The NI prisons minister met with protesters’ families and within days the strike was called off
A SERIES of sensitive meetings between the prisons minister Lord Grey Gowrie and relatives of the remaining hunger strikers in September 1981 played a major role in ending the crisis.
Minutes just released confirm the proactive role played in the ending of the protest by the relatives, the SDLP leader John Hume and Gowrie, a member of an Anglo-Irish family who had just arrived in the North as Jim Prior’s deputy, with responsibility for prisons.
On September 21st, 1981, DJ Wyatt, a Northern Ireland Office official, contacted the secretary of state to say that Hume had seen Mrs McCloskey who had now made up her mind to authorise her son’s [Liam] resuscitation when he reached the point of death.
She was anxious to keep this decision secret because of the pressures from the Provisional IRA and INLA. Hume said that she would like to meet Gowrie and to be accompanied by Mrs Lynch, the mother of the dead hunger striker Kevin Lynch, who herself had fought hard to make her son call off his fast.
Lord Gowrie arranged to meet Mrs McCloskey and Mrs Lynch whose son had died on August 1st. The hour-long meeting took place on September 23rd and the minutes record that “although [the two women] were quite tearful at the start, the meeting proceeded amicably despite the difficult and distressing circumstances”.
Gowrie welcomed both women, expressing his sympathy for their “heartbreaking predicament”. On his recent visit to the prison he had seen Liam who had been asleep at the time. It was tragic that young men “who had such opportunities before them” should lay down their lives with evident but wholly misguided sincerity. Prior and himself wished to promote reconciliation but this process could not realistically begin under the duress of the hunger strike.
Mrs McCloskey said that her son had asked to meet the minister: he did not wish to die but could not go back and face his comrades unless he got “something”.
Only one of the five demands was discussed. Mrs Lynch strongly believed that “own clothing” would have solved the problem two years ago but that it was very difficult now.
Both women said they did not think they had any influence with the hunger strikers’ OC . This was the reason they were appealing to the minister.
This enabled Gowrie to hope that the relatives should help in their way – quite independent of government – to end the strike. He [Gowrie] would see Liam McCloskey once the latter had definitely abandoned his hunger strike.
Towards the end of the meeting Mrs McCloskey – quite unprompted – “left little doubt that she would in fact intervene if and when her son became irrational or unconscious”.
The meeting ended amicably with Mrs Lynch and Mrs McCloskey both thanking the minister. Mrs McCloskey gave Gowrie a small volume of Bobby Sands’s works. This was followed by a further meeting on September 28th, 1981 between Gowrie and the relatives of five of the remaining six hunger strikers, at Stormont Castle.
Gowrie told them that the government would not negotiate over the five demands. However, if the hunger strike did come to an end, he promised that the following things would happen. “First, the government would not claim a large public victory and crow about success. Second, as minister responsible for prisons he had absolute authority to build on and make further improvements to the prison regime for all prisoners. The decision to come off the hunger strike had to be taken by the strikers themselves, but thereafter ministers would try to be helpful.”
This meeting seems critical in the final resolution of the protest. The hunger strike was called off five days later on October 3rd, 1981, and on October 6th the secretary of state announced changes in the prison regime. All prisoners would in future be entitled to wear their own clothes; 50 per cent of lost remission would be restored for conforming prisoners and free association would be permitted within the H-blocks.