly and slowly, somewhat awed by the man’s dignity and by the enormity of our mission.
He responded to my probing with paitence.
‘You know the score yourself,’ he said, ‘I’ve a week in me yet. How is Kevin [Lynch] holding out?’
‘You’ll both be dead soon. I can go out now, Doc and announce that it’s over.’
He paused momentarily and reflected, then: ‘We haven’t got our five demands and that’s the only way I’m coming off. Too much suffered for too long, too many good men dead. Thatcher can’t break us. Lean ar aghaidh. I’m not a criminal.’
I continued with my probing. Doc responded.
‘For too long our people have been broken. The Free Staters, the church, the SDLP. We won’t be broken. We’ll get our five demands. If I’m dead…well, the others will have them. I don’t want to die, but that’s up to the Brits. They think they can break us. Well they can’t.’ He grinned self-consciously. ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá.‘ (‘Our day will come.’)
‘How are you all keeping? I’m glad you came in. I can only see blurred shapes. I’m glad to be with friends. Cá bhfuil Bik? (Where is Bik?) Bik, stay staunch. How’s the boys doing?’
We talked quietly for a few minutes. Owen got another ribbing about the election. We got up to go. I told Doc to get the screw to give us a shout if he wanted anything.
We shook hands, an old internee’s handshake, firm and strong.
‘Thanks for coming in, I’m glad we had that wee yarn. Tell everyone, all the lads, I was asking for them and…’ He continued to grip my hand.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get our five demands. We’ll break Thatcher. Lean ar aghaidh.’
Outside Doc’s cell, the screw led us in to speak to Kieran’s father, Alfie, and brother, Michael, who had just arrived to relieve Kieran’s mother.
We spoke for about five minutes. I felt an immense solidarity with the Doherty family, broken-hearted, like all the families, as they watched Kieran die. Yet because they understood their son, they were prepared to accept his wishes and were completely committed to the five demands for which he was fasting.
Talking to Alfie, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, in the quiet cells in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, I felt a raw hatred for the injustice that created this crisis. Alfie, concerned for us, had a quiet word with Bik McFarlane and left to sit with Kieran.”

Note: Kieran Doherty died 4 days later.

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

Jim Gibney on Brendan Duddy: Secret go-between shines a light on history makers

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

Gerry Adams recalls Kieran Doherty

Note: See also Before the Dawn, pages 308-310.

Monday, August 3, 2009
Fair Play
Gerry Adams, Leargas blog

doherty_cupJoe McDonnell’s grandson Caolan presents the Joe McDonnell Cup to Captain Gary Lennon of Sarsfields

3 Lúnasa 2009

FAIR PLAY.

On Saturday afternoon this blog travelled to Saint Teresa’s Club in Belfast to watch the play offs in the Joe McDonnell – Kieran Doherty Football Tournament.

Joe and Kieran who died on hungerstrike in the H Blocks in 1981 were Saint Teresa’s men. The very fine playing facility on the Glen Road bears their names, Páirc Mhic Dhomhnaill Uí Dhocartaigh.

Each year the club organises a very competitive days sport for Under 16 players in their memory. Fair play to the organisers, the referees and most especially the players and mentors. Joe and Kieran would have enjoyed the day out. They were good Gaels.

Joe, a wee bit older and a wee bit smaller than Kieran was a good sportsman, resourceful in a skirmish and inclined to play on the referee’s blind side. But always for the devilment of it. He was not a cynical player. In football or anything else. Doc was a big guy. Six foot three inches tall. Maybe in another era he could have been county material. He won a minor medal with Saint Teresa’s and although the struggle interrupted his sporting life Kieran stayed fit, energetic and athletic.

I thought of Doc and Joe as I sat with my back to the Black Mountain. The city of Belfast stretched before us away off to the middle distance and the Craigantlet Hills. To our left the Cavehill looked down its nose at Belfast Lough and to our right lightly shrouded in rain in the far distance, the Mournes swept down to the sea. Impervious to all this, Saint Teresa’s and Naomh Pol Under 16s battled it out in the final of one competition and Eoin Roe’s and the Paddies (Sarsfields) in the other. Eoin Roe’s are a Tír Eoghan club and they play good football but the Paddies were better on the day. Saint Teresa’s were victorious as well. Seven clubs in all participated.

The Pearse’s turned up with their Under 16 hurlers but they couldn’t get a game. Communications, communications, communications!! But fair play to the stalwarts who keep this very fine club going. It was terrific to see such a fine squad of young hurlers ready to do battle for their team.

I got to do some of the presentations afterwards. Caolan McDonald, Joe’s grandson did the rest. And a fine job he did as well.

Between them all and all the other young athletes who turned up at the Feile an Phobal Carnival opening on Sunday morning, methinks the future of the gaelic games is secure in Aontroim. Our camógs, hurlers and footballers are the sleeping giants of the GAA. Our senior footballers have shown what is possible. Fair play to them. They did us and our county proud.

Joe and Kieran would be pleased about that as well.

I went to the Féile Carnival from the commemoration at Doc’s house and the vigil on Andytown Road on Sunday morning. At the commemoration Big Bobby regaled us with tales of derring-do and other bits of loose talk laced with gems of political clarity and words of great wisdom.

Then Mrs Doherty sang for us. A song about her son.

I thought of the last time I saw Kieran. In the prison hospital in the H Blocks of Long Kesh. By this time he was the TD for Cavan Monaghan. It was the 29 July 1981. Kieran died on August 2.

‘I’m not a criminal.’ He said
.
‘For too long our people have been broken. The Free Staters, the church, the SDLP. We won’t be broken. We’ll get our five demands. If I’m dead … well, the others will have them. I don’t want to die, but that’s up to the Brits. They think they can break us. Well they can’t.’ He grinned self-consciously: Tiocfaidh ar lá.’

We shook hands before I left, an old internee’s hand-shake, firm and strong.

‘Thanks for coming in, I’m glad we had that wee yarn. Tell everyone, all the lads, I was asking for them and … ‘ He continued to grip my hand.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll get our five demands. We’ll break That¬cher. Lean ar aghaidh.

Talking later to Kieran’s father Alfie, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, in the quiet cells in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, I felt a raw hatred for the injustice which created this crisis.

I am glad to say that I still feel the same today 28 years after Kieran’s death. And I am humbled that I knew him and Joe who died on July 8 1981, and the other hungerstrikers.

Fair play to them all. And to their families.

 

Sourced from Leargas blog

“Rusty Nail”: Prolonging the Hunger Strike: The Derailing of the ICJP

Friday, July 17, 2009

Prolonging the Hunger Strike: The Derailing of the ICJP
Rusty Nail at Slugger O’Toole

 
In addition to last week’s expanded timeline, two interesting articles originally in the Washington Post in 1981 have been added to the new hunger strike archive: Break Seen In Ulster Jail Crisis and 5th IRA Hunger Striker Dies Before Settlement Reached. They are very detailed about the ICJP offer and, put together with what we know today about the Adams negotiations with the British over the Mountain Climber offer, paint a very stark picture of how needlessly the hunger strike was prolonged.  It has been said by some who subscribe to the Morrison narrative of events that the Brits wanted the Provos to ‘call off the strike’ before they would move on any deal. Such language however is without nuance and negates the reality of what was happening. The FOI documents obtained by the Sunday Times illuminate this.

“The statement has now been read and we await provo reactions (we would be willing to allow them a sight of the document just before it is given to the prisoners and released to the press). It has been made clear (as the draft itself states) that it is not a basis for negotiation.” – Extract from a Telegram from the Northern Ireland Office to the Cabinet Office

Lest there be any doubt of their intentions, it should be clear that this is an internal directive of what they were going to do.

The Brits were looking assurance that their offer would be accepted. Once Adams said yes it would be, the choreography would be the Brits sending in the NIO with the statement to be read to the prisoners, who would ‘accept’ it and then the end of the hunger strike would be announced and the statement be released to the press.

So reducing it to language such as ‘calling off the strike’ makes it seem as if for nothing – as we saw from the 81 report, the ICJP had the essence of the M/C offer, the Brits had offered the ECHR as guarantors; to any rational eye it does not make sense why that was torpedoed. Reading the 81 reports you see the lay of the land as it was without knowledge of the M/C offer. Knowing what we know now, it seems likely the reason the NIO official did not go in was because the Brits were directly negotiating with the Adams committee; and in the meantime, the Adams committee were intent on getting the ICJP offside – to the point that McFarlane, following orders to shut the ICJP out, turned his back on them when they were so close to getting the deal done. What we see from the historical record is that the Brits, the ICJP, even the prisoners were prepared to end the strike. Evidence is all over the place of this – but no record exists of the Adams committee doing anything but what they could to prolong the strike. Just a week or so later, during the last weeks of July, they were stalling acceptance of the British offer over nailing down details of exactly what could be put into parcels. They had already won the concession of letters and parcels, yet they allowed men to die over fighting about what could be put in the parcels. That is the sort of detail you fight over, if you have to, after the strike is settled – not at the expense of people’s lives. Like George Mitchell said of them during the Good Friday negotiations, they were addicted to over-negotiating.

There were 2 offers on the table from the Brits in early July – the ICJP and M/C offer. Contrary to what we’ve been led to believe, the two offers did not differ in substance. They were much the same and contained enough to settle the protest. Rather than show British duplicity this shows that the British were serious about ending the hunger strike. It shows they were desperate to, actually. With the ICJP offer, you had the backing of the Irish government, and no shortage of mediators to stand as guarantors. As mentioned the Brits suggested the ECHR. That’s the Brits putting forward a guarantor! (Not much later they would send in the Red Cross in the hopes that they would fulfil the same remit – have the ability to secure a deal and act as guarantors to satisfy the prisoners and the international community that the Brits were honouring their end; they too were rejected by Adams and co.) The ICJP had the backing of the prisoners, who told them if they got someone from the NIO in to stand over the deal, they’d accept it. (In addition, the prison leadership, O’Rawe and McFarlane, also accepted the M/C version of the offer, with McFarlane describing it as ‘amazing’ and as a ‘huge opportunity’ and ‘a potential here to end this’; that they accepted the offer is no longer under question now that the conversation has been corroborated.) That was all the Brits were waiting for, an assurance that if they went in, the prisoners were going to say yes. As far as everyone connected with the ICJP initiative were concerned, everything was good to go. The NIO would go in, the prisoners would say yes, and Joe McDonnell had a chance.

But the Brits, desperate to get the guarantee the prisoners would say yes, opened the channel directly to the Provos. And this is where the mistake lay. Once the Provos got on the line, the ICJP was rendered redundant. Sure, they could stand as guarantors of the implementation of the deal, but as far as guaranteeing the assurances the British needed in order to go into the jail with the offer, Adams was the real deal in their eyes. And Adams had to have seen the ability to have direct negotiations with the British as an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. He didn’t share this activity with the rest of the A/C – this was kept tight between his small group. We know now that he was on the phone with the British himself, bypassing Duddy, during the negotiations; the conversation described in Before the Dawn has been verified and Duddy was at a loss to explain it, as it was outside his scope. We also know that Duddy was never informed that the prisoner leadership – O’Rawe and McFarlane – had accepted the offer; instead he was told it was rejected on the basis that ‘more was needed’. At this point, it must be remembered, the push for a political agenda was already well on the table; the Sands bill had just gone through, and it was known that Sands’ seat would be contestable (this would have been known from his death).

So while the ICJP were waiting for the NIO to come in and give their deal to the prisoners, Adams was dealing directly with the British. The British put the ICJP on hold, but gave no indication of why – because they couldn’t! From their position, and they made this clear to Adams who promptly broke their confidence by telling the ICJP, the negotiations they were having with Adams were secret – it would compromise the British Government fatally to be seen to be negotiating directly with the PIRA. So the ICJP was kept in the dark by the British, not because they were playing games and wanted to see as many hunger strikers die as possible, but because of the secret nature of what they were doing with Adams. The ICJP were not the only ones kept in the dark; Michael Alison could only tell the Friends of Ireland in Washington DC that there had been “drafting problems”, and that resolving them could not happen until “after the prisoners had gone to bed”. He had to maintain the British hard-line façade. This is why many of the papers relating to this time period are still classified; the repercussions that Thatcher would have felt had the extent of her direct contact with the PIRA been known would have brought her down, especially if her overtures were snubbed. Over a decade later, when it was revealed that John Major had had a back channel with the PIRA the ructions were serious. 

What has always been missing from the established narrative is the reason why the Brits did not send the NIO in with the ICJP offer when they were supposed to. Now we know why – they were getting what they believed was the real deal directly from the horse’s mouth. And Adams was telling them, ‘more was needed’, and then, when the Brits appeared to pull back from their very extended limb, it was ‘tone, not content’ – which they then wasted time negotiating over, right up until the moment Joe McDonnell died. It was a waste of time because as we see when the British came back after the funeral of Martin Hurson, they were negotiating over items of little importance, and as ultimately, when the hunger strike ended months later in October, the prisoners got what was on offer in July.

So the question of who was really prolonging the strike, the British or Adams, falls on Adams. He kept secret the fact of his negotiations from others on the Army Council; he withheld details of the negotiations from the prisoners; he kept the offer and negotiations secret from the IRSP and INLA, who also had men dying on hunger strike; all of this history has been buried until O’Rawe came forward writing of his and McFarlane’s acceptance of the M/C offer. Because of that and the information that has come out since then, the picture of what happened during the hunger strike is much clearer. He scuttled the ICJP settlement, and later would have the Red Cross chased, and used the prisoners, who were not informed of the details of what he was doing, as cover to prolong the hunger strike to the election of Owen Carron.

Sourced from Slugger O’Toole

Derry Journal: Seeking the ‘facts’ on the hunger strike

Seeking the ‘facts’ on the hunger strike

Derry Journal
Published Date: 10 July 2009

A chara,

In his most recent letter (Tuesday Journal, 7/7) Donncha McNiallais dismissed my questions as being opinions, rumours and speculation while pushing what he claimed to have occurred as facts.

He tried to push the line that the Brits reneged on an offer made during the first Hunger Strike, going as far as to state; “Secondly, when the first hunger strike was nearing its climax with Sean McKenna close to death, the British made an ‘offer’ through the Mountain Climber. Apparently, this offer amounted to three-and-a-half of the five demands, which sounds familiar.”

How could the Brits renege on an offer never completed? The hunger strike was called off before the offer could be made into a deal.

What actually happened was, at the same time as Brendan Hughes was calling off the hunger strike in order to save Sean McKenna, Father Meagher was delivering a document to Gerry Adams and others at Clonard Monastery from the British government. Adams and the others weren’t happy with what the document contained but they were arranging to have it sent into the prison when they got word that the hunger strike had ended.

When Bobby and the Dark (Hughes] eventually got to see the document after they received it from Father Meagher, it didn’t contain what Donncha stated was ‘apparently three-and-a-half of the five demands’, but stated “The prisoners would have to wear ‘prison-issue clothing’ during week-days, when they were engaged in prison work.” This didn’t even meet the bottom line as far as the five demands went and would have never been enough to end the hunger strike had Brendan Hughes chose to let Sean McKenna die and continue. In fact, Bobby said to Father Meagher, “It wasn’t what we wanted.”

Not only that, but republicans in Clonard with Adams said of the document, “It’s as full of holes as a sieve.” Even Adams said “it wasn’t a document I would have negotiated for.”

Donncha quoted from Denis O’Hearn’s book, yet all of this is in pages 295 to 302 of that book and it can also be found in page 44 of Ten Men Dead; anyone can check this for themselves. I’m surprised Donncha seemingly failed to read the above-mentioned pages as he would’ve seen that all of this meant that the so-called offer from the Brits wasn’t worth the document it was printed on as it contained nothing. How could the Brits renege on nothing, with the hunger strike ended?

There was a major difference between the first hunger strike and the second one at the time of the July 5th offer. Firstly, four men had died and others were following them on hunger strike. Secondly, Bobby had been elected as a MP, while Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew had been elected as TDs, thus effectively smashing Thatcher’s criminalisation policy. Then there was the July 4th conciliatory statement from Richard O’Rawe on behalf of the prisoners which pulled back from Political Status and stated that all prisoners could avail of the five demands. It was following this statement that the British government made an offer on July 5th via the Mountain Climber to the IRA.

Since Richard O’Rawe first made his claims, complete denials of any offers changed to ‘no concrete offers’; now with this too totally refuted, especially by Brendan Duddy’s admission that he took a offer to the IRA which they rejected, the guff has all changed to not trusting the Brits! Which of course is true, you can’t trust the Brits; however men were dying and Joe was at death’s door. So why not hold them to their word while making it clear that as soon as the hunger strike ended, if the promised immediate statement from the British was not forthcoming, then those men waiting in line would resume the Hunger Strike within 24 hours?

Of course, there would have been no need for this, as according to Bik in a comm to Adams dated 6.7.81, the ICJP the previous day had told the hunger strikers that they were willing to act as guarantors over any settlement. That was July 5th, the same day the Brits made their offer via the Mountain Climber. The ICJP were unaware of this offer; the following day July 6th Gerry Adams called the ICJP to a safe house in Belfast and told Father Crilly and Hugh Logue about the contact with the British government and that they had been offering them more than had been offered to the ICJP. This was an attempt to encourage the Commission to withdraw.

Surely Adams should have been encouraging them to ensure that the Brits kept their word over any agreed settlement instead of trying to remove them? Why remove those willing to act as guarantors?

Mise le meas,
Thomas Dixie Elliott

Sourced from the Derry Journal

“Rusty Nail”: Updated Timeline and Upcoming Discussion

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

IRSP reject Anderson criticism

IRSP reject Anderson criticism

Derry Journal
Published Date: 08 July 2009

The IRSP have described Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson’s attack on those republicans calling for an inquiry to be held into the events of the 1981 hunger strike as “arrogant.”

Strabane man Willie Gallagher, a member of the IRSP’s ruling executive, was speaking after the Sinn Féin MLA called for an end to the current controversary over the hunger strike.
Read the rest of this entry »

Derry Journal: Richard O’Rawe statement

O’Rawe and inquiry

Derry Journal
Published Date: 03 July 2009

Sir,

Following a call from the families of Patsy O’Hara and Micky Devine to Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Bik McFarlane and myself to support an independent inquiry into the 1981 hunger strike (Journal, 30th June), I wish it to be known that I pledge my full backing for such an inquiry.

I am prepared to give evidence, and submit myself to cross-examination, in order to hopefully get to the full facts of what happened during the hunger strike.

It is my fervent hope that the other three republicans mentioned by the O’Hara and Devine families pledge their support also.

Yours,
Richard O’Rawe

Sourced from the Derry Journal

Derry Journal: You won’t bury the truth

You won’t bury the truth

Derry Journal
Published Date: 07 July 2009

A chara,

Martina Anderson used the recent Volunteers’ commemoration to make an attack on those of us who are seeking to find the truth about what actually happened on and after July 5th 1981 during the H-Block Hunger Strikes.

She accused us of exploiting the grief of the families to attack her party.

We have never used the families to attack anyone. As former Blanket men, we were only asking for answers, so how is this exploiting the families?

However, Martina seemingly oblivious to the families request to call a halt to the controversy, has no problem in continuing to go ahead and throw mud.

Therefore I feel I am fully entitled to reply to Martina’s only attempt to answer any of the questions I posed in my recent letter to this paper.

Of course she, like Donncha before her, can only throw up the old anti-Republican journalists, those right wing press bogeymen, in reply to the questions posed.

I for one would like to know what lies between the right-wing press and what Martin calls ‘dissident journalists’ so that we are on ‘safe’ ground in regards the members of the press?

Exploitation

Martina talks about exploitation yet she and other members of her party have no problem claiming that IRA Volunteers who died for a 32 County Socialist Republic did so for what is basically a photocopy of the Sunningdale Agreement.

It might have a new name but it is no different.

That is the reason I today am totally against the use of armed struggle.

Attempts to smear those of us who resisted the beatings and everything the prison system threw at us and who watched as our ten comrades walked from the wings for the last time will no longer wash.

No amount of mud-slinging can bury the truth.

Is mise le meas,
Thomas Dixie Elliott

Sourced from the Derry Journal

Contents

Use this link to access all contents

New to Archive

SPRING 2013: 55 HOURS
A day-by-day account of the events of early July, 1981.


There's an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend? It has withstood the blows of a million years, and will do so to the end.