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18 August 2011

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British ban on prisoner MPs backfires

Margaret Thatcher and Willie Whitelaw: Distorting democracy

BOBBY SANDS, IRA Volunteer, H-Block prisoner and hunger striker, was elected MP for the constituency of Fermanagh/South Tyrone on 9th April 1981, with 30,493 votes. His election was a massive blow to the British strategy of attempting to criminalise Irish republican prisoners. In response, the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher brought in legislation to disqualify prisoners from standing for election.
After the death of Bobby Sands on 5th May, a by-election in Fermanagh/South Tyrone was required and there was much speculation that another political prisoner would be nominated. On 11th June, H-Block prisoners Kieran Doherty, who was on hunger strike, and Paddy Agnew, who was on the blanket protest, were elected TDs for Cavan/Monaghan and Louth respectively in the 26-County general election.
Less than two months after the death of Bobby Sands, British Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw introduced the ‘Representation of the People Bill’ in the House of Commons. Whitelaw had been the first British Direct Ruler (‘Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’) in 1972 and had met an Irish republican delegation in London during the bilateral truce of June and July that year. As a prelude to those talks, Whitelaw had agreed to grant ‘Sepcial Category Status’ — effectively political status — to IRA prisoners in the Six Counties. While the blanket protest and hunger strike by prisoners treated as criminals went on in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, in the nearby Cages prisoners convicted before March 1976 still had the status won from Whitelaw in 1972.

Now, nine years later, on 22nd June 1981, Whitelaw stood up in the House of Commons to defend Thatcher’s intransigence which by that date had cost the lives of four Hunger Strikers. Before the ‘Representation of the People Bill’ was even introduced it was already known as ‘The Bobby Sands Bill’. After attempting to defend the Bill on the spurious principle that constituents could not be truly represented by an imprisoned ‘felon’, Whitelaw admitted that the real purpose was to stop another republican prisoner from standing:
“It is clear what the motives of a prisoner candidate would be, and what the motives of the supporters of the late Mr Sands in fact were. They were to achieve publicity, and to use the parliamentary election process not in order to secure its object —election to this House — but to whip up feeling and public emotion in a political atmosphere . . . It is a perversion of the electoral process, and an affront to democracy, that they should be permitted to stand . . . They are people manifestly unfit for public office who, in the Northern Ireland context, have exploited a loophole in our electoral law to play on sectarian fear and undermine our democracy.”
The Bill was opposed by Labour and Liberal MPs — some on principle and some on the grounds that it would give a ‘propaganda boost’ to the IRA — but was carried by the Tory majority.
On 28th July, the writ for the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election was moved in the House of Commons and polling day was set for 20th August. The Anti-H-Block/Armagh candidate was Owen Carron, a 28-year-old teacher from Fermanagh who had achieved national prominence as election agent for Bobby Sands. In his election address, Owen Carron said:
“You are the people who placed the H-Block scandal before the eyes of the world. Through your vote Britain stands condemned by peace-loving people throughout the world. Britain’s only answer is more repression and more deaths in the H-Blocks and on the streets.”
The SDLP Executive declared its intention to contest the seat but had to reverse this decision after the party’s Fermanagh branch voted not to run, conscious of the widespread support for the prisoners and the political damage to their party if they allowed the seat to be lost because of a split nationalist vote.
The Unionist candidate was Ken Maginnis, a major in the sectarian, locally-recruited Ulster Defence Regiment of the British Army. The UDR and RUC took an active part in the election campaign by harassing H-Block campaigners.

The election took place at the height of the H-Block crisis and during the campaign four Hunger Strikers died — Kieran Doherty TD, Kevin Lynch, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine. And yet, despite the scale of the crisis and the fact that two elected representatives were now among the dead and that an election was on and that Owen Carron was an H-Block/Armagh candidate (not a Sinn Féin candidate) RTÉ banned him under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. RTÉ reporter Rodney Rice asked Carron during a rally to nominate someone to speak for him. Carron refused and replied: “You are the journalist and you can get me on if you want to.”
At approximately 7.50am on 20th August, hunger striker Mickey Devine of Derry City died in the H-Block prison hospital. He was the tenth and last of the hunger strikers to die. That day was polling day in Fermanagh/South Tyrone. When the boxes were opened it was a victory for the prisoners with Owen Carron receiving 31,278 votes, over 2,000 ahead of Ken Maginnis and an increase of 786 on the vote won by Bobby Sands.
Fine Gael/Labour Coalition Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald announced that he would not meet with the new MP and the RTÉ ban on him continued. However, the election victory was another severe blow to British and Dublin government policy. Britiain’s criminalisation strategy was in tatters after the Hunger Strike. Republicans had opened an important new electoral front in the struggle.
The SDLP split the nationalist vote in Fermanagh/South Tyrone in the 1983 Westminster election, securing the seat for Ken Maginnis. It was a unionist seat until it was regained by Michelle Gildernew for Sinn Féin in 2001, the 20th anniversary of the Hunger Strike.

• Anti-H-Block/Armagh candidate Owen Carron won the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election on 20th August 1981, 30 years ago this month.

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