…the British Government has planned the sell-out of Ulster

So Ian Paisley was right after all! In his The Revivalist editorial of January 1982, he reflected on 1981 saying: 1982 is the year when the British Government has planned the sell-out of Ulster. It is essential that Ulster prepares itself for the great battle which lies ahead. Without Divine intervention all is lost. Admittedly, he had began 1981 by stating: Having made a dirty deal with the I.R.A. terrorists the Government has proceeded to enter into an underhand mini-Munich …

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“and ‘Soon’ would have known this”

Perhaps the most interesting [and least covered? – Ed] response to the release of UK National Archive files from 1981 was that of the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, TD.  An edited version of his blog post appeared at the Guardian. The interesting part is not his declaration of “Another myth busted”.  That particular “war of words”, as Brian Rowan says, “will go on”. The interest is in Adams’ calling into question “the relationship between London and ‘Soon’” – Londonderry businessman Brendan Duddy – …

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“We on the outside finessed…”

In today’s Belfast Telegraph, Liam Clarke observes Danny Morrison’s admission that “we on the outside finessed the sequence of events for the sake of morale” at the end of the 1980 hunger strike. This is a major admission, as it changes the whole narrative that had been pushed for years, and also removes the main defence that the Morrison narrative had employed as to why O’Rawe’s version of events was wrong. Previously, it had been argued that the reason why Thatcher’s July 1981 offer was not accepted was because of British duplicity over the deal secured during the 1980 hunger strike. With Morrison’s admission that no such deal existed, and that the British reneging was a false claim, that argument falls apart.

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The “Top Secret” Press Release

One has to admire the sheer chutzpah of Brendan McFarlane. He was in Saturday’s Irish News trying to pass off a 1981 press release as a secret comm reflecting the personal viewpoint of Richard O’Rawe. Mr McFarlane said yesterday he would break five years of silence by producing secret IRA comms written by Mr O’Rawe during the Hunger Strike in which he accused the British government of trying to prolong it. The first first two lines of the original comm read: …

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