Absence of a united clear line on the first hunger strike prefigured disaster in the second, the 1980 archives reveal
The Irish Times’ reading of the British National Archives for 1980 reveals that Pope John Paul II came to favour the Church putting pressure on the Maze prisoners as well as on the British government to end the first hunger strike – an approach apparently greeted with lack of enthusiasm at first by Cardinal O Fiaich whose leadership was viewed as being ” not particularly helpful.” Clerical exceptions were seen as Frs Faul and Alec Reid who is reported in one despatch …