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Richard O'Rawe deserves huge respect for such an honest account
of this pivotal episode in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’. Most of the key players in the republican
movement have been neither open nor honest about events that occurred and their
role in them. Perhaps that is to be
expected. It does make this book stand
out from the crowd and means the author stands head and shoulders above his
comrades for even trying to shed some light.
Like the best war memoirs, Blanketmen represents the author
trying to process the events he participated in; to make some kind of sense of them,
to ‘do right’ by his comrades and achieve an accommodation with his conscience. I’m not sure that process will ever conclude,
but it’s a worthy endeavour.
I disagree entirely with O’Rawe’s politics, but it’s
possible to relate on a human level to the situation the prisoners found themselves
in, the decisions they and others made and the appalling consequences. Ironically the excessive blokey banter is no
different from that you would find in a group of British squaddies, although
the Blanketmen strike me as a more diverse and thoughtful group.
It seems fairly clear O’Rawe’s central contention is correct:
the hunger striker’s lives were deliberately sacrificed to further a political
objective. This needs some context: PIRA had considerable form for treating the
lives of its volunteers – and the public - with callous disregard. If the hunger strikers were used as cannon
fodder by the army council, that was neither new nor out of character. The IRA themselves didn’t take prisoners, they
executed anyone they caught.
More interesting is how much the decision to drag out the
strike was made by the army council, and how much was Gerry Adams’ decision alone. After all, the army council had opposed the
hunger strike, and would have contained members deeply hostile to the expansion
of political activity, in line with republican orthodoxy. It is also likely (as the author surmises)
that Adams had recognised the limitations of the armed struggle years before
and had a long-term project to redirect the republican movement towards
politics. In that context, the hunger
strike and the opportunity afforded by Bobby Sands’ election was too good to
waste. It’s at least possible that Adams
way playing his own game, manipulating both the army council and the strikers
to further his own political agenda.
So were the hunger strikers misled? Was their struggle for special category
status used as a trojan horse for a shift from the Armalite to the ballot box?
Perhaps, but the prison campaign was itself a form of proxy war – the armed
struggle by other means – so there’s a kind of logic in the longer-term
outcome.
Ultimately I have to agree with Professor English in his
introduction: that this book’s real value is in the wider insight it provides into
the republican movement, the individuals involved, their characters,
motivations and relationships, as much as illuminating the events
themselves. For someone who grew up
regarding the Provos as the enemy, it’s made them rather more real and a little
more comprehensible.
I still think republican ideology is fundamentally
wrong-headed and Provo methods execrable.
But you can’t fault the dedication, tenacity and bravery of the Blanketmen
and hunger strikers themselves. Whether they knew it or not, their sacrifice helped
to move things in the right direction. It’s
a sad inditement of the time, the place and the politics that these men’s
effort and talents couldn’t have been better employed.
Richard O’Rawe has done a great service by shining the light
of honesty on a very dark chapter.
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