PRISON PROTESTS:TAOISEACH CHARLES Haughey warned British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in December 1980 about a "tremendous emotional impact" and serious deterioration in Northern Ireland if any IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks died on hunger strike.
In private talks at the start of the British-Irish summit meeting in Dublin Castle on December 8th, Mr Haughey urged her to find “some face-saving formula”, using prison chaplains as intermediaries.
The meeting lasted approximately 80 minutes. Mr Haughey was accompanied by secretary to the government Dermot Nally, Mrs Thatcher by foreign policy secretary Michael Alexander.
The first H-Blocks hunger strike had begun on October 27th and, four days prior to the talks, the British government had indicated its willingness to review “humanitarian aspects” of the prison regime, but without conceding political status to the prisoners.
Mr Nally’s note of the meeting, released publicly through the National Archives under the 30-year rule, says Mr Haughey told his British counterpart his government was “extremely anxious” that a solution be brought forward because “things could deteriorate seriously” if one of the prisoners died.
He added: “Some face-saving formula can, no doubt, be found.”
Mrs Thatcher responded that the document which had been brought out was itself a formula: “The fact is that now there just is nothing left to give.”
Mr Haughey suggested the use of prison chaplains – “and perhaps Father [Denis] Faul” – as intermediaries with the prisoners. Mr Haughey agreed with the prime minister’s view that there was little or no public support for the hunger strike but added that “if there were deaths there could be a tremendous emotional impact”.
Mrs Thatcher said that “the psychology of any intervention would be extremely important” and Mr Haughey responded that the prisoners were being “fed with wrong information” which greatly exaggerated their level of support.
Despite a suggestion by the taoiseach that there were tensions between the prisoners’ relatives and the Provisional IRA leadership, Mrs Thatcher expressed scepticism that what she termed the “little people” were asserting themselves.
She said that what was required was a means of getting over to the hunger strikers what was available and what was not.
“Insofar as political status is concerned, this just is not on in the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the civilised world,” the prime minister is reported as saying. “If once it were conceded, no one in the world would be safe.”
The hunger strike ended 10 days later, without fatalities, but the issues remained unresolved and a second fast began the following March 1st, initiated by Belfast IRA activist Bobby Sands, who was elected MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone on April 9th. He died on May 5th and nine other hunger strikers died in the following months.
