Friday, March 28, 2008
O’Rawe’s account confirmed: Hunger Strikers Allowed To Die
Evidence which has now become available helps clarify a dispute sparked three years ago by the assertion of former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe that terms for ending the strike, accepted by the prisoners’ leadership in the Maze/Long Kesh, were rejected by IRA commanders outside. The implication is that the lives of six of the hunger strikers might have been saved if the prisoners hadn’t been overruled.
McCann also confirms Richard O’Rawe’s account on WBAI’s Radio Free Eireann (starts @ 42mins in; right click, save as): “I have confirmation of that. I have spoken to people who are certainly in a position to know what happened, who were in a position at that time to know exactly what was going on ... Broadly speaking, the information which I now have, I am absolutely satisfied with, is that in blunt terms that Richard O’Rawe, on the key issue between himself and Danny Morrison and the others, that Richard O’Rawe was right and that those who were arguing against him were wrong.”
“I think that’s right...that Richard O’Rawe is telling the truth. ... I don’t know what the motivation for the rejection, by the outside IRA leadership, for the rejection of the offer, which was made on 6/7th of July, at that time, I don’t know what the motivation was and therefore I can’t confirm the motivation, but I can confirm that it happened, that the prisoners’ acceptance of the deal was over-ruled by the outside leadership.”
“I have also spoken to the ‘Mountain Climber’; ... of course, he didn’t know what was going on inside the prison, but the things that he did know and which he’s told me, confirm Richard O’Rawe’s account.”
From the Belfast Telegraph article:
During this period, negotiations being conducted through the Derry man known as ‘the Mountain Climber’ were stepped up.
O’Rawe’s allegation is that an offer from the Foreign Office, conveyed to McFarlane on July 5, two days before the fifth hunger-striker, Joe McDonnell, was to die, conceded three of the prisoners’ five demands and effectively conceded a fourth.
He says that McFarlane pushed a document containing these proposals along a pipe to his cell.
He maintains that it offered that prisoners could wear their own clothes, have remission restored and enjoy more visits and letters — three of the five demands — and that while prison work wouldn’t be eliminated, ‘work’ would be broadly defined so as to include educational and cultural activities. The one demand not covered was free association within the wings.
“It was a fantastic offer. I never expected it,” says O’Rawe. He recalls a shouted conversation between himself and McFarlane, two cells away.
“We spoke in Irish so the screws could not understand. I said, ‘Ta go leor ann’ — there’s enough there.
“He said, ‘Aontaim leat, scriobhfaidh me chun taoibh amuigh agus cuirfidh me fhois orthu’ — I agree with you, I will write to the outside and let them know.”
McCann spoke to a number of people who have confirmed O’Rawe’s account:
… a number of republicans, including former prisoners, have confirmed that O’Rawe did voice the allegations on more than one occasion before publication of his book.
One ex-prisoner who had been on the same wing as O’Rawe and McFarlane and who also claims to have heard the exchange says that, independently of O’Rawe, he broached the subject of the rejected deal with senior IRA figures during the 1990s.
More importantly, the man who was sharing a cell with O’Rawe in July 1981 confirms O’Rawe’s account: “Richard isn’t a liar. He told the truth in his book. I heard what passed between Richard and Bik (McFarlane). I remember Richard saying, ‘Ta go leor ann,’ and the reply, ‘Aontaim leat.’ There’s just no question that that happened.”
O’Rawe’s account of the negotiations as seen from “inside” will not be contradicted by the account from a different perspective contained in the BBC programme to be transmitted tonight focusing on the role of the ‘Mountain Climber’, Brendan Duddy.
And, in what seems to be a recurring problem for the Sinn Fein leadership:
The suspicions which still surround the events and which have damaged the republican leadership in the eyes of many former activists arise, it seems, not so much from O’Rawe’s narrative of what happened but from an adamant refusal on the part of the IRA leadership of the time to admit to serious and, in the end, fatal errors in their conduct of the hunger strike and from determined efforts to blacken O’Rawe’s name in an attempt to obscure the truth.
Background: Blanketmen, by Richard O’Rawe
Danny Morrison
Jim Gibney
Brendan McFarlane
Brendan Hughes
Interview with Richard O’Rawe
YouTube Clip from Peter Taylor’s The Secret Peacemaker:
Rusty Nail @ 09:29 PM
McKelvey: there is the small matter of Lornie’s 25k p.a. european-funded, peace process-inspired, gerry adams-derived job for him to consider - you shouldn’t be surprised, history is full of examples of people lying to protect leaders and by so doing also themselves
Posted by on Mar 29, 2008 @ 09:22 PMThat bible guy needs to consider medication.
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 03:12 AMThe bible guy kills god.
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 03:39 PMHas the Adams leadership ever told the truth about anything?
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 03:45 PMBakunin
Has the Adams leadership ever told the truth about anything?
He certainly didn’t reveal this episode in his memoirs:-
Gerry Adams’ secret fear or the origins of the peace process revealed
I was a student at university in Galway this time twenty-two years ago when I had the most amazing spiritual experience that any human being could have. While writing an essay as an entry to the UCG Philosophical Society’s competition, I felt the most amazing sense of peace descend on me. I felt an absolute sense of love for all people and an overwhelming sense that I was loved too. I was filled with love.My essay concerned two babies, whose nametags were switched at birth, and who grew up in families that opposed each other, one a republican and the other a loyalist. These two children ended up murdering their natural fathers in violent incidents during the Troubles. The moral of the story was straightforward, I felt, and in a philosophical sense it meant that all violence was futile and that sectarian violence was simply patricide – or a desire to simply end the human race.
But the feeling of love would not go away after I wrote the essay. I felt that I was in the midst of something really profound and my mind began to search for what that overwhelming significant matter could be. Then it struck me.
It was like lightning struck me. It was to do with the other part of a calculation a friend had shown me in my days at St Columb’s College as a fifteen year old. That calculation worked out the name of Ian Paisley at 666. I had checked the references in the Book of Revelation at that time and I knew that there were to be two beasts.
“Gerry Adams! It has to be!” I roared to myself in the kitchen of the small flat where I had my experience of great love and peace.
I set down the same numeric alphabet, and calculated Gerry Adams’ name at 666. It was the icing on the cake. I now had an equation to back my essay up. My thesis, which in large part was the SDLP thesis, was being validated by God.
I never had any doubt that the SDLP thesis was Christian in orientation, or that the republican campaign of violence was evil in orientation. But now I had the proof. I tried it out on a few people, mainly Sinn Fein members at UCG and they were very interested (and worried). It seemed that I had something on them.
But it only impacted on them. It never impacted on others because others didn’t consider themselves to be doing anything wrong, as opposed to the Sinn Fein members who were assisting the IRA in their campaign of violence. I was left in no doubt that my discovery had gone straight to Gerry Adams.
It wasn’t long before I heard from Sinn Fein. Others may make up excuses but I know that the attack on our home, smashing several windows, in August 1986 was a warning from Sinn Fein. But it was too late. Their war was over. I had taken out their king and all good chess players will know that that is the game over.
Within months of that time, Gerry Adams was sending signals through Fr Alec Reid that he was prepared to end the IRA campaign. My experience had sown the seeds of doubt in Adams’ mind and unnerved him completely. He didn’t want to be the Antichrist. More accurately, he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who was regarded as the Antichrist.
In Spring 1987, a year after my experience, the peace process began in earnest with talks between John Hume and Gerry Adams arranged through Fr Alec Reid, and so the history books record a rational explanation of the ending of the IRA campaign.
No-one – especially not republicans – really wants to contemplate the possibility that something got to Gerry Adams to make him decide finally, after months of dithering, to give up the violence.
That something was God. Gerry Adams was confronted with what he had become by God – through me, his instrument – in 1986 and he very quickly developed a yellow streak. They say that Gerry Adams was never all that hot about the war and that has led to all kinds of speculation that he was a top level agent of the British and so on.
But I can end that speculation. Gerry Adams finally came to the conclusion that the war had to end when he realised that history will record him alongside Ian Paisley as the one of the two beasts of Revelation.
God had hit the Republican Movement at its weak point. It was thought that Sinn Fein was impenetrable because of its egalitarian structure which meant that Adams could have been replaced if got to. But the republicans had made a big mistake. They had relied heavily on Adams to fight their case in the public domain so he came to matter more than all the others. God got to Adams and it was checkmate.
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 04:35 PMSo: God v The Bearded One. Truly an epic struggle. Is Paddy Power taking odds on who the eventual winner will be? Gerry reminds me of Kim Il Sung who fought an averqe of 15 gun battles a day with the Japanese who occupied Korea. Gerry’s life has been as eventful and if the kids of West Belfast contented thesmelves with writing poetry in his honour, there would be no crimes against persons, only crimes against poetry. Of course, as Gerry’s close friend putts from the rough, Gerry is another enabler. Remember what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Nurders living in their own sh@t indeed.
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 05:09 PMJake,
“McKelvey: there is the small matter of Lornie’s 25k p.a. european-funded, peace process-inspired, gerry adams-derived job for him to consider - you shouldn’t be surprised, history is full of examples of people lying to protect leaders and by so doing also themselves”Throughout this whole so-called controversy, no one has questioned Lawrence McKeown’s integrity - as it is unlikely that any republican would, no matter what they may think of Gerry Adams and the Republican leadership - and here you are calling him a liar and moreover stating that he is lying to protect himself, but I’m not surprised; history is full of examples of people clutching at straws to make failed arguments.
Posted by on Mar 30, 2008 @ 05:27 PMThree cheers for John O’Connell!!
As I always say, if God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him/her!
“Being filled with love”—I like beer as well.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 07:19 PMCousin John is a straight shooter
“God got to Adams and it was checkmate.”
God’s nutting squad got to others. Do we have any agreement on who whacked Sands’ mate, Denis Decommisioner Donaldson? So many men,so few bullets.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 08:01 PMStakeknife right through the heart.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 08:26 PMBut who was the real Stakeknife and was he revealed in Revelations? Gerry Adams and friends gave Kreddy the thumbs up. And that should be good enough for the rest of us.
As regards O’Rawe, I think Cousin John is on the money. God works in mysterious days. He also works in very mysterious ways. But usually not on a Sunday unless the armed struggle dmeands it. God is old fashioned, the Irish equivalent of the stiff upper lip.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 08:36 PM
