TheChronicles of Long Kesh: Provisional Irish Republican memoirs and the contested memory of the hunger strikes

Stephen Hopkins

doi:10.1177/1750698014523442

Abstract

This article analyses the recent struggle for control of the Provisional Irish Republican movement’s collective memory of the 1980–1981 hunger strikes, during which 10 Republicans died.2It proceeds through an examination and interpretation of the published memoir-writing of some of the key protagonists within the broad Irish Republican movement. In particular, it examines the controversy surrounding the allegations made by Richard O’Rawe (former Public Relations Officer for the Irish Republican Army prisoners at the time of the 1981 strike), in his two volumes of memoir, Blanketmen (2005) and Afterlives (2010). The article addresses the role of dissent in the movement’s collective memory and the specific role of ‘memory entrepreneurs’ in the contestation of the Irish Republican ‘official’ memory of the hunger strikes.

Highlights

This article analyses the recent struggle for control of the Provisional Irish Republican movement’s collective memory of the 1980-81 hunger strikes, during which ten Republicans died.2 It proceeds through an examination and interpretation of the published memoir-writing of some of the key protagonists within the broad Irish Republican movement
As President of SF from 1983 until the present day, Gerry Adams has overseen a remarkable process of transition; ‘between 1994 and 2004 Sinn Féin moved from the political periphery to the centre-stage...’ (McDowell, 2007: 727)
The Irish Republican movement has attempted to use the biographies of the hunger strikers in a comparable fashion

Summary

Introduction

This article analyses the recent struggle for control of the Provisional Irish Republican movement’s collective memory of the 1980-81 hunger strikes, during which ten Republicans died.2 It proceeds through an examination and interpretation of the published memoir-writing of some of the key protagonists within the broad Irish Republican movement.

Results

Conclusion