Richard O'Rawe 📢 spoke at a recent commemoration in Derry.
Ba mhaith liom mo bhuÃochas a thabhairt do’n clan McBrearty, ach go h-airithe, Danny, do’n deis seo a labhairt libh inniu. Is onÏŒra mÏŒr é.
The last time I was in the rebel city of Derry was on the first of February this year, when Eddie Harkin unveiled a cross at Free Derry corner to commemorate the burning of Long Kesh on the 15th and 16th of October 1974. The cross also honoured the Blanketmen and women, and all who lost their lives in the fight for Irish freedom. It was an august occasion, one that will stay in my memory forever.
It was at this commemoration when the thought struck me that Vols George McBrearty and Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire were mown down exactly a week after another great Derry rebel, Vol Patsy O’Hara died on hunger strike. Patsy, as you know, was the 4th hunger striker to die, behind Vols Bobby Sands, Frank Hughes, and Raymond McCreesh. Between Bobby’s death and George’s and Pop’s, eighteen other people were killed in the conflict … one UDR man, three RUC, five British soldiers, five Catholic civilians (including children killed by plastic bullets, Carol Ann Kelly and Julie Livingstone), two Protestant civilians (schoolboy Des Guiney and his father, Eric), and two INLA volunteers. So, it is right that we acknowledge that these were the most harrowing of times for all sides and that the copious amount of tears shed by the bereaved were neither orange, green or red, white and blue.
That said, questions abound and one of them goes to the heart of the conflict: is it right to assume that this substantial loss of life was a potential catalyst for the re-think that was taking place within the upper echelons of the RM. I am, of course referring to Gerry Adams’ Kitchen Cabinet, the leading republicans that ran the hunger strike. And consequentially, does the evidence tell us that the Kitchen Cabinet was re-evaluating the efficacy of armed struggle?
There are two positions concerning this matter, one of which Danny Morrison advocated just this week in his 11 May Irish News piece:
1. During his interview with John Manley, DM advocated that the Kitchen Cabinet wanted to develop Sinn Féin as a viable political party, in order to ‘give back’ political leadership to the people. This is a very commendable view to take — if it is true. In his interview, Morrison goes to some lengths to say that ending the armed struggle was not on the KC’s agenda, that they still believed in the supremacy of the armed resistance approach to British rule in Ireland. This is a very understandable position to take because, if he were to say something else, something along the lines that the KC had abandoned all hope that the armed struggle would succeed in forcing the British government to cede Ireland to the Irish, then it would be morally unconscionable for them to hide their view from volunteers like George and Pop, brave individuals who were going out on dangerous operations against the British forces, specifically because they believed their leadership believed in armed struggle. It would be equally unconscionable to hide this position from prisoners who were on a horrendous death fast, where ten of their number would die horrible deaths.
Morrison, in his article, refers to his ‘ballot box and Armalite’ remark at the October 1981 Ard Fheis and uses it as a foil against the suspicion that Adams and he, and the rest of the KC, no longer had faith in the tactic of armed struggle. There are two ways of looking at the ballot box and Armalite remark:
A/ That Morrison was being genuine, that he, and presumably the leadership around Adams, still held that armed struggle was the primary method of attaining a Republic but that the political development of Sinn Féin was an important prop in their strategy. The second way is:
B/ That Morrison was being disingenuous, that he and his fellow kitchen cabinet comrades, believed armed struggle had had its day and that constitutional politics alone was the way forward for the Republican Movement.
The alternative position to what Morrison advocated in his Irish News piece is evidenced by none other than members of the British cabinet in confidential communications . . .
There are two positions concerning this matter, one of which Danny Morrison advocated just this week in his 11 May Irish News piece:
1. During his interview with John Manley, DM advocated that the Kitchen Cabinet wanted to develop Sinn Féin as a viable political party, in order to ‘give back’ political leadership to the people. This is a very commendable view to take — if it is true. In his interview, Morrison goes to some lengths to say that ending the armed struggle was not on the KC’s agenda, that they still believed in the supremacy of the armed resistance approach to British rule in Ireland. This is a very understandable position to take because, if he were to say something else, something along the lines that the KC had abandoned all hope that the armed struggle would succeed in forcing the British government to cede Ireland to the Irish, then it would be morally unconscionable for them to hide their view from volunteers like George and Pop, brave individuals who were going out on dangerous operations against the British forces, specifically because they believed their leadership believed in armed struggle. It would be equally unconscionable to hide this position from prisoners who were on a horrendous death fast, where ten of their number would die horrible deaths.
Morrison, in his article, refers to his ‘ballot box and Armalite’ remark at the October 1981 Ard Fheis and uses it as a foil against the suspicion that Adams and he, and the rest of the KC, no longer had faith in the tactic of armed struggle. There are two ways of looking at the ballot box and Armalite remark:
A/ That Morrison was being genuine, that he, and presumably the leadership around Adams, still held that armed struggle was the primary method of attaining a Republic but that the political development of Sinn Féin was an important prop in their strategy. The second way is:
B/ That Morrison was being disingenuous, that he and his fellow kitchen cabinet comrades, believed armed struggle had had its day and that constitutional politics alone was the way forward for the Republican Movement.
The alternative position to what Morrison advocated in his Irish News piece is evidenced by none other than members of the British cabinet in confidential communications . . .
2. In papers marked ‘secret’, which were released by the Thatcher Foundation in 2013, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1981, Humphrey Atkins, conveyed to Margaret Thatcher, on the afternoon of the 6th of July 1981 (two days before Joe McDonnell died), that:
The Provisionals need to settle the prisoners’ problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on — as we know some of them wish to do — to consider an end to the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has “lost” on the prisons is not in a position to do this.
No matter what way we look at it, this is a hugely important statement. Question: who exactly are the ‘some of them’ to whom Atkins refers, if not Morrison and the members of the KC? The use of the term ‘some’ is also significant because it denotes that ‘others’ may not be on-board (we now know that the KC had members of the IRA Army Council in its midst, and they did not inform the full Army Council that they were communicating with the British). The typed phrase, ‘…an end to the current terrorist campaign’ in Atkins’ minute is underlined and in longhand. We have to wonder: how did the British reach this conclusion; who informed them that the KC wanted, “to consider an end the current terrorist campaign”?
What emerges from this minute to Thatcher is the belief that the KC, at least during, and possibly before, the hunger strike period, was looking to end the IRA’s campaign and embrace constitutional politics. However, while the Brits might have been aware that a fundamental change was taking place within a section of the Republican Movement, we prisoners — and certainly not the hunger strikers, or volunteers like George or Pop — had any idea that the Great Peacemaker had lost faith in the tactic of armed struggle and was actively looking for a means to abandon the armed struggle.
Later, after the deaths of the ten hunger strikers had put Sinn Féin on the political map, Gerry Adams was able to pursue his peace-keeping mission along with Fr. Reid, John Hume, and figures attached to the British and Irish governments. Along the way, he and his KC buddies kept hidden from the IRA volunteers the fact that, in their opinion, the armed struggle had run its course. And, all the while, volunteers were losing their lives in the killing fields of East Tyrone and beyond, in pre-arranged SAS ambushes. Nobody, in the KC, thought it prudent, or honourable, to let those brave men know that they had thrown in the towel on armed struggle.
I cannot speak for Bobby, or Big Frank, or George, or Pop, but what I can say is that they did not die for an internal settlement whereby the border, and the division of the Irish people still persists, whereby the unionist veto still prevails.
Later, after the deaths of the ten hunger strikers had put Sinn Féin on the political map, Gerry Adams was able to pursue his peace-keeping mission along with Fr. Reid, John Hume, and figures attached to the British and Irish governments. Along the way, he and his KC buddies kept hidden from the IRA volunteers the fact that, in their opinion, the armed struggle had run its course. And, all the while, volunteers were losing their lives in the killing fields of East Tyrone and beyond, in pre-arranged SAS ambushes. Nobody, in the KC, thought it prudent, or honourable, to let those brave men know that they had thrown in the towel on armed struggle.
I cannot speak for Bobby, or Big Frank, or George, or Pop, but what I can say is that they did not die for an internal settlement whereby the border, and the division of the Irish people still persists, whereby the unionist veto still prevails.
Would the boys have laid down their lives for this? I very much doubt it.
⏩Richard O'Rawe is a former blanketman and the author of several books.
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