The Five Demands

Ex-prisoner challenges republicans to take lie detector test on hunger-strike deal (Sunday World)
(Suzanne Breen)
Ex-Provo Richard O’Rawe has challenged leading republicans to take a lie detector test over claims Sinn Féin rejected a deal that could have saved the lives of IRA hunger-strikers.
The former prisoner said a secret Sinn Féin committee rejected a British government offer that would have prevented the last six hunger-strikers dying.
But senior republicans have branded him a liar and denied that the H-Block death fast – which made headlines across the world – descended into a cynical PR exercise to win Sinn Féin votes.
Now O’Rawe has agreed to take a polygraph to prove he’s telling the truth. And he’s challenged Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, and Bik McFarland to do the same.
“It will end the controversy about the hunger-strike for once and for all,” the former Blanketman declared. “It will show who is being honest and who isn’t.
“They’ve been calling me a liar for years. This is their chance to put their money where their mouths are. Let’s all take a polygraph.
“Our accounts of what happened in 1981 will be thoroughly tested and the republican community and everybody else will conclusively know the truth.”
O’Rawe claims the hunger-strike is “the biggest cover-up in the history of Irish republicanism“.
The idea that both sides in the bitter dispute take a lie detector test comes from the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the INLA’s political wing.
Contact has been made with a well-respected firm which carries out polygraphs, although the IRSP said any other company, agreed upon by all taking the test, could be used.
Each participant would be asked a lengthy series of pre-agreed questions about their role in the hunger-strike negotiations.
An IRSP spokesman said: “Three INLA volunteers died on hunger-strike so we’ve every right to ask people to take polygraphs.
“An independent inquiry into the hunger-strike would be better but Sinn Féin will never agree to it. That’s why a lie detector test is a speedy and cheap way of sorting out the argument.”
The proposal is supported by Louise Devine who as a five-year-old girl watched her father Mickey endure an agonising death on hunger-strike. The last time she saw him, he was blind and covered in bed sores. He held his children’s hands and said goodbye with tears streaming down his face.
Devine called on Danny Morrison, Gerry Adams and Bik McFarlane to agree to the test.
“It’s a great idea and I’m asking these three men – if they’ve an ounce of compassion in their hearts – to take the polygraph. Knowing the truth about the hunger-strike would end the mental torment I’m in,” she said.
The hunger-strike was run on the outside by a clandestine committee headed by Gerry Adams.
In the H-Blocks, the IRA prisoners were led by Brendan McFarlane, their commander, and Richard O’Rawe, their PRO.
On July 5 1981, the British made an offer effectively granting the prisoners’ five demands except free association.
O’Rawe says Morrison visited the jail and briefed McFarlane. Later, McFarlane told O’Rawe and they accepted the offer believing no more men should die.
But, O’Rawe claims, the IRA prison leadership were over-ruled by the Adams’ committee. McFarlane initially denied discussing the offer with O’Rawe.
When other prisoners said they’d overheard it, that refreshed his memory. He agreed telling O’Rawe it was “amazing … . a huge opportunity”.
O’Rawe says the hunger-strikers went to their deaths totally in the dark about the life-saving offer. Danny Morrison insists the prisoners were always informed and in charge of their own fate.
If agreed, Morrison would be questioned on the alleged offer he brought into the jail and whether the hunger-strikers themselves were informed.
Adams would be quizzed on claims he over-rode the prison leadership’s acceptance of the British proposal. He’d also be asked about his meeting with the hunger-strikers on July 29 in the H-Blocks.
Kevin Lynch was just three days away from death and Kieran Doherty four. Adams has been quoted as telling them there was “nothing on the table, no movement from the British”.