Embers Under Ashes

The people of Iran have shown that they have their own demands; they want the Islamic regime to go. And it has to go. Thirty years of medievalism and brutality is enough. What this infighting has done and will continue to do is further provide the people of Iran with the opportunity to fight for real freedom and equality … Like racial apartheid in the former South Africa, a regime of sexual apartheid must be proclaimed a crime against 21st century humanity.– Maryam Namazie

On Friday the Iranian Embassy in Sweden was stormed by protestors outraged at the actions of the murderous theocratic regime in Tehran. Swedish police fired shots into the air in order to disperse the demonstrators. It seemed fitting that the protest should have occurred in Sweden, regarded as the most secular society in Europe and where the rule of god can go to hell. It follows on from the situation in Iran where aggregated millions of protestors have taken to the streets in the past month. Although many are demanding fresh elections to replace the one they allege was crooked, there are other demands raising their head; among them the call for the prosecution of those who sanctioned and perpetrated the recent spate of state murders, the freedom of political prisoners, and the removal of the country’s dictator along with the theocratic regime.

Ten days into the widespread resistance to the regime in an action that conjures up images of the 1976 Apartheid murder of 13 year old Hector Pieterson in Soweto, Neda Agha-Soltan was gunned down by theocratic goondas. A passer-by recorded her dying moments on his mobile phone which he then forwarded to a friend in Holland. Five minutes later images of the dying woman were on Youtube and the attempts by the Iranian state to cover up its crimes and censor its opponents appeared in disarray. Like Hector Pieterson, Neda’s dying moments have come to symbolise state brutality alongside popular resistance. It is an image that will haunt the regime. The Times of London was close to the mark in reporting that ‘footage of the 26-year-old music student dying on a back street in Tehran shocked the world, turning her overnight into a global symbol of suffering under the brutality of the Iranian regime.’

The situation appears to be one of naked oppression. On top of those being murdered others are reported to have been dragged from hospital beds and thrown into prison. The regime is also demanding the equivalent of $3000 from families who want the bodies of their loved ones released for burial and is then denying Islamic funeral rites. Many key officials, up to their necks in corruption, are said to be transferring funds out of the country and into their private bank accounts abroad. The Revolutionary Guard have been promising to deal with rioters in the ‘revolutionary way.’ As Robert Fisk points out: ‘everyone in Iran, even those too young to remember the 1988 slaughter of the regime’s opponents – when tens of thousands were hanged like thrushes on mass gallows – knows what this means.’ If they were in any doubt Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a prominent cleric close to the government moved to disabuse them. He castigated protestors as being ‘at war with God’ and demanded their execution.

Uncomfortably for the dictatorship running the country Fisk goes on to draw an analogy with the practices of a state theocratic Iran hates more than any other, Israel.

Unleashing a rabble of armed government forces onto the streets and claiming that all whom they shoot are ‘terrorists’ is an almost copycat version of the Israeli army’s public reaction to the Palestinian intifada. If stone throwing demonstrators are shot dead then it is their own fault, they are breaking the law and they are working for foreign powers … and it is indeed an intifada that has broken out in Iran.

Although much as been made in the Western media about the supposed fraudulent nature of the elections it would be a mistake to think that Iranian society can expect much from the leader of the opposition even were he to prove victorious in a fresh poll. Mir Hossein Mousavi was prime minister of the country for eight years up until 1989 during which he made no reputation as a liberal. He led a government that was intolerant of dissent. According to the Worker Communist Party or Iran thousands were killed during his term in office. And those who scream "Allahu akbar” in support of him from the rooftops hardly lift the hearts of those pursuing secular justice and reason. Yet at worst he remains a better option that Ahmadinejad whose brutality is unbounded and who has surrounded himself with lackies and cronies since taking power while ensuring criticism is muted.

There is an old Persian saying that the embers continue to burn beneath the ashes. It is a flame that the theocrats have never been able to extinguish and hopefully it will come to scorch them yet.

Ben & Billie Jean

During the 16-week trial, at Santa Maria court in California, prosecutors branded Jackson a serial child molester who used Neverland as part of a sophisticated grooming process, luring children to an environment filled with alcohol and pornography – Nick Allen

He has gone. Done in or from natural causes, it still seems a bit hazy. Natural causes does not make for a good news story so speculation of something more sinister will be rife for a while at least. I never gave the man much thought but as a result of media saturation he had become such a part of the fabric that makes up our unconscious that when I glanced at newspapers in a shop and discovered he was dead I was stunned. While never an ardent fan I recognised Michael Jackson as a musical genius. Not that it should matter in terms of likes and dislikes. It is what a person does with their genius that should determine whether we like them or not, rather than the mere fact of being a genius. The ingenuity applied by Adolf Eichmann to organising trains to the death camps hardly prompts him to be admired. He is despised for what he did.

Being a year or two bit older than Michael Jackson it was hard to grow up in the 70s and not hear his music. As a paper boy, before setting out on my rounds prior to heading off for school, I would avidly listen to the radio at home. The Jackson Five featured on about every station on the ubiquitous battery operated transistor that accompanied me into my more conventional working years as a teenager. Not that there were too many music based stations on the go. Tony Blackburn on Radio One in the mornings, David Hamilton on the same station in the afternoons is about a much as I recall from an era of limited choice.

Jackson’s Ben was a haunting musical composition, in my view equalled only in its peculiar qualities in popular music culture by 10CC’s I’m not in Love and Judy Tzuke’s Stay with me ‘till Dawn. And if there was one song from the ‘80s that stood out from all others for me it has to be Billie Jean.

My wife detested Michael Jackson, finding him a creep. Each time his music would be broadcast in one of the many pop channels available today she would flick to another channel and make a comment about his unsuitability for children. So I didn’t get to hear much of him in recent years and he is not among the artists who feature on my MP3 player.

If the allegations of child abuse against him were true then he should have died in the frugal surroundings of a prison cell and not the luxury of his Los Angeles home. I have never followed his career closely enough to come to a decision whether his behaviour with children was unconventional or improper. His attitude was certainly out of touch with societal constraints. Dangling his child over a balcony might be a non conformist act but it was also criminally negligent. Would I want someone of his ilk as a baby sitter? I would stay at home first. He was never convicted of sex abuse despite many accusations but that can be the power of wealth for you. A hefty out of court settlement made to one alleged abuse victim helped shade it in my mind that at the very least he had a considerable case to answer.

There is a tendency for transgressions be to downplayed when it comes to certain celebrities. Whether it is as a result of slick PR work or a large section of the public resistant to its icons being subject to the scorn and derision of iconoclasts I am not sure. It can’t be claimed that the absence of a court conviction alone explains it on the noble principle of innocent until proven guilty. Move to the case of the boxer-rapist Mike Tyson and a different reading emerges. He is hardly treated as other convicted rapists are. I got a sense that his victim Desiree Washington was the object of considerable resentment because she shopped him. In her case the animosity is for no good ethical reason. She hobbled other people’s cash cow or blemished the deity that fans had created in their minds.

On the question of being a creep Jackson had something of that about him for sure. Strange might be more appropriate than creepy. Eccentricities are all too often labelled with the most pejorative terms in a bid to force conformity. A conformist attitude moves in to the extent that it pushes a creative bent out. Minds too ready to fit the groove can rarely produce anything outside it. Without question Jackson produced, but he does not merit special circumstance or mitigation because of his talent. For that alone Gary Glitter must ponder on the disparities between his fortunes and Jackson’s in the sure knowledge that the only people flocking to his own funeral will be grave diggers.

In the end Jackson might be remembered as Arthur Koestler is. Koestler was a brilliant writer but he also raped the actress Jill Craigie, who later became the wife of Michael Foot. Rapists who write and abusers who sing. If they were Christian Brothers we would speak of them in one dimensional terms only; the one that is least kind.

Fraudsters and their Ads

Having just watched an onscreen ad targeting benefit thieves I am of the view that it is a long time since I have witnessed anything so crassly stupid in the midst of those frustrating commercials that keep interrupting our television viewing. As if being brought to a halt every 12 minutes to watch Gary Lineker trying to flog crisps or something is not bad enough without this rubbish being thrown in on top of it.

The narrator, trying to behave like something out of Tales from the Crypt, spoke to us in the most sombre of tones. He maintained sync with the camera which homed in on the target. This latter unfortunate appeared to generate the highest security level alert of ‘critical.’ It all oozed Orwellian Big Brotherliness. The gravitas of the voice would suggest that whoever was being followed had to be captured or killed before he could commit mass murder. A bit like the unfortunate Brazilian the British police murdered a couple of years back and then lied about ever since to cover it up.

Had our fugitive a nuclear device up his coat or a vial of ricin concealed on his person that once unlocked would lead to a deadly assault on a civilian population of some British city? Maybe he was a potential suicide bomber but he looked nothing like what we are supposed to think such people look like. No beard, just a few whiskers, no djellaba, nothing of the sort. The fiend being followed had been doing the unthinkable – the double. Not placing a bet on the same team lifting the championship and cup either; something much worse than that. Benefit fraud.

When our despicable double-doer eventually got to his destination it was not some underground bunker but his home. It looked every bit as downbeat as the target who was clearly a member of the urban poor and was most likely doing the double to make ends meet in the midst of a recession caused by incompetent ministers, avaricious bankers and a greed fuelled economic system. Yet here he was in his unpardonable vileness, depicted as a furtive, shady character who had perfected the art of ducking and diving in his bid to shake off any surveillance as he went about stealing the state’s money. I waited in anticipation of the lazer guided missile carbonising his home and vaporising him for good measure; a salutary warning to all that this could be you if you fiddle the benefit system.

The makers of this ad should be sacked and their jobs given to people capable of actually working at something useful. The rapidly expanding dole queues are filled with such capable people. It seems not to have occurred to the ad makers that a better use of their time would be to follow some MPs around London as they spend the ill gotten gains made from the expenses scam. They have been conning the public for years, dipping into its purse and living the high life. Only for the Daily Telegraph the public would still be getting robbed by these parliamentary pickpockets.

Out of all the offences that take place on a daily basis in Britain benefit fraud hardly seems the one that is going to bring an end to civilisation as we know it.

The Wonka Theory of Everything

What has been noticeable in the continuing debate about the hunger strikes prompted by the publication of Richard O’Rawe’s book Blanketmen four years ago is that in recent months those most critical of the author have appeared ideationally bankrupt. Any new evidence, insights or interpretations all seem to be reinforcing the O’Rawe perspective. At the beginning of April when the Sunday Times produced documentation indicating that Margaret Thatcher despite her unyielding public stance was privately committed to making substantial concessions to end the strike, Sinn Fein was reduced to falling back on the tried and failed rebuttal that the documents originated with British military intelligence.

When much that was new emerged from the Derry Gasyard debate the party claimed that there was in fact nothing new at all and that what charges had been made there had been:

comprehensively rebutted by documentary and witness testimony when they first appeared. The deaths of all the hunger strikers is the direct responsibility of a British government intent on defeating republicanism. It is regrettable that there are some who have preferred to ignore the truth of what occurred and seek to use events then to further their anti-Sinn Fein agenda today.

At the secretive Gulladuff meeting those disagreeing with Sinn Fein’s version of events were said to be driven by an anti-party agenda.

Added to this are Brendan McFarlane’s comments in London that the ongoing debate fits into a wider effort to undermine the current Sinn Fein president and main negotiator on the Sinn Fein side during the hunger strike: ‘all this information is specifically being used to target Gerry Adams and discredit both him and Sinn Féin.’ You would actually think Roland Dahl was writing the party script.

‘You see Charlie’, he said, ‘not so very long ago there used to be thousands of people working in Willy Wonka’s factory. Then one day all of a sudden, Mr Wonka had to ask everyone of them to leave, to go home, never to come back.’
‘But why?’ asked Charlie.
‘Because of spies.’
‘Spies?’
‘Yes. All the other chocolate makers you see had begun to grow jealous of the wonderful sweets that Mr Wonka was making, and they started sending in spies to steal his recipes.’

This amounts to little more than an assertion that that people who are sceptical of the party go to bed at night and get up the following morning with only one thing on their minds – frustrating the political career of Gerry Adams by stealing his chocolate recipe. As if there are not more important things in life than that; going for a pint, watching a game of soccer, reading a book etc. As well, it overlooks the more plausible view of Professor Paul Bew who pointed out some time back that British state strategy under Tony Blair and Jonathan Powell was about ensuring that the Adams leadership stayed in position. That leadership was considered the best bet for the success of British strategy. Talk to any British official and you get something similar. At a conference in an English university a number of years ago myself and Catherine McCartney pulled faces at each other as we listened to a British minister defend the Adams leadership against criticisms of it in obsequious tones the likes of which are normally only witnessed at Sinn Fein Ard Fheiseanna or in a Thursday column in the Irish News.

Whether intentional or not, the ‘everybody is out to steal Gerry’s chocolate recipe’ mantra amounts to a discursive subterfuge which seeks to disguise the usefulness of the Adams leadership to British state strategy in Ireland.

It is noticeable that Danny Morrison, the most prominent opponent of the O’Rawe perspective, avoids the ‘securocrats at work’ argument. Alert to the nuances of the PR game he is presumably aware that it is synonymous with a guilty plea given what the securocrats have been blamed on over the years. This is why both Brendan McFarlane and Sinn Fein have sounded less plausible than Morrison. Few buy into the notion that the British state seriously want to do Adams or the peace process harm. Although spinning it that way helps the credulous see a master plan that doesn’t exist in order to remain blind to the disaster plan that does.

RATs – Racists Against Tots

It is not that often that I am to be found coming out in favour of churches of any description. More frequently I am castigating them for their stance on a range of issues that contribute to the problems that beset the world. But as they say here, ‘credit where it is due.’ And in South Belfast last week it was due in copious amounts to those churches that opened their doors to Romanian victims of racist attack. They did so at considerable risk to their persons and properties not to mention the same for the people who make up their congregations.

While the racists spent the day after the attacks presumably sleeping off their hangovers Belfast was mobilising to bring relief to the suffering. While the PSNI, like the racists, seemed to be sleeping off whatever they had the night before, successful European candidate Joe Higgins saw his party in Belfast take the lead as it immediately organised defence for the victims. Paddy Meehan, one of its activists, has been warned by the PSNI of a death threat because of his role in defending Romanians against racism.

There appears to have been some UDA involvement whether approved or not despite assurances by Frankie Gallagher of the Ulster Political Research Group, definitely not a racist, that this was not so. Gallagher was far from persuasive when he made the case that the UDA were not blameworthy. When asked should the loyalist militia condemn the attack he sought refuge in peace processery, claiming that when military style organisations were being urged to go out of existence it was a backward step to be asking for the same organisations to be making statements of any kind. Whatever logic there is in that it seems more an excuse than a reason.

The UDA has a long history of involvement in hate crime, albeit a history which some of its members have refrained from participating in. Catholics were often targeted for no reason apart from their perceived religious allegiance. And the organisation in its Johnny days openly flouted its racism. It is hardly surprising that Frankie Gallagher and his colleagues are having problems confronting a racist mentality in the UDA. But the response, focused as it is on the need for more funding, is so typical of the UDA begging bowl mentality – dole out money and we will insist on our membership doing what it is doing now, whether it be killing Catholics or expelling Romanians. The UDA may have decommissioned some of its weaponry at the start of the week but it needs to decommission the racist mindset that grips many within it ranks.

One of the most appalling aspects of the attacks was that a baby of 5 days was among those targeted. I have known Romanian kids from birth. They have been in my home and I in theirs. They are no different from any other child in their vulnerability and need for human love and protection. That the pernicious viciousness of racist violence should visit them at so tender an age is loathsome. All the rubbish about begging in the streets and ‘stealing our jobs and houses’ is brought into sharp focus for the trash that it is when the situation of this tot is considered.

The incidents have also demonstrated the futility of censorship. Listening to a BBC Radio Ulster broadcast featuring those who were vehemently critical of the people under attack rather than the attackers, I felt a great opportunity was lost when they were silenced and told to clear off by the presenter. Here were bigots every bit as dunderheaded as those white South African farmers from the apartheid era who argued that black people lived in hovels because their brains could not understand other shapes. And their stupidity was pushed to the side where it was no longer exposed to us. They should feature on every chat show available and their bigoted moronic stupidity laid bare so that everyone can see the level of intellect that drives the violence against Romanians.

The Romanians have a right to return to their homes. The racists have a right to be nowhere but jail.

Dribblers

Given the level of detail that the ongoing debate on the 1981 hunger strike has generated – four years it has now lasted despite claims by Richard O’Rawe’s critics to have finished him off all of four years ago - it seems most people that I talk to have settled on a workable interpretive framework through which to filter a conclusion. They increasingly opt for the prove all panacea – whether or not the conversation that Richard O’Rawe claims to have taken place between him and Brendan McFarlane in which they said ‘deal’ in response to the British government’s ‘offer’, actually happened. After Derry’s Gasyard debate it is hard to find any but the usual suspects holding the line.

In the four years since the debate began in earnest there have been many cases of premature verdicts announced, based on the telling blow never delivered. The purpose is always the same: cry ‘victory’, mob the man who supposedly rattled home the winner, and the crowd will jump and down in celebration of the goal not scored. The roar of ‘O’Rawe demolished, account comprehensively rebutted’ has gone up quite a few times. For something so ‘comprehensively rebutted’ we find, puzzlingly, his attackers still needing to rebut it.

Earlier this week the key critics of O'Rawe hosted a secret meeting in Gulladuff to which the families of the dead hunger strikers were invited to be addressed by a high powered panel of speakers. The secrecy defeated its own purpose by dint of its inability to keep its own logic a secret. The meeting was hardly just to show the families an action replay of the great victory over O’Rawe that comprehensively demolished him. It represented a fear of cross examination, probing, and cold analytical pursuit of the facts. Others not privy to the secret gathering were barred including the father of a dead 16 year old republican activist shot dead by the British Army in the hours following the death of the hunger striker Joe McDonnell.

To date nothing seems to have emerged from the meeting that would strengthen the hand of those who hosted it. All those comprehensive rebutters for all their comprehensive rebuttals still seem to be taking considerable blows to glass chins that have been left, well, what else other than comprehensively exposed. The man who was supposed to have been on the canvas all those years ago seems to be still in the ring and has been scoring consistently with his jabs against an opposition frequently missing with its jibes. There are signs of growing anger and frustration in the ranks of the opposition that O’Rawe has refused to lie down as commanded and that seconds are crowding into his corner in stark contrast to March 2005 when the book was first launched.

Spectators watching even great players take the ball around their opponent and then around him again and again still want to see the leather hit the back of the onion bag. But dribbling at the mouth and not with the ball at feet has led to O’Rawe maintaining a clean sheet, his net still intact. Pronouncing great victories do not great victories make. Four years after the first great victory today’s proclamations of more great victories sound like Comical Ali’s utterances during the first days of the US invasion of Iraq – loud but empty. The reality check is this: the idea that O’Rawe was counted out is rubbish. Those who did the counting display symptoms of being arithmetically challenged - Ireland united by 2014 and all that.

Riotous Authority

This morning I listened to a priest talking on radio. Priests in the media invariably conjure up one image. So it was refreshing to hear one as he was led through the exchange by the interviewer in a gentle fashion, being asked to discuss something other than allegations of child rape. Indeed, today, the priest in question was there because he was a victim rather than a perp.

His victimiser was not a rapist but a rioter. He was attacked while trying to calm a riotous situation and bring about a halt to what he claimed was ‘recreational rioting.’ His assailant was a youth who clearly objected to the priest’s intervention in riots. The attack on him was without justification and can advance no political cause. That it came during the annual Tour of the North is neither here nor there even though the tour is an exercise in triumphalism through the nationalist north of Belfast.

In his comments to the news item he featured on the priest charged that people just didn’t respect authority any more. There would appear to be truth in that but what authority does he have other than that of an average citizen? The authority of the average citizen is the type that has long been characterised as ‘when everybody is somebody nobody is anybody.’ It carries little weight.

As a priest he has no authority over anyone other than those who might wish to defer to him; something increasingly rare in modern Ireland. As an official of the Catholic Church he has no authority within society either unless it is over those who subscribe to that body of opinion which the church embodies; and then only in matters of reigious faith that do not violate societal law. He, as a church official, does not bear the authority of state in the sense that the police do. Nor is he an ‘expert’ in the field of recreational rioting like someone might, say, claim expertise in crowd psychology. So what authority does he possess that people might submit to?

There is a multitude of very good reasons as to why people should refrain from throwing stones at each other. The authority of a cleric commanding them to desist is hardly one of them. His authority to stop rioting is no greater or lesser than that of the average guy in the pub. And if the Friday night pub goer leaves his stool at the bar to tackle rioters, while his actions might be commendable, he is unlikely to strike chords of sympathy when he complains that those rioting did not respect his authority. We might wish it were otherwise but it isn't.

If the institution to which an individual belongs wishes to exert moral authority it must first have morals.

Directional Arrows

Three months after the Human Rights Commissioner, Monica McWilliams, criticised conditions at Antrim PSNI detention centre the Criminal Justice Inspection has issued its report. Apart from the fact that it exists what exactly is wrong with the Antrim station is far from clear. When I hear the term ‘custody suite’ I immediately grow suspicious and raise a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Custody suite’ has an innocuous ring to it; you would be forgiven for thinking it was situated at the top of the Europa Hotel. We know it to be anything but.

People are clearly held in these suites for lengthy periods which are abusive of human rights. The Inspection report thinks the answer to this is to provide a treadmill so that people in custody can exercise. It seems not to have dawned on those who put the report together that the detainees might just be forced to run on it until they drop or sign statements. Or is that something from the bad old days which they told us were not bad old days at all? Prisoners only beat themselves up to make the police look bad.

It is a long time since I have been detained within a Northern police station. I was in them frequently enough in the days when the PSNI went under the name RUC. Dull, grey, uncomfortable and oppressive they were never a joy to inhabit. What they are like these days I have no idea. I don’t imagine they have improved all that much. I am far from convinced however that a treadmill would add to their overall quality.

What surprised me even more than the recommendation for a treadmill was the suggestion that Korans should be supplied along with directional arrows pointing to Mecca. This is a ridiculous bias toward religious opinion and discriminatory against other opinions. While I hope never to find myself in custody again, if I were to be so unfortunate I might not want a directional arrow pointing to Anfield but I would appreciate the monotony being broken up by having the ability to listen to a match on radio or even watch it on TV. And for reading material No Half Measures by Graeme Souness would be welcome. Should I be denied it because I don’t do obeisance to supernatural beings and invisible men? The Inspection report, however, made no mention of that type of thing. Equality for it means giving Muslims the same as Christians. Humanists can stew in the corner of their cells.

I am not opposed to the Koran being provided to those who want to read it. Same for the Christian Bible, the Jewish Tanakh, or the Satanic Bible. It also holds true for Dawkin’s God Delusion. A humanist might wish to while away an hour or two browsing through scientific literature. He or she has every right to – as much as those with religious opinions have to read their stuff.

In prison the one book in every cell was the Bible. It was not that you could have it, more that you were forced to have it. As far as I am aware a prisoner had no right to throw it out. There was none in my cell after the blanket protest. The one that was there during it went unread. During that protest no one wanted to throw it out as its thin pages made great cigarette paper for hand-rolled tobacco. A holy smoke was as good as any other.

Reading material should not be denied to any prisoner. But there should be no discrimination in favour of those interested in religion. The freedom of prisoners to read what they want in custody is not something that should be subject to approval by the police or clerics. As for reading the Bible, no thanks. I’ll take my chances on the treadmill.

Clash of Perspectives

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you - Oscar Wilde

There has now been a debate on the 1981 hunger strike spanning almost half a decade. Taking their seats on either side of the debating chamber are what may be generically termed the O’Rawe and Morrison perspectives. Use of these terms allows the discussion to be simplified without being compromised by distortion. These shorthand devices permit the tagging of a claim to a certain camp without having to actually implicate either Danny Morrison or Richard O’Rawe in anything that may flow from any particular claim. To say that the Morrison perspective holds that a certain position is either right or wrong does not mean that the statement should be attributed to Danny Morrison or that he even agrees with its content. Same for Richard O’Rawe.

When the author of Blanketmen first made public his misgivings in his book about the management of the hunger strike a more conciliatory approach from his detractors would have gone a long way. It could have capped the discussion. They could easily have acknowledged that the conversation between O’Rawe and Brendan McFarlane on July 5 1981, which has been the subject of much impassioned debate, took place and then moved to create a context favourable to their own narrative: they were in the midst of negotiations; decisions had to be made on the hoof; there was uncertainty about the Brits’ true position and it had to be tested; the British had no one dying in comparable circumstances and could afford to play brinkmanship; events were moving at breakneck pace; in the midst of it all the jail leadership through no fault of its own failed to appreciate that things were changing by the minute and that a much better deal was in the offing if not yet actually on offer; it needed to be explored further to ensure that the strikers got full bangs for their bucks; the republican negotiators delayed in giving the true jail response to the Brits in the hope of getting something much stronger; in the event they misjudged the timing and have been haunted by it ever since. Even had they called it right they can still not be certain that the British would have honoured any of it.

Only the most poisoned would have been at their throats for that. A more general attitude would have been ‘there for good fortune go I.’ Now that window of opportunity is being drawn shut. What room is left for a benign interpretation is being closed down as O’Rawe’s critics paint themselves into a corner. In ensuring that O’Rawe had to fight to maintain his integrity they have handed him the garrotte with which he seems set to strangle their credibility and narrative. They have also given legs to the spectre not conjured up by O’Rawe – only raised by him as one among a number of possible explanations – that there were political and electoral calculations behind the decision to overrule the prisoners.

Trapped by its own intolerance the Morrison perspective was incapable of even acknowledging that a different point of view could be legitimate without necessarily being right. O’Rawe had to be depicted as a Fagin-like character pick-pocketing the hunger strikers’ mantel of legitimacy and whose work was scurrilous in nature. The complete unwillingness to accept a different viewpoint or come up with something other than a strident roar accompanied by whispering campaigns has led to the debate being where it is today, more contentious than it was four years ago, hard fought and conducted in an atmosphere of acrimony. Small wonder there are those who long for a return to the old certainties of 1981. But like a face finger-drawn on a beach those old certainties have been wiped away by waves of doubt, never to return.

Something atypical from O’Rawe’s critics when Blanketmen first came out – something not laced with the typical parsimony that we have grown used to over the years – would have been the a stitch in time that might have saved nine. That was forgone in favour of the more odious notion of stitching up O’Rawe. Now as the threads of the official narrative continue to be pulled it will require the needle of a surgeon applied with more dexterity than witnessed up to now to restore the tattered and torn official narrative to something that even vaguely resembles its former self. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men had a less daunting challenge.

Missed chances for wholesome governance

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, David Adams

Missed chances for wholesome governance by David Adams

What an almighty mess we’ve made here in Ireland, North and South – we could hardly have done worse if we’d tried.

After partition, both nationalists and unionists had the perfect opportunity to build genuinely wholesome structures of governance within their own separate fiefdoms, but neither even bothered to try. Instead they each created something in their own worst image, and had the cheek to call it a liberal democracy.

For the North, it was a Protestant state for a Protestant people, which, in its everyday reality, had a sizeable Catholic minority isolated and routinely discriminated against. In the South, a Roman Catholic theocracy (in all but name) was the preferred option, with elected representatives largely subordinate to the real seat of power, the church.

It was only a matter of time before it all blew up in our faces. More than 40 years after civil rights protesters took to the streets of Northern Ireland – and well over 3,500 deaths and countless broken bodies and minds later – the place still pulsates with sectarian hatred. Just the other week, in Coleraine, a loyalist mob beat a Catholic man to death and left his friend critically injured. Sectarian murder is not an everyday occurrence in the North, but still common enough to be unsurprising.

On the face of it, the Republic fared better, with, at least to the outside observer, widespread political corruption seemingly the only major problem. But that was an illusion; it just took longer there than in the North for things to come to a head.

It’s not for me, a northern Protestant, to be rummaging through the Ryan report, but there are general points to be made. No individual or organisation of any kind can ever be trusted with unaccountable power, for they will always abuse it, and to the maximum extent possible. That the latest culprit happens to be the church is incidental to that immutable truth.

Further, regardless of its founding ideals or supposed guiding lights, the principal if not sole concern of an organisation that feels itself threatened is self-preservation – this is as true of a government or a church as it is of a hive of bees.

From the moment the first allegations of child abuse became public, the church fell into a pattern of self-protective behaviour – denials, evasions, cover-ups, and all the rest of it – that was as predictable as it is pathetic to observe. For the transgressor, it is always primarily about damage limitation and eventual self-recovery, not about the harm done. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the church is now coupling its declarations of contrition with wondering aloud how it can win back public confidence.

We could argue that, at root, partition is to blame for the mess we’ve made of things. At least in theory, a substantial Protestant minority within an Irish unitary state would have prevented excesses by either side. However, given the type of people we are, I think it much more likely that perpetual instability would have resulted if Ireland had in its entirety been pushed out of the UK, or been forced to remain within it. Imagine Northern Ireland, only a larger scale. Where, then, should we go from here?

We could do what we usually do, of course, and blame it all on the British for coming to Ireland in the first place, and making us what we are. Cast them once again in the role of Philip Larkin’s “Mum and Dad”, as it were, and declare that until the British leave Ireland completely, we will never be quite as we should be. That would bring us neatly back to our comfort-blanket dispute over partition.

Another option is an equally pointless debate on who created the bigger mess. How about, instead, we adopt a completely new approach, starting with an acknowledgment that we alone are to blame? After all, on one side of the Border we kept voting for politicians who routinely discriminated against our neighbours.

On the other side, we successively voted for those who handed many of the powers and responsibilities of state to an unaccountable body. While we’re about it, we could take an honest look at ourselves, and resolve to stop believing our own publicity – accepting that we are neither the most historically sinned against people in the world, nor inherently the most decent.

We may conclude, perhaps, that we are exceptional only in being amongst the most self-obsessed. Who knows where all this self-reappraisal may lead. We could end up acknowledging that Irishness and Britishness are not mutually exclusive, nor is one superior to the other, or either one tied to a single religion, ethnicity or culture.

We may decide never again to be in thrall to church or to history: eschewing sectarianism, and worshipping no more at the shrines of 1690, 1916 and 1969.If we take that route, maybe what divides us will evaporate of its own accord, including partition. We may even end up building a shared polity to be proud of, one without institutionalised discrimination or unaccountability: one that is moulded in the best image of both of us.

From the Irish Times 4/06/2009

Thunder in June

It was our daughter’s school sports day. We feared we might not get the weather for it. As we packed a sports bag in preparation to go the first clap of thunder pealed through the air. Signs were ominous. I looked up from the garden and black clouds hovered seemingly closer than clouds usually do, as if the weight of the moisture contained within was weighing them down. A deluge would soon be upon us. We might be the only ones there, I mused. My wife sent a text message to the principal hoping to get a rain check. No response. The woman was obviously far too busy to be looking at every text that came through.

The taxi arrived and it still had not rained. The greater the distance we put between ourselves and home, the less cloudy the sky became. At the school the sun was shining while parents watched over children frolicking on the grass or clambering over each other to get into the bouncy castle that had been provided for the day.

Last year we made the same but different journey. Her annual sports day was on but her school then was temporary and in a different location. It was my first visit to the new building. The lay out was conducive to a relaxed environment. Spacious and comfortable I was so pleased that my daughter was getting her education in conditions much better than I got mine. And I am not talking about the H-Blocks.

Once there we set up camp, first in the shade of the bicycle shed and then on the grass. Lying flat out as if on a Spanish beach it was not too long before my daughter summoned me to the first of her races. A medal eluded her on that one, largely because she allowed a competitor to cut across her, thwarting her stride. Rather than trip him as I would, she graciously held off. Compensation came in the wheelbarrow race where both she and her ‘barrow’ picked up a medal each.

My son, not yet at school, told me yesterday that his school is still being built. It isn’t. He will attend the same one as his sister but consoles himself with that for now. The school’s standard of education is excellent and we anticipate that he will be as bi-lingual as she when he comes of age. Today education and the Irish language were the last things on his mind as he bounced from one end of the castle to the other. Then the challenge came.

Prompted by his mother he invited – demanded is a more accurate term – me to race him from our ‘base camp’ to the wall at the far end of the school complex. Up we got and on the count of three away we hared it. Well, he did. It was more like the story of the Tortoise and the Hare but on this occasion the tortoise didn’t win. Overweight, overfed and under fit I stood no chance as his nimble frame literally made the running and I stumbled and fumbled in his wake. Two races, two victories to him. His demand for a third race was declined. Better to do it after the second contest than the twenty fifth. For as sure as the thunderstorm that was by now beckoning he would have raced until I dropped.

I then passed on the Dads’ race. On the previous occasion I came last and had no desire to prove that I could accomplish the same feat again. Despite the taunts of my wife I stayed put as a heaving mass of flesh wobbled its way up the field. Its ascetic form would only have been diminished by my presence.

Today was an Irish day. My wife loves it when our daughter engages me in spoken Irish. Her complaint is that it is not frequent enough. Although not a ‘culture vulture’ I realise I should make more use of my Gaelige so that my daughter can benefit from the conversation. It would also help create a more Gaelicised environment at home and help familiarise my son with the language prior to his first steps out the door to begin his schooling. And like the H-Blocks my wife too could grow to understand it without having to learn it.

Today I took some small steps toward making that possible. Surrounded by Irish speakers most of the conversation between myself and our daughter was conducted as Gaeilge, including the order to bolt for it when the skies opened and the downpour lashed us.

A wet end did nothing to dampen our spirits.

Blanketmen: No Agenda Only The Truth

"More Questions Than Answers", cartoon by John Kennedy

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, blanketman Thomas 'Dixie' Elliott on the topic of the 1981 hunger strike

Blanketmen: No Agenda Only The Truth by Thomas 'Dixie' Elliott

I feel I must respond to Donncha Mac Niallais who in his recent letter to the Derry Journal ‘defied’ any prisoner who was in the blocks at the time to deny that if a shouted conversation between Bik McFarlane and Richard O’Rawe happened it wouldn’t have been repeated at mass and on visits. Well I in turn wish to put my recollection on record just as I already did in the Gasyard debate.

I was in that wing with Bik and Richard at the time and I had previously shared a cell with Bobby Sands in the wing. As anyone who was on the protest would know I also shared a cell in H4 with Tom McElwee and we remained close friends. Tom gave me his rosary beads before he went on Hunger Strike and I still have them today. As I said at the Gasyard debate I did not hear the acceptance conversation between Bik and Richard as I was at the other end of the wing and I wasn’t going to lie about it. What I do remember is that there was a rumour at the time that the Brits had made an offer and Joe McDonnell wouldn’t have to die. I spoke to at least two other former blanket men from Derry recently and they too remembered the rumours. However rumours don’t prove anything neither does Donncha’s claims that he spoke to someone from Bik’s wing and he said that person didn’t mention an alternative offer direct from the British. How could that person know that the IRA were negotiating with the British Government if the ICJP didn’t know until told by Gerry Adams on the 6th July?

But lets get to the facts……When Richard O’Rawe first made these claims he stood alone against everything that Sinn Fein threw at him. At the Gasyard debate people were pushing to get in the doors. On the panel besides Liam Clarke and Brendan Duddy there were Willie Gallagher, Tommy Gorman, and Richard O’Rawe himself, all former Blanket Men; and someone who was actually on that Hunger Strike, Gerard Hodgins. A document was produced that was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act which outlined what the British were offering: four of the five demands. Brendan Duddy the Mountain Climber confirmed that this was indeed the offer he passed to the IRA and which they rejected. Gerard 'Cleeky' Clarke then came forward and admitted that he was in a cell beside Bik and Richard and that he had heard the acceptance conversation between the two, which was always denied by Bik. The whole Gasyard debate was filmed and is online if anyone wants to view it for themselves.

From the outset Bik said there never was an offer what-so-ever, then no concrete offers and he also said that the conversation between himself and Richard never took place. He actually said, “Not only did I not tell him. That conversation didn’t take place.” However Cleeky Clarke stood up and stated that it did indeed take place and Brendan Duddy confirmed that he took an offer containing four of the five demands to the IRA. Therefore this left a question mark over the claims of no concrete offers etc. Now after all this we now have Bik coming out and admitting that a conversation did take place and his comment was, “And I said to Richard (O’Rawe) this is amazing, this is a huge opportunity and I feel there’s a potential here (in the Mountain Climber process) to end this.”

This leaves us with the question, why weren’t the Hunger Strikers themselves fully informed of these developments? In a comm to Gerry Adams [which is reproduced in the book Ten Men Dead] dated 7.7.81, Bik said that he told the Hunger Strikers that parts of their offer was vague and the only concrete aspect seemed to be clothes and in no way was this good enough to satisfy us. Surely four of the fives demands amounted to a lot more than a vague offer and contained a lot more than just clothes? Not only that, the INLA members who were on Hunger Strike and their representatives stated they were never made aware of any offers from the British that contained what amounted to four demands. Gerard Hodgins, who was also on Hunger Strike and a member of the IRA, also publicly stated this. As well as all this, Bik told the Hunger Strikers on Tuesday 28.7.81 that “I could have accepted half measures before Joe died, but I didn’t then and wouldn’t now.” What he failed to say was that these half measures contained four of the five demands, as I’ve already pointed out.

The Hunger Strike eventually fell apart after the families started taking the men off the Hunger Strikes when they lapsed into unconsciousness, yet three days after it ended James Prior implemented four of the five demands.

During an RTE Hunger Strike documentary which was aired in 2006, Gerry Adams stated that he was unaware of the Mountain Climber initiative until after the Hunger Strikes had ended; surely as everyone who was part of the Prison protest or who even read the comms from Ten Men Dead would know this is untrue?

The whole argument has now gone from the Prison Leadership accepting what was on offer on July 5th to its rejection from outside and just why was it rejected. The families are entitled to these answers as are the friends and comrades of the men who died. What we don’t need is the usual attempt to smear those who ask these questions as ‘cheerleaders of an anti-republican journalist’, nor do we need Bloody Sunday brought into the debate. Those asking these questions are former Blanket Men with no agenda only the truth. I myself am not a member of any group nor party and I am now firmly opposed to the use of Armed Struggle as I saw too many give their lives for what was effectively on the table in 1973. We need closure in this and I feel that both sides need to come together in a debate open to all so that answers can be obtained.

Withstanding the Regime

I did not have to wait until compelling evidence emerged during the debate in Derry’s Gasyard Centre before concluding that an end to the 1981 hunger strike might have been reached in circumstances which would have seen the book Four Men Dead become the pioneering account of what happened behind the tomb-like walls of Long Kesh and its H-Blocks. Even before the publication of Blanketmen, despite being initially hesitant, as a result of conversation with him and others I was drawn to the uncomfortable conclusion that its author was right. When the book appeared on the shelves I commented ‘there was no possible reason that I could think of that would have prompted Richard O’Rawe to craft a tale that would bring him widespread opprobrium.’ Although there was no way of assessing his account on its own terms, I instinctively felt he was on the money. It was the response to his claims that clinched it not only for me but also for a fair few others.

During our pre-publication discussions I cautioned O’Rawe that if he was right his book would prompt a certain reaction. On one occasion I suggested he consider withholding the final product on the mistaken grounds that he might not prove robust enough to face the onslaught that would come his way and told him as much. I felt there was a moral obligation to ensure that he considered the widest range of options because of the consequences. I often joked with him that I could do the solitary, was setting no example for him, and that he was under no obligation to swell the ranks of the ostracised and keep me company. While the party apparatchiks and its military goondas might have been somewhat slow in getting out of the traps when others including myself first began publicly expressing misgivings about what they were telling us regarding the potential of the peace process, by 2005 they had got their bullying act together and would hardly spare O’Rawe their wrath. He was indifferent to it all. I seemed to have forgotten he was a Spartan and was not about to hide behind his shield once the poisoned arrows began raining down on him. He would come out and fight. Once made I welcomed his decision, feeling it was the right thing for him to do.

I had seen it all before and sure enough it came pretty much as expected. It is always the way with them when they are challenged, and particularly so when the challenge has some merit to it. It is the perennial give-away and invariably produces the very outcome their response seeks to avert; the observer infers from the response more so than the challenge that the challenger must have a case. Richard O’Rawe, the former blanket man, once the authentic voice of protesting prisoners, was now to have the blanket ripped from his waist and stuffed in his mouth; it no longer a symbol of potent defiance but a gag to suffocate and produce meekness. He had to be demonised and cut adrift from the social sustenance of the Provisional community; a man who penned ‘scurrilous’ nonsense, who should have called his book ‘on another man’s hunger strike’, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Margaret Thatcher, a liar, a money grabber, a self-promoter, a frustrated entrepreneur seeking another enterprise, an unpardonable creature who should hang his head in shame, even a ‘traitor’, long before Martin McGuinness immortalised the term by hurling it at people who carried out killings without his approval. The sort of things that will be said about you, when you voice concerns, by the staffers of any institution whose sense of power, prestige and privilege are best served by silence in the face of their dubious authority.

A recent example is to be found in the Catholic Church where the senior clerics labelled people much the same as O’Rawe was labelled because a bit of public exposure was not to their liking. So, in O’Rawe’s case the slander campaign was cranked up while the whisper weasels and graffiti vandals set forth to savage his reputation. Meanwhile the muscle flexed itself and filled the doorways of those who might at one time have eaten from the tree of forbidden knowledge and who just might say something in his favour. That would never be allowed to cross the porch and enter the pubic arena.

In spite of all the attempts to generate the power of shame against him O’Rawe simply refused to submit to it. At no time was he prepared to accept the order to sit at the back of the bus. As per usual for those who resist whatever is hurled their way, endurance brings validation. And so it has been for the author of Blanketmen.

Long, arduous and acrimonious the struggle to establish a counter-narrative to the ‘regime of truth’ has survived the regime attempts to demolish it. If the facts of the matter still need to be established definitively Richard O’Rawe’s integrity and reputation do not. On that he has prevailed. For long enough it had been like watching a game of tennis with each point contested as the ball zipped back and forth across the net. After the Derry event there is a sense of the umpire having called game, set and match to O’Rawe. No judgement has been passed on the motives of those who are said to have overruled the prisoners’ decision to accept the British offer; just the fact that they did. All O’Rawe ever needed to prove, really.

Time For An Inquiry

Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, blanketman and former hunger striker Gerard Hodgins on the topic of the 1981 hunger strike

Time For An Inquiry by Gerard Hodgins

In 1976 the British introduced the criminalisation policy which decreed that captured Republican volunteer soldiers would henceforth be treated as criminals, being forced to wear a criminal uniform and having no recognition whatsoever as political prisoners. This led to the Blanket Protest and subsequent hunger strikes which convulsed our society, but which did open a window of opportunity to develop a political alternative to armed struggle.

Those of us who were intimately involved in those dark days still carry with us each and every day a reminder of what that all entailed. The horrors of the H-Blocks leap into our consciousness at some point of each and every day; memories of Bobby, Francie, Raymey, Patsy, Joe, Martin, Kevin, Kieran, Tom and Red Mick and their horrific deaths through starvation are a constant. It is an indelible mark upon our lives and one we endured through a comforting prism that our ten friends and comrades were part of a greater struggle to achieve independence and freedom against an intransigent enemy who would not buckle and instead seemed to gloat in the deaths of Irishmen in British prisons on Irish soil.

The comforting narrative ran that the combined intelligence and commitment of the Republican Movement could not bend the Iron Lady, but won honour and political legitimacy through our combined efforts at resisting and exposing criminalisation as the fallacy that it was. The cost was high: five years held naked in extreme conditions of brutality and sensory deprivation culminating in two hunger strikes which claimed ten of our friends, fellow Blanket Men.

That narrative has been seriously challenged in recent years with stories of deals being offered by the British and accepted by the prison O/C, only to be overturned by the Leadership on the outside, thus prolonging the hunger strike and creating a question mark over the deaths of the last six hunger strikers to die.

Events surrounding those dark days were examined at a meeting in Derry recently, organised under the auspices of The Republican Network for Unity. Unfortunately Gerry Adams and the Provisional leadership of the day refused to attend or send a representative to contribute to the proceedings. I find it ironic Gerry can run to meetings in New York and San Francisco to discuss Irish unity with the diaspora yet cannot find the time or courtesy to attend a meeting in his own back yard with ex-Blanket Men and other interested parties of the day, about an issue so crucial to those of us who endured the Blanket protests and hunger strikes.

Recent revelations have pointed to the need for clarity, full disclosure and honesty on the part of all who were involved in those secret negotiations/discussions. I would appeal for all these people, for the sake of our memories and in the service of truth, to agree to co-operate with an inquiry into all aspects associated with this traumatic time in our history which has been thrown into such question with the reports and evidence that a deal could have been secured before Joe McDonnell died.

A genie has been let out of the bottle and thrown the perceived narrative of the horrors of 1981 into question. One thing is certain of those days and which no question mark hangs over: the Blanket Men fought courageously and the hunger strikers died martyrs and their commitment and sacrifice can never be sullied, questioned or diminished in any way.

The final piece of the jigsaw which has remained hidden from view to this day is the actions and reasons for those actions on behalf of the leadership who guided us. It is time for answers and explanations to be offered.

I am not a member or supporter of any political party, grouping or organisation. I am a supporter of peace and politics and don't advocate any sort of return to the days of war: I am not on a Sinn Fein bashing exercise and have tried to be measured with my words. I am an ex-Blanket Man who was there and would welcome some insight into the secrets of 28 years ago.

Bouncy Castles

We are just in the door. Along with my wife we made the short journey to the local polling station to cast our first votes as denizens of a state run by Irish citizens. A neighbour looked after the kids while we were away. She had a bouncy castle in her back garden as part of festivities around her daughter’s birthday. I am still thinking the kids did the more sensible thing. Birthday parties seem more useful to society than political parties and no child would disagree with that. They did not even notice our absence and there was no way we could have persuaded them to go voluntarily to a polling station.

A major difference between polling stations here and in the North is the complete lack of in-your-face canvassing as you enter. Half anticipating what in the North is the obligatory leaflet pushed into your hand instructing you on how to vote down the line, we were pleasantly surprised to go free from accost as we made our way to the booth. A cursory glance at our identification documents by electoral staff was the only thing to temporarily halt our progress. Another feel good factor was no sign of the Nuremburg factor - where the front of the polling station is bedecked with flags and party insignia watched over as if they were regimental colours by men of military age.

My wife’s political views and my own are not the same so we had no pre-arranged plan as to who we would vote for. I suppose the only thing I can say for both of us is that the one party that did not get a vote from this house was Sinn Fein. Experience has taught us that whatever it stands for today it will abandon tomorrow. It has plenty of promise in that it will promise you anything but fulfil nothing. It might be different if the party were to jettison its right wing Northern leadership, which has a heroin-like addiction to lying. Which means it can be trusted with nothing. Until that ditching happens, out of the many things I might cast in its direction a vote will not be one of them. No point in changing a 16 year habit.

How my wife voted is a matter for her. She holds to the view that her vote is between her and the polling booth. No point in exercising the democratic right to the secret ballot and then broadcast your choice to everybody. I am not so discreet. In the contest for the borough and County Councils I gave my vote to the same Independent candidate, a former Sinn Fein member who seems good on local issues and is quite Left in orientation. For the European election I voted Labour. Not that I agree with much of what Labour do but out of all the candidates theirs will at least subscribe in some way to a left discourse no matter how softly or minimalist it may be. And a slightly Left voice that is not totalitarian is better than no Left voice. On each of the three papers I worked my way down through the candidates allocating a lower preference with each stroke of a very blunt pencil. Libertas, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein slots were left blank. The Catholic Right, The Treaty party of the South, the Treaty party of the North. Black Shirts, Blue Shirts and Green Shirts. No chance. Better to save the depleted lead for more worthy things.

On our way back to pick up the kids and disturb their joyous bouncing, the Sinn Fein car passed us, its message blaring through the megaphone – ‘vote for change.’ The change from their hefty Westminster expense accounts I thought is the only change on offer there. Given our brushes with the party we found it amusing that its canvassers should pass us booming their message. My wife said something to the effect of ‘echoes from Belfast.’ Not that we were concerned as we sauntered along, homeward bound. We were laughing and jesting loudly ‘vote for change – we will change the way we lie to you.’ We didn’t direct it at them and they didn’t hear us. A joke between us but people passing us must have thought we had just come from the pub rather than the polling station.

On reflection I suppose it might have been better if we had. Pints before politicians.

Five Crucial Points

In the conversations I have had with Richard O’Rawe on the alternative view of the 1981 hunger strike proffered in his book Blanketmen I have insisted to him that there are no knock out blows delivered in the type of battle he had entered into. Attrition rather than blitzkrieg would come to characterise his advance. He would face many setbacks, would be let down by those he expected a lot more from, and would at all times feel the breath of hostility hot on the back of his neck. Breakthroughs are always agonisingly slow in coming and when they do can seem anti-climatic. I suggested to him that he would find it a point by point slog first to retain his reputation and then to establish his narrative in the face of withering assault. His achievements would be incremental, his critics nasty and brutish. The hunger strike narrative was a coveted asset from which the fingers of its self-defined custodians would only be prised away one at a time; and with each one removed it would be free to try and gouge him in the eyes. He would be up against pugilists wholly unfamiliar with Queensbury Rules. But at the end of it all if he possessed the necessary stamina and was correct he only had to stay in the ring and the breaks would come his way.

While it might have taken four years it has come to pass. The Derry debate in the Gasyard Centre seems to have been a tipping point. And the narrative has firmly tipped the way of O’Rawe. Since that discussion almost a fortnight ago I have spoken with a number of people from different perspectives and political backgrounds and there is acknowledgement of a definite shift. They all accept that O’Rawe’s credibility as a witness in the eye of the storm, who testified to the turbulence he saw, is now beyond reproach, it being no longer plausible to contend that he manufactured his account. While few of them would go as far as to ascribe the malign or sinister motive, favoured by some, to those republican figures who overruled the prison leadership’s acceptance of the offer from the British to end the hunger strike, they agree that something happened which has yet to convincingly explained.

Despite claims to the contrary we have known for at least four years of the existence of evidence from the wing in which O’Rawe was housed during the hunger strike that would support his claims. Like all evidence it was inconclusive until tested by cross examination. But it at least shaded things the way of O’Rawe. So I was not at all surprised when the former blanket prisoner Gerard Clarke made the contribution in Derry that he did. He claims to have heard the conversation between O’Rawe and Brendan McFarlane, the jail’s IRA leader, on July 5 1981 in which they agreed to accept the British offer. This is nothing new from Gerard Clarke; merely the first time he has said it public. He volunteered it to O’Rawe two to three years ago in a shopping centre but O’Rawe never felt free to cite it until the man himself came forward. Moreover, during his Radio Foyle debate with Raymond McCartney days before the Gasyard event O’Rawe foresaw imminent egg on the face of the Derry MLA over the latter’s allegations that not one person on the wing heard the exchange between O’Rawe and McFarlane. It was a pregnant moment that burst to fruition in the Gasyard.

Important as Gerard Clarke’s intervention was, even more crucial was the contribution made by Brendan Duddy, the conduit between the British government and the IRA leadership in 1981. He not only confirmed that an offer had indeed been made by the British, the contents of which the journalist Liam Clarke produced on the night in documented form, he also claimed that he was told by his contact in the IRA leadership that the offer was not acceptable. The leadership asked for more concessions, not for a British official to be sent in to stand over what was already in the document. O’Rawe’s opponents often insist that a refusal by the British to send in a government representative was the ultimate deal breaker without which no deal could be nailed down.

The five crucial points to emerge from Derry are: documented evidence of a British offer; witness evidence that the document in question was the one handed to his interlocutor in the republican leadership; witness evidence that the offer was refused by the same interlocutor; witness evidence that the stumbling block was not the absence of a British guarantor but not enough on the table; witness evidence that Richard O’Rawe’s account of the conversation between himself and Brendan McFarlane in which they agreed to accept the British offer was correct. The aggregated weight of evidence from Brendan Duddy, Gerard Clarke and Liam Clarke provide a linear account wholly consistent with O’Rawe and seriously at variance with those who would rather Blanketmen had never seen the light of day. Only a rogue intellect could continue to claim that O’Rawe is a falsifier. Too much is falling into place for him.

Against this critics of the O’Rawe perspective are being sorely tested and increasingly found to be wanting. They now sound more raucous than reassured. No new revelation supports their case, not Blelloch, not anything.

Gasyard Examines Graveyard

The discussion at the Gasyard Centre in Derry last weekend seems to have been a seminal moment in the struggle over the interpretation of the 1981 hunger strike. And I missed it. Despite intending to I eventually did not even attempt to make the trip to Derry. Earlier that week I had been in both Belfast and Dublin and didn’t fancy an even longer journey on the road.

These days I tend to write more from impulse than design although I am sure something of the latter has to be present as well. The pressure not to write is no longer there so the impulse to write is considerably weaker. Defying the censor is its own dynamic. Unlike during The Blanket years I write much more leisurely. There is no longer any need to forensically trace and forecast the defeat of the Provisional Movement as a republican project. It is there for all to see. As a consequence of taking the foot off the pedal I am no longer as tuned into the hunger strike debate as I was a number of years ago when I was still writing for The Blanket.

Maybe it is less a case of not being tuned in and more that the debate itself has reached a peak in terms of detail that the time required to follow it through its labyrinth of references and minutiae in the way that Richard O’Rawe or Danny Morrison presumably do is simply not available. While each twist and turn, fought over and dissected, may be all very necessary to keep the discussion critically informed, when it reaches a certain level it goes over the heads of most people. They see the foothills peppered with footnotes before they even get to follow the trail of the Mountain Climber and they baulk. Keeping pace with it all requires a lot of work. That does not prevent me from trying to keep up but there is a sense that I am trying to jog alongside sprinters. If someone appears on radio or TV I listen to them and try to consider the case that they make. That does not mean that I refrain from taking sides. My long held view is that Richard O’Rawe is right and his detractors wrong.

In any event, if there as a choice on a day like this to take the kids to the park or reread Ten Men Dead the kids win out. In the midst of this electrifying discussion, despite talking a bit about it to friends and journalists, I make the time to watch soccer, write banter about the same, browse through or review a book maybe not connected to Irish politics at all, or watch a film. When that is added to time spent at work or courses there are precious few minutes left over that can be squeezed out of the remainder of the day. Life is better served if we remember to live rather than live to remember.

I haven’t even managed to view the Gasyard discussion it in its entirety on Youtube, dipping into various sections in response to calls from people either asking me if I saw this or that contribution or insisting some segment is a ‘must see.’ Nor did I tune into the full debate on Slugger O’Toole - apparently followed by almost everyone else with an interest in the matter - again restricting my forays to dipping in when someone asked what I thought of any particular comment.

As for the Derry event, my wife went up. Not in my stead but in her own right as an observer with a keen interest in the topic. No doubt she appreciated the break from the kids having been with them all week, breaking up their fights, adjudicating on their disputes and tending to their needs. On top of that she travelled North with her buddy so the enterprise was as much an opportunity for chilling out as it was a political expedition. At the same time there is no disputing that as former editor of The Blanket she learned in the school of hard knocks to give no quarter to the censor. She knows all about the need to ensure alternative voices in any field otherwise knowledge of the matter being discussed will be forced to bend to the pressure of conformity applied by those least interested in allowing free discussion. It may have brought more than a fair share of criticism down on her head along with the unsolicited attention of spooky misogynists or misogynistic spooks – take your pick – who from time to time have unleashed salvoes of vitriol her way. But she has remained undeterred, striving always to provide a platform for free inquiry and expression.

I am glad she went up because Richard O’Rawe later told me that she pulled the questions together at the end in ‘professorial’ style. She is not a professor, just someone who knows how to cut through the chaff, guff and tripe – the component parts of a dunghill-cum-barricade against truth into which the censors are firmly burrowed - and apply a forensic mind to uncluttering the debris and extracting the detail that matters. Subsequently she is equipped with the necessary acumen to deconstruct and demolish an account that does not stand up to scrutiny. It is anathema to her detractors.

It is not just that it saves me the bother of having to do something other than play football with the children and their friends that I am totally supportive of her in her efforts to bring light to bear on the issues at stake. It was the type of service The Blanket was always disposed towards. It seems right that the tradition inherited there from earlier anti-censorship republicans should be exported to other venues and forums. And the city of Derry, where Widgery in 1972 wreaked so much dishonesty, is an unlikely venue for a similar dark spirit to haunt the narrative of the hunger strike.