Dixie Elliot ✍ I recently became aware of a video which was posted on YouTube during the week by Sinn Fein titled, ‘Hunger Striker Sean McKenna remembered by his comrade Danny Morrison.’
Danny Morrison, Sinn Fein’s Director of Revisionism, walked among the graves of the Republican dead in Milltown Cemetery and once again lied in regards to the ending of the first hunger strike back in December 1980, laying the blame for it’s failure on Brendan Hughes.
If that was sickening enough, seeing him using the name of the late Sean McKenna to sell this lie added to my anger. The grave robbers Burke and Hare had more respect for the dead.
According to Morrison:
The thing about the truth is that you cannot get caught out telling it, something Morrison can’t seem to get his head around as he’s a habitual liar and the above statement is full of holes, big holes.
I stated many times, given my huge respect for Brendan Hughes, a leader who always led from the front, that any attempt to smear his name regarding how that hunger strike came to an end would be met with the truth and the only ones to blame for this are the liars like Morrison.
However, the one very important person who exposes Morrison’s lie regarding how that hunger strike ended was Bobby Sands himself. I will get to that soon.
Take for example Morrison’s claim, ‘the document arrived and Bobby Sands was sent for…’
No thought whatsoever has gone into that particular lie. Father Meagher received the document at Belfast airport from ‘The Mountain Climber.’ He then took it to Adams and others who were waiting in Clonard Monastery. As they were looking over it Tom Hartley entered the room and told them that the hunger strike was over.
The document contained nothing, it merely indicated that prisoners could wear ‘civilian-type’ clothing during the working week. That was another form of prison uniform.
Bobby had been sent for when the hunger strike ended and he had no document because it was still in the hands of Gerry Adams in Clonard Monastery. The source for this is Adams himself in his book, A Farther Shore.
Why would Bobby return to our wing that night and tell desperate men in Irish that, “ní fhuaireamar feic.” (we got nothing) if there was even the slightest of chances that some British offer gave us some hope of ending the blanket protest? Why did Bobby then sit down on his mattress and start writing a comm to Gerry Adams informing him that he would be leading another hunger strike which would begin on January 1st instead of waiting to see if the Brits kept to their promises? Because they had made none. That hunger strike ended because, as Sean McKenna was nearing death, some men told Brendan they were coming of it, leaving The Dark with no other choice but to end it before Sean died needlessly.
In fact, Bobby told Adams exactly that in the comm he was writing to him. (see screenshots taken from page 305, Chapter 21; Nothing But An Unfinished Song, below).
Adams, Morrison and the others knew how it ended from the time they read that comm from Bobby, yet they persist in the lie that Brendan Hughes had ended it and was therefore responsible for the second hunger strike which claimed the lives of ten brave men. They do this because The Dark died with his principles intact and he never betrayed his dead comrades for political or financial gain and he didn’t hold back, while he lived, in telling the truth.
According to Morrison:
. . . The following night the British government were due, through an emissary, to deliver a document to the hunger strikers. Before the document arrived, the hunger strike was called off by Brendan Hughes. The document arrived and Bobby Sands was sent for. All the promises of a progressive prison liberal regime were now, that the British government knew that the hunger strike was over and all those people who said they would intervene and support the prisoners and would support reforms, they all disappeared . . .
The thing about the truth is that you cannot get caught out telling it, something Morrison can’t seem to get his head around as he’s a habitual liar and the above statement is full of holes, big holes.
I stated many times, given my huge respect for Brendan Hughes, a leader who always led from the front, that any attempt to smear his name regarding how that hunger strike came to an end would be met with the truth and the only ones to blame for this are the liars like Morrison.
However, the one very important person who exposes Morrison’s lie regarding how that hunger strike ended was Bobby Sands himself. I will get to that soon.
Take for example Morrison’s claim, ‘the document arrived and Bobby Sands was sent for…’
No thought whatsoever has gone into that particular lie. Father Meagher received the document at Belfast airport from ‘The Mountain Climber.’ He then took it to Adams and others who were waiting in Clonard Monastery. As they were looking over it Tom Hartley entered the room and told them that the hunger strike was over.
The document contained nothing, it merely indicated that prisoners could wear ‘civilian-type’ clothing during the working week. That was another form of prison uniform.
Bobby had been sent for when the hunger strike ended and he had no document because it was still in the hands of Gerry Adams in Clonard Monastery. The source for this is Adams himself in his book, A Farther Shore.
Why would Bobby return to our wing that night and tell desperate men in Irish that, “ní fhuaireamar feic.” (we got nothing) if there was even the slightest of chances that some British offer gave us some hope of ending the blanket protest? Why did Bobby then sit down on his mattress and start writing a comm to Gerry Adams informing him that he would be leading another hunger strike which would begin on January 1st instead of waiting to see if the Brits kept to their promises? Because they had made none. That hunger strike ended because, as Sean McKenna was nearing death, some men told Brendan they were coming of it, leaving The Dark with no other choice but to end it before Sean died needlessly.
In fact, Bobby told Adams exactly that in the comm he was writing to him. (see screenshots taken from page 305, Chapter 21; Nothing But An Unfinished Song, below).
. . . I don’t believe we can achieve our our aims or recoup our losses in the light of what has occurred. Sooner, rather than later, our defeat will be exposed. When I say, in the light of what has occurred, I mean not only the boys breaking but perhaps our desperate attempts to salvage something . . .
Adams, Morrison and the others knew how it ended from the time they read that comm from Bobby, yet they persist in the lie that Brendan Hughes had ended it and was therefore responsible for the second hunger strike which claimed the lives of ten brave men. They do this because The Dark died with his principles intact and he never betrayed his dead comrades for political or financial gain and he didn’t hold back, while he lived, in telling the truth.
Near the end of the video Morrison tells anyone foolish enough to believe him that Bobby’s election victory paved the way for Sinn Féin’s move towards electoral politics. He would have you believe that the hunger strikes were part of a long term strategy to bring Sinn Féin into government in the Stormont it was determined to ‘smash’ back then, and to take their seats with the Free Staters, who had sided with the British against their own people in the North.
According to Morrison:
…The election of Bobby Sands, on the 9th April 1981, provided the springboard for Sinn Féin to adopt it’s electoral strategy, the fruits of which we see today…
Bobby only stood in that election in the hope that victory would mean that Thatcher couldn’t possibly let a sitting MP die on hunger strike. This of course proved not to be the case, as she was a vindicative evil bitch.
However, even while the hunger strike was still ongoing, Adams and his inner-circle, which of course included Morrison, began to furtively lay the path which would take an unwitting Republican Movement onto the road of electoral politics. Three days after the death of Michael Devine, on the same day that Owen Carron won the bye-election for Bobby’s vacant seat in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Sinn Féin announced that in future it would contest all ‘Northern Ireland’ elections.
The hunger strike was still ongoing and this decision had not been to put to the Movement as a whole because that year’s Ard Fheis would not be until late October. Michael Devine had barely been lowered into his grave as they ‘seized the opportunity’ to set their ‘electoral strategy’ in motion. It comes as no surprise that it was Morrison who would ask the delegates at that Ard Fheis if anyone there would object if they took power in Ireland with a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other.
We all know what eventually happened to the Armalite. They decommissioned it, as did they the right to call themselves Republicans by attending the coronation of the British king, Charles.
Thanks to the family of Bobby Sands, who had only recently found out themselves by uncovering one of his prison comms in the National Archives, we now know he had requested that he be buried in Ballina beside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, because he didn’t like Milltown Cemetery. Bobby also requested that he ‘wanted wrapped in a blanket cause I don’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud.’
Danny Morrison tried to claim that Bobby had later changed his mind about Ballina by coming up with a few lines which he claimed were contained in a comm from Bobby, but the comm he referred to did not in fact include those lines in both the books it was included in, Ten Men Dead and Nothing But An Unfinished Song.
What he could not lie about was that Bobby’s simple request, that he be wrapped in a blanket because he didn’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud, was denied him. Bobby Sands was highly intelligent and he would have fully realised that the screws would not have handed over a prison blanket for him to be laid to rest in. He was obviously referring to a similar type of blanket which would be symbolic of the protest which took up the final years of his life.
Bobby Sands was buried in a shroud and his family weren’t made aware of his final request.
Excerpt from Bury Me In My Blanket by Bobby Sands:
We all know what eventually happened to the Armalite. They decommissioned it, as did they the right to call themselves Republicans by attending the coronation of the British king, Charles.
Thanks to the family of Bobby Sands, who had only recently found out themselves by uncovering one of his prison comms in the National Archives, we now know he had requested that he be buried in Ballina beside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, because he didn’t like Milltown Cemetery. Bobby also requested that he ‘wanted wrapped in a blanket cause I don’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud.’
Danny Morrison tried to claim that Bobby had later changed his mind about Ballina by coming up with a few lines which he claimed were contained in a comm from Bobby, but the comm he referred to did not in fact include those lines in both the books it was included in, Ten Men Dead and Nothing But An Unfinished Song.
What he could not lie about was that Bobby’s simple request, that he be wrapped in a blanket because he didn’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud, was denied him. Bobby Sands was highly intelligent and he would have fully realised that the screws would not have handed over a prison blanket for him to be laid to rest in. He was obviously referring to a similar type of blanket which would be symbolic of the protest which took up the final years of his life.
Bobby Sands was buried in a shroud and his family weren’t made aware of his final request.
Excerpt from Bury Me In My Blanket by Bobby Sands:
I've thought about that too,” I said, “and it's hard to say to oneself that one is prepared to go to such an extreme, but then we are special prisoners and we are struggling for a special cause, so if I should die here, tell “Mr Mason” to bury me in my blanket . . . ”
 |
Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
Great article. Raises many disturbing issues.
ReplyDeleteTragic
In fact Gerry Adams and his cabal were vehemently opposed to the idea of Bobby Sands contesting the Fermangh/South Tyrone by-Election when it was proposed by Dáithí Ó Conaill.
ReplyDeleteOf course this fact doesn't fit the historical narrative required by Danny's Lord and Master so a new one had to be created..
The narrative that Sinn Fein's entry into electoral politics and its long march into the institutions began with the FST hunger strike by-elections has unfortunately been mainstreamed by commentators who should know better like Peter Taylor. Great article. SF's electorate may not know or wish to know of the treacherous machinations of Adamas and Morrison, but posterity needs to know.
ReplyDeleteSearing commentary Dixie.
ReplyDeleteThe lying and the smearing is well and truly exposed at this point.
Is there a type of Stockholm Syndrome or something with the likes of Bik who are also aware of the truth?
ReplyDeleteResentment is like taking poison and hoping it'll kill someone else. Keeping resentments is like “swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.” The goal is not to forgive and forget, but to grieve and let go." - take note Dxie. The people don't believe you.
ReplyDeleteAh Alex, I just came across your rather confusing reply. The
Deleteonly thing it tells me is, that you have no answers whatsoever to any of the points I have made. In particular the comm written by Bobby to Adams the night the first hunger strike ended, which included the telling line... " I mean not only the boys breaking but perhaps our desperate attempts to salvage something..." 'Not only the boys breaking'... and no mention of The Dark accepting a British offer, or any document. Then you make the absurd claim that... "The people don't believe you." Would that be those people in Sinn Féin who believe that becoming the biggest shower of West Brits in Ireland (and that takes some doing) is part of some cunning plan to bring
about a United Ireland?
What's confusing about my reply? You clearly have an unhealthy obsession with SF, let it go. They have decided on an electoral path to deliver what Bobby and the othe Hunger strikers died for. Like it or not, you have to 'smell the cofee' and look around you, it's clearly working which, bizzarely seems to make you all the more angrier.
ReplyDeleteShinnerbots out tonight I see.
DeleteAh Alex, your second reply merely confirmed what I had already thought, you just have no answers and you are reduced to spiting out the usual programmed responses about being obsessed with SF, blah blah. Who in their right mind would die on hunger strike for the path that the SFers are now on? I certainly wouldn't have thrown stones for them to become the new SDLP, FF or FG. In fact well before those 10 brave men went into the H Blocks, John Hume was telling us that the only way to achieve a United Ireland was through peaceful means and politics, the electoral path you refer to. Hume also spoke about an 'Agreed Ireland' when we were led to believe that we were fighting for a 32 County Socialist Republic. Adams and McGuinness were saying that the only way to achieve it was through war and the cutting edge of the IRA. After squandering the lives of all those brave young IRA volunteers and the civilians killed during the war, those two eventually took the movement on the same electoral path of John Hume. What a bloody fucking waste of lives and those two came through it unscathed and very rich. If you think that becoming West Brits is it clearly working then you are on something a lot stronger than coffee. It's painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that Adams and his inner circle nor any army council isn't steering the former Republicans in SF down the path they are heading, but that the strings have been long pulled from Thames House in London...
DeleteWhat if Morrison on that Sunday visit had off asked or ordered the OC not to mention the offer in blocks as they didn't want build up hopes or such as an excuse then no one would have known anything thus be unable to accept it because they would have none nothing a out it.what if he was meant to do something like that but forgot.Few days prior to visit Sand act be came law at date could be set for by-election,but when Morrison left jail no one got near the martyrs because of his orders he gave them could that have real reason of Brits allowing him to go in giving orders the Brits would use as reasons for not talking.The Brits wanted Sinn Fein into electoral politics as much as the outside leadership.So the Brits knew the leadership had decided to let the men die then they could offer adams anything knowing it would not be accepted taking him so far then cancelling the talks with Adams believing it was them asking for to much
ReplyDeleteI recently read Gerry Adam's 2003 book Hope and History: Making Peace in Ireland and was left surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. In it Adams essentially confirms Ed Moloney's narrative of him building an escape hatch from the IRA's armed campaign with priest Alec Reid from the early 1980s.
ReplyDeleteAdams actually goes further; Moloney dates the beginning of this process to the October 1982 kidnapping of a UDR soldier and the Assembly election but Adams says talks with Reid began earlier, without specifics on when. Adams even shares how he was floating a ceasefire proposal through the Catholic Church in 1985.
Memos from Thatcher's cabinet from July 1981 casually reference how some unnamed members of the IRA's Army Council want to end their armed campaign. This was three months after Bobby Sands' election.. was that the reason? Or had it been gestating for a months or years before that? Questions that will probably never be answered.