Brendan Hughes, 1948-2008

Brendan Hughes, the IRA Commander who led the 1980 hunger strike died last Saturday evening in hospital in Belfast, he had been ill for some time. A respected figure in Republican circles, Hughes, known as "The Dark', a name given to him by the British Army because of his swarthy skin, was heavily involved in IRA action in Belfast in the early 1970s and was first arrested in 1973 and detained in Long Kesh. Rolling himself in prison garbage that was then thrown into a garbage truck, Hughes escaped and went 'on the run' for a short time to Dublin before returning to Belfast.

He assumed the name Arthur McAllister and set himself up in a house in the affluent Malone Road area of Belfast where he posed as a toy salesman. Collecting intelligence and taking part in IRA operations in the city, Hughes quickly established himself a highly effective adversary for the RUC and Army alike. Arrested again, he was sent back to Long Kesh, sharing Cage 11 with Gerry Adams. Here a new strategy was developed to both fight the British through the prisons and also to politicize the campaign.

In 1980 in an attempt to bring an end to Special Category Status (the treating of IRA men as ordinary criminals instead of prisoners of war) within the now H Blocks, Hughes led a hunger strike in order to achieve 'The Five Demands', which included the right of prisoners to wear their own clothes and the right not to do prison work. Begun on October 27th, 1980, seven prisoners went without food. It had been decided to have one IRA member from each northern county on the strike along with one member of the INLA. The strike was called off on December 18th after 53 days when one of the prisoners, Sean McKenna, in a coma, was close to death.

At the time Hughes believed the prisoners had the basis of a deal with the British authorities, but this was proven not to be the case. A second hunger strike, led by Bobby Sands, was begun on March 1st 1981 and resulted in the deaths of ten prisoners. The five demands were given to the prisoners when this second strike had ended.

Released from prison, Hughes worked as a laborer on construction sites but the toll of the hunger strike was carried heavily and he was both physically and psychologically drained.

With the arrival of the current peace process and an IRA cease-fire, Hughes was often critical of Gerry Adams and the Sinn Fein leadership for entering into what he perceived as a British driven solution and not staying true to their objective of a 32 County Socialist Republic. While never advocating a return to war during this time, Hughes often openly wondered what the 30 years of the troubles had accomplished. "Does thirty years of struggle boil down to a big room at Stormont, ministerial cars, dark suits and the implementation of the British Patten Report?" Brendan Hughes remained true to his principles to the end.