Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 46

The Aftermath
Part 1

The Kesh, The Great Escape, & The American Lobby

by Gerry Coleman

In the months that followed, the surviving men on the protest virtually received their five demands. The no-slop-out and no-wash protests ended when Bobby went on hunger strike to better enable the men to focus on the campaign. By December, a bit more than one month after the strike was called off, the men were wearing not blankets or prison uniforms, but their own clothes. The Blanket protest was over.

Conditions improve dramatically

Work around the prison was confined to work that the men agreed to do, 10 activities, and under orders from their own command structure. The integrity of the Republican military command was accepted in fact by the prison authorities. In the future, anytime the men wished to negotiate a specific issue, they went through their OC. Even if a man wanted a specific book that was not available, he went to his CO who went to the governor. Screws wishing to enforce an order had to go through the OC. Holding firmly to Bik’s authority during the hunger strike -- the men refused to meet or negotiate with any agency inside or outside the prison unless Bik was present -- paid dividends.

Mirror searches ended entirely and all searches were reduced greatly. Visits became more open; screws no longer loomed over the men staring into the face of the visitor.

The men soon achieved the right to association. Men in the wings were allowed to mingle with each other, 40 or so at a time, with only a handful of screws present. This had the added benefit that outnumbered screws were far less likely to harass individual men. They were allowed out of their cells after tea for two hours every night. They had an hour’s yard exercise each day. They had educational material and books to read.

In essence, the five demands were acceded to, although the British government never said so.

Britain's Irish Policies and Criminalization -- a total failure

Understanding the underlying need or rationale for IRA’s military campaign was beginning to enter the consciousness of people throughout the world, even among those that did not support violence. More importantly, no one anywhere in the world believed the IRA volunteers were criminals. Criminals do not starve to death for their fellow man and they do not die for justice. Even Thatcher knew that now, somewhere in her thick skull.

Fr Des Wilson, writing in 1981 soon after the hunger strike ended, tells of speaking to a ranking British army officer about why they lie about the character of volunteers who took up arms against them, calling them thugs and gangsters. Didn’t he know they were ordinary people, often honorable, who were fighting for a cause they thought just: "He replied, ‘But we know this is so.’ ‘Then why do you tell the public that they are only thugs?’ ‘We do not tell the public that; the government does. We know differently,’ was his response."

Even the British army didn’t believe the lie any more. As Fr Des put it, "It was now possible to speak respectfully of a member of the IRA."

At the very least, there was now a growing support for Ireland’s cause and a sharp decline in respect for the British government’s treatment of Irish people and its policies regarding Ireland.

The nature of hunger strike as a political tactic requires an honorable opponent who plays by the same rules of human conduct, one that treasures human life -- even the enemies’ life. From an Irish sensibility, to let a man die on your doorstep, or in one of your prisons in this case, was a disgrace to you. The British government’s determination to allow this to happen, and Thatcher’s reactions which alternated between apparent glee as the human cost mounted and disdain or indignation as if she were annoyed by these Irishmen dying, was a disgrace in the eyes of the world.

Even in England, Margaret Thatcher’s popularity in the polls dropped dramatically in the post-hunger strike era, although it was to rise again when she found another island to subjugate with her military in the Malvinas [or Falkland] islands.

The Great Escape from the Kesh

On the 22nd of September, nineteen hundred and eighty three, the republican prisoners in Long Kesh effected the greatest prison breakout since WWII to the shock and dismay of, in this order: British war lords home, abroad and underground; Margaret Thatcher’s polyurethane hairdo; parliamentary procedure; the lovely princes and princesses, dukely dukes and duchesses, baronly barons and baronesses; the geese and ducks on the ponds in the parks and conservatories; the Queen of Hearts itself and lowering minions in the streets; the pious gentles of Ballymena and environs; not to slight securocrats ominous over old blueprints of the "H M Prison: The Maze" and the Governor’s latest weekly report on the Irish boys washing the prison floors clean and calling the wing screws by their first names, as in: "Ach, Johnny. May we mop another block?"

The most escape proof prison ever under God’s heaven, this earth, this realm, this England! Holy shit.

It took the Irish boys only four months to plan. Thirty-seven, the cream of the IRA, flew the coop. Most notable among them was the glue that kept the hunger strike together, the man who succeeded Bobby Sands as OC of the Blocks, Bik McFarlane.

Bik and the escape

Bik is credited with planning it all, but that’s unlikely. No doubt he approved every detail.

At precisely 2:15 on a lazy Sunday afternoon in Long Kesh prison, an entire wing of Irish POWs, armed with mops and brooms and 6 handguns fitted with silencers and a few homemade knives, proceeded to scrub clean H Block 7. They had been cleaning and fussing about the prison for months to gather intelligence on the prison layout, its potential weak points, and working out escape scenarios and likely routes.

They also were ingratiating themselves to the screws to bring on a high comfort level and general sense of relaxation. It took them one half hour to secure the block with screws bound and gagged. They piled into a supply truck, an entire wing of men, aimed a gun to the driver’s head, and sailed through two security checkpoints. They got to near the outer perimeter fence when fierce fighting broke out as they encountered screws coming on duty. One IPOW was shot along with a warder and another was stabbed to death. Five screws received non-lethal knife wounds. Many of the men were badly injured.

The men were thwarted from driving further and had to make it through the gate as best they could and into the fields beyond -- into highly unfriendly territory. The prison is located in a predominately unionist area. The hounds of the Empire were soon in hot pursuit. Many didn’t make it. Thirty-seven did.

Back in the prison, the men inside paid a heavy price. There is no telling the abuse and beating the enraged screws inflicted on the men in their cells, particularly those that had participated in the planning and escape.

The new governor, Ernest Whittingham, who had replaced Stanley Hilditch -- the man in charge throughout the H-Block protests and the Hunger Strike -- was fired. They rushed Hilditch back to deal with the new situation.

Unionists were outraged that everyone wasn’t fired, including Brit direct ruler of the Six Counties Prior and Prison Minister Nicholas Scott.

It was a morale boost to the Movement and a devastating blow to the culture of British imperial superiority. The groundwork was established during the hunger strike and the blanket protest days. The men just found a different way of taking on the forces of occupation in the jails.

Escapes and attempted escapes, some of them fantastic in nature in failure and success, continued right up until the prisoner releases of the GFA in 2000. If a man was a day away from serving his sentence, he was just as likely to attempt an escape as any lifer. That was the way it was. Escape wasn’t for personal freedom. It was an act of a war that had to be won -- outside and inside.

The West Awoke

Irish America was revitalized by the 1981 hunger strike and continues to be a major player in Ireland’s struggle. Many who thought Irish heritage meant cute, fuzzy accents, shamrocks and beer on the 17th of March, learned on television and on the streets what their parents and the history books didn’t tell them, namely, they come from a divided country whose people are still persecuted by a foreign power. A dedicated group of women, a.k.a. The Long Green Line, picketed the British consulate in New York City every single day, rain or shine, for 15 years during and after the hunger strike.

Ten men died for Ireland in a British prison on Irish soil. Why? At the very least thousands of Americans of Irish heritage asked the question.

While the American "Special Relationship" with Britain maintained, when it came to Ireland, the US came to have a major impact on Britain’s Irish policy, particularly in Congress. The Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs, later joined by the more conservative "Friends of Ireland", very publicly critiqued British actions in the Six Counties. Today, both groups tend to speak with the same voice on matters such as the British forces’ collusion to murder civil rights lawyers, policing in the north, sectarian abuses and marches, and other matters formerly thought to be Britain’s own business. Not any more, as hearings, resolutions and congressional letters follow nearly every British foul-up or misguided policy.

The MacBride Campaign

Soon after the hunger strike, the Mac Bride Principle’s campaign for economic equality was a critical battle fought by American activists and political leaders against British misrule on the civil and human rights front. The British government was helpless to thwart its progress. By putting the economic resources of American state and city pension funds and purchasing power behind ethical investment and the buying of goods and services only from corporations and companies doing business in the north that follow equal employment rights, this campaign trained a very public spotlight onto British misrule and the nature of the sectarian state they created. It took the battle out of the "terrorist" / "counterinsurgency" mode -- the criminals vs the state -- and put it strictly into the human rights category.

State after state

The same people who picketed British consulates during the hunger strike, now lobbied politicians, attended public hearings, and pushed Mac Bride bills through state after state, city after city. The Brits opened an special office in Washington, D.C. to counter its advance. Still the campaign thrived.

The campaigners were accused by the British government of being motivated solely to embarrass the British regime in the Six Counties. That turned out to be an easy thing to do.

Next: The Aftermath, Part II: Adams hits NYC, America brokers the GFA, and The Rise of Sinn Fein