The Wrong Man Interviewed

Guest Host Áine Lawlor (AL) interviews former Sinn Féin Director of Publicity Danny Morrison (DM) on the eve of the August 31st anniversary of the 1994 IRA ceasefire about his life and times and his writing. TPQ's transcriber takes credit for wading through this.

RTÉ Radio One
The Marian Finucane Show
30 August 2014

AL: Let's move on now. And it really is hard for anyone who's under thirty I suppose to understand what a watershed on this island the thirty-first of August, 1994 was. It was that day that the IRA announced a complete cessation of military operations. The war was over. And the women of the Falls were out beating the dustbin lids in celebration after twenty-five long and dark years of The Troubles. Now that ceasefire of course was broken and resumed. There've been plenty of tragedies since, most notably I suppose Omagh, and the peace has and is often an uneasy one. But still - the ceasefire - it was a before and after moment. And certainly in the life of my studio guest this morning, who's the writer and Republican Danny Morrison. Danny, thank you for coming in with us.

DM: Good Morning, Áine.

AL: I presume you remember that moment and you'd never forget it.

DM: Well, I was serving an eight year prison sentence at the time. I was in H 4 and believe it or not I was doing weights in the weights room with a friend and comrade of mine, Pat Sheehan, who actually had been the longest and the last man on hunger strike when it ended in 1981, and it came on as a newsflash – and we just stopped.  We were then locked up at twelve o'clock which was the usual routine in the prison and I just went into my cell and I wept. I just cried. Both with a sense of relief I think but also a sense of the tragedy of all the people who had lost their lives – you know reflecting on all that had all that happened – all the suffering - my friends and comrades and also those who were not on our side including: British soldiers, RUC men, UDR men and many, many civilians.

AL: Just such a loss!

DM: Such a loss and I've made this point before especially when I've been challenged by Unionist critics; the point that I have made is: Had we got the Good Friday Agreement in Easter for example, 1969, I don't believe one person would have died. So I mean everybody shares the responsibility and guilt and the blame for what happened. And it just can't be apportioned to one side which is often the media norm - the media approach to it. They have a position, a default position, where the Republicans were to blame and everybody else was innocent to various degrees and the British government were there as peace keepers – which was untrue - they were a major part of the problem as I saw it.

AL: What was it like inside the prison? Because I know what it was like outside: you know – there was the woman on the Falls – the dustbins – there was the press conferences – there was everybody saying this is a great thing – a bright new dawn – but I imagine you weren't the only one crying in the prison that night?

DM: Well, I had political status. Ten men had lost their lives in that gaol for political status and after the hunger strike more than their five demands were conceded by the prison administration. So we had quite a bit of freedom: we had access to books, radio, TV and yes – we were locked up many hours a day - but we had access to the exercise yard. And I had been the chair of Sinn Féin in the gaol up until my release in May, 1995 so we were encouraging debate and discussion. And by and large – although there were people who had reservations – you must understand it was a big risk to take. Sinn Féin were not in a very strong negotiating position numerically because the SDLP were the largest party representing the Nationalist community - and then of course there was the magnitude and the size of the Unionist population - but I thought it was a brave decision – it was the right decision. I don't know ...

AL: ... I'm not actually talking about the politics but I'm talking about the reaction of the men as individuals.

DM: I think there's been mixed views. As I said there was a political concern about how it would play out. And I, I mean, for example, I understood right away once you ceasefired you were compromised – I mean I knew that and I had a rough idea in my head how I thought it would pan out. But amongst the other prisoners – I mean we had never seen anything like it on this island before. People were serving and had served Mandela-like sentences. I mean Séanna Breathnach, the man who ultimately declared the ending of the IRA campaign, I mean Séanna Breathnach had served twenty-one years in gaol. Pat Sheehan, who I referred to earlier, had served twenty years in total by the time he was given early release under the Good Friday Agreement. So it was obvious that prisoners and the families had a vested interest and the hope was there that perhaps there would be early release ...

AL ...Was it also the fact that you were certain generation? As a generation you were tired and more inclined to want peace?

DM: The fact of the matter is that the IRA had never been better armed because remember I think it had manged to get four shipments through from Libya before the Eksund was caught in 1987 and I think that because it was well-armed that it was able to call a ceasefire. And as we know prior to the ceasefire whenever Sinn Féin ended the abstentionist policy towards Leinster House, Ruarí Ó Brádaigh walked out and established Republican Sinn Féin. And also as a result of the compromises that the IRA made a section went away and formed the Real IRA and various other dissident branches since then - which again you referred to the tragedy of Omagh.

So when people realised that there was this big gamble going to be taking place in negotiations – and you cannot win on the table what you haven't won in the field outside. So I mean it was risky and I think people had a problem with coming to terms with certain sections of it – particularly when we crossed the Rubicon in terms of recognising the police in The North and recognising the judiciary – I think a lot of people – some people only in the last two or three years walked away over that issue.

AL: But do you know the thing that has always struck me as most remarkable about The North and the IRA in particular is that you had this generation of pretty ordinary young men – I mean, you'd have gone on and maybe have been a journalist. Martin McGuinness? What was he? Delivering milk bottles? Or Gerry Adams working in the pub? You were all ordinary people who got caught up in extraordinary decades - proved to be capable of doing extraordinary things - both good and bad - some of them really dreadful things people would say. So to live through that – it's just remarkable that ordinary people can get caught up and do so much extraordinary things. And even the way you spoke about there – the sense of loss – do you know when the peace came?

DM: But it depends you see, I suppose where you grew up. To us it was a continuum, almost. Whenever I was interned in my late teens in Long Kesh I was in prison with people who had been in prison in the '40's and the '50's. And they had been in prison in the '40's and '50's with people from 1916 ...

AL: ... And did you know what you were doing when you got involved then or were you just an angry young guy like and here was a cause?

DM: I was a pacifist with long hair believe it or not...

AL: ...It's hard to see you with long hair now, Danny! (both laugh)

DM: I was probably the last person on our street to join up. I mean I resisted and resisted and it went through stages as I saw things happening. The Morrison Family was Scottish-Presbyterian background – somebody jumped ship along the way – but the Morrison side of the family would not have been Republican. On my mother's side her older brother had been sentenced to death down here in 1944 over the killing of a Special Branch man during a shootout and was later reprieved – Seán McBride had been representing him. But I don't think I got my politics from the family – it was from the street and from the experience and from seeing what the - particularly the British soldiers – because we welcomed them initially when they came in - I mean I bought them cigarettes - made them sandwiches - two of my sisters married British soldiers – I married the daughter of a British soldier in the early '70's - although he hadn't served in the North of Ireland. It was this disillusionment - we soon realised - and different areas - like maybe Tyrone learnt it at a different stage – but certainly West Belfast - we learned very quickly that the soldiers were not there to protect us. In fact, the IRA hadn't even fired a shot whenever the British Army surrounded the Lower Falls – you know - fifteen to twenty thousand people and dropped gas from helicopters into the area and shot dead anybody who came out of their house and wrecked the homes - and that was a real turning point. But even at that stage I would not have supported armed struggle.

It was after internment whenever I was trying to study, A level English and History, and every night there was explosions in the street or in the area – doors were getting kicked in. The British Army - I mean imagine - they would just seal off a street and then do forty houses – and take everybody out of their beds – interrogate everybody, often very abusively. I mean my own mother, the week that the hunger strike ended the British Army raided our street and my mother collapsed with brain damage and never recovered her memory. And things like that – where my young son was going to school at eleven years of age and they found a letter from him to me in his schoolbag and they took his shoes and socks off and made him walk down the street barefoot!

Just punishing the kid and collective punishment for whole areas. So people didn't feel there was a way – didn't feel there was a political answer to this – and I'm not saying the majority of people – but it's clearly the IRA's campaign was limited to mostly urban working class areas, poor rural areas, etc and those people felt that they had no alternative and so they decided to support the IRA.

AL: So you're a long-haired pacifist and you get dragged into this. But then as the '70's goes on and you get into the long war and the IRA is a player in doing dreadful things and in taking people's lives – as a human being within that struggle how did you justify that to yourself at the time? How do you square that in your head with your humanity?

DM: Well, of course there were unconscionable things done during the conflict as there was during the Tan War for example down in the Twenty-Six Counties. But first of all I didn't think it was going to last. When I did become involved I didn't think it was going to last ...

AL: ... Like them all going off in 1914? It'll be over by Christmas?

DM: Well, that's what I was doing whenever I joined – and that wasn't true! By Christmas I was interned in Long Kesh. I've been to gaol in total four times: I was back in gaol in 1978. Back in goal in 1990 and I had been in gaol for a short time in America as well.  But that became part of our experience and people can be fairly stubborn - we weren't giving into the British government because we knew what we were entitled to – and they wouldn't give it to us. And they were prepared to use force to stop us from getting our rights. And so basically people ended up in trenches – if I can use that expression - and it was very hard to see over the parapet. And it was also very hard to see things from the other person's point of view. And that didn't happen until the ceasefire whenever I met former ...

AL: ... In a way that work of seeing things from the other person's point of view was that something that gradually began to go on in the discussions that went on in the prisons?

DM: Well, we were separated from the Loyalists by and large except at the Crumlin Road Gaol where they tried to forcibly integrate us and where a bomb was planted and killed two Loyalist prisoners. Loyalists tried to cut the throat of Seán Adams, Gerry Adams' younger brother. And there was boiling water poured over people and they fired shots at our visitors coming into the gaol. In Long Kesh you would often meet Loyalists on visits and share a mini-bus going to the visiting area with them.

AL: Because I remember one time, I think it was Martin Meehan, I can't remember who, had a wallet that had been carved by Gusty Spence – I mean you know – two people from absolutely opposite sides of the war.

DM: I, for example, recently retired as chair of Féile an Phobail, the festival established in West Belfast twenty-five years ago as a result of some of those awful incidents that took place - after in Gibraltar and the killing of two Army corporals in Andersonstown. And I hosted, two years ago we gave over the assembly hall at St. Mary's University to the UVF, former UVF prisoners, it was packed out. It was difficult for many from the Nationalist community because they had been involved in sectarian killings. But they came along and they explained why they were involved and what they did and what their lives were like and how they perceived Republicans and the Nationalist community and it was a very important educational engagement. And I've also been to East Belfast and met with former British soldiers and former RUC men and talked things out - you know – Could it have been avoided? How did we ever end up in that situation? And the responsibility does lies with the leaders of society who felt for a time ... well, first of all the Unionists – totally opposed to sharing power – totally opposed to people having their votes being recognised at the same value as everybody else ...

AL: And isn't it bizarre that in some ways it seems that where there were points of contact that Republicans and Loyalists actually seem to be better able to get on on one level than you would get say, civic society people sometimes.

DM: Well, certainly on socio-economic matters there would be a confluence of interests there. There's difficulties of course, over ... I just don't get this obsession with the flag. For example, I'm not obsessed with the Tricolour to the same extent that Unionists protested - and I think the bill so far is nine million pounds for the policing of the Twaddell Avenue because they can't get marching up past Ardoyne. I don't understand it. The Union flag still flies - Sinn Féin voted in a compromise resolution for the Union flag to fly seventeen designated days a year over Belfast City Hall. I don't see the Tricolour flying. But they still don't see that – they don't see that as a concession and they want it to fly three hundred and sixty-five days a year! And ultimately to me sadly it's a sign of insecurity.

AL: So how would you describe the peace then – this past two decades of peace?

DM: I've stated this and again I've shared platforms with Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP, and I'm firmly of the view that it can never go back – nobody can lift a gun again. No one can plant a bomb.

AL: So it uneasy but it was a watershed?

DM: Yes. So the physical conflict has passed and there's no justification at all for any physical conflict today. Now there are major problems politically. I would be critical of the DUP part of the executive because I think they rolled over too easily ...

AL: But we all know about that but I think what I'm trying to get at is what it's like on a day-to-day basis. You know because – Is it still a sectarian society? Are there parts of Belfast you could never walk in?

DM: Of course there's parts of Belfast I wouldn't feel safe to go into to. But I mean the City Centre's a pretty neutral area. And also for example as I mentioned Féile an Phobail, the festival - we had people coming from, getting taxis from Holywood in Co. Down - from Cumber - from Newtownards – so clearly from the demographics of those areas – there is a lot of people coming together and enjoying life with each other. And I think that the young people for example, if you go down to Belfast City Centre on a Saturday afternoon and see all these young people hanging about outside the city hall - all chatting – you know – talking about music and some of their goals, etc. And I think at the young level I think that the polarisation has come to an end. I think that estrangement is ending and I think that's the future.

AL: Alright. The master propagandist, the man who coined “the ballot box and the Armalite” - you could have had a great future as a spin-doctor, couldn't you?

DM: Well, I don't like that term: “spin-doctor”. And that phrase actually was just coined on the spot at a time when we thought we weren't going to win a vote at the Ard Fheis to allow us to contest elections – because you know the history of Republicanism and constitutional politics has been a very uneasy one. But we won that vote and of course and since then Sinn Féin has become the – well it's the largest party in Belfast, the largest party in Doire and the second largest party – and overall North and South - combined votes - the largest party in Ireland. So I think that you can trace the progress from it to the politicisation and the attempt to find a way out of the conflict.

AL: And in terms of I suppose putting Sinn Féin on the map politically and in particularly during the hunger strikes - there's one story - I mean you certainly contributed a huge amount – and there's one story isn't there of the Northern Ireland Office - wanting to lobby Congressman, people on Capitol Hill – politicians on Capitol Hill – with leaflets about the hunger strikers portraying them in a bad light. And of course when they get there with their leaflets what had you done?

DM: We had already been in contact with them and put material out.It' s interesting. We put out the photograph, that famous photograph of Bobby Sands with the long-flowing hair and smiling face – again a very pacifistic photograph - which was actually taken in Long Kesh the first time he was in and had political status. But what the British government and the NIO tried to do – and it was too late – because we had established that iconic image of Bobby Sands. They tried to get the media to take a mug shot of him – you know with the number plate on him after his arrest looking – and it didn't work. And the media even said to them: Look - It's too late – this is the image of Bobby Sands which is going to be and we're not going to fall for it. There were all sorts of tricks they tried to use even during the election campaign. But no, – Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers - it was quite evident that they were not criminals. I mean Bobby Sands got elected, Kieran Doherty got elected to Leinster House for Cavan-Monaghan, Paddy Agnew from Louth got elected as well while he was on the blanket. And of course the British government themselves - if you read the books now written by prison governors for example, they say: Well, we knew they were political all along.

AL: But they were also killers or would-be killers. And we're getting some messages in – and I don't want to get into whataboutery - but they were both. This was all ...

DM: ... Well, they were involved in an armed struggle which involved killing people – killing the enemy. But it was only Republicans and Loyalists who went to gaol. The British Army and the RUC didn't go to gaol. And yet they were involved. And to this day they refuse to cooperate with up to seventy inquests. There's been people who were killed in 1982 and the families still have no inquests into it.

AL: The past is a huge issue and I want to talk about that in a moment but let's stick with Bobby and the hunger strikes. And of course, you weren't in gaol I think at the time but you were able to go in and out of the prison ...

DM: ...No. The last time I saw Bobby Sands was at the end of the first hunger strike on the nineteenth of December, 1980 and then they banned me from the prison. So whilst I was able to send in secret messages and letters to him – we wrote to each other for many years up until he went to the prison hospital - but I was banned from the prison except for one occasion: in July, 1981 when we believed that the British government were prepared to compromise.

AL: And I know there's been a huge debate about all of that and the various allegations from Richard O'Rawe that there was a deal on the table and it could have been taken - and in the end it seems to me this debate that has gone on and still goes on - there seems to be the suspicion among some Republicans that in a way Gerry Adams and his faction – that they were only waiting for a chance – if you'd like – to forsake armed struggle and go into politics and that the hunger strikes were used opportunistically to advance that. There's another view which is that the hunger strikes were there started by the prisoners and the tactics evolved as they went along. What's your recollection?

DM: Well, the hunger strikers were completely sovereign in this. It was their decision.
In fact, throughout 1980 Gerry Adams and myself were secretly meeting with Cardinal Ó Fiaich who was meeting with Humphrey Atkins who was the Secretary of State and we were trying to prevent a hunger strike. Of course once the hunger strike started we threw our full support behind the prisoners. But this allegation that occasionally comes up - it isn't one that's even made by the British government! So could you imagine the scenario where they had offered, allegedly if you read Richard O'Rawe's claims, they had offered four and a half of the five demands and somehow we stopped that from being implemented? Sure the British government would have crucified Sinn Féin with that allegation! Especially when you look at what the British government eventually did....wait - sorry, bear with me one second ...

AL: ...But doesn't it get to a sense of betrayal?

DM: ... Bear with me... when I got elected into the Northern Ireland Assembly and Gerry Adams won the British government introduced exclusion orders against us. There was attempts on Gerry Adams' life, attempts on my life. They introduced the broadcasting ban against Sinn Féin. They tried to stop us from contesting elections. So could you imagine? If this was the case then why wouldn't the British government have claimed it? And of course, all of the documentation is there showing that whenever I went into the prison - and this is in telexed messages from 10 Downing Street published under the Thirty Year Rule - Brendan Duddy asked the British government: What is on offer? And it says in black and white: We're not prepared to formulate a position until after Morrison's visit. So how could I have gone in with an offer when they hadn't formulated it?

AL: Was that the worst time? The toughest time? The time of most pressure?

DM: It was a terrible time. Seven months the hunger strike lasted - we were on duty twenty-four hours a day - we slept in the Sinn Féin office on the floor in sleeping bags. It was tragic! And of course on the outside, prison officers lost their lives as well who had never been attacked prior to that period – prior to the blanket protest period. A friend of mine, Nora McCabe, the morning that Joe McDonnell died, she ran out of cigarettes and left the house to go out to get a pack of cigarettes – just ran down the street - her three kids were left in the house - and she was shot dead by the RUC. Again, nobody ever held to account. It was the worst year certainly of my life and for many others and for what the families came through.

AL: It's almost impossible to describe to people today who never lived through it, isn't it? Just what the - I mean the whole country – even here in Dublin – people were waking up in the morning going: Are they alive today? Who's alive today? Who's not?
And also the consequences that would flow because every death carried a consequence in terms of more deaths. That was the awful time it was.

DM: Well, you know Thatcher's theory was that by facing them down she was going to defeat them. But in actual fact support for the IRA multiplied afterwards. Support for Sinn Féin increased. And I said to you, they were all given early release – all the prisoners – including for example Pat Sheehan who had been on hunger strike - they were all given early release under the Good Friday Agreement. And even the legislation when they did appear in the Diplock courts stated that their actions - how they were able to discern what they called Ordinary Decent Criminals from IRA prisoners – was that the definition was that they were carrying out these acts for a political end. So even in the legislation the British government were contradicting themselves in terms of who were criminals. They knew they weren't criminals.

AL: Although many people ended up victims of whoever's violence – you know - who might have said I don't care what the politics were - they're dead – it's over - it wasn't worth it.  I want to talk to you about now about a play you wrote called The Wrong Man – which I've - ever since I saw that play – which is a play about... Well, you describe the play to people listening – tell us what the play is.

DM: It's based upon a novel that I began - my third novel which I began in gaol and finished upon my release. And it's quite a claustrophobic atmosphere about an IRA informer but it's told from a sympathetic point-of-view of the informer and how this little man just becomes trapped by a big picture and by circumstances over which he has no control. He makes one mistake and he's scared and snared.

AL: A mistake for love as well.

DM: Yes, yes. You're going to reveal the plot are you? (laughs)

AL: No, but I'm just saying – what amazed me watching it - because there's a very unflattering portrait of an IRA interrogation unit and in many ways parallels drawn between them and the official British security forces' interrogations on the opposite side. What amazed me watching it was: How did Danny Morrison, die-hard Republican – the man who's described informers as despicable - How did you manage to write that play with such empathy for your main character?

DM: Well, a lot of my friends who were in the IRA and who saw it didn't like it and didn't like that particular scene that you're referring to. But, there's an Israeli writer called Amos Oz and he...

AL: ... Ah! He's brilliant – yes!

DM: ...and he says that: I have two pens. This one on my left if I pick this up I'm going to write polemics and this one on my right if I pick it up I'm going to write fiction or art or culture. And I think that you have to draw that division. So I decided that there was going to be no propaganda in the novel itself – it was going to be a portrayal. And so where ever the story took me I had to describe truthfully and accurately what is likely to have taken place in those circumstances - now I had already been in Castlereagh myself on numerous occasions so I knew how the police performed ...

AL: ...You knew a bit about interrogation.

DM: So that was the opening scene and then the novel was – I adapted for stage and it went on to be nominated as the third best play by Fest Magazine at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005. I'm currently writing another play which is “stuck” - it's based on a book by Bobby Handly called The Mental - it's about a man who works in a mental hospital. And I'm also writing a novel – I was jokingly talking to Roddy Doyle about this - it's The Commitments for pensioners - it's based on a man in his sixties who's fed up taxiing all his life and decides to form a boy band with him in it of course and his friends.

AL: I look forward to that. But what's interesting – what's really interesting - getting back to The Wrong Man – is that sense of a character's who's trapped by circumstances - trapped by a normal feeling like love that shouldn't trap somebody in the normal course of events. Are you part of a generation that was trapped by the politics around you into violence and its consequences?

DM: Well, no. I did have a choice. I could have gone to university in Liverpool as my cousin did. But I suppose I was too emotional. And what I had witnessed on the streets, seeing what was happening to people and friends getting killed. You know my best friend, who was in the IRA, was shot dead when he was eighteen. And my next best friend was killed when we were in Milltown Cemetery burying the three people who were killed at Gibraltar - Kevin Brady – he was killed in Milltown. So I mean I had seen an awful lot of suffering and I felt I tried to resist getting involved as long as possible because I was aware that people were going to get killed as a result of a struggle against the British and you had no guaranteed outcome. But whilst I was involved in the Republican Movement I would like to think that I did try to change things for the better and move things in a proper direction. I always gave support to Gerry Adams particularly whenever internally he was arguing for peace - and I was in prison of course when the main negotiations took place - but I supported it from there.

AL: Why didn't you stay with it? Why aren't you going around Stormont in a suit or The Dáil or whatever?

DM: When I was in gaol – I was divorced in gaol – I became a grandfather in gaol. I came out of gaol and there was a ceasefire on. Rita O'Hare had my job as Director of Publicity. I had previously left An Phoblacht.

AL: But were you burnt out? I have a suspicion you might have been a bit.

DM: Well, I said to Gerry Adams: Look, I'm ready to get back in here. And he said: Look, take time out. You haven't seen your family for five and a half years.  So I rented a house and my youngest son, Liam, came to live with me for two years - this is before I went and moved in with my partner who I'm now married to for fifteen years. After a year – well during that year I had finished The Wrong Man - I had been asked to write for various newspapers and review books. So I was reviewing for The Guardian and particularly The Irish Examiner which was always very good to me. And I then realised I was middle-aged, I had spent the last twenty-five years of my life – since my teens - devoted completely and entirely to the Republican struggle – often it had negative effects on my family – the house and the kids had been harassed. So when Adams came back to me the next year and said: Right, We're ready to... I said: Gerry, I've taken a decision. I'm only going to get one chance and I want to be a writer. And he said: Well, good. I support you in that.

AL: If you could turn back time where would you start?

DM: Oh, that's a real difficult question.

AL: You tweeted it!

DM: I know! But I didn't have an answer. I didn't have an answer! (both laugh)

AL: Okay well, I'll ask you another question again. Because actually you referenced 1914 – there's a lot of talk about that at the moment - the young men going off thinking at Christmas would be around – and of course they weren't. There are young men you spoke about who are joining the dissidents. There are young men going off and joining a jihad. What would you say to any young man or young women who thinks that this is their mission in life – to kill or be killed for a cause?

DM: Well, I do distinguish between people who have joined up because for example their country has been occupied and some foreigner comes into it – I distinguish between those and those who put on a uniform as a profession because they're doing their killing with the sanction of ...

AL: ...Yeah. But the people who do it for a belief?

DM: Well, first of all you'd need to be specific about the circumstances. The fact of the matter is that what's going on in Syria, what's going on in Iraq and in Afghanistan - where the Taliban are going to come back in again – there's no doubt about it. What was the West doing?

AL: And you wouldn't tell them to think twice?

DM: Of course – I'd be totally opposed to it. I mean, these people in this Islamic State to me are fanatical fundamentalists who absolutely have no rules whatsoever.

AL: So you're writing away. You're working on the play. Rudi, your novel, is about to be translated into German.

DM: It has been. I'm speaking at the Berlin International Festival next week from it.

AL: Well, good luck with that.

DM: Thank you very much.

AL: And good luck with the writing and thank you very much for coming in to talk to us this morning. Danny Morrison, thank you.

15 comments:

  1. 'Brendan Duddy asked the British government: What is on offer? And it says in black and white: We're not prepared to formulate a position until after Morrison's visit. So how could I have gone in with an offer when they hadn't formulated it? "

    But Duddy is adamant that the republican leadership had the detail of that offer. It may not have been an official document but they had the detail, because Duddy said republicans had the detail on tape. He also says Morrison was second choice, Adams being the first preferred choice but that the British wouldn't go for that...?

    Is there an explanation for this discrepancy?

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  2. Gerard,

    there is an explanation. Morrison is lying.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance and ineptitude of the media when it comes to the 1981 Hunger Strike. No radio or TV journalist bothers to ask Morrison any forensic follow-up questions once he starts spoofing about formal documents, etc. For example, Morrison asks why the British government never exposed the failure of the Adams committee to accept the offer. It is pretty obvious that it would have been politically disastrous for Maggie "Not For Turning" Thatcher to reveal that she had been negotiating with the IRA. Secondly, as Northern Secretary Humphrey Atkins noted in a briefing to Thatcher, the British had bigger fish to fry:

    The Provisionals need to the settle the prisons problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on – as we know some of them wish to do – to consider an end of the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has “lost” on the prisons is in no position to do this.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alfie,

    even at that, what the British did not do with the knowledge in public it most certainly used as leverage in private: who it levered into becoming an agent is something we have given great thought to. Who most pushed Brit ideas and smeared those opposed to Brit ideas?

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  5. Danny needs to behave himself. He's put an awful lot of pressure on my wife over that filmed tape. That was filmed during feile at a time when Danny had a lot of influence in feile. As I recall it was shortly after the Gasyard debate in Derry, and I suppose done by way of damage limitation. Danny cannot complain to us that it is being used against him and puts him in a predicament.

    The Gasyard was filmed and this was filmed, not to prove one side right or wrong but to get the debate out there, because it's very dear and pretty important to anyone even slightly interested in our history.

    The predicament he finds himself in is his own making, not anyone else's .

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gerard,

    where Morrison seeks to intimidate, get it out in the open. He has not got us tied to a chair. He can stick his intimidation up his mouth.

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  7. Danny wants to rebut what Richard O'Rawe said to him about the offer in Richard's letter to the Irish times. Danny says this

    It looked to us that he was trying to say maybe we cut him out deliberately and that is not the case.

    Danny says this

    So we looked for the original file from back then, considering it was some time ago, and found it. We had to cut it at the time to upload on to you tube as at that time nothing over 15 minutes was accepted.

    We told him we found it and had no footage of him. So he wanted to see it

    Fair enough, but he couldn't see it unless we uploaded it and it wasn't convenient at that time due to family illness, and he was told this, but persisted. He was also told we didn't want to be involved here

    Then he went on to tell us more about his predicament (of his own making.

    Our position is this. Danny ought to have corrected Mr Duddy immediately if such a mistake were made, we have over 2 hrs of footage and theres no sign of Danny correcting Mr Duddy. Danny also says that Brian Rowan said he asked a question from the floor, so Danny was told then go that route you don't need us (to rebut Ricky O'Rawe) you have Barney Rowan..

    Now at the end of that conference my wife spoke to Barney about his opinion of the controversy, basically asking him what he thought...so we were there to the end...

    Danny can't come along all these years later as if he didn't know the film exsisted and cry

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  8. contd...

    foul. If Danny has a rebut for Richard then put it out there and deal with it instead of demanding the impossible from a person who simply did a bit of recording.

    We can't put you in there Danny if you are not there....

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  9. Am I missing something?
    Having previously banned Danny Moŕrison, why would the British let him into the prison in July 1981 and seemingly just for the hell of it?(ie according to Danny he had no offer or anything to take into the hunger strikers)
    Danny quotes and uses British documents to substantiate this case saying the British stated that they, the British, would not formulate a position until after Morrisons visit!
    How could Morrison and the H.S.'s formulate a position if they didnt know the British position at that moment in time. The only other logical conclusion if any credence is to be given to Morrison version of events is that Morrison was allowed to go into the jail and probably to deliver a message to the H.S.'s to the effect that the British were not for bending - and if that were the case why would Morrison not have said that then or anytime since?

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  10. DM: I've stated this and again I've shared platforms with Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP, and I'm firmly of the view that it can never go back – nobody can lift a gun again. No one can plant a bomb.

    In light of that statement danny. I wonder why the provisional IRA in West Belfast are targeting individuals with surveilence. Could it be the prelude to murder danny, by gerrys (republican gaurd).

    That big idiot bob never had a proper job, stood and said it to the world on the Falls road. If he speaks for them, (the hijackers of republicanism), does it follow that he is directly going to take full responsibility for the murder that is coming from those whom have declared publically, that they have given up on the madness of violence. While at the same time secretly conspiring to murder members of their own community.

    Danny was the book you were writing about an informer, based on your brothers or your own experience?. You have very little credibility danny, given that you are a proven LIAR. Thank you mountain climber for that. You had yor chance to put an end to that debate but you never challenged mr Duddy because you are a LIAR. Just like MMCG did not lie to the derry informer he lured home, only to be executed.

    Gerry Adams privatised republicanism and sold it for a bag of magic beans and a seat on the gravy chu chu.

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  11. Feel te love,

    the issue is about Morrison not his brother who is a bystander in this and should not be attacked as a means of poking Morrison in the eye. No harm should fall the brother's way on account of Morrison. Let him stay out of it.

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  12. Morrison must know that future historians, not gagged by the constraints of the so called peace process, will expose his part in the deaths of 6 brave men...

    Adamsites talking crap about their peace process is nothing new but this statement from the Rat in a Hat has to be Adamsite diarrhea at it's wateriest...

    "Had we got the Good Friday Agreement in Easter for example, 1969, I don't believe one person would have died."

    Where was the interviewer with Sunningdale in 1973?

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  13. David Any time Danny gets asked about the betrayal of republican principles, he reminds everybody he served time, don't see how that is relevant.

    When I listened to the interview he gave to The Marian Finucane Show. I was thinking like 'Feelthelove'.. Why doesn't anyone follow up directly on what he said.


    DM: Well, I had political status. Ten men had lost their lives in that gaol for political status and after the hunger strike more than their five demands were conceded by the prison administration. So we had quite a bit of freedom: we had access to books, radio, TV and yes – we were locked up many hours a day - but we had access to the exercise yard.

    And what about the treatment and facilities Republican prisioners have today? They are in prison for exactly the same beliefs as former Provisionals and INLA volunteers and have less rights.. And the place (Roe House) is on a knife edge and PSF are just about paying lip service.... The place is at breaking point..

    What will it take for PSF/ NIO to wake up? Another hunger strike or another David Black killing.......?

    He then say's...

    DM: But it depends you see, I suppose where you grew up. To us it was a continuum, almost. Whenever I was interned in my late teens in Long Kesh I was in prison with people who had been in prison in the '40's and the '50's. And they had been in prison in the '40's and '50's with people from 1916 ...

    Has to be a memory lapse or Danny doesn't think the likes of Alex McCory who was in the H-Blocks along with Danny's former comrades who today could be sharing a cell with... 21 year old Nathan Hastings aren't part of the same continuum.......


    Talk about re-writing history....

    DM: The fact of the matter is that the IRA had never been better armed because remember I think it had manged to get four shipments through from Libya before the Eksund was caught in 1987 and I think that because it was well-armed that it was able to call a ceasefire.

    Danny I think we both know that from 1986 (possibly before) Gerry Adams had decided to wind up the war.

    DM: And as we know prior to the ceasefire whenever Sinn Féin ended the abstentionist policy towards Leinster House, Ruarí Ó Brádaigh walked out and established Republican Sinn Féin.

    And as history has shown Ruarí Ó Brádaigh called it right...


    DM:And also as a result of the compromises that the IRA made a section went away and formed the Real IRA and various other dissident branches since then - which again you referred to the tragedy of Omagh.

    You could say former comrades seen through the lies... and knew the GFA wasn't worth the paper it was written on or the money spent trying to shore it up...

    What I found interesting was the Eamon Mallie interview in the The Marian Finucane Show was when Eamon said during a 'briefing' by Danny Morrison on the chance of a ceasefire, was he (DM) dropped a clanger and had to be told off in private by the leadership of the PRM. To me at least it sounded like the Gerry Adams arrest fiasco when PSF came out and huffed and puffed and then when Gerry Adams finished his weekend break in Antrim he slapped down the like of Martin McGuinness, Bobby Storey...

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  14. DM: It was after internment whenever I was trying to study, A level English and History, and every night there was explosions in the street or in the area – doors were getting kicked in.

    Now Nathan Hastings like yourself Danny was...

    "Interviewed four years ago by this newspaper when he was 17, he was studying for his A levels – religion, English literature and politics in St Columb’s College – and planning to go to university. Politics, law and sociology seemed to be his thing.

    But felt he had no choice but to take up arms for the same reasons as former Provisonals did ..Sound familiar???? Today finds himself in prison who as I mentioned in another piece could share a cell with Alex McCory who was in the H-Blocks. And you want the world to believe there are no parallels or a continuum..

    (Maybe I'm missing reading Danny's line of thought)

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  15. There is a piece in that interview which no one seems to have noticed which coming from him being such a publicist makes strange reading or an inadvertent acknowledgment off guilt in the assassinations of the volunteers in gibraltar.How he could refer to the murdered volunteers as the three people killed in gibraltar and not as Volunteers murdered by the British for a publicist or more over a supposedly Republican makes for curious reading. Martin

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