One Man's Terrorist Read online

  In fact, the new leadership bitterly reproached Ó Brádaigh’s old guard for alleged softness on the question of armed struggle. They denounced the 1975 truce as a fiasco and rejected the idea of further talks with the British government unless there was an explicit commitment to withdrawal.30 In tandem with their public embrace of class struggle and ‘economic resistance’, Adams and his comrades steered through a reorganization of the IRA along cellular lines that was intended to blunt London’s security offensive.31 Adams became the IRA’s chief of staff after his release from prison and won the support of several important figures for the project, including Martin McGuinness, Ivor Bell and Brian Keenan.32

  The new-model IRA was much smaller than its predecessor. One estimate put the movement’s core strength at 300 or so, with another 3,000 ‘active sympathizers’ providing assistance. By comparison, in 1972 there had been 300 Volunteers in Belfast’s First Battalion alone.33 The Provos told their supporters to prepare for a ‘long war’ that might last for ten, fifteen or even twenty years. As an Army Council spokesman told Ed Moloney, the IRA’s objective was now to ‘wear down the will’ of its opponents: ‘Either the British government itself comes to the conclusion that it must leave, or that conclusion will be forced on them by British public opinion.’34

  The La Mon Hotel bombing in February 1978 threw the conflict between armed struggle and political action into sharp relief. IRA members had been planting incendiary devices as part of their bombing campaign against commercial targets. This time, the warning they supplied was totally inadequate and a fireball swept through the building, burning twelve civilians alive. The RUC distributed horrifying photographs of the corpses as part of a media campaign against the IRA.

  Facing a popular backlash, republicans had little prospect of strengthening their base. Adams later said that he could feel ‘two years of work going down the drain’ on the night of the bombing.35 But the Provos strongly defended the use of such methods: ‘The political effects of the bombing campaign have been productive. It has created insecurity and confusion among Unionists and helped break up the loyalist monolith, brought down Stormont, made and makes the Six Counties internally ungovernable, and has made government under British direct rule difficult and often impossible.’36

  Later that year, the ministry of defence prepared a confidential assessment of the IRA’s strengths, ‘Future Terrorist Trends’. To its great embarrassment, the Provos managed to obtain a copy, and it supplied them with a welcome propaganda boost. The document paid reluctant tribute to the IRA’s recruitment policy: ‘Our evidence of the calibre of rank-and-file terrorists does not support the view that they are merely mindless hooligans drawn from the unemployed and unemployable. PIRA now trains and uses its members with some care.’ The IRA was now farther removed from the communities in which it operated, but this need not prove fatal to its campaign: ‘There is seldom much support even for traditional protest marches. But by reorganizing on cellular lines PIRA has become less dependent on public support than in the past.’37

  In August 1979, the Provos supplied lethal confirmation of their enduring strength when a meticulously planned bomb attack killed eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint on the same day an IRA unit assassinated Lord Mountbatten during a holiday in Sligo. As Margaret Thatcher’s new government ordered a review of security policy to determine what had gone wrong, the IRA was in bullish form. Its leaders saw no reason to contemplate another ceasefire until they were sure that Britain was getting out for good.

  In April 1980, ‘Brownie’ returned to a familiar theme in the pages of An Phoblacht: ‘A British withdrawal can be secured more quickly and in more favourable conditions if it is achieved not only because of the IRA’s military thrust but also because resistance to British rule has been channelled into an alternative political movement.’38 For all the time spent on Sinn Féin’s revamped programme, the party was still a pale shadow of the IRA, with no real political weight and no chance of putting its radical policies into effect. However, the movement now stood on the brink of a dramatic breakthrough that would transform the balance of forces in Northern Ireland.

  The issue that supplied this opening had been staring them in the face all along. When republican inmates in the H-Blocks began refusing to wear prison uniform, they set in motion a prolonged and hard-fought struggle that culminated in the death of ten hunger strikers during the summer of 1981. That struggle revived the fortunes of the republican movement and provoked the greatest crisis for British rule in Northern Ireland since the fall of Stormont nine years earlier. By then, Jimmy Drumm’s call for mass resistance at Bodenstown in 1977 had been decisively answered. But we cannot draw a straight line between the new thinking of the Adams leadership and the dramatic events of the period that followed. At several crucial points, the Provos had to be coaxed reluctantly along the road that led them to their ultimate destination.

  Strength in Unity

  Soon after Drumm’s speech at Bodenstown, Jim Gibney composed a letter from Crumlin Road jail, where he was being held on remand. Gibney saw the prison protest as a golden opportunity for ‘rallying the people away from their inertia and apathy’, but complained that the prisoners were not receiving enough support from the movement outside: ‘Whilst not singling out any group in particular, I believe that unity on this issue is essential.’39 Tact may have prevented Gibney from ‘singling out’ his own comrades for criticism, but the Provos had certainly shown little interest in mobilizing support for the prisoners, leaving the burden of such work to the Relatives Action Committees (RACs). According to People’s Democracy, the RACs were ‘unable to mobilize much more than the relatives of political prisoners and the hard-core activists of Sinn Féin and the Marxist groups’.40 That weakness prompted Bernadette McAliskey and her Tyrone associates to organize an ‘Anti-Repression Conference’ in Coalisland at the beginning of 1978, in hope of expanding the campaign.

  The former civil rights MP gave a sober assessment of where things stood almost a decade after NICRA’s first march, reminding her audience that they represented a minority of the nationalist population.41 People’s Democracy called for a broad campaign in support of the prisoners that would not be restricted to supporters of the IRA, but Sinn Féin members greeted the proposal with suspicion.42 The IRSP, which had its own prisoners involved in the protest, was more sympathetic, having been schooled in the idea of a ‘broad front’ by Seamus Costello before his death. Gerry Adams later admitted that the conference became a ‘lost opportunity to build unity’ because his own movement was still ‘temperamentally and organizationally disinclined’ to cooperate with other groups.43 There was no hint of self-criticism from the Provos at the time. Republican News hailed the conference as a ‘notable success’, but warned against ‘hasty thoughts of a “New Mass Resistance” comparable to that of the civil rights movement ten years ago. The clock cannot simply be turned back like that, much as People’s Democracy and Bernadette McAliskey might wish it to be.’44

  The work of building a campaign in support of the prisoners continued nonetheless. In August 1978, the RACs organized a march from Coalisland to Dungannon on the anniversary of NICRA’s demonstration along the same route, laying claim to the civil rights heritage. Estimates of the turnout ranged from 10,000 to 25,000: a marked improvement on the 1968 march, which attracted a little over 2,000 people. Several veterans of the civil rights movement spoke at the rally, including Bernadette McAliskey, Eamonn McCann and Michael Farrell.45 Republican News insisted that the protest was not just an expression of solidarity with the prisoners: ‘It also confirms the continued massive support for the armed struggle being waged by the revolutionary Irish Republican Army.’46 After the success of the first march, a coalition of left-wing groups called another demonstration, this time following the same path from Belfast to Derry that People’s Democracy had traced a decade earlier. But Sinn Féin boycotted the event and condemned its organizers for registering the route with the RUC.47

 
Another row erupted in June 1979, when Bernadette McAliskey announced that she was contesting Northern Ireland’s first European election on a platform supporting the prisoners. The Provos vehemently opposed her campaign: Gerry Adams warned that it would ‘only confuse the nationalist people’, and Martin McGuinness even heckled McAliskey with the aid of a megaphone as she canvassed in the Bogside.48 On the eve of polling day, An Phoblacht railed against ‘mosquito groups such as People’s Democracy’ who had rallied to McAliskey’s banner: ‘Perhaps they have opportunistically buried their principles in their eagerness to promote a candidate – Bernadette McAliskey – who they believe they can manipulate to give themselves a public voice independent of – and opposed to – the Republican Movement.’49 The IRSP also called for a boycott of the poll, a measure of the distance travelled by Costello’s party since 1975, when McAliskey had looked set to spearhead its electoral challenge in the North.

  McAliskey’s eventual score, 6 per cent, was respectable, although the SDLP candidate John Hume polled four times as many votes. PD saw the election as the start of a challenge to the SDLP’s political hegemony among nationalists. Hume’s margin of victory showed there was still a long way to go after ‘years of anti-imperialist fragmentation, mistaken reliance on an armed campaign, and irresponsible sectarian behaviour’.50 An Phoblacht was pleased to report that McAliskey had received fewer votes than her supporters were hoping for, thanks to a ‘vigorous Sinn Féin boycott campaign’.51 The paper accused PD of ‘crossing the anti-EEC picket line’ with its support for McAliskey – ‘a mischievous act, and one which casts doubt on PD’s sincerity when they call for unity among anti-imperialists’.52

  However, after three years of foot-dragging, the Provos were about to endorse the proposal for a united front in support of the prisoners. Pressure from inside the H-Blocks may have been decisive. The IRA leadership wanted to dissuade the blanketmen from launching a hunger strike, but had to offer them some tangible signs of progress if that desperate gamble was to be avoided.53 In October 1979, An Phoblacht passed on the movement’s new line: ‘Conditions placed by the Republican Movement in the past, for political-status campaigners to also support the armed struggle, no longer apply.’54

  At a ‘Smash H-Block’ conference held in West Belfast that month, delegates elected a sixteen-person committee to organize a campaign of protest in support of the ‘five demands’ (civilian clothing, no prison work, free association with other prisoners, the right to organize leisure and educational facilities, and full remission of sentences). The committee naturally had a strong Provisional element, but also included representatives of People’s Democracy and the IRSP.55

  Over the next year, the National H-Block Committee channelled all its energies into publicity work, petitioning trade unions for support and organizing tours in the United States for its spokesmen. The committee’s leading figures exposed themselves to real danger: in June 1980, loyalist paramilitaries killed two prominent activists, John Turnley of the Irish Independence Party and the IRSP’s Miriam Daly. However, their efforts to rally public support proved unavailing. With no sign of a shift in British policy, Brendan Hughes led a group of seven IRA and INLA prisoners onto a fast that began in October 1980.56

  The first protest in solidarity with the hunger strikers attracted 17,000 marchers onto the streets of Belfast: the kind of mobilization that had not been seen since the heyday of civil resistance in the early 1970s. In a report for the current affairs magazine Magill, Gerry Foley described the sight of Bernadette McAliskey overcome with emotion as she watched the crowds pass by: ‘It was as if the civil rights movement that she knew eleven years ago had resumed its march.’57 McAliskey herself, the most high-profile figure associated with the campaign, was lucky to survive an assassination attempt in January 1981 when a UDA hit squad riddled her with bullets. The attack was a perverse tribute to the central role McAliskey played in mobilizing support for the prisoners.

  The first hunger strike ended in December 1980 without a clear agreement to address the grievances of the prisoners, exposing two tactical errors made by the prison leadership: all of the men had begun to refuse food simultaneously, and Hughes kept responsibility for decision-making even though he was taking part in the strike. One of the prisoners, Seán McKenna, proved to be physically weaker than his comrades and slipped into a coma. An offer of some kind appeared to be on the table, and Hughes decided to call off the protest rather than allow McKenna to die. There was still a window of opportunity at the beginning of 1981 when it might have been possible to resolve the stand-off in a way that allowed both sides to save face. However, the prisoners became convinced that the administration was bent on humiliating them and broke off negotiations.58 They began preparing for a second hunger strike. This time, the prisoners would join the fast one by one, maximizing the impact of their sacrifice.

  On the first day of March, Bobby Sands stood down as the IRA’s commander in the Maze and began refusing food. Sands, soon to become the most iconic Provisional martyr of them all, had joined the IRA as a teenager in the early 70s. Convicted for possession of arms, he served time in the celebrated Cage 11 at Long Kesh, where Gerry Adams had begun to establish himself as one of the movement’s leading strategists. After his release, Sands resumed his IRA career and before long was back in prison on another weapons charge, still in his early twenties.

  Such experiences were typical of the blanketmen who now pitted themselves in a fight to the finish against the government of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s hostility to the republican cause had acquired a sharp personal edge when the INLA killed her friend Airey Neave two years earlier. It would require an unprecedented popular mobilization in support of the five demands to break her government’s will to resist.

  In the first week of the strike, an opportunity arose when the Nationalist MP Frank Maguire died suddenly, leaving his Fermanagh–South Tyrone seat vacant. Bernadette McAliskey was still recovering from the wounds inflicted by loyalist paramilitaries in January. She declared her willingness to run as a candidate in support of the prisoners, but promised to stand aside if one of the hunger strikers came forward in her place: ‘I would work the shirt off my back for that prisoner and the other prisoners he is representing.’59 On 9 April, the voters of Fermanagh–South Tyrone had a straight choice between Bobby Sands and the Unionist candidate Harry West. By a tight margin, they elected Sands to Westminster.

  The Northern Ireland Office had been rather sanguine about the protests of the previous year, suggesting that popular indifference to their cause ‘must have contributed to a sense of futility among the strikers’.60 Shortly before the vote in Fermanagh–South Tyrone, civil servants reported that public interest in the strike ‘still seems to be at a satisfyingly low level’.61 The by-election put paid to that. It gave the Provos a tremendous political boost and shone a harsh, unflattering light upon the British government’s record in Ireland.

  Many supporters of the campaign assumed that Thatcher would now have to cut a deal with the prisoners. But she remained intransigent and Sands passed away in the prison hospital on 5 May. News of his death provoked violent clashes between young nationalists and the RUC throughout Northern Ireland. A newspaper report described the funeral on 7 May as ‘the biggest demonstration of republican sympathy since the protest rally immediately after Bloody Sunday’.62 Most alarmingly for London, demonstrations of support for the hunger strikers also took place in cities around the world. Dockworkers in the US refused to unload British ships for twenty-four hours, and the Portuguese parliament held a minute’s silence in honour of Sands.63

  The IRSP hailed the Fermanagh–South Tyrone by-election as ‘a victory for the united front approach – by means of which members of different political organizations, and of none, can unite around the beliefs that they hold in common’.64 The same could be said for the campaign as a whole. If the IRA leadership had insisted on making support for armed struggle into a precondition, its appeal would have been greatly
reduced, and the hunger strikers might have gone to their graves without leaving any mark on Irish history. According to the RUC, there were at least 1,200 protests in Northern Ireland during the second hunger strike, attended by over 350,000 people. F. Stuart Ross, who has written the most comprehensive account of this upsurge, suggests that the mobilization of 1980–81 ‘dwarfed that of 1968 and 1969’.65 Those who had put the idea of a united front campaign on the agenda in the first place – People’s Democracy, Bernadette McAliskey, the IRSP – played a crucial role in making that happen.

  Ten Men Dead

  The far-left fringe, often dismissed by the Provos as irrelevant minnows, made another key intervention during the hunger strike. Local elections were scheduled for May 1981, and the British government resisted pressure to cancel the poll, fearing it would be seen as a victory for the Provos.66 Sinn Féin had already decided to boycott the election, so People’s Democracy and the IRSP stepped in to fill the vacuum and won two seats each in Belfast. For PD, it was especially important to challenge the West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt, who had urged Thatcher not to make any concessions to the prisoners: ‘We cannot ignore quislings like Fitt nor can we render them irrelevant simply by mass mobilizations. They must be fought and defeated on their home ground.’67 PD targeted Fitt and Paddy Devlin, another staunch opponent of the prisoners, knocking Fitt off the council altogether, while Devlin was lucky to survive with a much reduced vote. An Phoblacht took careful note of the ‘remarkable’ victories achieved by these shoestring campaigns: ‘Had Sinn Féin or republican prisoners entered the field then the SDLP would have taken a sound enough knocking to have made nationalist collaboration a diminishing trade.’68