O’Doherty’s major break from the IRA ranks dated from 17 February 1978 when a letter originally intended for Republican News appeared on the front page of the Derry Journal. The smuggled communication had been passed by a family member to a senior republican in Derry and elicited a message that the Belfast-produced republican organ required deletions. The prospect of censorship aggrieved O’Doherty, who turned to Derry’s main newspaper in the hope that an unexpurgated version would be published in the letters column. He was taken aback when it received the prominence of a lead story, although he must have realized that life-sentenced IRA prisoners in any jurisdiction rarely aired such controversial issues in public.106 The letter caused a minor sensation and its contents were widely reported in the Irish and British media.107 His basic argument was that revolutionary socialism was incompatible with Christian morality on the grounds that it tended to create a totalitarian political environment. This view would have been contested by contemporary republicans, but any critical analysis attributed to an IRA ‘lifer’ could not be dismissed out of hand. Editorial comment added by the Derry Journal presented the communication as a repudiation of the argument that the conflict was a ‘just war’ under theological definitions devised by the Christian and specifically Catholic tradition. O’Doherty’s experience was cited in order to assert that political violence was ‘not justifiable’.108 As an avowedly pluralist and secular organization with numerous non-Catholic members, the IRA was uninterested in the moral status of its campaign within the Vatican, but published commentaries, which strengthened the analysis of the SDLP at the expense of Sinn Féin, were clearly unwelcome. The Derryman would have been viewed in some quarters as undermining comrades by disseminating such an important unilateral statement. This would have been a more daunting prospect in Portlaoise and the H-Blocks, where republican command structures would have militated against a solo run.
In the short term, O’Doherty faced the possibility of a backlash from fellow IRA prisoners in England. He claimed that some ostracized and ‘verged on wanting to beat me up for speaking my mind’, although other ‘more broadminded’ individuals offered unconditional support.109 The unsympathetic Prisoners Aid Committee (PAC) speculated that O’Doherty acted when ‘suffering from the psychological effects which inevitably follow upon prolonged isolation’ and had been adversely influenced by ‘pacifist Lord Longford’.110 In retrospect, the Derryman believed that the negative response from Irish comrades was a by-product of the enhanced importance and perception of ‘solidarity’ among the political prisoners in England.111 When moved to Maghaberry, County Antrim, in September 1985, he perceived a greater degree of tolerance for his perspective, albeit within a prison regime designed to undermine paramilitary authority. However, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been allowed to remain on a republican landing of Portlaoise or an IRA-controlled prison environment in Crumlin Road and Long Kesh in 1978. Prisoners in England generally had far more freedom of association and routine than under the formal O/C arrangements maintained in Ireland. Among those he may have presumed to be hostile were men who believed that he had refused to enter into dialogue.112
The ‘Blanket Protest’
The shifting context of the Irish situation changed the relative significance of the prison struggle in England. The mounting severity of the Blanket Protest in the H-Blocks in the early months of 1978 competed for the limited resources available to pro-republican advocates in Ireland and Britain. A case in point was the London meeting convened in Conway Hall on 3 March 1978 which highlighted the demand for ‘Prisoner of War Status’. The focus was very much on Belfast as opposed to Parkhurst, and the gathering was similar to those held by the new Relatives Action Committee in Limerick and elsewhere. The Irish bias was logical given that ‘special category’ had been expressly removed to undermine republican cohesion in the Six Counties. This had resulted in a gruelling, widespread protest. Prisoner groups organized by Sinn Féin Headquarters in Dublin, not least the RAC of Belfast, sought publicity in England for the parallel protests in the North of Ireland.113 Belfast RAC drew strength from precursor and kindred groupings, and Andersonstown founding member Leo Wilson had belonged at various times to the Citizen Defence Committees, the Association for Legal Justice and later the National H-Block/ Armagh Committee.114 Linked events included the picketing of newspaper offices on Fleet Street, London, by twelve blanket-clad women on 1 March and a public meeting in the House of Commons. Many London-based personalities of the prisoner campaign participated in the Conway Hall evening, including Sr. Sarah Clarke, Jim Reilly, Jackie Kaye and progressive Labour politician Ken Livingstone.115 The International Marxist Group and Socialist Workers Party were prominent in the London gathering yet were criticized by Kaye and Reilly for their ‘failure … to support Republican prisoners in England’.116 Generally, the strategy of the PAC Central Committee was to ‘maintain friendly relations with all anti-imperialist groups and to co-operate with them wherever possible in the mutual struggle against repression’.117 The lack of rigid alliances provided room for criticism of policies and tactics within the groupings.
Tensions between the PAC and elements of Sinn Féin in London, partly due to uncoordinated fundraising arrangements, had calmed since a flare up in the early months of 1977. ‘Official’ Sinn Féin, which had recently added the suffix ‘The Workers’ Party’ to its title as part of an ambitious process of reinvention, commented on the matter in their Eolas newsletter. The Official Republican Movement had a vestigial interest in the fortunes of the PAC given that the group had emerged from its Clann na hÉireann affiliate in England. ‘Official’ Sinn Féin claimed that An Cumann Cabhrach in London had complained that An Phoblacht editor Gerry O’Hare and ‘Provisional’ Sinn Féin in general was overly supportive of Kaye and the PAC.118 O’Hare, a man with a Peoples Democracy background, was described as an ‘ultra-left’ activist in the same edition of Eolas, which promoted the impression that the Provisionals were politically incoherent and riven with dissension.119 While there were indeed divergences on strategic direction between the PAC and Sinn Féin in England, the key bone of contention in London in 1977–78 centred on money-raising for prisoners in a small pool of city locations. An Cumann Cabhrach relied upon such venues to fulfil its obligations of providing welfare support to the families of imprisoned republicans. The Official Republican Movement, which retained an armed existence for fundraising and feuding into the 1980s despite its nominal 1972 ‘ceasefire’, underplayed