1981: British politicking cost Hunger Strikers’ lives

BRITISH STATE PAPERS RELEASED UNDER 30-YEAR RULE | THATCHER AND THE H-BLOCKS CRISIS

Resolving the issues behind the prison conflict were long down the list of the British government’s priorities

ADULTERATING their drinking water, forcibly intravenously feeding them and banning all visitors, quashing the results of the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election and disqualifying Bobby Sands as MP, berating the Reuters news agency for refusing to describe the IRA as ‘terrorists’ — these are just some of the revelations in British state papers just released under the ‘30-year rule’ about the reactions of Margaret Thatcher and her government to the 1981 Hunger Strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.
Long down the list of British priorities was resolving the issues behind the prison conflict: that is, the imposition of harsh prison conditions aimed at criminalising the prisoners and thus the struggle for Irish freedom. That the prisoners were politically motivated was never in doubt. After the Hunger Strike, the prisoners eventually won every single demand they made, and more; and, of course, they were recognised as key political participants when the British agreed to their early release under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. Today, dozens of ex-POWs and Hunger Strikers are among Sinn Féin’s elected representatives.
Some of the British state papers from 30 years ago have still been withheld, leaving us with an incomplete picture of key decisions being taken, especially around the time of the death of Joe McDonnell on 8 July 1981, on his 61st day of hunger strike. Also, any analysis must come with a health warning. Although not specifically with the state files and posterity in mind, Sir Robert Armstrong, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary, refers to British officials bowdlerising (removing damaging text from) correspondence between London and Dublin in 1981 in case Dublin leaked the contents.
Nonetheless, it is possible to focus a little closer on what was taking place behind the doors of 10 Downing Street, what the Dublin Government was saying privately, and what actually happened.
Certainly, concern must now be expressed about the quality and accuracy of the verbal messages being sent through the so-called ‘back channel’ (Brendan Duddy, the Derry businessman and mediator). If the transcripts made by a British representative (codename ‘The Mountain Climber’) truly reflect the comments he made on the telephone, then his relationship with the British would appear to be closer than had been thought. Indeed, this ‘back channel’ was abandoned by Sinn Féin in 1993 when Secretary of State Patrick Mayhew falsely claimed that a message had come through from Martin McGuinness stating that ‘the war is over and we need your help’.
On 4 July 1981, the protesting prisoners in the H-Blocks issued a conciliatory statement saying that the British Government could settle the hunger strike without any departure from ‘principle’ by extending prison reforms to the entire prison population.
The Sinn Féin sub-committee advising the prisoners was led to believe by Duddy that the British had contacted him, whereas the papers now reveal that he contacted the British and told them that republicans wanted to contact London.
Danny Morrison was given clearance to meet with the Hunger Strikers on 5 July and told them that the British had been in contact. Hopes were raised that there could be a deal. However, Morrison was later ordered out of the jail by Deputy Governor John Pepper, indicating that there was tension between the Northern Ireland Office and the Foreign Office (whom Mountain Climber, an MI6 agent, worked for), and this was later confirmed by Mountain Climber.
The British agreed to supply their offer to Sinn Féin so that it could be checked for any problems or omissions prior to it being released. The papers show that the British procrastinated for almost 24 hours and that when they eventually sent an offer, at 11:30pm on 6 July, they gave Sinn Féin just nine-and-a-half hours to accept it. When Sinn Féin replied that the statement did not address the issues of work and remission, the British withdrew the offer and cut the link. Although there is evidence suggesting that at a meeting just after midnight on 8 July between Thatcher and her Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins, it was agreed to send a rewritten offer, no such offer was sent and Joe McDonnell died several hours later.
Parallel with these secret talks, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP) was also engaged in talks with the Prisons Minister, Michael Alison, and thought it was making progress. Six times it was led to believe that a Government representative would go into the Hunger Strikers and explain to them what was on offer if they ended the strike. But no one appeared. A prison official did appear hours after Joe McDonnell died and declared that there was no change in the Government’s position.
At a press conference, the ICJP condemned the British Government and NIO for failing to honour its undertakings and for “clawing back” concessions. Garret FitzGerald’s government accepted the ICJP’s account. According to the papers, his representatives “thought that the British reaction to the ICJP attempts to help was too slow. They were disposed to believe the ICJP accounts and these suggested that there had been an insufficient sense of urgency.”
With the passage of time and the emergence of more information it is clear that the British saw the Hunger Strike as an opportunity  “to humiliate the Provisionals” and defeat the struggle. Prisons Minister Michael Alison, on the day after the death of Joe McDonnell, compared talking to Hunger Strikers as like talking to hijackers: “You continued talking while you figured out a way to defeat them, while allowing them to save face.”
Back in 1981, unionist thinking was prevalent throughout the NIO and among British ministers. A minute of a Cabinet meeting on 18 July notes: “She [Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher] was more concerned to do the right thing by NI than to try to satisfy international critics. Mr Atkins observed that, from a purely NI point of view, he would rather do nothing . . . After further discussion, the PM decided that the dangers in taking an initiative would be so great in NI that she was not prepared to risk them.”
And more Hunger Strikers died.

What the British state papers say

The ‘W’ Word

SECRETARY OF STATE Humphrey Atkins showed some signs of despair on 12 June 1981 in a confidential paper to Margaret Thatcher about the Irish situation:
“I believe there is increasingly a mood in the country that if we cannot ‘do something’ about ‘the Northern Ireland problem’, we should consider withdrawal. The message which I get loud and clear from every contact I have with broad public and political opinion — including particularly backbench Conservative opinion relayed by the officers of the party’s Northern Ireland Committee — is that the time has come for us to be seen to be making moves on both fronts, political and prisons, since they reinforce each other. We are not winning friends by doing nothing.”
However, when it came to ‘doing something’, the British balked at the idea and within two weeks Atkins was saying that any concessions to the Hunger Strikers “will provoke a strong adverse reaction among Northern Ireland Protestants, who will read it as the beginning of a sell-out . . . A move by us now would be seen — in Northern Ireland by Protestants and Provisionals — as a signal that we were cracking.”

Force feeding considered

IAN GOW, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, in June 1981 (later assassinated by the IRA), wrote to Humphrey Atkins about the possibility of feeding the Hunger Strikers intravenously.
Later, on July 14, a Foreign Office minister suggested that the only way to prevent any more deaths was to feed the prisoners intravenously, against their will. If this option was taken, the prison authorities would also have to restrict visitors because “any relatives and priests allowed in may well be fanatical enough to wrench out the drip and smash the equipment”.
Lord Carrington raised the prospect of “force feeding” because of the damage being done to Britain’s international reputation by the deaths. Others suggested surreptitiously inserting glucose into the water provided to those fasting.

Tragic misreading

MEMO from British official Wyatt the day after Joe McDonnell died:

“We have come rather better out of the ICJP [Irish Commission for Justice and Peace] exercise than we might have expected . . . There is endless scope for argument about the severity of control and the period of association but the prisoners are on a slithery slope to accepting our terms.”

A long legacy

» MEMO from British official Blatherwick, 17 July:

“Even if the Hunger Strike were to end tomorrow, its consequences will be with us for a long time to come . . .
“People are becoming anti-British . . . a new generation of children have been infected with rampant Anglophobia.”

Decision-making

» MEMO from British official Blelloch:

“The Provisional leadership outside the prison are apparently content to let the prisoners make the running . . . neither directing nor controlling the protest.
“The protesters themselves do not appear yet to be in the least ready to settle for anything short of their five demands.”