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Article Excerpt
Context
ON MAY 5, 1981, TWO YEARS AND TWO DAYS INTO THE FIRST THATCHER government, Bobby Sands, Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died in the prison hospital of the H Blocks, Long Kesh Prison, in the North of Ireland. His was the first of 10 deaths, a consequence of the hunger strike protest for Irish Republican prisoners to be granted political status (see Campbell et al., 2006). As prisoners of war, Irish Republicans refused to accept the label "criminal." But the British government had removed special category status for those sentenced for crimes related to the conflict after March 1, 1976. All convicted prisoners were then incarcerated in the 800-cell H Blocks. Following the imprisonment of Kieran Nugent in the Blocks in September 1976, and his refusal to wear prison-issue clothes, the blanket protest began. Covered only by a single blanket, prisoners were held in solitary confinement and exercise and basic "privileges" were withdrawn. The blanket and no-wash protest was followed in 1978 by the Dirty Protest. Prisoners daubed their cells with excreta. In 1980, Republican women prisoners at Armagh jail also joined the Dirty Protest.
On October 27, 1980, seemingly no closer to achieving political status, seven men began a hunger strike. Expecting some form of resolution with the British government, the strike was abandoned on December 18. But the expected concessions were a false dawn and on March 1,1981, Bobby Sands refused food (O'Hearn, 2006). It was exactly five years to the day since the abolition of special category status. The prisoner's five demands encompassed five political fights: not to wear prison-issue uniforms; free association with Republican political prisoners; not to participate in prison work; access to, and self-organization of, education and recreation; and one weekly visit, letter, and parcel. The Thatcher government was unmoved. Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Kieran Doherty, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Thomas McElwee, and Michael Devine all died. Protests erupted around the world. Eventually, with more men replacing those who died, the Thatcher government made concessions and the Hunger Strike ended on October 3, 1981 (see McKeown, 2001). Twenty-five years on, survivors of the Hunger Strike reflect on the struggle, the implications, and the consequences of their and their comrades' actions. (1)
Introduction
Matt Devlin never welcomed reliving his days on hunger strike. But on the rare occasions he mentioned it to his friends, he talked about a swarm of bees he was convinced had infested his head while he lay, wasting away in the prison hospital. Their steady and insistent thrum almost drove him mad in the hours before he finally slipped into a coma and his family--against his wishes--asked doctors to intervene to save him, after 52 days without food.
Almost 25 years later, in the last days of his life, the same continuous low murmur returned. He died three days after Christmas in 2005, aged 55, at the end of a long battle with stomach cancer, an illness that may or may not have had its seed in the 1981 prison protest. In a final twist to his life, he spent his last month on an enforced fast, too sick to allow anything to pass his lips for 32 days. The bees, he told friends at his bedside, were back. Yet he clung grimly to life, right to the very end. The doctors told Geraldine, his partner and the mother of his four-year-old son, that he seemed to be railing against the inevitable. Throughout his battle with cancer, she remembered, he swore that however and whenever the end came, he would live to see Margaret Thatcher die first.
In his final hours, his family told him Thatcher had been taken to hospital, was seriously ill, and would not last the night. That day the bees stopped and Matt Devlin died. At his funeral in his native Tyrone, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness said Matt never fully recovered from the 1981 hunger strike that defined him forever in Republican eyes. Martin McGuinness might have been speaking about any of the 13 men who faced death during the most extraordinary political drama of the Conflict, but lived to debate its legacy and value. For Thatcher, the IRA's "last card" had failed, as she had vowed. To the IRA (Irish Republican Army), the stailc and the election of two dying prisoners--Bobby Sands to Westminster and Kieran Doherty to the Dail--brought down the shaky edifice of British security policy in Northern Ireland, one based on the hypothesis that the conflict was caused by a small rump of criminals who enjoyed no community support.
The events leading up to the protest began in 1976, when Britain's Labour government abolished special category status as part of a strategy to "normalize" the security situation in the north of Ireland. From the beginning of March, those convicted of offenses committed in relation to the Northern conflict no longer were given de facto prisoner of war status in World War II-style compounds, known as the cages. Instead, they were held in eight, purpose-built, H-shaped blocks, where they were expected to wear uniforms and work like the regular criminal prison population. More than 400 Republican prisoners refused to wear the new uniforms, beginning the so-called blanket protest. It escalated into a no-wash protest, then a dirty protest, and finally into two hunger strikes. Twenty-three IRA and INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) prisoners took part in the second, which lasted over 217 days and reached well into autumn 1981. The images of the 10 who died are celebrated in the murals that bookend hundreds of Republican homes in Belfast and Derry. They are remembered in the black flags and white crosses that line the roads in South Armagh. But the 13 who lived have become a parenthesis in the story, scratched from the scene in the popular imagination.
Matt Devlin was not the only survivor to die a premature death. Pat McGeown, who died in October 1996 after years of heart trouble, is often referred to as "the eleventh hunger striker." Most who survived admit that the two deaths are a shadow on the X-ray of their own being. They wonder whether the effect of starving themselves for up to 70 days has shaved years off their lives, whether nature will eventually claim its forfeit. Almost all were in their early twenties when they embarked on the strike. Now, they are in their middle years. For some, it shows in grey or thinning hair, or faces that look far older than their years. Age may have softened their features, even leavened their anger, but the hunger strike left the tracery of its shadow on all. Some who were taken off the strike by their families were left with confused feelings. Some have suffered a lifetime's health problems, from strokes to failing eyesight. Others report no problems, other than unemployment.
For most, their release from prison was the yeast of a new beginning. With no war to fight, they settled down and started families, uncommonly late in life. Most, but not all, reflect on the strike through the prism of the peace process and say it was worth it. They are bound by the adhesive of a common experience, but only a handful of them remain in touch with each other. Some would prefer to forget it--but without forgetting it. "We all made up our minds that we were going to die," says Gerard Hodgins, one of the 11 men alive, "it's not the kind of thing you have a reunion for."
Laurence McKeown: 70 Days
His life is a riot of activity, his head full of plans and schemes. Right now he is leading the campaign to have the prison where he served the best part of a life sentence reopened as a museum. Then there is his work with Coiste na nIarchimi helping hundreds of ex-prisoners fight their corners on a range of issues. Few have found it easy segueing back into ordinary lives, with most finding it impossible to get jobs, mortgages, insurance, and travel visas because they have criminal convictions. In a way, he is still fighting the same fight that took him to the brink of death in the summer of 1981.
Our argument back then was that there was a difference between the ordinary prisoners in jail and us, and that distinction was accepted in the Good Friday agreement, because people who were in jail for offences connected with the conflict were released early. But, once you get outside, you discover that there's no differentiation between a criminal and political conviction.
Then there is his work as a playwright and screenwriter. He has co-written two plays, with the late Brian Campbell--The Laughter of Our Children and A Cold House--and the award-winning screenplay for H3, the definitive film about the 1981 hunger strike. Drama only goes partway to capturing the corporeality of a body being slowly starved to death. Some of his most vivid memories are smells; the most repellent of all, that of his body decaying.
As your other senses deteriorate, your sense of smell is heightened. And you start to become conscious of this one particular smell, which is--it's like no other smell in the world--rotting flesh. It's hard to describe it. It's not like food going off. It's live meat--your body--rotting.
He lived without food for 70 days, longer than eight of the 10 men who died, physically suffering nothing more serious than ulcerative colitis (an inflammation of the bowel) and nystagmic (involuntarily twitching) eyes. Only recently, now 49, he was prescribed his first pair of glasses. He wonders about the reason for his robust good health. At the time of the strike, Bik McFarlane, the Republican prisoners' Officer-in-Charge in the Blocks, suspected that his rate of deterioration was being controlled by vitamin boosters added to his drinking water to suit a political agenda. Earlier in the summer, Kieran Doherty had been given 48 hours to live, but rallied unexpectedly before the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. He died four days later, 73 days after first refusing food.
What's interesting is that last year...
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