Chapter Two

Oxygen for Terrorists

Dissent is and always has been entwined with media depictions of it, whether it wants to be or not, and whether that coverage is beneficial or not. The traditional assumption is often that it is, however; as Thatcher famously announced: “We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend” (Moseley, 1985). Thatcher’s government used censorship against the threat of the Provisional IRA in the 1980s, as well as the ANC, who were at the time branded ‘terrorists’ also (and Nelson Mandela in particular). The voices of Irish Republicans were dubbed with the voices of anonymous actors, in a bizarre and at times comic form of censorship, which bore more resemblance to a Monty Python sketch than anything else. (The Day Today in fact aired a sketch, ‘IRA Bomb Dogs’, in which terrorists were seen speaking having sucked helium.) The British press, meanwhile, whenever it did mention the IRA, did so with dehumanising and insulting language. The Times (20/09/90) described the IRA as “gloating” and quoted Thatcher as calling the IRA “cowardly… wicked and evil” and their actions that of “depravity.” Punch magazine has at various times compared the Irish revolutionaries (the IRA of the 1920s as well as post-1960s) and the Irish more generally to chimps, Frankenstein, crazy drunks, pigs, a vampire, an inferno, Jekyll and Hyde, and various images of idiocy and barbarianism. In ‘The Irish Frankenstein’, for example, the caricatured representative of the Irish people wears a hat with horns sticking out, ripped trousers and coat and broken shoes. He brandishes a club at a well-dressed man in a top hat, and stands with his legs splayed and a pipe sticking out of his lips, eyes wild and beard unkempt. In ‘The British Lion and The Irish Monkey’, meanwhile, the caption reads: “One of us MUST be ‘Put Down’” – under a picture of an irate monkey with menacing teeth and clawed hands, opposite a stately and grand lion, his demeanour proud but demure.

In general, however, (aside from provocative cartoons) the Provisional IRA was given as little coverage as possible from the 1970s onwards, in line with Thatcher’s insistence that depriving the cause of any publicity would stifle them. Indeed it did, but the Provisional IRA fought back with actions that would win their cause and people worldwide interest and at times solidarity, if not from the British press (who only changed tack in the 1990s, after the peace talks). The Hunger Strikes, and specifically the death of Bobby Sands, offered a narrative that went some way to counter the British press’ dismissal of the Republican cause.

The hunger strikes (there were ten deaths in all from the strikes – Sands’ was the best known) took place in Long Kesh prison in Belfast, at the end of a long protest. The disagreement that triggered the protest regarded prisoner status: the Republican prisoners (eight were Provisional IRA, and two were INLA – a more socialist break-off from the Provisional IRA) wanted to be recognised as prisoners of war, while the Thatcher-led government insisted that they be treated as non-political criminals.

While the ‘dirty protests’ began as a long campaign of non-cooperation, continued mistreatment by prison guards and a refusal to take their arguments seriously by the Thatcher-led government meant that these protests evolved into the hunger strikes. These began in 1980 and ended in October 1981. Although technically non-violent, obviously the hunger strikes involved casualties – deaths of the strikers themselves, and then related violence in the form of retributory killing of prison officers. Nevertheless, they went some way to change the public image of the Republican movement from violent perpetrators and troublemakers, to tragic victims. These acts of self-sacrifice “gained unprecedented legitimacy for the nationalist cause” (Fierke, 2014, 107). From a public-relations perspective, the hunger strikes were successful, although clearly at a terrible cost to human life. Drawing on familiar pacifist and religious iconography (Feldman, 1991, 220; Fierke, 2014, 111), popular support for the hunger strikers, the other prisoners, and the Republican cause itself rose exponentially as a result. The use of Catholic symbols and ideas such as, most obviously, a crucified Jesus and the act of martyrdom, were especially significant in attracting attention, sympathy, and a sense of camaraderie with the strikers. Pamphlets made these connections explicit, too: one put an image of Christ on the cross next to a photograph of one of the strikers, the caption reading: “He too was a prisoner of conscience” (English, 2003, 210; Fierke, 2014, 111). Being socialised into religion, and a religious way of thinking – having these themes and ideas indoctrinated into one’s thoughts – meant that martyrdom as an idea was already normalised in the people of Ireland. Public rituals of self-sacrifice, and symbolic gestures about life, death and resurrection, were inherent in the hunger strikes, and meant that these protests chimed with the people on a deep level. These stunts used ideas and rituals that mattered to people, that touched them on an emotional and even spiritual level, and therefore connected these political activists with the grandest religious ideas. They asserted a sense of identity that was bound up in Catholicism and Republicanism, which made these two strands harmonious and all the more powerful for that fusion. The activists themselves became not merely men, but transcendent figures who would inevitably remind people of the religious figures they had known of since childhood, who had an emotional effect on them because of a mixture of those early memories and spiritual ideas.

When it came to the media representations of the hunger strikes, these tended to be local rather than national or international at first, given the use of censorship by the British. However, that local awareness gave the activists a local audience and sympathy that was perhaps more powerful because it was exclusive to a grassroots audience at that point. Later, when Bobby Sands died and the story was told further afield, even the most basic facts told a story of martyrdom and evoked a sense of tragedy, given Sands’ age, his background, and the fact that he starved to death for his beliefs. Even the most hardened and distant audience would likely be concerned or ashamed that he suffered such a death. For even people who had no political sympathy, who were not of the same background and identity, would nevertheless recognise that story – that sense of tragedy and self-sacrifice that is ingrained in storytelling across cultures, and which explains, perhaps, why martyrdom is a theme used by political actors in so many different settings. The fusion of fame and suffering is one that seems to arrest audiences everywhere. Whatever the reason for this – be it voyeurism, deeply ingrained social ritual, confused admiration or sympathy – martyrdom is powerful as a political tactic and a narrative arc.

And yet the Conservative government at the time did not quite realise how powerful it could be. While Thatcher’s rationale for ignoring the strikers was that any negotiations or change in status would “represent an acknowledgment of Irish Republican Army violence outside the prison” (Fierke, 107), this strategy backfired, partly because she underestimated the power of the hunger strikes from an emotional point of view. The self-sacrifice and deaths of the hunger strikers drew attention to their plight, drew attention to (and empathy towards) the victimhood of Catholics in Northern Ireland (especially given the symbolism inherent in the strikers’ martyrdom), and ultimately encouraged support for the Provisional IRA in spite of their violence.

People were reminded of why these young men had joined the cause in the first place: a series of events in which Catholics were victimised, and peaceful protesters killed. In particular, the shooting of thirteen unarmed civilians during a demonstration in Derry in January 1972 (Bloody Sunday), by British paratroopers, had inspired young activists to abandon more peaceful means of dissent and join the Provisional IRA instead. As Bishop Edward Daly wrote in his memoirs Mister, AreYou a Priest?: “Countless young people were motivated by the events of that day to become actively involved in armed struggle and, as a direct result, joined the Provisional IRA… Many former paramilitary members have gone on record stating that they first became actively involved in the wake of that Sunday. I am not at all sure about how I would have reacted, had I been a teenager and witnessed those same events” (Bowcott, 2010).

The hunger strikes reminded people of this sense of injustice and sympathy, and so the boys who died in Long Kesh were seen as victims rather than terrorists by many people. This perception was deepened by the symbolic nature of the deaths – not only the Catholic imagery of young men dying for their beliefs, but also more recent stories and communal memories of IRA resistance. Earlier in the 20th century, around the time of the 1916 Easter Rising, hunger strikes had been used as a political tactic, with over fifty strikes in the period between 1913 and 1923 (Sweeney, 1993; Fierke, 2014, 111).

The substance and history of the cause was exposed, the contemporary Provisional IRA was tied into a longer tradition of Irish Republicanism, and that helped its public image and suggested a more complex story than a simple ‘good vs. evil’ and the terrorism narrative of Thatcher’s government and the British tabloids. The lines blurred, the characters, these ‘terrorists’, became first human, then saintly. And with this surge in public support, it became difficult for the British government to keep up its story that the Provisional IRA was a group of troublemakers with no real public support.

The British press, of course, used their expected language of condemnation and vitriol when covering the strikes and Sands’ death, and underplayed the huge effect on public support. When Bobby Sands died of hunger, the Daily Mail called him out as guilty of “a moral fraud” and the Daily Telegraph called him “ruthless” and “corrupted”. The Express dwelled on political failure: “Sands will find no victory in the grave… The shadow of Bobby Sands will pass…”, while the Sun focused on the supposed victory of the British at his death: “Blackmail has failed… The society which has stood firm against violence in long blood-stained years will remain unshaken.” At the news of Sands’ funeral, the Mirror published an account that insisted Sands’ funeral was “a pathetic end for a man who never played more than an average part in the deadly moves called by his IRA masters.” The Daily Mail called it “a macabre propaganda circus” and “a gangster parody” (Greenslade, 2011).

Despite this coverage, Bobby Sands’ death on 5th May 1981, at the age of 27, was not easily forgotten or dismissed – quite the opposite. Bobby Sands became a martyr to the cause – a secular saint, of sorts (Anderson, 2008). His story, and death, became known and mythologised not only in Northern Ireland but worldwide (Fierke, 2014, 107). Even the British press could not ignore him, especially since he was by this time an elected MP. While coverage of his death remained characteristically derisive, it nevertheless broke the censorship policy that had been in place before and hinted at the reality of public support for Sands and Irish Republicanism in general. Censorship, then, while an ideal for some governments in their dealing with dissent, even in the 1980s, before the Internet, was not always realistic in the face of particularly compelling personalities and their stories.

Sands, in this case, won a battle in the PR war between the British state and the Republican cause. Similarly, Nelson Mandela’s transformation in the press from ‘terrorist’ villain to a symbol of peace and strength shows the way in which a government’s strategy for dealing with the anti-establishment can be ineffective long-term, if community support (whether local or worldwide) is there. If the audience demands another narrative, or is compelled by one offered, then the story of censorship is less predictable than the state may hope. The state of course has learnt to work with that unpredictability; it has learnt to use publicity against its threats, when it cannot stifle it entirely. While bad publicity may be better than no publicity, it is still not ideal.

For dissenting groups, therefore, it is not just about getting publicity – it’s about getting the right kind of publicity. It is necessary for the best narrative to dominate public discourse, and the cause therefore to win popular support, whether in the immediate locality, or further afield. Publicity, while important when it is the ‘right’ narrative, is not always ‘oxygen for terrorists’ when the state and wider establishment can control it. For many years the IRA, when it was mentioned, was portrayed in only negative and alienating terms. Bobby Sands’ death marked a turning point in that he brought another layer to their story, and showed the Republican movement as sympathetic rather than merely villainous, but in general the British state and press were quite successful in cutting off publicity, and where that was impossible, in using it to make the Republican cause seem criminal and ridiculous. Indeed, despite Thatcher’s statement about the “oxygen of publicity,” the British establishment has more commonly used bad publicity as a sort of poisonous gas against dissent, rather than focusing entirely on censorship to cut off its ‘oxygen’. Not only violent groups such as the Provisional IRA have been targets of this behaviour, but dissenting groups widely. Peaceful groups have also received a familiar combination of dismissal and demonisation to the more violent political actors.

Even high-profile dissent has been ineffective because of this combination of bad publicity and no publicity. As we saw with the Iraq protests of 2003, for instance, a million people marching did not change the government’s mind, even though the event was highly publicised. The student protests of 2010, similarly, were ineffective in their aims, partly because media attention was generally focused on a small minority of rioters, who were demonised by the press. This is part of a wider trend, where anti-establishment groups are depicted in certain ways by the media, so that while their cause is given attention, it is not to their benefit. It is to the benefit of the establishment (politically), but also to media organisations who can make money from the political spectacle they air. There are clear commercial incentives for media organisations to cover the dramatic events of politics, whether terrorist attacks or protests, and we can see from recent history that media organisations have taken those opportunities. The media can be an ally as well as an enemy of dissenting groups. They can give publicity to a cause; but they can also make that cause look ridiculous, or that group’s methods unreasonable. When a group receives media coverage of their actions, it can mean anything from political success to outright humiliation. Getting press can be far from useful; it is always a risk.

Media coverage of political violence, in particular, does not necessarily translate into ‘success’ for that cause. People may notice the group more, and be fascinated by them, but it doesn’t mean they will sympathise with them at all. While media attention can raise morale for individuals in a group as well as recruit new people to it, while it can make members feel significant and relevant, that same coverage can outrage the public that sees it, and it can provide the provocation needed by a government to mobilise its military and other resources against that ‘threat’. Importantly, media coverage means that the group is no longer secret, and with that newfound infamy comes scrutiny, aggression and criticism, all of which can be used to undermine and defeat them.

So although the media and dissent have evolved in parallel, the relationship is not always equal in its benefits. This largely depends on how media-savvy the dissenting group is. Infamy does not necessarily translate to political success, especially if the media organisation involved has some political interest itself – for example the British media during the IRA years; clearly they were swayed by British government interests (Whiting, 2012). However, as the IRA case showed, a group that understands this context, and can successfully manipulate the media to show itself in a sympathetic light, can benefit from media coverage as much as the media organisations themselves.

While the Irish revolutionary cause was Romantic in spirit in some ways, it was figures such as Bobby Sands who personified, quite intentionally, the sense of glory and tragedy that many people felt already about the Republican cause in Ireland, both at the time and historically. The hunger strikes made martyrs of Sands and his fellow prisoners, and a religious fervour surrounded them, for Sands’ poetry and personality as much as any Catholic imagery. With instinct and intentional strategising, Sands created in himself the ultimate Romantic figure, doomed by an oppressive distant authority to a tragic and early death.

The hunger strikes were not simply a pose though; they articulated and expressed the way people (and these prisoners especially) felt about the Republican movement and its clash with the British and loyalists at that time. They were communicating not only their willingness to sacrifice themselves for a cause they believed in, but also the sense of victimhood they believed that the Republican cause could defend them against and ultimately put right. They were expressing a refusal to give up and give in to the British, even if it meant dying a long and painful death. They were showing that these men, and their cause, had a huge following, which refuted the British government’s insistence, up until that time, that they did not. Perhaps most significantly, the strikes communicated that Sands and the other hunger strikers were not merely criminals, but political prisoners whom others could identify with and support. In expressing all of these things through the hunger strikes, the prisoners managed to change their public image, and that of Republicanism, through a compelling and emotionally charged message to the people as well as the British government. Theirs was a battle that merged Romanticism with realpolitik powerfully.