Subterranean

Peter Taylor made a documentary for Panorama in 1981 from the Maze Prison


It's incredible not just because he is broadcasting from within the H-Blocks, but because he outlines the strict IRA army council rules around hunger strike and its strong hierarchical structure, negating an interpretation of the strike as an assertion of autonomy or individual identity (and ultimately proves the political intent by binding them together). The interview with Gerry Adams indicates that the IRA army council was against hunger strike and only supported it when the prisoners were intent on commencing, which most historians accept. This throws up interesting, conflicting issues of voluntarism inside a severely disciplined (fatal for the disloyal) organisation. Debates surrounding individual-focused activist networks compared to traditional formation of campaign groups like trade unions have recently come to the fore in light of student and anti-cuts protests (see Adam Curtis' criticism of UK Uncut).

Gerry Adams also claims towards the end of the clip that the hunger strike will end when the prisoners see fit, which is an incredibly contentious issue. This is disputed in Richard O'Rawe's account of his time as Press Officer for the PIRA in the Maze, the book Blanketmen, in which he claims the prisoners wanted to call off the strike before the death of Joe McDonnell as the government had provided an acceptable offer. Bik MacFarlane (who currently works for Sinn Fein and gave a recent Q&A at the Phoenix about the hunger strike) disputes this. Interestingly, O'Rawe claims this shows that responsibility, not power, had shifted back to prison leaders, with the army council retaining the final say on when the strike should end. In some ways this splitting of hairs has an underlying intention to blame the republican movement for unnecessary deaths - considering the disastrous premature end of the 1980 hunger strike, it is understandable why the IRA army council did not trust the British government to deliver a satisfactory offer. What is more intriguing is whether or not the army council had the final say, and what this meant for the prisoners, the hunger strikers' autonomy in the act of self-sacrifice, and the republican movement and its passage into representative politics via the peace process.

Since the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Taylor has kept an eye on Northern Ireland, and another on the new terrorist threat in the form of Al-Qaeda that has almost seamlessly taken over from the IRA as the main source of fear and panic. He made this recent radio programme about Brendan Duddy (the 'Mountain Climber' who enabled top-secret negotiations between the IRA and the British government), undercover cops and spies working within terrorist cells. The danger Brendan Duddy was in seems incredible, considering the potential overlap between members of the British security services and loyalist paramilitaries who no doubt wanted to scupper plans to get the British and the republicans around the table.

I was fascinated to read this news story on an Irish republican museum in a secret location. The fact that the toilet roll holder from the room where Bobby Sands died is there as an exhibit is particularly significant. I hope in some way to get there on my upcoming trip to the six counties.


This song makes me lose all concept of time, and makes my cat purr: