BBC's
recent documentary The Hunger Strike was
a vivid depiction of a most emotionally challenging
era in the history of the Northern conflict. The
spectral depiction of Lawrence McKeown walking through
the prison hospital in which ten men died caused
me to convulse with an involuntary shudder. It brought
home how close Laurence came to being the 11th man,
having gone 70 days without food, the longest any
of the surviving hunger strikers managed. Most of
those who died succumbed short of Laurence's 70
days. That he is alive and well and able to take
us though that terrible place of dying, ward by
ward, helps cushion the reality of the awful events
that occurred in the vicinity of that small corridor
along which he retraced his steps.
Margo
Harkin of Besom Productions who directed the documentary
stated her purpose:
Unravelling
the inside story of any major event is never an
easy task. No one yet has managed to do it in relation
to the hunger strikes. The best that can be hoped
for is that the conditions are created whereby a
multiplicity of accounts can emerge through which
people can learn more rather than learn everything.
The definitive 'truth' will elude us forever.
In
her bid, Harkin pulled together a disparate band
of interviewees. Viewers by now know what to expect
from Bernard Ingham; a rattling out of the standard
British line that Thatcher was angelic and the hunger
strikers demonic. It was therefore refreshing to
learn that Lord Gowrie would wade in. Potentially
a valuable voice that could add texture and additional
meaning to any history maker's reconstruction of
the hunger strikes, he undermined his own contribution
by glibly and incongruously describing the enjoyment
he derived from the food laid out on Cardinal O'Fiaich's
table. Even amongst the most liberal of Thatcher's
Conservatives, there was a gross insensitivity to
Irish concerns. Thatcher was hardly alone in seeing
Ireland as remote as Sri Lanka. Such indifference
goes a long way in explaining why violent conflict
lasted for as long as it did. Thatcher's successors,
displaying considerably more interest have demonstrated
how little political ground needed to be ceded in
order to satisfy her most determined opponents.
There
were a number of intense emotional moments captured
by Harkin. The mother of Bobby Sands emerging from
a prison van to tell reporters that 'my son is dying'
was one of them. As too was Dr John O'Connell's
description of Sile de Valera sitting at the bedside
of Bobby, crying at the sight of life ebbing away
from someone she deeply respected as heroic.
This
helped make The Hunger Strike riveting viewing.
Yet, far from providing the inside account, it prompts
questions to which answers will be sought. These
concern the negotiations between republicans and
the British government during both the 1980 and
1981 strikes.
Gerry
Adams, in what may be seen as an implicit criticism
of the leader of the 1980 strike, suggested it failed
as a result of the decision by Brendan Hughes not
to allow Sean McKenna to die. This was a view articulated
much more forthrightly and honestly by Bernadette
McAliskey. Adams compounded his critique by arguing
that the document delivered by the British as a
basis for a settlement was so weak that a coach
and horses could be driven through it. Yet Jim Gibney
elsewhere has written that 'the negotiations during
the hunger strike between Gerry Adams and the British
government had produced a document which on paper
had the potential to end the prison protests in
the H-Blocks and Armagh Women's prison.' If true,
Sean McKenna came to the brink of death and Hughes
intervened to save his life, because the substance
of what Adams negotiated with the British had no
potential to solve the five year long prison dispute.
Another
aspect of this which requires further investigation
is the precise role of those negotiating on behalf
of the British. One strand was between NIO minister
Michael Allison and the Irish Commission for Justice
and Peace. As Harkin demonstrates, Allison was halted
by Thatcher, not because she was sabotaging a conclusion
but because, through MI6, her government was dealing
directly with the IRA leadership. So, Danny Morrison,
in frequently making the relevant point that on
six occasions Allison was asked to send in a British
representative to explain what was on offer through
the ICJP to the prisoners, does not address the
more important question of what went on in the more
substantive negotiations between MI6 and the IRA
leadership. Both Adams, by his own admission, and
Thatcher too, seemingly, wanted the ICJP-Allison
strand to be 'butted out.'
This
is important because it does not really matter how
many times or how strenuously Morrison demanded
of Allison that he send a representative into the
prison to clinch a deal. From Sinn Fein's perspective
the Allison-ICJP initiative was not the deal that
needed to be clinched. What we really need to know
is what similar demands were made of the Mountain
Climber and MI6. Clearly Adams wanted the ICJP involvement
scuttled. This, we are told by Morrison, was premised
on a view that the Mountain Climber offer was more
substantive than what the ICJP were being promised.
There seemed little point, therefore, in asking
Allison to send in a representative to explain a
deal that Sinn Fein did not want implemented on
the grounds that it may have undermined a better
deal. Nobody seems to have presented any evidence
that demands, similar to those made of Allison,
were made of the Mountain Climber to send in a representative
to explain what was in his offer to the prisoners.
This
makes a fuller account of the communications between
the IRA leadership and MI6 indispensable to any
fuller understanding of the hunger strikes. So,
far the guardians of that particular information
on both sides have given no indication that they
will let go of it.
