July 1981

British ‘had no intention of resolving the hunger strike’
Brian Rowan reports
Belfast Telegraph, Thursday, 4 June 2009

The IRA jail leader during the 1981 hunger strike today said the British Government never had any intention of resolving the notorious prison dispute in which 10 men starved to death.

Brendan ‘Bic’ McFarlane accused the then Thatcher Government of trying to resolve the prison protest “on their terms” while attempting to “wreck” the IRA in the process.

McFarlane, speaking in an exclusive interview for the Belfast Telegraph, again dismissed claims that he accepted an offer secretly communicated by the British that summer, but was overruled by the Army Council on the outside.

The suggestion first emerged in the controversial book Blanketmen — written by former prisoner Richard O’Rawe, who was part of the IRA jail leadership in 1981.

A British offer on the prisoners’ demands was communicated in the summer of that year through a secret contact channel which was codenamed Mountain Climber.

And, on Sunday, July 5, the senior republican Danny Morrison was allowed into the Maze to separately brief McFarlane and the hunger strikers.

“Something was going down,” McFarlane said.

“And I said to Richard (O’Rawe) this is amazing, this is a huge opportunity and I feel there’s a potential here (in the Mountain Climber process) to end this.”

But he said he also made clear that more was needed — that the British had to “expand the offer, and they need to go into the prison hospital”.

McFarlane said this was key — that the Government detail its offer directly to the hunger strikers.

“They (the hunger strikers) were at pains to say the Brits need to come forward,” he said.

“They need to expand on it (the offer),” he continued, “and stand over it and it needed to be underwritten in whatever shape, form or fashion the British chose to do that. It needed to be confirmed,” he said.

McFarlane said at the time this had also been made clear to the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace.

“They (the Commission) went directly to the British and urged them to send someone in,” McFarlane continued.

“The British indicated clearly that they were sending someone in and it didn’t happen.

Looking back at the events of 1981, McFarlane said: “It seems very clear that they didn’t have an intention to resolve it to an acceptable degree — that we felt was acceptable.

“They were going to resolve it on their terms and wreck us in the process,” he said.

My crucial discussion with the Maze strikers

When Brendan McFarlane met Danny Morrison in the jail that Sunday afternoon in July 1981, four hunger strikers were dead and another Joe McDonnell “was in an appalling state”.

The jail leader knew that Morrison’s presence meant something was happening.

For months — since the first hunger strike of 1980 — he had been banned from the jail, and, now, on a Sunday when there were no visits the prison gates had opened for him.

The man from the outside was allowed in to explain the Mountain Climber contacts and the offer the British had communicated.

And the fact that the British were in contact — albeit through a conduit now known to be the Derry businessman Brendan Duddy — was progress.

After meeting Morrison, McFarlane met the hunger strikers.

“We went through it step by step,” he said. “The hunger strikers themselves said: OK the Brits are prepared to do business — possibly, but what is detailed, or what has been outlined here isn’t enough to conclude the hunger strike.

“And they said to me, what do I think?

“And I said I concur with your analysis — fair enough — but you need to make your minds up,” he continued.

The hunger strikers, according to both McFarlane and Morrison wanted the British to send someone into the prison.

McFarlane continued: “Something had to be written down. Something had to be produced to the hunger strikers, even to the extent that the Brits were saying, there it is, nothing more, take it or leave it, and that’s the way the lads wanted clarity on this.

“We were never given a piece of paper,” he added.

McFarlane: Key Dates

1951 – born Belfast.

1968 – left Belfast to train as a priest.

1970 – left seminary in Wales and later joined IRA.

1976 – life sentence for gun and bomb attack on Bayardo Bar in Belfast (August 1975, five killed).

1981 – IRA jail leader during hunger strike. Ten men died (7 IRA, 3 INLA).

1983 – he escaped from the Maze in IRA breakout.

1986 – re-arrested in Amsterdam, extradited and returned to Maze Prison.

1998 – release papers signed January 5.

Now – Sinn Fein party activist based in north Belfast

Sourced from the Belfast Telegraph

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to understand the bigger picture to understand Duddy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sourced from the Belfast Telegraph

‘There was never any deal offered’
Irish Post

REPUBLICAN hunger strike prisoners who died in the Maze prison in 1981 were never offered any ‘deal’ from the Margaret Thatcher-led Government, according to Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane.

McFarlane succeeded Bobby Sands as leader of the political prisoners in the H-Blocks and has vehemently denied suggestions that a strikebreaking deal was put in place by the then-British Government that might have saved the lives of Republican prisoners.

A total of 10 men died on the strike and the story that a deal was rejected by the IRA was widely reported in the media in recent weeks.

The former Officer Commanding (OC) believes that the information is being deliberately fed to discredit Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin.

“There was never any deal,” he said, when speaking to The Irish Post in London over the weekend. “All this information is specifically being used to target Gerry Adams and discredit both him and Sinn Féin. “What it’s actually doing is accusing him of killing the hunger strikers, which is absolutely preposterous.”

He added: “The whole thrust of this is coming from information that certain journalists requested from the British Government. “But the Government and the journalists didn’t release it all — so we’ve actually asked them to publish the whole lot because you will see, through an outline of their own documentation, that they did not have any deal.”

The assertion that there was a deal on the table in 1981 was made by former Republican prisoner Richard O’Raw who was held in the H-Blocks (Maze/Long Kesh) during the hunger strikes.

But leading Republicans have long denounced the testimony contained in his book Blanket Men.

“The British opened the conduit,” said McFarlane. “They said it was to bring about a resolution. But they had to go in with a piece of paper to the hunger strikers and say have a read of it, and ask whether we wanted to accept what they were offering — be it one or two concessions or whatever. “But the British never came in because no deal existed and it didn’t happen.

Sourced from the Irish Post

SF denies claims on hunger strike deaths
GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor, Irish Times

Mon, Apr 06, 2009

SINN FÉIN has rejected the latest claims that the IRA leadership prevented a deal that possibly could have saved the lives of six of the 10 republicans who died in the 1981 H-Block hunger strikes.

These claims follow on repeated allegations that the IRA and Sinn Féin leaderships in 1981 refused to countenance ending the strike in July in order to facilitate the election of hunger strike candidate Owen Carron in August 1981. The election of Mr Carron as MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone, which followed the election of Bobby Sands who died in May of that year, marked the rise of Sinn Féin as a political force.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that it had seen documents that showed the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, despite publicly being opposed to the prisoners’ demands, privately was prepared to make critical concessions.

These reported concessions, including a key demand that prisoners be allowed wear their own clothes, were made in July at a time when Bobby Sands and three other prisoners had died. By the time the hunger strike began to peter out in late August, six more prisoners had died. The last of the hunger strikers to die was INLA member Michael Devine, who passed away on August 20th, the day Mr Carron was elected MP.

The allegation that the republican leadership, driven by Gerry Adams, was prepared to prolong the strike in order to see Mr Carron elected, has been raging for a number of years now.

Four years ago former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe, in his book Blanketmen , said the IRA army council blocked a deal that possibly could have saved the lives of six of the hunger strikers. The Sunday Times report quoting documents it received under freedom of information legislation effectively supports Mr O’Rawe’s account of events.

Mr O’Rawe said that in July 1981, when four prisoners had died, the prisoners’ leadership accepted a deal to end the strike but that this was over-ruled by the IRA army council. Mr O’Rawe wrote that a British intermediary effectively conceded most of the prisoners’ five demands. In his book, Mr O’Rawe said that he and Brendan McFarlane, the IRA commanding officer in the Maze Prison at the time, agreed the offer should be accepted.

Both Mr McFarlane and Mr Morrison have repeatedly insisted the claims by Mr O’Rawe and others are wrong.

A Sinn Féin spokesman also said yesterday that the allegations were untrue. He said they emanated from British military intelligence “and ignore completely the actual timeline of events”.

© 2009 The Irish Times

Sourced from The Irish Times

Hunger Strike Deal Must Be Disclosed
Seamus McKinney, Irish News

TRUTH: The 10 republican hunger strikers – pictured on the first day of each of their individual protests at the Maze Prison – and the dates on which they died PICTURE: Alan Lewis/Photopress

The first IRA hunger striker to speak about a possible deal which could have saved the lives of five or possibly six of his colleagues has called for the full facts of the initiative to be made public.
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From The Sunday Times April 5, 2009

Was Gerry Adams complicit over hunger strikers?
Papers suggest IRA snubbed a conciliatory offer from Margaret Thatcher to ensure Sinn Fein by-election win to Westminster

Liam Clarke
Read the documents here

Did five, or even six, of the republican prisoners who were on hunger strike in the Maze prison in 1981 die to advance the political strategy of Sinn Fein?

Did Gerry Adams and other members of the IRA kitchen cabinet snub a conciliatory offer from Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister, which met the substance of the prisoners’ demands, just to ensure that Sinn Fein would win a crucial by-election to Westminster?

These are the explosive questions raised for Sinn Fein by papers released to The Sunday Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
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1981 hunger strike – an offer, a deal or what?
Published Date: 18 April 2008

Richard O’Rawe has made a number of complaints regarding the assertion by Colm Scullion in the Journal two weeks ago that no deal was made with the hunger strikers before Joe McDonnell died in July 1981.

Among other things Mr O’Rawe states the Journal should know “that Bik McFarlane, who was OC of IRA prisoners during the hunger strike, has always denied that any offer of any sort was ever made by the British at any point (see UTV Live, 1 March 2005,
in reply to question from reporter Fearghal McKinney).”
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Hunger Strike Controversy Has Not Gone Away, You Know
April 17, 2008

Eamon McCann’s Belfast Telegraph article and Radio Free Eireann interview about Richard O’Rawe’s account of the prisoner acceptance of a deal which would have saved the lives of six hunger strikers has created more questions than answers. McCann’s pieces were firm in his conviction that “Richard O’Rawe is telling the truth”, based on confirmations he had from the “Mountain Climber”, former prisoners on the same wing and Richard’s cellmate. Richard’s cellmate, Colm Scullion, was then quoted by the Derry Journal – in a confused piece, which, for example, referred to the Derry based INLA hunger strikers as being IRA, and also ran without a by-line – saying there was no deal but agreeing there was an offer. This was followed by a letter from Scullion to the Irish News, which Richard O’Rawe has answered today.
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Will IRA ever admit truth over hunger strike?

Eamon McCann, Belfast Telegraph,
Thursday, 27 March 2008

New light has been shed on reported republican reaction to a British offer which might have ended the 1981 hunger strike after four deaths. Ten men were to die before the strike ended.

Evidence which has now become available helps clarify a dispute sparked three years ago by the assertion of former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe that terms for ending the strike, accepted by the prisoners’ leadership in the Maze/Long Kesh, were rejected by IRA commanders outside. The implication is that the lives of six of the hunger strikers might have been saved if the prisoners hadn’t been overruled.
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* See also Expanded Timeline 29 June – 12 July 1981

Morrison: Hunger strike deal didn’t exist
Daily Ireland

Danny Morrison
07/06/2006

In a forthcoming BBC documentary Richard O’Rawe once again will be claiming that the republican leadership rejected a deal from the British government shortly before the death of Joe McDonnell on July 8th 1981. Richard is a former blanket man and PRO in the H-Blocks. Whilst in jail Richard never raised his claims with the leadership in prison or the leadership outside. After Richard’s release he worked with me in the Republican Press Centre for a year and never mentioned the allegations he now makes.
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Dramas out of crises
Two new books offer compelling material to potential dramatists
Henry McDonald
The Observer, Sunday 1 May 2005 02.33 BST

Two hundred and ninety-two years separate the Siege of Derry from the second hunger strike in the Maze. Books out this year concerning these two key events not only shed new light on our history but also provide a challenge for screenwriters and television producers.

Carlo Gebler’s The Siege of Derry is a masterful and meticulously structured account of the 105-day struggle against the besieging Jacobite armies in 1689, while Richard O’Rawe’s Blanketmen gives a painfully honest insider’s view of the 1981 death fast. The one thing the two works have in common is the dramatic tension contained in the narratives, which are full of tragedy, sacrifice, endurance and political opportunism.
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Thursday, April 07, 2005

A bizarre tale with a ring of authenticity

Blanketmen
By Richard O’Rawe
New Island Books • £Sterling 9.99

Reviewed by John Cooney
Western People

During the 1981 hunger strikes in the H-Block of the Maze Prison a regular visitor was the Dungannon priest, Father Denis Faul, whom the prisoners nick-named “Denis the Menace” because of his campaign with the prisoners’ families to end their fast.

Recalling their ordeal in one of the most gruesome episodes of the Troubles some 24 years later, Fr Faul, then chaplain to the prisoners, says that he felt at the time that there was “a political dimension” that made his humanitarian campaign more difficult.
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Dead Men Talking …

Blanketmen
By Richard O’Rawe
New Island, stg£9.99

Book Review

Maurice Hayes

This is a really gripping book, and an important one too for an understanding of the dynamics both of the 1981 Hunger Strikes and of the rise of Sinn Fein as a political force. It is the first account written by an insider, and it is as near as you will get to hearing dead men talking about their concerns, their dreams and the relentless loyalty to a cause that drives them to their deaths.

Ricky O Rawe was the Communications Officer in the H-Block, and one of only two people in the prison to be fully in the loop between the IRA command and the hunger strikers as they faced death, one after another. The story is told with a stark honesty, which discloses the author’s mental agony at the moral dilemmas he faced then and which have clearly stayed with him since.
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Hunger strike revisited

Book Review

Daily Ireland

Think you know the story of the 1981 hunger strikes? Think again. We’ve all seen Bobby Sands’ emaciated body, the footage of people honking car horns in glee at his election, that priest comparing conditions to an open sewer in Calcutta. You might even say that Richard O’Rawe’s Blanketmen (New Island), is – whisper it – old news.

All this is playing in the shallow end of a powerful tale. O’Rawe pulls the reader into the deep water till they’re gulping for air.

Rather than the ‘skin and bones’ Bobby Sands, the 2-D icon for a thousand murals, you meet a “man for all seasons”; softly spoken with a flair for sing-songs.
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‘Raw truth’ of Hunger Strike
Sunday Times Online

Comment: Liam Clarke: Raw truth of hunger strike fights its way past myths
March 20, 2005

Anybody who wants to understand the history of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein should read Blanketmen, Richard O’Rawe’s searingly honest account of the events surrounding the 1981 hunger strike.

O’Rawe gives us something new in modern republican history: a participant’s account that attempts to face the facts without romanticising them.

Up to now we have had mostly anodyne accounts, in which every dead IRA man was good at Gaelic games, fearless on active service and loved his mother. Every decision taken by Gerry Adams, the infallible helmsman of the movement and founder of the peace process, was not only correct but also designed to save lives and bring about a ceasefire.

We have also been treated to cod biographies in which Adams never joined the IRA, and a book of lives of IRA volunteers in which well-known informers are revered for their dedication. In this alternative universe, the IRA never committed a crime and even when it made mistakes it was forced into them by the Brits. As Goethe noted, “patriotism ruins history”.

O’Rawe was a public relations officer for IRA prisoners and later for Sinn Fein, so it should not surprise him that the full weight of the republican propaganda machine was deployed to drown the simple truth that many of the later hunger strikers wanted to end the protest around the time when Joe McDonnell, the fifth of the 10 prisoners to die, reached the critical stage.

I know the feeling. I still remember the call from Danny Morrison to my home in North Belfast nearly 10 years ago. He was appealing to me not to write a book about the hunger strikes. He implored me not to slander the memory of the dead or bring distress to their families.

I had just conducted an interview with Geraldine Scheiss, the girlfriend of Kieran Doherty, the eighth hunger striker to die. She told me that he wanted to call off the strike and that, in his final two hours of life, asked her to get tablets to save him from death. Tom Toner, the prison chaplain, confirmed that shortly before Doherty died Scheiss had come out of his room to say he was asking for tablets “for his body”. Doherty’s mother wouldn’t agree until her husband Alfie got back to the jail. Scheiss tried unsuccessfully to get the tablets herself. By the time Doherty’s father returned to the prison, his son had died.

It was clear to me that Kieran Doherty was unhappy about the hunger strike and had expressed his doubts about continuing. He had told Mary McDermott, the mother of Sean McDermott, a close IRA comrade, that “there was a lot more to it than the five demands”. It was clear from her and from other prisoners that Paddy Quinn, another hunger striker who was taken off by his mother when he became unconscious, had spoken in favour of ending the strike.

I sent a copy of my taped interview with Scheiss to her for comment, mentioning in a covering letter that one or two passages were not clear. I got a solicitor’s letter back denying she had said any of it and saying the tape must all have been faulty. As a result I put in only what was independently confirmed.

Sinn Fein had stymied me at every turn in writing the book. I was invited for interviews and kept sitting for hours in a room with prisoners’ wives and relatives waiting for the Long Kesh minibus, only to be told that nobody was available to speak to me. Eventually two liaison people were appointed — Morrison later told me that the only purpose was to see what I was up to — but they proved quite helpful.

One was the former hunger striker Pat “Beag” McGeown, a republican of tremendous dedication, haunted by survivor’s guilt because his wife had taken him off the hunger strike when so many others had died. “You can’t really be sorry to be alive, but yes it does trouble me,” he said.

He hinted at things that would be confirmed and fleshed out in O’Rawe’s account. McGeown told me he had wanted the strike to end and that “a certain number of hunger strikers had arrived at the same conclusion and were saying, ‘Look, possibly the whole thing should be reviewed’.”

It was also clear to me that, although the IRA leadership had not wanted the hunger strike to start in the first place, once Bobby Sands was elected to Westminster things had changed. They wanted it to continue until Owen Carron, a Sinn Fein member who stood as “proxy prisoner” could be elected to the seat left vacant by Sands’s death. At the time there was a republican policy of not contesting Westminster or Dail elections and this was the leadership’s way round it. As Adams said in a 1985 Bobby Sands memorial lecture: “The hunger strikes, at great cost to our H-Block martyrs and their families, smashed criminalisation and led to the electoral strategy, plus the revamping of the IRA.”

O’Rawe puts it more bluntly. The hunger strikers, he said, may have been “cannon fodder” and six of them may have died just to get Sinn Fein’s political project under way.

The hunger strike was prolonged despite an offer to the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP), which would have been guaranteed by the Catholic church’s hierarchy, that met many of the prisoners’ demands. Substantially the same offer was repeated through an MI6 officer with whom Adams was liaising, and was accepted by the prison leadership as the best deal available. When the hunger strike did eventually end, the same offer was at length implemented and greeted as a victory by republicans.

O’Rawe reveals that McGeown had been warned to keep quiet about his doubts when Adams visited the hunger strikers after many of their families asked him to end the strike. Adams made it clear the visit was a formality, saying that he had come because he “felt duty-bound to satisfy the clergymen and all those who were pressurising their families”.

Most tellingly of all he was accompanied by Carron, who was dressed in what the prisoners referred to as his “election suit”. The implied message was that they would be letting the movement down if they did not hold out until polling was over. Doherty did not attend because he was judged too ill. Instead Adams visited him in a private room and came out saying that “Big Doc” was determined to continue.

The price was deaths in the prison and on the streets, as hunger strike rioting continued. An honest debate on Sinn Fein’s entry to politics was avoided, and Adams’ strategy was advanced.

Some may say it was worth it. Ending the hunger strike after three or four deaths on the basis of the offer to the ICJP, and the parallel offer through MI6, would have set the Sinn Fein political project back. The Catholic church and the SDLP, who were to the fore in the ICJP, would have shared the credit, with little going the way of Sinn Fein.

Adams would then have had to argue openly for a political strategy. He might have faced a split.

Of course it is the duty of military leaders to take such decisions. Generals send men to their deaths after weighing the lives of soldiers against their overall strategic objectives.

It can be argued that Adams and the republican leadership made the right choice but it is an argument that they never had the courage to make. Certainly not to the families of the hunger strikers.

Sourced from Bobby Sands Net Resources

For the cause or caucus
Village
Saturday, 19 March 2005

Richard O’Rawe’s book which claims that the six H-Block hunger strikers were allowed to die purely for political expediency is reviewed by Hugh Logue who was part of the team that negotiated to end the hunger strikes
Blanketmen

by Richard O’Rawe
New Island, €13.99

The old adage that troubles come in three will have credence in Sinn Féin. Just when they had hoped that they were emerging from the Robert Mc Cartney murder and the Northern Bank raid, along comes Richard O’Rawe’s Blanketmen to unsettle that holy of holies, the 1981 H-Block hunger strike, during which 10 hunger strikers died. For republicans that is the shrine from which all popular support has flowed in the last twenty years. Prior to it, Sinn Féin was a political fig leaf on a military movement, extremely cynical of electoral participation. O’Rawe’s assertion that six of the hunger strikers were allowed to die to secure the electoral success of Owen Carron in Fermanagh South Tyrone is as unwelcome to Sinn Féin as it will be unsettling for the families of the hunger strikers.

Blanketmen is an important, interesting yet intriguing book. Intriguing, in that in this well written and readable book, there is no acknowledgement of assistance in editing, researching or proofing of the text.
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Former comrades’ war of words over hunger strike

(Steven McCaffrey, Irish News)

The man who led IRA prisoners inside the Maze jail during the 1981 hunger strike has dismissed a controversial new book on the period as fictitious.

Brendan McFarlane speaks to Steven McCaffrey about a period that still stirs deeply held emotions among republicans.

In his book, Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike, Richard O’Rawe fondly re-calls his former republican comrade Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane.

Describing him as “six feet tall and full of bonhomie”, a “striking character” and a “great singer”, the author writes that both men were avid fans of Gaelic football and that they “whiled away the time dreaming of the day when the Antrim football team would grace Croke Park in an all-Ireland final”.
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McFarlane denies Hunger Strike deal was struck

(Irelandclick.com)

Brendan McFarlane, the leader of the H-Block prisoners during the hunger strikes of 1981, has rejected any suggestion that a deal was rejected before the death of Joe McDonnell.

The North Belfast man said the claims in Richard O’Rawe’s book entitled Blanketmen: The Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike had caused distress among the families of the hunger strikers.

In his book O’Rawe claims the final six men to die were sacrificed for political reasons and to help the election of Owen Carron to Bobby Sands’ Westminster seat.

“All of us, particularly the families of the men who died, carry the tragedy and trauma of the hunger strikes with us every day of our lives.

“It was an emotional and deeply distressing time for those of us who were in the H-Blocks and close to the hunger strikers,” said Brendan McFarlane.

“However, as the Officer Commanding in the prison at the time, I can say categorically that there was no outside intervention to prevent a deal.
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Hunger strike claims rile H-block veterans
Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 4 March 2005 12.20 GMT

To nationalists it was one of the most emotive episodes of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the event that gave birth to the electoral force that is modern Sinn Féin.

But the death of 10 republican hunger strikers in the Maze prison in 1981 became the subject of a furious row in Belfast this week after a former prisoner claimed that Gerry Adams and the IRA army council had blocked a deal to end the protest, possibly sacrificing the last six of the hunger strikers for electoral gain.

Richard O’Rawe, 51, who acted as public relations officer for the hunger strikers while he was serving a sentence for robbery, said that a deal was offered in July 1981 which addressed most of the prisoners’ demands for political status.
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Hunger Strikers Story Brought to Book

From Daily Ireland, 2 March 2005
Danny Morrison

I got a phone call from the ‘Sunday Times’ last Saturday.

“Do you know Richard O’Rawe,” the journalist asked. “He mentions you in a new book he has brought out.”

That surprised me because I had waved to Richard a few days earlier when I crossed the road just below his house and would have thought he would have given me the good news – and a free copy. About four years ago he came to me and told me he was writing a book about growing up in West Belfast and could I give him advice. We met twice, once in each other’s homes. What I read was quite funny and reminiscent of my own youth. Richard said that an agent had offered to publish his book for several thousand pounds. I told him not to go down that road – which is called vanity publishing – and I gave him the names of some literary scouts and publishers. But I don’t think he had any luck. It is a tough circle to break into.

The journalist told me that his paper was serialising Richard’s book, ‘Blanketmen’, and proceeded to read out to me an accompanying feature: ‘Ireland: The men who died for nothing. Former Maze inmate Richard O’Rawe was at the heart of the 1980s hunger strike drama. His new book lays the blame for six of the 10 deaths firmly on his IRA army council masters.’

I was astonished. Richard was saying that there was a deal offered to the hunger strikers by the British before Joe McDonnell died but that the army council rejected it. The journalist quoted from the book: “No matter which way one views it, the outside leadership alone, not the prison leadership, took the decision to play brinkmanship with Joe McDonnell’s life. If Bik and I had had our way, Joe and the five comrades who followed him to the grave would be alive today.”
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Hunger strikers’ lives not sacrificed — family

(Barry McCaffrey, Irish News)

The family of a dead hunger striker last night (Tuesday) hit out at claims that the IRA sacrificed the lives of republican prisoners in negotiations with the British government during the 1981 dispute.

The family of Francis Hughes last night rejected the claims from former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe, who earlier this week stated that the British government had been prepared to agree to four of five prisoner demands during the 1981 hunger strike.

However Mr O’Rawe claimed that while IRA leaders in the prison were prepared to accept the deal, they were overruled by the army council on the outside.

Six other hunger strikers died before the end of the protest in October 1981.
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‘Dying wasn’t their decision’

Controversy persisted last night (Tuesday) over allegations in a book that the IRA army council may have allowed some hunger strikers to die. Former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe has claimed the paramilitary leadership blocked an acceptable deal from the British government to end the 1981 protest before six of the 10 men had died.

The allegation has been dismissed by former IRA jail leader Brendan Bik McFarlane.

Mr McFarlane insisted “no deal was offered to the hunger strikers whereby they could say it was acceptable”.

However, a woman connected to one hunger striker, who did not want to be named but said she had attended family meetings surrounding the hunger strike, last night backed Mr O’Rawe’s claims.
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Allegations of a rejected deal spark fury among republicans

(Catherine Morrison, Irish News)

Senior republicans last night (Monday) rejected controversial claims in a new book that Sinn Féin and the IRA blocked a deal which could have saved the lives of six hunger strikers.

Richard O’Rawe, spokesman for the Provisional IRA in the Maze prison during the hunger strikes, said he accepted a British government deal just days before the fifth hunger striker, Joe McDonnell, died in July 1981.

In Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike, Mr O’Rawe claims fellow prisoners’ leader Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane had shared details of a “substantial” offer from Margaret Thatcher’s government, conceding four of the five IRA demands.

The only point the British had refused to concede was the free association of prisoners on the IRA wing.

Mr O’Rawe, who was serving eight years for robbery, claimed both men agreed that the offer, which was tabled by a mysterious middleman called the Mountain Climber, was sufficient to call off the hunger strike.
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Monsignor Faul regrets his ‘late intervention’

(Catherine Morrison, Irish News)

A key player in the 1981 hunger strikes last night (Monday) said he regretted not intervening earlier in the protest.

Monsignor Denis Faul, was a regular visitor at the Maze prison at the time and a supporter of the prisoners’ families.

Mgr Faul described how, by the end of June 1981, he believed the strikes were all but over.

Four prisoners had died agonising slow deaths from starvation, but unbeknownst to Mgr Faul at the time, six more would die before the protest was brought to an end.
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Was my father’s death PR exercise?

(Seamus McKinney and Catherine Morrison, Irish News)

The son of a Derry hunger striker has voiced concerns over claims that the republican leadership could have allowed his father to die for political gain.

Michael Devine, whose father Mickey was the last of the 10 men to die in the 1981 protest, was speaking after publication of Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-block Hunger Strike.

The book’s author, Richard O’Rawe, was a public relations officer for the hunger strikers in the Maze. Along with IRA prisoners’ ‘OC’ Brendan Bik McFarlane, he was closely in-volved in the day-to-day events of the hunger strike.
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July 8, 1981, Wednesday, Final Edition

5th IRA Hunger Striker Dies Before Settlement Reached
BYLINE: By Leonard Downie, Jr., Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: LONDON, July 8, 1981 (Wednesday)

Convicted Irish Republican Army terrorist Joe McDonnell died this morning after refusing food for 61 days after it appeared that mediators were near achieving a settlement to stop the four-month-old hunger strike that has now claimed five lives.

Britain’s Northern Ireland Office announced the death in a terse statement that said McDonnell, 30, “took his own life by refusing food and medical attention for 61 days” at 5:11 a.m. (12:11 a.m. EDT). The announcement came more than two hours after McDonnell’s death.

McDonnell, who is survived by a wife and two children, was serving a 14-year sentence for illegal weapons possession.

The death came after sources close to negotiations to end the protest by IRA prisoners in British-ruled Northern Ireland said the British government had decided to send an official into the Maze Prison outside Belfast to read a statement outlining changes the government has agreed to make in the prison regime.

This appeared to break a deadlock over which side would move first to implement a settlement worked out by the five mediators from the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace of the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland to the south of Ulster.

The British official still had not gone into the Maze when McDonnell’s death was announced, and it was not unclear why not. In a statement to reporters shortly before midnight last night, the chairman of the Irish church commission, Brian Gallagher, said that the settlement was a race against time with McDonnell near death.

The prisoners had insisted that an official appear in the prison to guarantee that the government would make the promised changes in prison conditions. Government officials had said yesterday that nothing more could be done until the prisoners first ended their fast.

This sticking point, according to sources, had prevented the mediators from making a statement of their own this afternoon in Belfast outlining what the government had proposed, and the prisoners were reported to have accepted. The dispute over whether or not a government official would go into the Maze to talk to the prisoners followed a final meeting between the mediators and government officials in Belfast Monday night.

British sources confirmed yesterday that at the four-hour meeting the mediators presented a draft statement for settling the hunger strike to the British officials, headed by Michael Allison, the minister in charge of prisons in Northern Ireland.

British officials have contended that the prisoners could trust the government to make the discussed changes because it has carried out numerous other steps to liberalize the prison regime in Northern Ireland during the last two years. Only continuation of the hunger strike, British sources said, was stopping the government from beginning immediately to make more improvements.

Sources said the proposed changes include allowing prisoners to wear their own clothes at all times, to visit each other during leisure hours for longer periods in larger numbers, and to substitute education programs, vocational training projects, handiwork for charity and construction of additional prison facilities for traditional industrial prison work. Prisoners ending their protest also would be eligible for expanded mail and visitor privileges and restoration of some of the lost time off for good behavior, according to the sources.

These proposals have been generally accepted by the hunger strikers, the more than 400 other convicted nationalist terrorists in the Maze and other militants, sources said.

July 5, 1981, Sunday, Final Edition

Break Seen In Ulster Jail Crisis;
British and Ira Prisoners Appear Ready To Move Toward Agreement;
British, Prisoners Modify Conditions For Settling Dispute
BYLINE: By Leonard Downie Jr., Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: LONDON, July 4, 1981

Both the British government and imprisoned Irish nationalist hunger strikers in British-ruled Northern Ireland appeared ready today to give ground in their impasse over prison rules in an effort to head off further starvation deaths among inmates.

A Roman Catholic group in the Republic of Ireland, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, met with British officials and the hunger strikers amid signs that both sides had modified their positions in response to the commission’s intervention. The commission is a group of clergy and lay people affiliated with the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

British officials said the government is willing to make further modifications in prison conditions in Northern Ireland if the hunger strike is ended. They suggested the European Human Rights Commission as an arbitrator of prisoners’ complaints.

A statement made on behalf of the prisoners, markedly more consiliatory than earlier statements, said that there is no need for either side to lose a point of principle and that there is still plenty of room for maneuver.

The statement reiterated the prisoners’ original five demands, but dropped language in previous statements also demanding treatment as political rather than criminal prisoners. Instead, the statement said the prisoners were seeking changes for all prisoners in Northern Ireland.

Time is running short, however. After an interval of six weeks since the deaths of the first four hunger strikers, Joe McDonnell, 30, a member of the outlawed Provisional Irish Republican Army serving a 14-year sentence for illegal possession of arms, lies near death after refusing food for 57 days. He is reported to be having extreme difficulty hearing and seeing. He was given last rites of the Catholic Church Thursday.

Seven other hunger strikers are expected to die at one- or two-week intervals in the next two months if the protest does not end.

Until recent days, there had been little sign of movement away from the longstanding deadlock between the demands of convicted Irish nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland for changes in prison conditions, including their insistence that they be treated as political prisoners, and the refusal by the British government to grant them that status or give up any of its control of the prison.

British sources said Michael Allison, a government minister responsible for Northern Ireland, told members of the Irish church commission today that the government still would not negotiate with the prisoners and must remain in control of the prison regime.

But the sources also emphasized the government’s willingness to make some changes, particularly if suggested by the European Human Rights Commission, if the prisoners end their hunger strike.

“We are not left with a great deal of room for maneuver,” said one source, “but we wish to get it settled.”

Some of the hunger strikers and their relatives also have been reported to be more receptive to compromise now, although suspicious of promises. A bigger question is the attitude of leaders of other convicted Irish nationalist terrorists inside the prison and their supporters outside, who have remained publicly hostile to settlement for anything less than the prisoners’ original demands.

Efforts to reach a settlement, begun by suggestions for compromise by the Irish church commission last month, intensified with a day-long meeting yesterday between commission members and British officials headed by Allison at Hillsborough Castle, three miles from the Maze Prison outside Belfast where relatives, priests, lawyers and representatives of the commission have been in contact with the hunger strikers.

At the same time, relatives of the hunger strikers met for three hours in Dublin with the new Irish prime minister, Garret FitzGerald, who also consulted on the problem with both the Irish church commission and the British ambassador to Ireland. The commission then met with British officials and the hunger strikers today.

The five specific demands made by the prisoners are that they be allowed to wear their own clothes at all times, be exempted from required prison work, be allowed to associate freely with other prisoners, receive more mail and visitors, and regain the time off for good behavior that they have lost during their protest.

The Irish church commission suggested publicly last month that a compromise settlement be built on allowing the prisoners to wear their own clothes, increasing opportunities for freer association while not allowing paramilitary groupings or training, and reviewing the question of prison work to “ensure that the work is of the greatest possible cultural and educational value and that no work of a demeaning nature is demanded.”

The commission also called on the prisoners “to contribute towards the resolution of this issue by making it clear that the proposals on clothing, association and work which we have outlined would, if implemented, provide the avenue for a solution.”

British officials first criticized the suggestion as being unlikely to resolve the prisoners’ overriding desire to be treated as political rather than criminal prisoners. Informed sources said the government also was concerned about the reaction of Protestant loyalists to a compromise, at a time of high tension in Northern Ireland, and about possible erosion of the government’s authority inside the prison.

But this week, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Humphrey Atkins, made public a long statement detailing steps taken in the past to liberalize conditions for all prisoners in Northern Ireland and indicating areas where modifications could be made or considered in the future.

Atkins reiterated that mail and visitor privileges for conforming prisoners already are more generous that what the protestants have demanded, some remission time has been restored to other prisoners who ended their protests, prisoners may wear their own clothes in leisure time and prison-issued civilian clothes during work hours, supervised association among groups of prisoners already exists, and prisoners have some choice, with the final decision made by the authorities, among various kinds of industrial work, housekeeping chores and educational and training progrms.

He added that greater flexibility could be introduced in the choice of “prison activity” and in rules for group association. But he said control of these would have to remain ultimately with the authorities and no group of prisoners could be treated differently from others.

Atkins was silent about the possibility of any further changes on clothing. Outsiders have contended that this issue should be the easiest to resolve because the prisoners already wear their own clothes much of the time. But it has been a symbol for prison authorities of maintaining control.

Atkins contended that “the Northern Ireland prison regime is generous, and has and will be administered flexibly by the authorities” and added that “there is scope for yet further development.” But he said this would take time and “cannot proceed further while the hunger strike places the authorities under duress.”

An answer purportedly smuggled out of the Maze from leaders of the Irish nationalist prisoners said they would not “submit to such an ambiguous and distorting statement . . . vaguely guaranteeing unspecified further development of the prison regime at some unspecified time in the future.”

A lengthy statement on behalf of the hunger strikers today said they were not seeking special treatment and would not be sacrificing principle if the changes they demand were made for all prisoners.

They said they were willing to perform maintenance work in their cell blocks, for example, and to confine their association with other prisoners to their own cell blocks, under supervision. They said they were not asking to be allowed to do as they pleased in prison.

They said these changes would not erode any of the authorities’ control of the prison and had not been completely understood by British officials. However, they continued to request direct negotiations with the government. Officials made clear today that no such negotiations would occur.

They suggested that some of the hunger strikers and their relatives also had indicated willingness to compromise, but that militant Irish nationalists outside the prison, particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army, were resisting it. The British have contended that the hunger strike and sympathy it has aroused is an important propaganda and recruiting tool for the IRA.

This has been denied by the hunger strikers’ supporters, organized as “H-Block” committees, named for the shape of Maze Prison cell buildings. Gerry Adams, a leader of Provisional Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Provisional IRA, said the British were acting, “on the false premise that the hunger strikers are in some way manipulated from the outside.”