One tiny quibble: as a student of language, it irks me to see the above legend coupled on the ticket with the phrase ‘back by popular demand’.

Throughout that period of recent history, I was wracked with doubts – as I am certain were many who disavowed the ‘armed struggle’ – about the details emerging from ‘the Kesh’ and exactly where the truth was to be found. But since the hunger strikes were the springboard to prominence and political domination of Sinn Fein, it is an important period of history to consider.

Nor do I claim is the whole truth to be found in Lynch’s potent drama but assuredly I learned a lot. As a consequence I reproduce here some journalism of the time (the first below published in March 1978) by eminent local (in the broader sense) writer Darach McDonald. Some of McDonald’s pieces also serve to highlight the role of Cardinal O’Fiach, another local figure I have inadvertently neglected in these pages in the past.

‘The nightmarish details of conditions in the H-Blocks continue to come from those inside and their supporters outside. Recently two spokesmen for the 24 IRSP prisoners ‘on the blanket’, John Nixon and John O’Neill – both from Armagh – were allegedly beaten by relays of four wardens at a time and were sentenced to 13 days ‘on the boards’ when it became known that they were smuggling out accounts of life in the H-Blocks. 

At the present rate that the courts are processing cases there will be about 500 prisoners ‘on the blanket’ by late summer and even more on remand in Crumlin Road Jail’s B-Wing. This represents about one per cent of the North’s male Catholic population. Because most come from the strong Republican ghettoes of West Belfast, Short Strand, Armagh and Derry, the impact there is even more accentuated. 

But on the second anniversary of Merlyn Rees’ decision to de-politicise paramilitary offences (label them ‘criminal’) the attempt has still not succeeded in breaking the Republican prisoners.’

Hibernia : 22.03.1978

But things were quickly to become much, much worse …

…. more later …