Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 34

"An Appalling Mass of Evil!"
The Fight For Joe Mc Donnell’s Life
Three More Join the Hunger Strike

After the deaths of Patsy and Raymond, and the H-Block candidates’ successes in the Dail elections, there was still a good period of time before Joe Mc Donnell would reach crisis. Of course, a sudden heart attack or another fatal event could happen at any time. In order to put more pressure on the Brits, three new men who had volunteered months ago were selected to join Joe: Brendan McLaughlin, Kieran Doherty, and Kevin Lynch.

Putting three men on would insure that there were four on hunger strike and that the Brits couldn’t just wait out Joe’s death, because there were others behind him. As Bik McFarlane put it, "It was a calculated risk, taken in the firm belief that we could definitely exert further pressure both on the Brits to seek settlement and on the Irish establishment to do something positive to get Thatcher’s government off their intransigent line... But we needed to act positively and decisively. And pressure, regardless of its severity, could never balance against the sheer hell of an agonizing death for those on hunger strike."

The Catholic Bishops Move -- In the Wrong Direction

The work of The Irish Commission on Justice and Peace, headed by Dublin Bishop Dermot O’Mahony, who was also Chancellor of the Dublin Archdiocese, was one of the few initiatives that offered any real hope for saving Joe’s life. In fact, the whole point of the ICJP was to save Joe’s life. But the Commission was a curious operation, dealing directly with the press, the Irish government, the Northern Ireland Office and the RUC, where they received all of their information, but not with the prisoners themselves. Only when it was too late did they meet with the hunger strikers.

"An appalling mass of evil."

In June, the Irish Bishops delivered a statement which oddly highlighted the crimes of Republicans and spoke of the hunger strikers themselves as performing acts of evil leading to an "appalling mass of evil." The bishops made no mention of the appalling mass of evil the British army and loyalist death squads were heaping upon the nationalist people or the reasons for the IRA’s military campaign, even if they were against it.

In fact, they offered no plan of settlement or way out of the impasse except that the men needed to "reflect deeply on the evil of their actions."

The Bishops’ attack was so severe and one sided that the Sunday Times headline roared: IRISH CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONDEMN MAZE FAST AS EVIL. Meanwhile, Joe McDonnell’s life was daily being sucked out of his weakening body.

Speaking about the situation after the hunger strike was over, Bishop O’Mahony, the man in charge of a committee with the remit of saving these men’s lives on hunger strike, had this to say:

"All along we were against granting political status to the IRA prisoners. To grant political status would help the IRA, and we couldn’t do that... The IRA would have as their goal not only getting the British Army out of Ireland, but undermining the democratic process in the South of Ireland.

"One can’t forget the crimes most of those in prison are guilty of, even though they were tried in special courts: attempted murder, bombing, all kinds of violence..."

It was like putting Hitler in charge of saving Jews.

Brendan comes off his fast

Brendan Mc Laughlin, who had just started his strike, was stricken with wracking stomach pains which turned out to be a severe case of perforated ulcers. He was immediately taken off his fast; he wouldn’t have lasted another week or two. The idea wasn’t to die, but to pressure the Brits to win the 5 demands. So much for Cardinal Hume’s suicide nonsense.

Bik informed Martin Hurson by comm that he would be taking Brendan’s place. And so he did.

Brendan’s coming off the strike, not of his own doing, nevertheless must have encouraged Thatcher to visit the North for sick reasons of her own. The world had watched her gleefully preside over four deaths on hunger strike; there was no reason to expect that she wouldn’t just as gleefully watch the entire Irish Nation heaped dead in front of her.

Nonetheless, here she was flying into Belfast. It got ugly, but not ugly enough.

"Good morning, good morning, good morning"

Thatcher wanted to make headlines, so she tried to set up while on her trip a meeting with Churchmen, particularly Cardinal O’Fiaich. To his credit, he refused to break previous commitments elsewhere to suit her propaganda requirements, although meeting for purposes of saving lives was another matter.

Thatcher, her reptilian self, busily shook hands with Belfast city center crowds in front of the media, although she could hardly help her forked tongue from occasionally flicking out from her stoney serene countenance. "Good morning, good morning, good morning," she chimed as if she were attending a Wimbleton match. "Good morning, good morning, good morning," She feigned, complaining happily like a good housewife that she wouldn’t be able to get any shopping done because of the crowds. She avoided questions from the press about the hunger strike like the plague; the general impression that she wanted to portray was that everything was fine. Hunger strike? What hunger strike? Just Irish men starving to death.

Journalists kept trying to get something out of her, "Mrs. Thatcher, why are you here?" "Good morning, good morning, to see these people, good morning..."

But at a Stormont press conference later she said that the hunger strikers had been "persuaded, coerced or ordered to starve themselves to death." And "Faced with failure of their discredited cause, the men of violence have chosen in recent months to play what may well be their last card."

Thatcher on "Downtown" radio program: ‘No one asked me to compromise...'

One radio journalist cornered her on his Belfast based radio program ["Downtown"] and asked if her "last card’ remark wasn’t tantamount to provoking the IRA? She avoided the question. He followed up and she responded evasively stressing how the community have rejected the Provisional IRA and she said these remarkable words: "... and I stress this very much indeed -- no one in any responsible position in any religion has urged me to give either political status or anything like special category status."

The host [Eamon Maille] jumped in, incredulous: "But they have asked you to compromise, haven’t they?"

Thatcher: "One moment, one moment. No one has asked me to compromise on any of those things."

Maille: "Are you saying that you haven’t been asked to actually find a solution?"

Thatcher: "May I answer your questions? No on. Now let’s get this absolutely clear. No one has asked me to compromise on any of those things. Now what I am saying is we will uphold the law, we will continue to uphold the law."

This was an amazing statement. Hadn’t the Irish government, at least, asked her to compromise or find a solution? And if not, what did that say about the Haughey and/or Fitzgerald?

Maille brought up the 22 people who were killed since Bobby Sands’ death. Thatcher snapped: "And who killed them? The men of violence killed them."

Back in London

She could easily myopically ignore the men of violence in her own army of occupation in Ireland, loyalist killers, and the thuggery of the RUC, because no sooner did she arrive than she was back off to London. While in London, perhaps she would be able to hook up with Cardinal O’Fiaich, who would be attending the centenary celebrations of the martyrdom of St. Oliver Plunkett. That would be some occasion for a meeting of the two, the British PM and the Cardinal from Crossmaglen over in England to celebrate the memory of a man murdered for his faith by the British government. In fact, such a meeting was set up for the 1st of July at Number 10 Downing Street. Whatever would he say to her? The first thing in the event was, when asked what he wanted to drink, he asked for "a little Irish." But there wasn’t a drop of the stuff in the house. He had a bitter Scotch instead.

Joe, weakening in body, gets a joke in

Others flew in after Maggie. One was David Steel, a life-long British civil servant. He actually visited the Kesh and met with Joe. Stupidly, Steel asked Joe to compare the conditions in Long Kesh with the Crum where he was held on remand. I don’t know what kind of face Joe McDonnell put on for Steel, but I like to think he was straight faced: "The food was better." He had been on hunger strike almost two months.

Next: The fight for Joe McDonnell continues; O’Fiaich meets Maggie