2005
marks the 25th anniversary of the first aborted
republican H Block hunger strike, but the commemoration
will also spark allegations the IRA and INLA inmates
became the deliberate victims of an English Royal
revenge conspiracy.
Global
attention has always focused on the second major
hunger strike in 1981 during which 10 leading republicans
died, including the Maze Prison's IRA Officer Commanding
and Fermanagh/South Tyrone MP Bobby Sands.
However,
they need not have died if republicans had unearthed
the deadly royal policy of annihiliation which was
building against them.
The
original hunger strike began on 27 October 1980
with seven H Block prisoners refusing food to win
the right, amongst other things, to wear their own
clothing. But the hardline Right-wing Tory Government
of Maggie Thatcher adopted a No Surrender policy
to the republican prisoners.
This
left the republican movement with no other option
but to abort the hunger strike a few weeks later
on 18 December when one IRA prisoner was critically
ill.
The
INLA murder of top Thatcherite advisor on the North,
British war hero Airey Neave, in March 1979 has
fuelled the perception the British establishment
initiated an assassination campaign against the
republican socialist cause.
But
a new conspiracy theory has emerged as to why the
Thatcher Government blatantly refused to give concessions
to the hunger strikers and was prepared to let as
many prisoners starve themselves to death as the
republican leadership allowed.
Essentially,
whilst the British establishment was prepared unofficially
to tolerate an acceptable level of violence against
Northern-based security forces and Protestants,
the one campaign bound to provoke a severe backlash
from that establishment was an attack on the English
Royal Family.
Spilling
Blue Blood was the so-called thin red line over
which the republican movement could not cross –
until 27 August, 1979.
The
English Royals had never forgiven the Lenin and
his communists for the slaughter of the Tsar Nicholas
II and the Russian Royal Family during the revolution
of 1917.
On
that bloody August date, the IRA not only murdered
18 soldiers near Warrenpoint, Co Down, which had
been the single biggest death toll in a terrorist
attack in the decade, republicans also killed one
of the Royals' greatest heroes – Lord Mountbatten
of Burma.
He
died when an IRA no-warning bomb ripped apart his
motor yacht at Mullaghmore Bay, Co Sligo. Mountbatten
was a living legend to the British establishment.
He had been the Royal who had masterminded the Allied
fightback against the Japanese in the Far East during
World War Two.
Next
to the Queen and the Queen Mother, he was perhaps
the most respected Royal, and was the great uncle
of Prince Charles, the heir to the English Throne.
Mountbatten
was not the only Blue Blood claimed by the IRA blast.
The famous post-war film producer Lord Brabourne
and his family were also on the yacht. One of his
sons, 14-year-old Nicholas also died in the blast.
Brabourne
and his wife suffered serious injuries, but Brabourne's
mother, another top Blue Blood, the Dowager Lady
Brabourne, died later from her injuries.
It
was only with Brabourne's own death this year on
22 September, aged 80, that the full nature of the
conspiracy theory can be revealed.
It
is believed that Brabourne was exceptionally influential
amongst the English establishment, principally for
his role in producing patriotic British films such
as 'Sink the Bismarck!' about the British naval
operation to sink the notorious Nazi battleship.
Whilst
the Royals kept a typically British 'stiff upper
lip' attitude towards the Mountbatten murder, Brabourne
and other Blue Bloods were convinced this may be
the start of a totally different terror strategy
by the IRA.
It
has been suggested Mountbatten and the Dowager despised
the Russian communists for wiping out the Tsar's
family to whom they would have been related through
their Blue Blood.
Privately,
the Blue Blood Royal establishment wanted the republican
movement to be taught a lesson for killing their
members. They feared Prince Charles – who was
very close to Mountbatten – could be next in
line for an IRA assassination bid.
Under
pressure from the Blue Bloods, especially Brabourne,
the Thatcher Government resolved not to give in
to republican demands – even if it meant republicans
resorting to the passive resistance tactic of the
hunger strike.
Republicans
should have realised on 1st April, 1980, that Thatcher
would not go against the wishes of the Royal establishment
when the Government insisted there would be no entitlement
to special category status for terrorist offenders.
Attitudes
against the republican movement were already beginning
to harden, fuelled primarily by the background Blue
Blood lobbying – especially by Brabourne in
particular.
That
determination against republicans had deepened in
early March 1980 when the body of top German industrialist
Thomas Niedermayer was found at Colinglen Road in
west Belfast. He had disappeared in December 1973.
The
Blue Blood revenge plot was given a further boost
on 5 June when the ruling body of the North's largest
Protestant denomination, the Presbyterian General
Assembly, voted to take the Church out of the World
Council of Churches on the basis the Council supported
terrorist groups.
In
reality, the fate of the 1981 republican hunger
strikes had already been decided by the events on
a windswept Co Sligo Bay almost two years earlier
when the Blue Blood establishment watched their
TV screens in horror as Mountbatten's body was brought
ashore, followed by the news of the Dowager's death.
The
Blue Bloods were determined they would not suffer
the same fate as Tsar Nicholas' family. For republicans,
Thatcher is a hate figure for her dogmatic refusal
to reach an accommodation with the H Block hunger
strikers.
However,
the real truth may be that the Blue Bloods were
demanding their pound of flesh from republicanism
– to inflict so much pain on the movement that
it would never again consider implementing the unthinkable,
an attack on the English Royal Family.
