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I have watched all of the
online events and participated in many of them. The organizers are to be
commended for their efforts and their ingenuity. They have successfully combined
music and song, poetry, news footage of the time, and interviews with friends
and relatives to create informative, emotional and uplifting productions.
The online events for the
hunger strikers have been especially poignant. The memories come flooding back.
The Fermanagh South Tyrone by-election and the election of Bobby Sands. His
death and funeral. The deaths that followed of Francie Hughes, Raymond
McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran
Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine. The general election in the South in
June 1981 in which Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected as the first TDs
of this generation of republicans. The marches, protests, the funerals, and the
confrontations with British state forces. The attack on Joe McDonnell’s
funeral, the plastic bullet deaths. All against the backdrop of a small number
of courageous and amazing human beings, taking on the criminalisation and
demonisation policy of the Thatcher government.
Prison struggles have been an important part of the story of Ireland’s long struggle for
freedom and independence. From the 1798 Rebellion, to the young Irelanders and Van
Dieman’s Land in Australia, the Fenian prisoners, driven mad by horrendous
conditions in English prisons in the 1880s, to the 1916 Rising and Kilmainham,
and prisons and prison camps in Ireland, England and Wales. The blanket protest
of the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s prison and the resulting 1981 hunger strike,
were a watershed moment in this phase of our struggle and of modern Irish
history.
Regrettably, there have always been those in the media and political establishment
in Ireland who enthusiastically joined the chorus of condemnation of
republicans by the British. It served their narrow self-interests. In
particular, the use of abusive and sectarian language, of describing political
opponents in terms that make them less than human, was used for generations by
the Unionist government at Stormont to justify discrimination and repression
against nationalists. It was also a fundamental part of the counter-insurgency
strategy of successive British and Irish governments to defeat republicanism.
British governments in colonial wars after 1945 demonised their opponents to defend
the use of concentration camps in Kenya or torture and shoot to kill tactics in
Oman, Malaya, Aden, Cyprus and Borneo or the creation of counter-gangs to
facilitate collusion between state forces and state sponsored terror groups.
The use of racist language to dehumanise people has been consciously used
to excuse and justify slavery, the exploitation of native peoples, of women, and
the ill-treatment and abuse of others. The English media of the 19th
century regularly pictured the Irish as ape-like. One Punch satirist
described the Irish who fled to England after the great hunger as ‘a creature manifestly between the gorilla
and the negro’ which sometimes ‘sallies forth in states of excitement and
attacks civilised human beings that have provoked its fury.’
For centuries the Irish were depicted as
brutish, drunkards and stupid. The poverty and destitution, the forced
emigration and cyclical famines were blamed on the Irish character, not British
colonialism. The recent years of conflict saw British cartoonists and
newspapers repeated this racism. In the 1980s one writer in a mainstream British
newspaper described the Irish ‘as
extremely violent, bloody minded, always fighting, drinking enormous amounts,
getting roaring drunk’ and that IRA violence tended to make them ‘look rather like apes – though that’s
rather hard luck on the apes.’
Even today there are some in the media, in academia and in the political
establishments who believe it is still ok to use degrading and insulting
language when describing Sinn Féin and our voters. A column last week in the
Irish Times, about the need to detoxify Sinn Féin, and of the party needing to
be house trained, is a recent example.
It’s at times like these that the heroism of the hunger strikers and
the words and deeds of Bobby Sands, Kieran Doherty and their comrades, and of
Mairead Farrell and hundreds of others, shine through.
So, on Sunday evening as you sit down to watch the 2020 National
Hunger Strike Commemoration on Facebook, on YouTube and Twitter remember the
courage of Kieran Doherty and his comrades.
39 years ago at around 7.15 pm on the evening of August 2nd
Big Doc died. He had been on hunger strike 73 days. He was just 25 years old.
Kieran was first arrested as a 17 year old and interned. He spent seven of the
last ten years of his life in prison. Big Doc’s remains arrived at his family
home at Commedagh Drive in Andersonstown in the early hours of the following
morning. Two days later thousands followed his cortege to the Republican Plot
in Milltown Cemetery where he was laid beside Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell.
I knew Big Doc. The last time I met him was a few days
before he died. I was visiting the prison hospital to speak to the hunger
strikers. After speaking to Tom McElwee and Lorny McKeown, Matt Devlin and
others I walked into Big Doc’s cell. He was too weak to join the others. I had
known Big Doc on the outside but there in that prison cell he was a shadow of
himself.
Doc was propped
up on one elbow, his eyes unseeing. He looked massive in his gauntness, as his
eyes, fierce in their quiet defiance, scanned my face. I spoke to him quietly
and slowly. I sat on the side of the bed.
I told him
that he would soon be dead and that if he wanted I would leave the blocks and
announce that the hunger strike was over. He paused momentarily, and said: “We haven’t got our five demands and that’s
the only way I’m coming off. Too much suffered for too long, too many good men
dead. Thatcher can’t break us. Lean ar aghaidh. I’m not a criminal.”
After that
we talked quietly for a few minutes. As I left his cell we shook hands, an old
internee’s handshake, firm and strong.
“Thanks for coming in”, he
said, “I’m glad we had that wee yarn.
Tell everyone, all the lads I was asking for them and…”
He continued
to grip my hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll get
our five demands. We’ll break Thatcher. Lean ar aghaidh... For too long our
people have been broken. The Free Staters, the Church, the SDLP. We won’t be
broken. We’ll get our five demands. If I’m dead well, the others will have them
... I don’t want to died but that’s up to the Brits. They think they can break
us. Well they can’t. Tiocfaidh ár lá.”
Big Doc was right.
Thatcher was beaten. The political prisoners won their five demands. And today because
of their self-sacrifice and that of countless others, Sinn Féin is the biggest
party on the island of Ireland.
We refuse to allow anyone
to delegitimise or criminalise the hunger strikers or our struggle.
Kieran Doherty put in
well in those final moments before we parted.
‘Lean ar aghaidh’ – Go Ahead.
The Links to the online commemoration
are:
www.facebook.com/sinnfein
www.twitter.com/sinnfeinireland
www.sinnfein.ie
www.youtube.com/c/sinnfeinireland
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