We were young men and women back then, mainly in our twenties. Our dream was achieving a 32 County Socialist Republic. Today forty-four years later those of us who made it this far are now in our late sixties and we have achieving nothing which would have made their selfless sacrifice worthwhile.
Nothing whatsoever. But we have the truth. It is all we have left and we owe it not only to those ten men but to every single volunteer who gave their lives for that dream.
To find the truth we must first dig through a litany of lies.
"I can give a commitment on behalf of the leadership that we have absolutely no intention of going to Westminster or Stormont.” Announced Martin McGuinness at the beginning of his speech during the now infamous 1986 Ard Fhéis.
He ended that speech with the defiant line:
If you allow yourself to be led out of this hall today, the only place you’re going is home. You will be walking away from the struggle. Don’t go my friends. We will lead you to the Republic.
During his presidential address, Gerry Adams informed the Ard Fhéis that a recent IRA army convention had decided in favour of ending abstentionism and there had been no walkouts on the issue.
To leave Sinn Féin is to leave the IRA,” Adams told the delegates.
But the question now is, when did Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness decide to walk away from the armed struggle and take the movement down the path of electoralism?
How many IRA volunteers and members of Sinn Féin, who placed their trust in that leadership, died before they could see it for the lie that it had been?
Within six months of that Ard Fheis eight of the IRA's bravest Volunteers were cut down in Loughgall in a SAS ambush in May 1987.
The same month, according to the De Silva Report into the murder of Pat Finucane, the British saved the life of Gerry Adams when the UDA planned to attach a limpet mine to the roof of his car from a passing motorbike. The information that saved him came from Brian Nelson.
As for the beginnings of the so called Peace Process, Gerry Adams now has no problem informing the world that it began in 1987.
While under cross examination by Eilis McDermott QC during the trail of his paedophile brother, Liam, Adams, likely in an attempt to garner sympathy for himself, said that the peace process was being negotiated in 1987.
Ms McDermott: "And the Good Friday Agreement certainly wasn’t being negotiated in 1987; was it?"
Adams: "The Good Friday Agreement wasn’t, but the peace process was."
Ms McDermott: "The peace process had begun then; had it?"
Adams: "Well the history of that is now well known, and you don’t need me to give you through all of the dates involved."
What Adams was referring to was the approach made by Father Alec Reid on his behalf to Charlie Haughey in an effort to set up a meeting between the two, in regards to finding a way of ending the war. Haughey was wary of being caught talking to Adams and so began the Hume/Adams Talks.
This was happening barely year after McGuinness attacked Ruairí O'Bradaigh and those opposed to ending abstentionism during his speech.
They tell you that it is inevitable certainty that the war against British rule will be run down. These suggestions deliberately infer that the present leadership of Sinn Fein and the leadership of the Irish Republican Army are intent on edging the republican movement on to a constitutional path.
Gerry and Martin would never lie to us. Of that we were never in any doubt. Now it is beyond doubt that they did nothing but lie.
Bobby Sands put his faith in the leadership in writing during the early days of his hunger strike back in 1981 when he noted in his diary.
I always have tremendous feeling for Liam Mellows as well; and for the present leadership of the Republican Movement, and a confidence in them that they will always remain undaunted and unchanged.
Nearly five long years had past since Bobby wrote those words to when Kieran Nugent told the screws that he was not going to wear any prison uniform as he was not a criminal but a political prisoner, and became the first Blanket Man.
He would be joined by others in the coming months; both IRA and INLA sentenced prisoners, and the numbers increased. But as they did the screws were given free-rein to do whatever it took to break us; beatings, mirror searches, starvation and psychological torture.
Left with no other option The Dark and Bobby gave the order to wreck our cells and embark on a no-wash protest. The prison authorities reacted with a ferocity fuelled by sectarian hatred and so began the wing shifts which entailed moving an entire wing at a time to a cleaner wing so that the one we had been moved from could be cleaned.
Wing shifts meant running a gauntlet of hate, beatings, mirror searches and forced washing in either a freezing cold bath or a scolding hot one. They used scrubbing brushes on our naked bodies and sheared off our hair and beards. When it was the turn of another wing to undergo these wing shifts we sat silent and listened seething with rage as they endured the same brutality.
By about 1979 the numbers leaving the protest for the conforming blocks gradually increased. The Dark said that if it continued like that we would end up with around a hundred men stuck in a corner of the H Blocks and forgotten about.
Going into the conforming Blocks and making them impossible to govern was considered but order to do this we would have to wear the prison uniform and that was simply out of the question. As the months passed the only option left open to us was decided upon. A hunger strike to the death.
I first got to know Bobby Sands and Brendan The Dark Hughes when the screws took those they seen to be leaders from the three protesting blocks, H3, 4 and 5 and put them in a wing in H6 in February 1979. By doing so they hoped to break the men in those other blocks.
I wasn't a leader but I had shared a cell in H4 with Big Tom McElwee who had a habit of hitting screws and Blanket Orderlies. So we both found ourselves in H6 with Bobby, The Dark, Larry Marley, Richard O'Rawe and Bik McFarlane among others.
By September the prison authorities had come to realise that their plan to break the protest had failed so they moved us back to the other three blocks. I again found myself in a wing with Bobby, The Dark, Richard, Bik and my friend Big Tom. This time it was in H3, a block of mainly young prisoners who suffered the most at the hands of the depraved screws.
When the screw opened the cell door Bobby was standing there waiting to greet me. I would be sharing that small cell caked in excrement with someone who had, like Brendan Hughes, The Dark, proven his leadership qualities time and again over the period of that protest; who could inspire those he led to follow him through hell and high water.
Bobby had long dirty fair hair and a thick beard.
His gaunt body didn't seem capable of remaining in the one place for too long as he constantly paced the cell, from the window to the door and back. He had a habit of stroking his beard as he walked to and fro, deep in thought.
Bobby would pitch ideas at me about a poem or a song he was writing, take a note on a clean part of the wall near where he sat on his mattress and then begin pacing again. He thought about the books he would tell the lads out the door at night. Trinity by Leon Uris or his own famous story about Jet who abandoned the Vietnam War for the Freedom of the American highways on the back of a Harley.
He was a Gaeilgeoir and he encouraged the rest of us to learn our native tongue. On top of all that Bobby was a fantastic singer.
He thought about the men in the other blocks and what they were going through and what could be done for them. He thought about the brave women on the blanket protest in Armagh Gaol. He thought about the way ahead and what had to be done to get there.
Bobby had a dream. We all had. A dream that kept us determined to see that protest through to the bitter end. We spoke about it often, together as cellmates or in discussions out the doors at night with the rest of the lads in the wing. That dream was of a 32 county socialist Republic and a better future, free from the shackles of British tyranny, for our children and the generations to come.
Then came the time of the two hunger strikes. The darkest period of the Blanket Protest. After the failure of the first one Bobby announced that he would be starting a new one that very night. This time he would lead it and it would be staggered, unlike the first one in which the men began as a group of seven. He would go first and the other volunteers would follow him.
Bobby stood in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election as an Anti-H Block candidate, after the death of Frank Maguire, in the hope that Thatcher couldn’t allow a sitting MP to die on hunger strike. He won and our hopes were raised that no one have have to die. But Thatcher was an evil vindictive bitch and Bobby died on May 5th after 66 days on hunger strike. One hundred thousand people attended his funeral.
Soon he would be followed by Francis Hughes on May 12th, then Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara on May 21st.
On July 4th, as Joe McDonnell was nearing the critical stage of his hunger strike, Richard O'Rawe, who was PRO, sent out a statement on behalf of the protesting prisoners in the H Blocks and Armagh Gaol effectively pulling back from political status and stating that all prisoners in the North could avail of the 'Five Demands.'
On the 6th July word was passed from cell to cell that the Brits were moving and Joe wouldn't have to die. We heard no more and so passed it off as a rumour. Then Joe died at 4.50am on the morning of 8th July after 61 days on hunger strike.
And so it continued. Word would reach us on the 13th of July that Martin Hurson had died. We had by that time been totally consumed by a black void. Six of our friends, our comrades, had died, their voices would be heard no more, laughing, singing, sometimes badly, but still defiant.
Then Kevin Lynch died. Kevin from Dungiven. We called him Barabbas and he died on 1st August. Word of his passing had barely reached our cells when we heard that Kieran Doherty had died. Big Doc had breathed his last the following day on 2nd August.
I thought about Tom McElwee, my cellmate from H4. I remembered the bitter cold Winter of '78. Christmas week spent in the punishment block, otherwise known as the boards. Returning to the wing on Christmas Eve. Big Tom still defiant, banging on cell doors as we walked up the wing. I was just glad to be back in that hellish block and prayed silently that he wouldn't hit anymore screws that Christmas.
A screw on night duty turned the Christmas hit of that year, Mary's Boy Child by Boney M, up full blast for a minute or so to remind us that it was almost Christmas Day. We rose to our doors as one and sang for hours
Big Tom died on 8th August. He had given me his wooden Rosary beads before he left our wing for the hospital block. I still treasure them to this day.
On the 20th August Michael Devine from Derry, or Red Mick as we knew him, became the tenth and final hunger striker to die.
That same day Owen Carron won the bye-election in Fermanagh/ South Tyrone for Bobby’s vacant seat. We cared little about that victory. Ten of our comrades were dead and there was no end in sight. Was it little wonder that the Republican Movement was opposed to standing in elections?
On Saturday 3rd October the hunger strike was called off mainly because Father Faul had encouraged the families to ask for medical intervention to save the lives of the remaining hunger strikers.
Three days later, Tuesday 6th October, British Secretary of State James Prior announced a number of changes to prison policy, one being the right to wear our own clothes at all times. That had been our main demand. Why couldn't they have given us that at the very beginning of the hunger strike and no one would have died? As far as we were concerned the British had been intent in making us pay a heavy price for it, the lives of ten of our comrades.
Two more of our Five Demands were also conceded. Free association would be allowed in neighbouring wings of each H-Block, in the exercise areas and in recreation rooms. And an increase in the number of visits each prisoner would be entitled to.
But only 50% of lost remission would be restored to us. The issue of work and segregation from Loyalist prisoners was yet to be resolved. But we had our own clothes so we were in a very strong position to ensure that we achieved those as well.
Time passed until the day came when we would walk out through those prison gates to freedom but not to the freedom we had dreamed of in that concrete hell. In fact, many of us never really left that protest. How could we as we had lost so much and still nothing had been achieved? It stayed with us as did the faces of our dead comrades.
We had locked memories, good and bad, inside our heads, just as surely as the screws had locked us in our cells. One day many years later a key would unlock those memories and the person with the key who would unlock them was Richard O’Rawe when his book Blanketmen was published in February 2005.
In Blanketmen he told about releasing a statement on July 4th on behalf of the Prisoners saying that the British government could settle the hunger strike without any departure from ‘principle’ by extending prison reforms to the entire prison population.
The deaths of the first four men; Bobby, Francis, Raymond and Patsy had seen Thatcher coming under immense pressure and that statement had given her the opportunity to end the hunger strike so the British opened the Mountain Climber channel with the IRA. The Mountain Climber being Derry business man Brendan Duddy. He relayed the British offer to the IRA and would confirm himself that Danny Morrison was allowed to take it into the prison.
When Bik McFarlane who was OC of the protesting prisoners received it he passed it on to Richard who was PRO and on whom he relied heavily for advice.
When he read it Richard said, ‘Ta go leor ann’ — there’s enough there.
“Bik said, ‘Aontaim leat, scriobhfaidh me chun taoibh amuigh agus cuirfidh me fhois orthu’ — I agree with you, I will write to the outside and let them know.”
When Bik referred to outside he was usually referring to Adams or Danny Morrison.
Two men in a cell near to their cells overheard their conversation and sent word round the wing that the Brits were moving and Joe McDonnell wouldn't have to die.
The memory of that message being passed from cell to cell had been unlocked. I knew that it had been true what was Richard was saying.
Richard had also wrote that Adams had sent word back in rejecting the offer saying that it didn't go far enough and I also realised why we had heard no more about it.
Adams had rejected an offer which the prisoners leadership had accepted and six more brave men died because of it.
There were many things which we weren't aware of back then, like the fact that three days after the death of Michael Devine and Owen Carron's election victory on August 20th Sinn Féin announced that it would be standing in all future elections in the North.
They hadn't even put that to the Movement as that year's Ard Fhéis wouldn't be held until the end of October when Danny Morrison gave his ballot paper and armalite speech.
They were laying the groundwork for participating in future elections days after the death of a hunger striker and while the hunger strike was still ongoing.
Then more recently Bobby’s family came to learn through documents viewed in the National Archives that Bobby's final burial wishes, which were not made known to them at the time, were not fulfilled by those in the movement who had been entrusted with his funeral arrangements.
Bobby had wanted to be buried in Ballina alongside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan and he asked that he be buried wrapped in a blanket and not a shroud.
He was buried in Milltown Cemetery in a shroud. Danny Morrison claimed that Bobby had changed his mind about Ballina but he was only able use questionable evidence for this. They couldn't however come up with any excuse for denying Bobby his wish to be buried wrapped in a blanket.
Bobby was highly intelligent and he knew that there wasn't a hope in hell that the screws would hand over a blanket for his burial so he was likely referring to a similar type of blanket which would be symbolic of his time on the protest. Bobby was a poet and it was through the eyes of a poet that he envisioned his funeral.
Bobby willingly gave his life and those who were entrusted with his funeral arrangements couldn't even grant him that small request.
We see today where participating in elections has brought Sinn Féin so there isn't much I can say, other than that a once proud movement is now willingly parading itself before the eyes of the world as the former enemies of the British Crown who are now among it's most loyal subjects.
They accepted the so called GFA, an agreement which had been on the table since 1973 when it was known as the Sunningdale Agreement and sold it as a victory. Like the latter agreement the GFA contains the promise of a border poll. They now use the language of John Hume from the 1970s and 80s that the only way to achieve a United Ireland was through peaceful means and politics.
But how far back does the so called peace process really go?
In 2013 the Thatcher Foundation Papers were released and they revealed that British Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins in a communiqué to Thatcher on July 6th, two days before the death of Joe McDonnell, indicated that:
The Provisionals need to settle the prisons 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 of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has ‘lost’ on the prisons is in no position to do this.
This communiqué was not only proof that Richard O’Rawe had been telling the truth about the British offer to end the hunger strike on that date but it also raises the question: how did the British know as far back as 1981 that some in the leadership of the IRA were considering bringing the war to an end?
To quote the great James Connolly:
England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.
Finally I feel that I need to address the issue of the Far-Right here in Ireland who use our patriot dead, in particular Bobby Sands, to try and justify their racism. Bobby was a socialist like James Connolly and he had common cause with people in other countries, regardless of race, colour or creed, who struggled for freedom and justice.
In his brilliant poem The Rhythm of Time he wrote in one of the stanzas:
It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.
He not only supported Anwar Ditta, a brave lady who fought against immigration laws in Britain, he wrote her and her family a poem in his H Block cell back on the 11th of August 1980.
In the face of brutality and racism,
we shall hold fast together.
There is faith because you have us
and we bleed with you.
Who would doubt for a second that had he been alive today Bobby would throw his support behind the Palestinian people? Yet many of these vile racists, some who would claim to be Republicans include those people in their racist hatred. How could anyone be that evil to stand on the side of the Israeli genocide?
Bobby would view the Far-Right in Ireland with the same loathing that he had for the British empire and their loyalist murder gangs in the North.
 |
Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
The speech is a concise valuable resource to have for those trying to find their way through the maze of lies and obfuscations thrown up the outside leadership.
ReplyDeleteGreat taking down of the fascists to conclude with.