UK plotted ‘covert’ measures against Irish republican hunger strikers
The UK government planned “covert” measures to monitor “everything” which was said and written by Irish republican hunger strikers in prison in 1980, declassified files reveal.
The strike had been called in response to the removal of political status for convicted paramilitary prisoners, with seven men in HMP Maze refusing their first meal on 27 October.
It ended 53 days later, with some of the hunger strikers claiming the UK government had gestured towards meeting their demands before reneging.
The incident set the scene for the 1981 hunger strike, which saw ten Irish republicans including Bobby Sands starve themselves to death amid a showdown with Margaret Thatcher.
Files released to the National Archives in London now detail how the UK government was acutely concerned about the domestic and international implications of the 1980 hunger strike.
It produced weekly bulletins on the situation, monitored media coverage, liaised with the Catholic church, and even considered meeting some of the strikers’ demands, the files show.
Plans were also made to employ “covert techniques” in order to “find out as much as possible about the day-to-day state of mind of each striker”.
This would apparently include eavesdropping on the prisoners’ private conversations and intercepting mail so that the British state could know “everything” that was said and written.
The goal was to put the British state in a privileged position to put pressure on the strikers when they were most “vulnerable”.
The revelation comes after Keir Starmer’s government refused to engage with the “Prisoners for Palestine” hunger strike, the largest since the 1980s.
Britain’s prisons minister Lord Timpson sought to downplay the significance of the strike, which was mostly halted yesterday, claiming “we have averaged over 200 hunger strike incidents every year”.
But the government did not release data on how many of those were waged collectively or sustained over long periods of time.
Last month, UK justice secretary David Lammy even tried to claim ignorance about the issue, telling family members of one of the strikers: “I don’t know anything about this”.
Against this backdrop, the newly declassified files offer a window into the kinds of official deliberations – and underhand techniques – which may have taken place behind closed doors.
‘Covert techniques’
The document discussing “covert techniques” against the hunger strikers was authored by B.A. Blackwell, a security official in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).
Blackwell observed in November 1980 how the UK government had “acquired a world-wide reputation for being particularly adept at dealing with hostage-takers”.
He therefore contemplated whether there were “lessons to be learned from the well-tried tactics used to deal with the taking of hostages” when dealing with hunger strikers.
An important pre-requisite to advising ministers on possible courses of action, he wrote, would be getting “to know every possible detail about those with whom we are dealing”.
That would include gathering information on the “personalities” and the “views and state of mind” of the strikers.
“We need a complete psychological, historical and physical picture of each striker”, Blackwell wrote.
“We need his school records, his medical records, police records and every other possible piece of information so that we can assess as accurately as possible what makes him tick”, he added.
In terms of acquiring information about their “views and state of mind”, Blackwell wrote that “we need to know everything he says and writes”.
This might “require the sort of covert techniques used in dealing with hostage-takers and is almost certainly technically feasible”, he continued.
A small team would then need to be assembled, with support from a consultant psychiatrist, in order “to assist in interpreting the information”.
That analysis would then be used by Britain’s security agencies to understand “the timing” and “best way” to “influence matters” in a way which “assists the government’s objectives”.
Another official wrote how “much greater knowledge of the protesters… is needed if they are to be approached at the time when they are likely to be most vulnerable to the prospects of ending their protest”.
This was a “specialist matter referred to in Mr Blackwell’s paper”, they added.
Handling the media
The UK government also placed emphasis on monitoring domestic and international responses to the hunger strike, and sought to ensure “balanced” media coverage.
Work was done “conditioning leader writers, journalists and television companies”, with a booklet on the “facts” distributed to the press across the UK and Ireland.
Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Editor-in-Chief of the Observer, for instance, was given “full background material on the Dirty Protest and the Hunger Strike”.
Officials were informed – “by no less an authority than The Cruiser himself” – that a front-page spread would appear on the matter.
Further discussions were held on “countering provisional IRA propaganda in the USA”, with UK embassies reporting on how protests on the hunger strike were spreading across the country.
Apparently in order to counter this development, an “Ulsterman” had been appointed as “information officer attached to the British Mission in New York”.
The UK government also remained in close contact with prominent figures in the Catholic church, who they hoped would “help [in] keeping Catholic opinion in the north on the rails”.
Concessions
The declassified files show how officials within the UK government were also open to permitting some concessions to the prisoners in order to bring an end to the hunger strike.
This was despite the government’s official position that it would “not and cannot make any concessions whatever on the principle of political status for prisoners who claim a political motive for their crimes. All have been convicted of criminal acts by due process of law”.
The hunger strikers’ demands were:
- The right not to wear prison uniform
- The right not to do prison work
- Freedom of association
- The right to organise recreational facilities, to one weekly visit, to one weekly letter in and out and one food parcel a week
- Restoration of full remission
NIO official P.W.J. Buxton wondered whether the gap between both positions was really “unbridgeable” and asked if it would be possible to assemble a “package” of reforms which would be acceptable to both sides.
Buxton’s package would include:
- Allowing prisoners to wear their own clothing of the same approved style and type as that provided by the official civilian-type prison dress and controlled by the prison authorities
- Widening the scope of prison work to include many of the activities regarded as recreational and educational but within a framework controlled by the prison authorities
- Making ad hoc provision for those prisoners who wished to do so, to associate together from time to time in self-constituted groups
- Allowing prisoners to “buy back” remission lost on the protest subject to future good behaviour
- Confirming those present were “privileged”, which [would] in effect meet the main part of the protesters’ other demands
In order to ensure the success of such a “package”, Buxton noted that it “should be put forward by some party outside Government” and therefore be seen as an “independent” proposal.
However, this party would not be altogether “independent”.
It would be “given precise terms of reference which would exclude the concession of political status or the recommendation of measures which concede de facto political status”, he wrote.
Buxton’s proposal appears similar to concessions that were drawn up for an MI6 officer to propose to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
MI6’s contact with the Republican leadership about the hunger strike was authorised by Thatcher, her permanent secretary at the NIO, Kenneth Stowe, said.
Stowe regarded the MI6 proposal as “a façade of concessions about the treatment of prisoners which gave them a ladder to climb down”, according to Thatcher’s official biography.