JULY - Joe McDonnell and Martin Hurson die; riot at the British Embassy

Gardaí provoke a riot by blocking the peaceful march to the British Embassy in Dublin

AS the new Fine Gael/Labour Government took office at the end of June 1981, Joe McDonnell was facing death in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. He died on July 8th after 61 days on the Hunger Strike. He was 29 years old.
He was the fifth Hunger Striker to lose his life in the struggle for the restoration of political status.
Less than three hours after Joe died, 16-year-old Fianna boy John Dempsey was shot dead by the British Army in Belfast.
On the same morning that Joe died, Norah McCabe, a 33-year-old mother of three young children, the youngest three months old, was shot in the back of the head at close range by a plastic bullet fired from an RUC armoured Land Rover. She died the next day in hospital from her injuries.
The Blanketman who replaced Joe McDonnell on the H-Block Hunger Strike on July 9th was 25-year-old Pat McGeown from West Belfast.
Born on September 3rd 1956, McGeown was a veteran of the armed struggle, having joined Fianna Éireann in 1970 at the age of 13. One of a family of five, with one older sister and three younger brothers, Pat was married with a six-year-old son in 1981 when he became the 14th man to embark on the Hunger Strike.
McGeown was interned in Long Kesh in 1973 when he was just 16 years of age. He was released in 1974 and re-arrested in November 1975, charged with possession of explosives and with bombing the Europa hotel in 1975. He was subsequently imprisoned with political status in the cages of Long Kesh.
In March 1978 he, along with Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane (O/C of the Blocks in 1981) and Larry Marley attempted to escape dressed as prison warders. They were caught before reaching the perimeter of the jail. McGeown was stripped of political status and put on the boards in the H-Block punishment block for 13 months where he immediately went on the blanket protest.
He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for the escape attempt which he served in the H-Blocks with the other blanket men. However, when the six months was up he was not transferred back to the cages but kept in the H-Blocks. By the time he replaced the late Joe McDonnell on hunger strike, McGeown had spent the previous three years and four months on the blanket.
As Joe McDonnell passed away, the condition of Kieran Doherty, elected a TD in June’s 26-County general election, continued to deteriorate, with the six other Hunger Strikers — Kevin Lynch, Martin Hurson, Thomas McElwee, Paddy Quinn, Michael Devine and Laurence McKeown — following in quick succession behind him.
The health of Martin Hurson was giving huge cause for concern as his health was declining much faster than anyone had anticipated. After 41 days, he was unable to stand up and his vision was blurred.
Martin Hurson died on July 13th, after 46 days on the Hunger Strike. The suddenness of his death, coming only five days after that of Joe McDonnell, came as a shock, since two previous Hunger Strikers, Kieran Doherty and Kevin Lynch, had been almost a week on hunger strike ahead of Martin.
Matt Devlin from Ardboe, County Tyrone replaced Martin Hurson, another Tyrone man on the 1981 Hunger Strike, on July 15th. At this point there were eight men on the strike. Born on April 30th 1950, Matt was the second eldest in a family of six.
Matt was arrested by British forces in February 1977 and taken to Cookstown and then Omagh barracks, where he was interrogated for four days. On the basis of a forced statement he was charged with attempting to kill members of the RUC. In October 1977, Devlin was sentenced to seven years and immediately went ‘on the blanket’. He was one of the 30 men who joined the first Hunger Strike in 1980.
On Saturday, July 18th 1981, a peaceful protest in Dublin in support of the Hunger Strikers turned into a full-blown riot when gardaí in riot gear blocked the route to the British Embassy. An estimated 20,000 marchers were making their way to the embassy when they were brutally assaulted as the gardaí protected the representative of a British government that had effectively killed six Hunger Strikers at that stage.
The fact that journalists were amongst those battered by the gardaí that day ensured that their orgy of violence was documented despite efforts amongst the media in general to apportion blame to the marchers. Besides recounting the beatings they themselves endured, journalists were able to give details of the indiscriminate kicking and beating of old men and women, young girls, and already unconscious victims by gardaí. Certainly members of the Garda were injured but in very small numbers and some of those listed as casualties included many who wisely hit the ground and were carried away from danger.
The writ for the Fermanagh/ South Tyrone by-election caused by the death of IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands MP was moved in Westminster on July 28th by Dafydd Thomas MP from the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru. Bobby’s election agent, Owen Carron, was the Anti-H-Block/Armagh candidate.
The struggle — inside and outside the jail — continued on all fronts.