On LMFM Monday past Danny Morrison stated that he did not take a British offer to settle the 1981 hunger strike into the H Blocks on the 5th of July 1981. Morrison has long labeled Richard O’Rawe dishonest for having claimed otherwise. Yet Morrison has been proven wrong so many times that people are no longer sure if The Wrong Man is a title of Morrison’s 1997 novel or the name of the author. He has changed his story more times than his boxers.

Morrison smeared O’Rawe, claiming his narrative was scurrilous and that his book Blanketmen was contrived 'on Another Man's Hunger Strike.' Morrison was lying then, he is lying now. The following transcript and video show intermediary Brendan Duddy/The Mountain Climber making it crystal clear that he secured clearance from the British government for Morrison to go into the prison on 5 July 1981 with an offer. Just as O’Rawe said. Maybe Duddy too was out to wreck the peace process despite having spent half his life trying to build it.

What Morrison once said to Richard O’Rawe during one of his many smears can again be turned back on him: Let this be the end of it. It will be no other way. Ten out of every nine people simply don’t believe Morrison.


Barney Rowan interviews Brendan Duddy: Part 9. Source Youtube








Duddy: ... I had no idea at that point, and as I say this is me, somebody here can correct me, that there had been a change in the leadership to what may be called the Northern Command. I did not know that happened. I just know that at that stage I was dealing with Adams in Belfast and McGuinness in Derry. I did not know that they had taken leadership of the Republican Movement. I just thought that O'Bradaigh at this stage was out, McKee was out and various other people was out. So at that particular stage I was limited to a situation. And that's how I wanted it.

Rowan: Just explain to the audience how it happened. You spoke to Donald or Donald spoke to you. You then spoke to Martin McGuinness in Doire. And Martin McGuinness spoke to Gerry Adams in Belfast. What way did it work?

Duddy: Well, I don't want to be just as precise as you're putting it. Donald spoke to me ...

Rowan: Yeah.

Duddy: … everywhere - all the time - right from nine in the morning ‘til ten at night.

Rowan: This is in 1981? This is … 

Duddy: In 1981.

Rowan: As Joe McDonnell is very, very ill at this stage.

Duddy: is very, very ill at this stage. So basically it became clear that the hunger strikes were not going to be resolved. The other thing I might say, and I have no evidence whatsoever of this other than experience: we now know, right now, that the amount of electronic surveillance, the amount of bugging, the amount of “situation” available, it may not have been as sophisticated as it is now, but none of us in this room in 1981 would have known that you could put a device in a car and track it by satellite and tell you that it took, it is in the Mourne Mountains. We didn't know those type of things.

And those type of things were there. So what I would suspect that the British government at that time had an insight not only to the dialogue in the prisons but dialogue in the very intimate areas in which the Republican Movement was, was working day-by-day. I have no idea whether that's true or not. I would firmly believe that that was one of the areas they had. As well as that they had all the telephones coming in and out tapped. So the notion of me talking to you, and you talking to this lady in the front and her talking to Danny Morrison and so forth without all of that being known. We didn't understand that in those days.

Rowan: The argument is about the offer. Would you just explain. to the audience ... 

Duddy: Yes I will explain.

Rowan: ... how the offer was communicated to you.. 

Duddy: Well, first of all the reason I've told you about this particular situation was that when I was speaking in Doire, the journalist Liam Clarke produced a piece of paper. And that piece of paper was a genuine assessment, written down, of what was on offer in the last moments of ...

Rowan: July 81?

Duddy: July 81. The very last moment.

Rowan: You agreed with Liam. Liam Clarke got that document through Freedom of Information.

Duddy: yes, yes.

Rowan: You agreed with the detail of the document?

Duddy:  I agreed immediately with the detail of the document. But the point was that that document was never in print. There were no written communications between the British government and me. None whatsoever. So when this document appeared like this it looked very, very positive and very correct at that time. But in actual fact it was not in existence. Nobody ever handed that document to me and I never handed it to Adams or McGuinness or anyone else.

Rowan: You wrote it down when Donald called you on the phone

Duddy: Yes. I wrote it down. But the point is, and this is quite difficult to take on board, if that document had have been in print and handed over then that document would have became public. there may have been a much greater opportunity of solving it. But if you then go back to what happened in the first hunger strikes when in actual fact everybody thought that this thing was under control, we were heading, as we saw it at that particular time, for a repeat of that because the British made it absolutely clear that any leakage of this situation in any shape, form or fashion would end the dialogue. 

Rowan: So you scribbled the offer down.

Duddy: Yes.

Rowan: You then communicated it to the Republican leadership?

Duddy: Yes.

Rowan: I think your, your sort of test, which is to get someone into the prison on the Sunday,

Duddy: Him. (Duddy points to Danny Morrison in audience).

Rowan: … into the prison on Sunday to, to ..

Duddy: Danny Morrison

Rowan: … outline the offer. What has he got to bring into the prison …?

Duddy: Yes. But I want to say this to you - what I was saying is this here: I was saying the Republicans do not want these hunger strikes. The notion they want twenty, ten, five, eight, six people to die is absolute nonsense. But as long as you won't talk to them and you won't dialogue with them and whatever, the person that I wanted to get in, (Duddy addresses Danny Morrison in audience) with respect to you, Mr. Morrison, was Gerry Adams. And they said no way is Adams going in. Right? you will not be offended here - second choice, right?

(Laugher in audience)

Duddy: So I considered it a positive way forward to get Danny Morrison in. (Duddy turns and speaks directly to Danny Morrison) And I was also totally happy that you were well-aware of what was being said and what was on offer and so forth. So getting Danny Morrison in was, in my book, a major, major step forward. At that particular point of time the real difficulty was that this particular written piece of paper, and I would like if maybe some of the scholars in the audience could try and find out when the British deposited that. And I think that would be quite important. Because if they deposited it say on the twenty-eighth of July at this time when … I would be asking why, if then it was there, why could they not have put it through? And it was equally the first time that I knew that Thatcher was on board because the British always kept a wall there. She was not talking to anybody. She was not doing anything and she didn't want anything to do with it. Remind me to say something else about that in a moment. So Danny Morrison went in and I thought that ...

Rowan: With the outline of the offer that you had communicated to the Republican leadership...


Duddy: ...The Republican leadership had the detail of the offer.

Rowan: Yes,

Duddy: There's no argument about that. But what they didn't have...

Rowan: And what did you do? Did you give Martin McGuinness your note …?

Duddy: That doesn't matter. I'm telling you the Republican leadership had the detail of that offer and at that particular point that offer was available to go into the prisons and whatever. But what was not available at that time...

Rowan: you made that … the document...the document is not clear. The document is not available

Duddy: It didn't exist. I didn't see it at the time.

Rowan: But when you scribbled the offer down you were sitting there in your house

Duddy: I wrote it very carefully.

Rowan: You wrote it very carefully.

Duddy: Yeah

Rowan: Well, when you wrote the offer down very carefully

Duddy: Yes

Rowan: in your own house in July, 1981.

Duddy: you don’t, You, don't take chances like that...

Rowan: No, no. So that's fine. So you're reading it.

Duddy: Yes

Rowan: In your own head?

Duddy: yes

Rowan: do you think: it’s good enough This is it. This iwill break thi s great. This'll get us through. This is it. Should it have been good enough is what I'm asking?

Duddy: I'm not a member of the Republican Movement. I'm not a member of the IRA. I have, the very moment that I would have crossed the line as to what I believed I was finished. I’m putting it bluntly and with the greatest respect and I hope this is not misheard: my primary objective was to get past the hunger strikes and get dialogue going so that they could have a settlement of the war on the .. It was not my job or not my role or not whatever. Now having said that, if you know me, I would settle every dispute for half the price.

Morrison With Hand On Heart Swears No British Offer to End Hunger Strike.

On LMFM Monday past Danny Morrison stated that he did not take a British offer to settle the 1981 hunger strike into the H Blocks on the 5th of July 1981. Morrison has long labeled Richard O’Rawe dishonest for having claimed otherwise. Yet Morrison has been proven wrong so many times that people are no longer sure if The Wrong Man is a title of Morrison’s 1997 novel or the name of the author. He has changed his story more times than his boxers.

Morrison smeared O’Rawe, claiming his narrative was scurrilous and that his book Blanketmen was contrived 'on Another Man's Hunger Strike.' Morrison was lying then, he is lying now. The following transcript and video show intermediary Brendan Duddy/The Mountain Climber making it crystal clear that he secured clearance from the British government for Morrison to go into the prison on 5 July 1981 with an offer. Just as O’Rawe said. Maybe Duddy too was out to wreck the peace process despite having spent half his life trying to build it.

What Morrison once said to Richard O’Rawe during one of his many smears can again be turned back on him: Let this be the end of it. It will be no other way. Ten out of every nine people simply don’t believe Morrison.


Barney Rowan interviews Brendan Duddy: Part 9. Source Youtube








Duddy: ... I had no idea at that point, and as I say this is me, somebody here can correct me, that there had been a change in the leadership to what may be called the Northern Command. I did not know that happened. I just know that at that stage I was dealing with Adams in Belfast and McGuinness in Derry. I did not know that they had taken leadership of the Republican Movement. I just thought that O'Bradaigh at this stage was out, McKee was out and various other people was out. So at that particular stage I was limited to a situation. And that's how I wanted it.

Rowan: Just explain to the audience how it happened. You spoke to Donald or Donald spoke to you. You then spoke to Martin McGuinness in Doire. And Martin McGuinness spoke to Gerry Adams in Belfast. What way did it work?

Duddy: Well, I don't want to be just as precise as you're putting it. Donald spoke to me ...

Rowan: Yeah.

Duddy: … everywhere - all the time - right from nine in the morning ‘til ten at night.

Rowan: This is in 1981? This is … 

Duddy: In 1981.

Rowan: As Joe McDonnell is very, very ill at this stage.

Duddy: is very, very ill at this stage. So basically it became clear that the hunger strikes were not going to be resolved. The other thing I might say, and I have no evidence whatsoever of this other than experience: we now know, right now, that the amount of electronic surveillance, the amount of bugging, the amount of “situation” available, it may not have been as sophisticated as it is now, but none of us in this room in 1981 would have known that you could put a device in a car and track it by satellite and tell you that it took, it is in the Mourne Mountains. We didn't know those type of things.

And those type of things were there. So what I would suspect that the British government at that time had an insight not only to the dialogue in the prisons but dialogue in the very intimate areas in which the Republican Movement was, was working day-by-day. I have no idea whether that's true or not. I would firmly believe that that was one of the areas they had. As well as that they had all the telephones coming in and out tapped. So the notion of me talking to you, and you talking to this lady in the front and her talking to Danny Morrison and so forth without all of that being known. We didn't understand that in those days.

Rowan: The argument is about the offer. Would you just explain. to the audience ... 

Duddy: Yes I will explain.

Rowan: ... how the offer was communicated to you.. 

Duddy: Well, first of all the reason I've told you about this particular situation was that when I was speaking in Doire, the journalist Liam Clarke produced a piece of paper. And that piece of paper was a genuine assessment, written down, of what was on offer in the last moments of ...

Rowan: July 81?

Duddy: July 81. The very last moment.

Rowan: You agreed with Liam. Liam Clarke got that document through Freedom of Information.

Duddy: yes, yes.

Rowan: You agreed with the detail of the document?

Duddy:  I agreed immediately with the detail of the document. But the point was that that document was never in print. There were no written communications between the British government and me. None whatsoever. So when this document appeared like this it looked very, very positive and very correct at that time. But in actual fact it was not in existence. Nobody ever handed that document to me and I never handed it to Adams or McGuinness or anyone else.

Rowan: You wrote it down when Donald called you on the phone

Duddy: Yes. I wrote it down. But the point is, and this is quite difficult to take on board, if that document had have been in print and handed over then that document would have became public. there may have been a much greater opportunity of solving it. But if you then go back to what happened in the first hunger strikes when in actual fact everybody thought that this thing was under control, we were heading, as we saw it at that particular time, for a repeat of that because the British made it absolutely clear that any leakage of this situation in any shape, form or fashion would end the dialogue. 

Rowan: So you scribbled the offer down.

Duddy: Yes.

Rowan: You then communicated it to the Republican leadership?

Duddy: Yes.

Rowan: I think your, your sort of test, which is to get someone into the prison on the Sunday,

Duddy: Him. (Duddy points to Danny Morrison in audience).

Rowan: … into the prison on Sunday to, to ..

Duddy: Danny Morrison

Rowan: … outline the offer. What has he got to bring into the prison …?

Duddy: Yes. But I want to say this to you - what I was saying is this here: I was saying the Republicans do not want these hunger strikes. The notion they want twenty, ten, five, eight, six people to die is absolute nonsense. But as long as you won't talk to them and you won't dialogue with them and whatever, the person that I wanted to get in, (Duddy addresses Danny Morrison in audience) with respect to you, Mr. Morrison, was Gerry Adams. And they said no way is Adams going in. Right? you will not be offended here - second choice, right?

(Laugher in audience)

Duddy: So I considered it a positive way forward to get Danny Morrison in. (Duddy turns and speaks directly to Danny Morrison) And I was also totally happy that you were well-aware of what was being said and what was on offer and so forth. So getting Danny Morrison in was, in my book, a major, major step forward. At that particular point of time the real difficulty was that this particular written piece of paper, and I would like if maybe some of the scholars in the audience could try and find out when the British deposited that. And I think that would be quite important. Because if they deposited it say on the twenty-eighth of July at this time when … I would be asking why, if then it was there, why could they not have put it through? And it was equally the first time that I knew that Thatcher was on board because the British always kept a wall there. She was not talking to anybody. She was not doing anything and she didn't want anything to do with it. Remind me to say something else about that in a moment. So Danny Morrison went in and I thought that ...

Rowan: With the outline of the offer that you had communicated to the Republican leadership...


Duddy: ...The Republican leadership had the detail of the offer.

Rowan: Yes,

Duddy: There's no argument about that. But what they didn't have...

Rowan: And what did you do? Did you give Martin McGuinness your note …?

Duddy: That doesn't matter. I'm telling you the Republican leadership had the detail of that offer and at that particular point that offer was available to go into the prisons and whatever. But what was not available at that time...

Rowan: you made that … the document...the document is not clear. The document is not available

Duddy: It didn't exist. I didn't see it at the time.

Rowan: But when you scribbled the offer down you were sitting there in your house

Duddy: I wrote it very carefully.

Rowan: You wrote it very carefully.

Duddy: Yeah

Rowan: Well, when you wrote the offer down very carefully

Duddy: Yes

Rowan: in your own house in July, 1981.

Duddy: you don’t, You, don't take chances like that...

Rowan: No, no. So that's fine. So you're reading it.

Duddy: Yes

Rowan: In your own head?

Duddy: yes

Rowan: do you think: it’s good enough This is it. This iwill break thi s great. This'll get us through. This is it. Should it have been good enough is what I'm asking?

Duddy: I'm not a member of the Republican Movement. I'm not a member of the IRA. I have, the very moment that I would have crossed the line as to what I believed I was finished. I’m putting it bluntly and with the greatest respect and I hope this is not misheard: my primary objective was to get past the hunger strikes and get dialogue going so that they could have a settlement of the war on the .. It was not my job or not my role or not whatever. Now having said that, if you know me, I would settle every dispute for half the price.

12 comments:

  1. It's sad for SF that all their political 'progress' is tainted with blatant never ending lies. Not sure why they needed to resort to that nonsense in the first place. I suppose it stems initially from the contradiction of creating political careers at the expense/demolition of the IRA whilst at the same time clinging to the 'ownership' of the IRA with those cringe worthy re-enactment parades etc. That simply doesn't tie in with their political reality. Like trying to convince people a cat can bark.

    The media facilitation of the 'process' and SF has left them believing they can just say what they want. They have become accustomed to that. BBC1 aired a documentary last night about Thatcher and secret talks with the Provos. The Conservatives stated talks began in 1986. Adams said 1990. At this stage I'm just left shaking my head and laughing at Adams.

    It was so impressive the way the republicans had taken the war back to the cocky Tories who had decided on pursuing a military victory, Airey Neave's advice to Thatcher (he was taken out) and then Ian Gow, Thatcher's pro unionist and anti 'peace' mentor (he was taken out). Not to mention the Brighton Bomb. Now these guys who were the 'leadership' at that time are reduced to being professional liars. Why do they do that? It has become the only consistent thing about them, 'the lie'. How sad.

    SF office has moved, it is now at "Fibber Magee's" in Belfast city centre.

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  2. Was just wondering might the SF strategy of the 'permanent lie' be what they think passes for preparing for government?

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  3. The talks started way back before 1990.....why was Bell et al removed by Adams and his cronies? The ground was being laid by Britain's agents and it took a few years to get them all on board but the British eventually succeeded....and besides all this, I was told about it in February 1989!!!!!!!!!

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  4. Bangers with hand on heart kinda reminds me of Martybroy Mc Guinness on bended knee in front of Frank Heagerty.s ma.

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  5. As soon as I read the ravings of Squealer Morrison - as in Napoleon the Pig's minister of propaganda - in regards to the Hunger Strikes, the first thing which struck me was that very Brendan Duddy interview, of which I had transcribed the main bits at the time.

    I also remembered a Talk Back interview with Squealer Morrison and searched through my stuff trying to find them. The thing is most of it has been put on flash drives as I had my laptop spring cleaned.

    Well it seems that the same thoughts were popping into Mackers or Carrie's heads at the same time.

    Danny would be better off searching for new butterfly species in the Amazon rainforest. Then again, being Danny, he'd probably find the last of it's kind then proceed to step on it.

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  6. Nial

    Loyalists in the mixed wings in the H-Blocks were talking about it in 1988. People thought they were dreaming. Not so 'thick' as it turns out.

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  7. Dixie,

    that is classical Morrison if he can’t step on it he will dance around it when that fails he will blame others as it would be impossible for the elite infallible SF leadership to make a mistake and worse who in their right mind dare question their perfect judgments.

    You don’t have to weigh the issue up Richard had nothing to gain from it quite the opposite he had more to lose it was a worthy gamble on his part knowing that the SF spin machine would be on full cycle trying to silence him not with any reasonable counter argument but with ridicule and smear.

    Morrison couldn’t be wrong and in his world why let facts and details get in the way of denial. There is a clear callousness about his version his insistence that there is no possibility of him being wrong only highlights and lends credence to the fact that they (SF) failed the hunger strikers.

    If the POWs had direct control of the negotiations the outcome would have been entirely different. Perhaps that is the reason for the constant denial as SF were too concerned with the image of the party the hunger strikers were only pawns in their maneuverings intent on controlling the demands and turned a blind eye to what was on offer or should I say too busy sleeping to be disturbed with any important communiqué.

    The common theme from SF is denial from Adams down through the ranks and unfortunately those blinded by the spin.

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  8. SF, went from a barometer of support for the IRA and armed struggle to a barometer of opposition to it and RUC cheerleaders.

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  9. came across this quote last week, never heard of her, but thought it worth copying;

    People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. - Ayn Rand

    am going to stop telling white lies now after that. hopefully.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Squealer Morrison seems to think that if he tells the same lie often enough people will eventually accept it as fact.

    In January 2012 in the Belfast Telegraph Ricky countered these claims yet Squealer still persists with the obvious lie...

    http://saoirse32.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/somebody-wants-to-twist-the-truth-but-its-not-me/

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  11. That's a good article Dixie. Bik and the committee were dangerous people, dangerous to all and sundry on both sides of the conflict. AND FOR WHAT!?

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  12. An awful lot of people picking on this poor deluded guy called Danny Morrison, famous for plagiarizing the line ‘The ballot box and gun in one hand,’ from Willie Arthur Chalfant’s classic Gold, Dust & Ghost Towns. Those picking on him should be ashamed of themselves. He’s a lion without teeth. Oh, and he wears a cowboy hat…

    ReplyDelete