Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 21

Bobby’s Campaign for MP

People were marching and demonstrating in the streets, but there was little mention of the hunger strike in the media. The BBC and establishment newspapers tended to portray the situation as if the people didn’t really care what happened to the hunger strikers. Something had to be done to put a shot in the arm into the anti-H-Block campaign and the Blanketmen’s five demands. A dangerous run for the British parliament by an Irish Republican on hunger strike in a Brit jail would do that.

The Gamble

The Blanketmen knew that running Bobby Sands for parliament was a gamble. Fr. Denis Faul told them Sands didn’t stand a chance, 10,000 votes at best. Three times that would be needed to win the seat. The prospect of a Unionist MP getting elected instead was a horrifying possibility. Harry West, the Official Unionist candidate, was expected to take the seat if the SDLP or Frank Maguire’s brother didn’t run. And now that the SDLP’s Austin Currie was embarrassed out of running and Noel Maguire’s conscience wouldn’t let him run against a man on hunger strike, it was Bobby’s seat to win -- or loose.

A win would draw attention to the hunger strike and demonstrate for sure that the people were in fact behind the Blanketmen. But would a win save Bobby’s life and those that followed him on the hunger strike? Would the Brits allow one of its MPs die in one of their prisons? Probably, yes, but what was the choice? The gamble was taken.

The other side of the coin was, however, very ugly. If Bobby lost by even a single vote, although it might be a statistical victory of sorts or show better than most expected support, the Brits would use the defeat as a mandate to let the men die.

The "Comms" Pour Out

The men couldn’t allow thoughts of defeat to affect their morale or efforts to get Bobby elected. The only way they could fight from inside was to smuggle out as many "comms" as they could asking people they knew, or those targeted for them by men from Co. Fermanagh and South Tyrone, to vote and campaign for Bobby. The prisoners from these areas were driven near mad trying to come up with people to "comm". In a week over 200 "comms" got out. At the end of the campaign, double that amount were making their way out of the Kesh and passed on to often startled Co Fermanagh and South Tyrone residents who were not used this kind of attention -- from Republicans. They responded.

Soon, Nationalist men and women, even children, who would not have been considered Republicans, were now campaigning around the clock for Bobby Sands for MP against the Unionist Harry West.

Francis Hughes Is Taken To Hospital: "Victory to the IRA!"

Around this time, on his 25th day without food, Frances Hughes was taken to the prison hospital in weakened condition. He was taken away from the wing by an escort of 6 prison warders. One was plenty to control Frank at that time, yet it was a form of harassment and mockery to surround him like that. It was also a left-handed complement of sorts: that Francis Hughes was so feared that, even though hardly able to stand, he wasn’t trusted to go without a battle. He was our Superman. Perhaps he would yet attack his tormentors even now, break out of the H-Blocks, leap the perimeter walls in a bound, back into the hills and hollows of South Derry where he would again attack the British army at will. He would escape his captors only in death, but they would still learn to fear him. They would always fear him.

Before he left the wing, he whipped the Blanketmen into a frenzy of support --a wild, righteous joy that a person might experience once or twice in a lifetime, if lucky. He didn’t need it to prepare himself to die. No. He did it for them. He raised his crutch [he was still crippled by the bullet wounds he received during his capture and abuse in prison] high over his head and shouted to the men and banged on their cells as he passed: "Victory to the IRA!" The men shouted back and hammered on their cell doors. "Tiocfaidh ar la! Victory to the Blanketmen!," Francis Hughes bellowed as they took him to the hospital. It would be the last they would see of Francis Hughes, but they never would forget him.

The bi-election vote was set for 10 April. By the 32nd day, Bobby had lost 11.3 kilos and was gobbling down water pints at a time. He was developing at the same time an abhorrence for water. He could hardly get it down, but it was important to prolong his life. Bobby knew the story. He told Gerry Adams in a "comm" that he "will be very sick in a week or two, but my mind will see me thru... I’m not building hopes on anything. I’m afraid I’m just resigned to the worse, so sin sin [that’s that’s]..."

O’Hara and McCreesh Still In Their Cells -- For Now

Patsy O’Hara was taken from his cell in H5 by a warder who told him, "The doctor wants to see you to tell you when you are going to die." Patsy and Raymond McCreesh were still in their wings with their comrades, but they knew that they would be taken away to the prison hospital soon enough, just like Bobby and Frank Hughes before them. That was the final trip.

Besides trying to get Bobby elected, the hunger strike committee on the outside, headed by Gerry Adams and a few others to deal with short-term strategy, had to figure what to do if there were deaths. It was decided that, rather than putting another "squad" of men on hunger strike, they would replace a man who died with another man on an individual basis.

But what good would be served by allowing another four or more to die if the deaths of the first four were unsuccessful in achieving the demands? Would justice, bravery and commitment start to look like suicide at one point? Would abandoning the strike after four deaths without victory seem like a betrayal and waste of the men’s sacrifice.

The men inside began, as best they could under the circumstances, to discuss these same dilemmas.

Carron Runs For Bobby

Meanwhile on the campaign trail, Owen Carron was made election agent for Bobby Sands. Running this election would have been nerve wracking enough knowing the stakes and considering Carron’s lack of political experience at this level, but the Northern Ireland Office made it worse by refusing to allow Bobby to do any sort of campaigning, not even to give interviews for television or the press.

Owen Carron had never even meet Bobby Sands; now he was running in his stead for his life. They met in the prison hospital for the first time when Bobby had to sign papers to empower Carron to be his spokesman, Bobby looking like a concentration camp victim in prison pajamas and Owen like a business man in a blue, pin-striped suit. In essence, Owen Carron now was Bobby Sands, as far as the election was concerned. Bobby, through Owen, put out a statement that day which read in part: "There is but a single issue at stake, the right of human dignity for Irish men and women who are imprisoned for taking part in this period of the historic struggle for Irish independence."

Carron had a rough road ahead and only 10 or so days before the election. The Unionists smelled a victory and threw all of their resources into it and Nationalist were not at all guaranteed to vote for Bobby. Although they would never vote for a Unionist, many could abstain rather than cast "a vote for violence." There was still resentment over the way Noel Maguire was perceived to have been treated. This antipathy made itself clear early on when they were almost literally thrown out of a store front that they hoped to rent, from a Catholic businessman, in city center Enniskillen. They had to make due in an inappropriate, old wreck of a house awaiting demolition on the edge of town.

But, it was magic as well. Nationalists who were normally afraid to expose their true colors, or be dragged into the nearby RUC station or Ulster Defense Regiment [UDR] barracks or decried from the pulpit, were now witnessing hundreds of Republicans from every corner of Ireland driving up and down their roads waving tricolors and singing Republican songs. It was near euphoria. Door to door canvassing was going brilliantly well. The people were coming around.

So were the UDR, who were harassing Republican canvassers and pulling down and ripping up posters. Often the posters were removed before the light of day could reveal them to potential voters. It seems no one was sleeping very much on either side.

Next: Election Day Comes and Fermanagh/So. Tyrone Gets An Unlikely, Honorable Member of Parliament