Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair. - book reviews

National Review, May 28, 1990 by John P. McCarthy

THIS BOOK along with O'Malley's earlier Ireland: The Uncivil Wars, must be included in any list of the best works on modem Northern Ireland. The hunger strike of 1981, which ten Irish revolutionary nationalist prisoners followed to the bitter end, was undoubtedly the high point of world attention and sympathy for the IRA and for the cause of Irish unification. It was a powerful tactic, not easily repeated. And it was a tactic that required of its participants-regardless of what one may think of their cause-a remarkable sense of commitment, sincerity of purpose, and bravery.

O'Malley's book gives a balanced account of the general historical background and a thorough chronological report on the hunger strike, including the day-to-day unfolding of events, communications among the strikers, the organizational structure among the prisoners (and in the IRA command outside), the interventions by churchmen in pursuit of some compromise, and the reaction of the British and Irish governments to each new development.

But where O'Malley is especially adept is in his description of the hunger-strikers themselves: their backgrounds, their families, their motivations. Empathy with them helped him gain the confidence several years later of the families, noting, as many Irish Catholics might, that "there but for the grace of God go I." At the same time O'Malley realizes that this mindset, with its intertwining of religious and nationalist imagery and symbolism, is at the root of the whole imbroglio. "Their self-image," he writes, reinforced by the chronicles of oppression on which they had been raised and the experiences of their young lives, impaired their ability to act independently and diminished their capacity to act in their own behalf." This is scarcely hagiography.

The hunger strike ended only when the families of some strikers began to break loose from community solidarity-shedding the illusion that the British were going to break, or the fear that their sons' capitulation would make the deaths of previous hunger-strikers futile-and actually intervened and ordered medical resuscitation of their sons. Needless to say, Father Denis Faul, a long-time champion of Catholic grievances and prisoner complaints, who was instrumental in prompting family intervention, was condemned by the militants for being "treacherous, conniving," and for acting as a "tool of the Irish establishment," even to the point of abetting Westminster's "murder [of] ten young Irish men."

We should recall what the strikes were about. Essentially they were in furtherance of a demand that IRA prisoners be given the special status of political prisoners, a practice the British had imprudently allowed in the opening years of the now twenty-year-old Northern Irish confrontation. Political-prisoner status would have entailed certain privileges (among them, the right to wear civilian clothes and freely associate within the prison) and would have bestowed an element of legitimacy upon the prisoners' cause. Their efforts to gain such privileges began with a protest in which they covered themselves with blankets rather than wear their assigned uniforms. When, as a result, they were confined to their cells, the prisoners turned to the "dirty" protest-smearing the walls of their cells with their own excrement, a strategy to which the warders responded with periodic forced bathings and hosings. The final step was the hunger strike, astutely organized to guarantee a pattern of strikers nearing death successively rather than simultaneously in order to maintain pressure on the authorities. Replacements were ready to carry on after each death until the British government capitulated. But, alas for them, they were ultimately confronted by a particularly determined head of government, Margaret Thatcher.

It is important to mention that the European Commission on Human Rights had ruled that the harsh conditions under which the prisoners lived were self-inflicted" to gain support for "their political aims." Even Amnesty International did not support the demand for special status, although it did believe that while certain facilities for exercise and work might legitimately be temporarily withdrawn as punishment," the continuous denial of such facilities justified international protest.

O'Malley is particularly understanding of Protestants' inability to comprehend or sympathize with the hunger-strikers. After all, the IRA was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Northern Irish Protestants, particularly members of the police and auxiliary security forces. O'Malley skillfully relays Protestants' perplexity about the reactions of the Catholic Church, which they knew could (and they assumed would) authoritatively pronounce on moral questions for its members in a way that Protestant churches, with their essentially anti-sacerdotal character, could not. Comments by some Catholic churchmen about the extenuating circumstances that might justify self-starvation, which seemed clearly to be a sinful act of suicide, only confirmed an inherent Protestant suspicion of Catholic casuistry. When it was all over, the average Protestant could only respond that the hunger-strikers at least had chosen their own end-a privilege the IRA never gave its victims.