Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland

by Ed Moloney

  The British document handed to Father Meagher at Belfast airport by a mysterious courier from the British government and then rushed to the hospital wing of the Maze prison may well have contained, within its carefully constructed ambiguity, the seeds of a Portlaoise-type settlement – but if it was there, it didn’t exactly jump out of the page. The narrative of what happened next is disputed to this day: did the British renege on a good deal or did Bobby Sands realise that Brendan Hughes and his men had failed and that another hunger strike was inevitable? If it was the latter, as Hughes himself believed, then the days and weeks following 18 December 1980 were spent by Sands and his fellow inmates creating the conditions in which a second hunger strike would seem like a justifiable response to British double-dealing.

  Whatever the truth, the second hunger strike commenced on 1 March 1981 with Bobby Sands leading it alone. The first hunger strike suffered from a structural weakness that proved disastrous and that mistake would not be repeated the second time round. The flaw in the first protest was that the seven prisoners had all started their fast on the same day but since they would not deteriorate at the same rate, one of their number would approach death before the others. The healthier hunger strikers would then have to decide whether their failing comrade should live or die, and the likelihood that they would intervene was always going to be high.

  The second hunger strike, by contrast, was a staggered and weighted affair. First Bobby Sands began fasting, then some time later Francis Hughes, followed after another short interval by Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara, and so on. Not only was the sense of interdependence undermined by this arrangement but very soon the pressure would all be the other way, not to end the protest but to stay on it, even to death. The die had been cast with Sands’s decision to lead the fast alone. No other prisoner would hold Sands’s life in his hands as he approached the end, while the pressure on Sands to expiate the failure of the first hunger strike by sacrificing his own life was huge. Only a concession by Margaret Thatcher could stop that happening, and it didn’t come. Those following Sands carried the weight of his dead body on their shoulders. To end their own protest would be a betrayal of his death and as the toll in the Maze increased, that burden grew exponentially heavier. Sands’s death was virtually unavoidable once the hunger strike began, as he himself must have known. It is this very Republican and Catholic quality of self-sacrifice that made Bobby Sands’s death so special and transformed him into such an iconic figure for the Provos.

  Sands died on 5 May 1981 after sixty-six days without food. Between then and the last week of August 1981, nine more prisoners followed him to an early grave. Outside the jail, sixty-two people, civilians, policemen and British soldiers, died in the riots and violence that accompanied the procession of coffins from the Maze. All this would have been enough to mark out the hunger strikes as a seminal moment in the history of the Troubles. But the protest was significant for another reason. It represented the fork in the road for the Provisional movement, a moment when its leaders were presented with a political alternative to the IRA’s violence – and it happened entirely fortuitously. The Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh–South Tyrone, ex-IRA man Frank Maguire, died suddenly, leaving the seat open. After some tense toing and froing, the way was cleared for Bobby Sands to stand as the sole Nationalist candidate in the resulting by-election and he won quite easily, against conventional expectation.

  Sands’s election to the British House of Commons transformed the IRA hunger strikes into an international media event and greatly intensified the pressure on Margaret Thatcher to end the protest peacefully and without further loss of life. But his victory in Fermanagh–South Tyrone had greater consequences for Sinn Fein and its soon-to-be leader, Gerry Adams. The Provo leadership had been mulling over the idea of standing for elections for some time, weighing up the likely opposition there might be internally. Sands’s triumph in Fermanagh–South Tyrone provided a risk-free opportunity to adopt the strategy. An article in Republican News under the Adams byline, ‘Brownie’, in April 1980, long before even the first hunger strike, gave a glimpse of the thinking at the time. Under the cover of challenging conventional and simplistic IRA notions about how British withdrawal would happen, the author – whose famous Long Kesh nom de plume gave the article huge authority – argued for ‘a strong political movement’ to supplement the IRA’s armed struggle and said that the aim of establishing a socialist republic ‘is only viable from a Republican position if those representing such a radical Republican Movement … secure majority support in government’.65 If the desire to enter the electoral arena and to develop into a more conventional political party was at this stage embryonic, then the hunger strikes functioned as a fast-acting growth hormone. Sands’s election had broken the taboo against standing in elections, which had been a defining part of who the Provos were since 1969. In June 1981, the Irish general election was held and H-block candidates won two seats in the Dublin parliament, causing a change in government. A month later, in August, Sands’s election agent, Owen Carron, won the second Fermanagh–South Tyrone by-election and by that November, Sinn Fein had formally embraced electoral politics as part of its overall strategy. The era of the Armalite and ballot box had dawned but rather than the two working in harmony, it was not long before the IRA violence was getting in the way of electoral success. This fundamental contradiction could be resolved only by either the Armalite or the ballot box prevailing. The rest is history.

  Brendan Hughes’s memory of the weeks and months after the first hunger strike ended, as he admitted to Boston College’s interviewer, are hazy and indistinct, a possible reflection of the emotional turmoil he went through at that time. Of one thing, however, he was absolutely clear and that was his opposition to the second hunger strike. As the protest continued and more bodies were carried out of the jail, his opposition intensified in proportion to the guilt he felt for not having died himself on the first fast. He argued with the new Prison Commander, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, urging him to end it, but to no avail. In the end Hughes concluded that McFarlane kept the hunger strike going because the IRA leadership wished it so.

  … the first hunger strike ended with the situation … unresolved. Myself and Bobby had meetings afterwards and Bobby indicated to me that he was going to go on another hunger strike. I opposed him, I disagreed with him at the time, agreeing with him [only] that the first hunger strike had not resolved the situation; that we were still in a rather severe situation within the H-blocks. But Bobby was the person in charge. I know for a fact that my memory was messed up … I don’t know why … but certainly my recollections of that period are a bit fuzzy. I have a slight memory of John Hume [the SDLP leader] visiting me in the prison hospital, and I don’t know if that actually happened … I went back to H6 and I had this vision about [being] back to square one … I remember feeling a lot worse then than I did even on the hunger strike because I was back into the situation that I had left months before, hoping to come back to a resolved situation and here we were going back onto the treadmill again – only this time me being a passenger or an observer and Bobby taking the lead role.

  I had advocated … from a very early stage … and I advocated it again to Bobby in the prison hospital, that if the situation was not resolved then … we could go into the system and bring about the destruction … of the structure that they were imposing on us by participating in the prison regime, which we had done before. We had done it in Crumlin Road jail … A hunger strike was always seen to be the very, very last resort. Now after the first hunger strike, that, that’s what I was advocating, that we go into the prison, into the system, and sabotage as much as possible and bring about a situation where the screws could not control us, which eventually is what we did. We went into the prison system and just sabotaged all round us. This is after ten men had died, but … I was advocating at the end of the first hunger strike that we should go in even without our own clothes, that we should go in and wear the
prison uniform … I was advocating that rather than embark upon another hunger strike … We had something like three hundred men … and no prison can operate without the co-operation of the prisoners. The prison regime has to find some ways of keeping the prisoners content. If three hundred men went into a system refusing to co-operate with that system, that system will inevitably fall apart. We had tried the hunger strike and it failed. Bobby was insistent … And after Bobby died, I openly opposed the continuation of the hunger strike. When Brendan McFarlane was in charge, I remember standing in the canteen beside the hotplate, advocating to Bik to call the thing off, that enough people had died. And I remember Bik being in turmoil. He was the person in charge, he was the person that had to make the decisions. I met him at Mass on Sundays … There was no shouting out the doors about ending the hunger strikes or anything like that, it was done privately, I did it privately … Richard O’Rawe, who now tells me that he is writing a book about the period,‡‡‡ also advocated ending it. At least he tells me that. But outside of that I don’t know of anyone else who was … as well. I was an observer. I was just another number, whereas up until this period I was the person who was … in some sort of position of influence. This time I was totally out of my depth in that I had no … input into the decisions that were being taken.

  I disagreed with the continuation of the hunger strike. I did not know what was going on in the minds of the people who were allowing this to go on. And yet I was still a passenger on this moving train that was slowly killing people. I sensed that … one person in particular was pushing Bik (and that) was ——. I always thought that this man was in the background, stirring the pot … but not prepared to step into the pot … And remember this, that Bik was, during the whole blanket period, going through periods of depression and here we had Bik in the position where he could have ended … the hunger strike there and then. I do believe that Bik felt really restrained by the powers that be on the outside, by the IRA leadership … I believed the IRA leadership … should have and could have done a lot more to ensure that people did not die … And I think Bik felt that outside did not want him to do that. I can’t speak for Bik or what was going through Bik’s mind at the period, but I believe he felt really restricted on what decisions he could make. And no one on the outside was giving him any sort of advice to call the thing off, even though most of the prisoners by this stage were getting disillusioned. Even though there were still plenty of volunteers prepared to go on the hunger strike, I think most men were getting to the position where they felt enough was enough.

  The feeling of utter futility that I had came after Bobby died. I mean, you had to remember that I disagreed with the second hunger strike in the first place and I had been quietly advocating the calling off of the hunger strike after Bobby died. By the time it got to Joe McDonnell§§§ dying, I was openly opposed to the continuation of the hunger strike and I think it became clear to most prisoners in the jail. I remember feeling really, really guilty … talking to Francis Hughes¶¶¶ before he went on hunger strike. Francis came over and gave me a hug and told me that I shouldn’t feel bad about it [the way the first hunger strike ended], and that he had no reservations, no objections to me … He was obviously quite prepared to do what he was doing. And I felt … ‘What can I say here?’ And I didn’t say anything to him … You don’t say to a person who is just about to embark on a hunger strike, ‘I think you’re wrong’ … I sometimes regret … my not saying that even though I did say it to Bik. But you don’t say it to a man who is walking to his death. And besides that … I was disillusioned and embarrassed … Here I was alive, and here was another man … walking onto the treadmill I had just left … The job was only half done and here were these people like Francis Hughes and Bobby going on to finish the job that I had failed to do. So there were these feelings of being like an outsider. Here were men I’d been with for years, you know, on the blanket and coming through things like that and I felt like an outsider among them … I never finished off the job that I set out to achieve and these people were going to finish it for me. So … it was as simple as that, I felt guilty. And I continued feeling that way for many, many years afterwards … I found it very, very hard to live with myself because I felt that possibly I should have been dead rather than the other ten men.

  In his interviews with Boston College, Brendan Hughes touched upon some of the most controversial, sensitive yet recurring questions that arise out of the 1981 hunger strikes. Why did they last so long? Were any of the deaths needless? Why didn’t the IRA leadership step in and stop the conveyor belt when it became clear that the campaign for political status could not be advanced by further loss of life? Was there an ulterior motive for keeping the protest alive? At the start of it all, the IRA leadership, including Gerry Adams, had made their attitude crystal clear. Fearing a devastating defeat, they had declared against the tactic of hunger striking, while Adams had gone so far as to describe plans for the first fast as ‘suicidal’. The second hunger strike risked being a bigger setback than the first, if only because failure would see the Republican struggle staggering from the second of two knockout blows delivered within months of each other. Victory or defeat hung in the balance. Shouldn’t the leadership therefore have intervened to alleviate the damage? And if not, why not? Hughes’s answer is a controversial one: the hunger strike was kept going for political advantage, he claimed, specifically to help build up Sinn Fein as a political and electoral force.

  I know for a fact that there were people on the outside, people like Ivor Bell|||||| who were totally opposed to the second hunger strike and I know people like Ivor … pushed from his own position to stop the hunger strike taking place. So if the leadership – and I believe they had a responsibility even though we have this old tradition of not interfering with … the prisoners’ decisions … I believe in this particular position where men were dying off … I think, morally, that the leadership on the outside should have intervened … This is an army; we were all volunteers in this army; the leadership had direct responsibility over these men. And I think they betrayed to a large extent the comradeship that was there and they eventually allowed people like Father Faul and families to make their own decisions of ending or stopping their sons, husbands from dying. I remember talking to my sister afterwards and she informed me that if I had gone into a coma, she would not have let me die. So the pressure that was put on the relatives, like Bobby Sands’s mother and all the rest of the sisters and wives, I believe was totally unfair and unjust and a total disregarding of the responsibility that the leadership had. [It was] cowardly in many ways as well to allow mothers and sisters and fathers to make these decisions … allowing that to happen was a total disregard of the responsibility that they had to these people.

  Q. Would the prisoners have ended the hunger strike, in your view, had the leadership ordered them to?

  A. Yes. Yes.

  Q. You do not think that the prisoners would have rebelled?

  A. I don’t believe so, I don’t believe so. Maybe at an early stage of the hunger strike the prisoners might have … rebelled. But I think the prisoners had enough responsibility and enough dedication … to the leadership and to the Army [IRA] that I believe the order would have been taken … just like there were people during the blanket [protest] who refused to leave their cells even to go to Mass, or for a visit, certainly there would have been people who would have [protested] … but I think as time went on and more men died, I think the order from outside would have been accepted, I do believe it. I mean I was certainly advocating that the hunger strike be called off and I … would have stood up and accepted that.

  Q. In your conversations with Ivor Bell, who was a senior figure in the IRA leadership at the time on the outside, in your later conversations with him in relation to the hunger strike, did he give you any indication of the type of opposition that he met within the leadership to his suggestion that the leadership should in fact intervene and call it to an end, bring it to a ha
lt?

  A. As far as I can make out, Ivor was a lone voice in his opposition to it. I mean, Gerry Adams is a powerful figure within the Republican leadership and what Gerry says normally goes. And possibly at that time Ivor Bell would have been the only person that would have been strong enough to stand up against Gerry …

  Q. Do you think Gerry himself had any particular reason for not wanting to intervene?

  A. I’ve always suspected that … there were more reasons than would appear for allowing the hunger strike to go on for so long, political reasons, ambitious reasons … And I have heard some stories which I cannot confirm … where people were ignored, parents were ignored, mothers were ignored when they went to the leadership and asked the leadership to order an end to the hunger strike. I have heard stories that the leadership ignored these requests, which leads you to suspect that there were other reasons rather than the five demands … The five demands were no big deal. We could have survived without the five demands; we could have continued resisting the prison regime without the five demands. The five demands were something that were developed on the outside, they didn’t come from the prisoners … So there was always that suspicion that there was a lot more to this than just prisoners’ demands. I mean, not one death was worth those five demands, not one death, never mind ten deaths. The regime and the conditions that the prisoners had come through over the years did not deserve one death. So I believe that … from outside’s point of view [there were] purely … political reasons to keep the thing going.