PRC-UTE
10th July 2006, 11:33
Looking Back on 1981
From The Blanket http://lark.phoblacht.net/AM09070616g.html
Anthony McIntyre • Forum Magazine, June/July 2006
It should have been Sinn Fein's year. The 90th anniversary of the
Easter Rising and the 25th anniversary of the hunger strikes were
destined to merge as one seamless thread of continuous resistance and
struggle, and send the party strutting along the stage of Irish
nationalism bathed in the light of adulation; the carriers of the
eternal flame fuelled by the blood of the 1916 leaders and the ten
men who died in 1981. It has hardly turned out that way. The Easter
Rising thunder was siphoned off by Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fail. Not
too hard to do. The choice was between Real Fianna Fail and
Provisional Fianna Fail at a point when the latter could no longer
expect to benefit from a sleaze-free image. Sinn Fein since 1998 have
more than sufficiently demonstrated that they are Good Friday rather
than Easter Sunday republicans. It is inane to march past Dublin's
GPO chanting 'administer British rule' and expect to win accolades.
As if that were not bad enough, the hunger strikes are proving to be
a lot more thorny. The Sinn Fein leadership just can't grasp the
baton passed on by ten dead men without recoiling from the prick of
the barb. Rather than basking in reflected glory, they are facing
questions in the media which, when stripped of their velvet sheath,
sound ominously like 'did you kill help six of the hunger strikers?'
Anniversary years have not been kind to Sinn Fein. The party's
centenary year, 2005, had already been destroyed by the killers of
Robert McCartney. 2006, where such key anniversaries as 1916 and 1981
in other circumstances would have been a launching pad for greater
things, has been overshadowed by the towering figure of Richard
O'Rawe, resisting all the intimidating invective, slander and
innuendo that the diminutive party sandbags have thrown his way as
they desperately try to protect their leader; the very source of
their own status, with whom they have been complicit, their fates are
intertwined.
O'Rawe's charge is simple. The British government made an offer to
end the hunger strike prior to the death of Joe McDonnell. The prison
leadership said 'deal', informed key republican leaders on the
outside of their position, and sat back in nervous anticipation that
the British would immediately proceed to initiate arrangements that
would prevent further loss of life resulting from prison protest. To
their chagrin the same leaders said 'no deal.'
Since O'Rawe's book Blanketmen was published last year, much
speculation has centred around the motives of that leadership element
which was operating without the knowledge or approval of the bulk of
those on the army council. Amongst those who find O'Rawe plausible
there has emerged signs of a consensus that the guiding strategic
objective of the then adjutant general of the IRA was to ensure that
the hunger strike continued until at least the seat 'only borrowed'
by Bobby Sands had been safely secured by a Sinn Fein member.
After the death of the sixth hunger striker, Martin Hurson, dark
murmurings were beginning to simmer in the wing O'Rawe was held on.
In conversation with one of the central figures on our own wing at
the time I made the point that that if the rumours coming out of
O'Rawe's wing were true, then whoever repeated them might end up dead
themselves. Since Blanketmen appeared on the shelves he has reminded
me of the conversation each time we discuss O'Rawe's allegations.
Nevertheless, the jail was nothing if not a hot bed of distortion.
Perspectives that would fly nowhere else would soar to great heights
in that place. If gremlins were beginning to appear there would be
enough conspiracy theorists to give them fair wind. But most people
would have viewed untoward occurrences in the management of the
hunger strike as the result of human error and miscalculation rather
than Machiavellian manipulation in what was a precarious odyssey. No
choice was easy; even less could it be guaranteed that success would
follow. There certainly would have been few takers for the view that
the foremost Provisional IRA leader for what was then the best part
of a decade, would be contemplating electoral glory at the cost of
our comrades' lives.
To believe that prominent republicans were capable of sabotaging a
deal that would end the hunger strike to suit their own electoral
ambitions, we would have had to entertain the seemingly absurd notion
that those pursuing such an end would at some point seek to surrender
IRA weapons, install Ian Paisley in a returned Stormont as leader of
a partitioned Northern Ireland statelet and call for republicans to
hand themselves over to the Diplock courts to experience the dubious
merits of British justice. It is easy to conceive of such people as
being endowed with characters of such malignancy that they would
readily regard votes as more important than republican lives.
Now who in their right minds in 1981 would ever have imagined that
there was anyone like that in our ranks?
From The Blanket http://lark.phoblacht.net/AM09070616g.html
Anthony McIntyre • Forum Magazine, June/July 2006
It should have been Sinn Fein's year. The 90th anniversary of the
Easter Rising and the 25th anniversary of the hunger strikes were
destined to merge as one seamless thread of continuous resistance and
struggle, and send the party strutting along the stage of Irish
nationalism bathed in the light of adulation; the carriers of the
eternal flame fuelled by the blood of the 1916 leaders and the ten
men who died in 1981. It has hardly turned out that way. The Easter
Rising thunder was siphoned off by Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fail. Not
too hard to do. The choice was between Real Fianna Fail and
Provisional Fianna Fail at a point when the latter could no longer
expect to benefit from a sleaze-free image. Sinn Fein since 1998 have
more than sufficiently demonstrated that they are Good Friday rather
than Easter Sunday republicans. It is inane to march past Dublin's
GPO chanting 'administer British rule' and expect to win accolades.
As if that were not bad enough, the hunger strikes are proving to be
a lot more thorny. The Sinn Fein leadership just can't grasp the
baton passed on by ten dead men without recoiling from the prick of
the barb. Rather than basking in reflected glory, they are facing
questions in the media which, when stripped of their velvet sheath,
sound ominously like 'did you kill help six of the hunger strikers?'
Anniversary years have not been kind to Sinn Fein. The party's
centenary year, 2005, had already been destroyed by the killers of
Robert McCartney. 2006, where such key anniversaries as 1916 and 1981
in other circumstances would have been a launching pad for greater
things, has been overshadowed by the towering figure of Richard
O'Rawe, resisting all the intimidating invective, slander and
innuendo that the diminutive party sandbags have thrown his way as
they desperately try to protect their leader; the very source of
their own status, with whom they have been complicit, their fates are
intertwined.
O'Rawe's charge is simple. The British government made an offer to
end the hunger strike prior to the death of Joe McDonnell. The prison
leadership said 'deal', informed key republican leaders on the
outside of their position, and sat back in nervous anticipation that
the British would immediately proceed to initiate arrangements that
would prevent further loss of life resulting from prison protest. To
their chagrin the same leaders said 'no deal.'
Since O'Rawe's book Blanketmen was published last year, much
speculation has centred around the motives of that leadership element
which was operating without the knowledge or approval of the bulk of
those on the army council. Amongst those who find O'Rawe plausible
there has emerged signs of a consensus that the guiding strategic
objective of the then adjutant general of the IRA was to ensure that
the hunger strike continued until at least the seat 'only borrowed'
by Bobby Sands had been safely secured by a Sinn Fein member.
After the death of the sixth hunger striker, Martin Hurson, dark
murmurings were beginning to simmer in the wing O'Rawe was held on.
In conversation with one of the central figures on our own wing at
the time I made the point that that if the rumours coming out of
O'Rawe's wing were true, then whoever repeated them might end up dead
themselves. Since Blanketmen appeared on the shelves he has reminded
me of the conversation each time we discuss O'Rawe's allegations.
Nevertheless, the jail was nothing if not a hot bed of distortion.
Perspectives that would fly nowhere else would soar to great heights
in that place. If gremlins were beginning to appear there would be
enough conspiracy theorists to give them fair wind. But most people
would have viewed untoward occurrences in the management of the
hunger strike as the result of human error and miscalculation rather
than Machiavellian manipulation in what was a precarious odyssey. No
choice was easy; even less could it be guaranteed that success would
follow. There certainly would have been few takers for the view that
the foremost Provisional IRA leader for what was then the best part
of a decade, would be contemplating electoral glory at the cost of
our comrades' lives.
To believe that prominent republicans were capable of sabotaging a
deal that would end the hunger strike to suit their own electoral
ambitions, we would have had to entertain the seemingly absurd notion
that those pursuing such an end would at some point seek to surrender
IRA weapons, install Ian Paisley in a returned Stormont as leader of
a partitioned Northern Ireland statelet and call for republicans to
hand themselves over to the Diplock courts to experience the dubious
merits of British justice. It is easy to conceive of such people as
being endowed with characters of such malignancy that they would
readily regard votes as more important than republican lives.
Now who in their right minds in 1981 would ever have imagined that
there was anyone like that in our ranks?