The Hunger Strike General Election

Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey’s 1981 election campaign was dominated by the H-Blocks issue

ON May 21st 1981, Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Charles Haughey called a general election, the first since he took over as leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach in 1979. The election was overshadowed by the H-Block crisis.
On the very day the general election was called, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara died after 61 days on hunger strike.
Bobby Sands and Francis Hughes had died on May 5th and 12th respectively and the national and international support for the prisoners had grown hugely.  The election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone had shown that electoral support could be mobilised behind the prisoners’ demands and so it was that on May 29th the National H-Block/Armagh Committee announced that was endorsing nine candidates. Eight were protesting republican prisoners.
Four Hunger Strikers were nominated: Kieran Doherty of Belfast, who stood in Cavan/ Monaghan; Joe McDonnell of Belfast, contesting Sligo/ Leitrim; Martin Hurson of Tyrone, fighting in Longford/ Westmeath; and Kevin Lynch of County Derry, the candidate in Waterford.
The other prisoner candidates were Dundalk native Paddy Agnew in Louth, Mairead Farrell of Belfast in Cork North Central, Newry’s Seán McKenna in North Kerry and Tom McAllister of Belfast in Clare. Tony O’Hara, brother of deceased Hunger Striker Patsy O’Hara, stood in Dublin West.
In addition to these nine officially endorsed by the National H-Block/Armagh Committee there were three candidates standing specifically on the H-Block issue - Vincent Doherty in Dublin North Central, Paddy Healy in Dublin North-East and Sean Kelleher in Cork South-West.
Charles Haughey’s hopes of a triumphant campaign were dashed.
He was challenged by H-Block/Armagh protesters throughout the country. After an egg was thrown at him in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, he was reportedly white with rage and declared that his father had “fought for Irish freedom”. Meanwhile, Haughey’s government was ensuring that voters were denied the right to hear the prisoners’ side of the story - state censorship of TV and radio  under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act  was reinforced.
An Phoblacht noted that the Irish Press newspaper, up to the time of the election, had given “comparatively commendable coverage” to the H-Block crisis but once the election was called it played down and disregarded the campaign. This reflected the attitude of many in Fianna Fáil who expressed verbal support for the prisoners once the campaign was kept confined to the Six Counties but drew back when it came to ‘home turf’.
After visiting the constituencies, Gerry Adams wrote that the intervention of the prisoner candidates had “brought to life a staged, stale and contrived contest between Tweedledee Haughey and Tweedledum [Garret] FitzGerald”. He described it as the “first anti-Establishment challenge to the powers-that-be in 25 years” and that young people especially had been mobilised.
Republicans received an enormous boost on the eve of the general election. Eight armed IRA prisoners escaped from the heavily-guarded Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast. They overpowered warders and defied the presence of the RUC and British Army to escape out the front gate of the prison.
Voters across the 26 Counties went to the polls on June 11th. When the votes were counted, the biggest shock was the size of the H-Block/Armagh vote - despite censorship, despite Garda harassment of campaigners, despite scarce resources and the hostility of political opponents and media.
Two H-Block prisoners were elected. In Cavan/Monaghan, Kieran Doherty secured 9,121 first-preferences, only 303 votes behind poll-topping Fianna Fáil Minister John Wilson. Kieran’s Director of Elections was Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (now Sinn Féin TD for the constituency since 1997) who described “the winning combination of a firmly implanted local leadership backed up by an energetic team of extremely hard workers dedicated to a just cause”. Monaghan GAA county footballer Tommy Moyna said that in north Monaghan “we had 95% of the young people’s votes and if that’s a reflection of the whole constituency that’s how Kieran got in”.
Kieran’s election agent was Charlie Boylan, now a long-serving Sinn Féin Cavan County Councillor. Making the acceptance speech on Kieran’s behalf, he appealed to the other elected candidates to back the prisoners’ five demands.
In Louth, H-Block prisoner Paddy Agnew topped the poll with 8,368 votes. A significant factor in the election here was the split in Labour Party ranks with a number of key activists resigning in order to back Agnew, as well as strong trade union support for the H-Block/Armagh campaign. But the biggest factor was clearly the strong support for this local republican who was on the blanket in the H-Blocks.
The nine H-Block/Armagh candidates received just short of 43,000 votes. The closest to gaining a further two seats were Joe McDonnell in Sligo/Leitrim and Martin Hurson in Longford/ Westmeath.
The intervention of H-Block/Armagh prisoners and the election of two of them proved to be a further blow to the British Government policy of criminalising republicans. But the prison struggle went on. Kieran Doherty TD, whose hunger strike for justice was ignored by all but a handful of his fellow TDs, died on August 2nd 1981.
Haughey was deprived of his overall majority and he was replaced by a Fine Gael/Labour government that was equally subservient to the British government of Margaret Thatcher. The H-Block crisis was hardly even mentioned in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil never again secured an overall majority.
The general election took place on June 11th1981, 30 years ago this month.