In Blanketmen, O'Rawe gives his personal account of those turbulent times that saw British and Irish governments entering unprecedented negotiations with the IRA Army Council and the prisoners themselves. One of the 'Blanketmen', he took part in the dirty protests that led to the hunger strikes of the early 1980s. O'Rawe is critical of IRA leadership as well as himself, and the deaths from the hunger strike and his role in them clearly still haunt him. I was a member of the RUC during the hunger strikes, I performed duty at six of the funerals throughout Northern Ireland.

The prison administration tried to force the men to unconditionally end their protest but at a further meeting between all the H-Block O/Cs on January 11th it was decided to attempt in a step-by-step process the de-escalation of the protests in a principled fashion. In mid June 1943 a form of blanket protest was carried out by Irish Republican prisoners in Crumlin Road Jail when 22 prisoners went on a "strip strike' for political status. The prisoners requested showers be installed in their cells and when this request was turned down they refused to use the wash-hand basins. He has been married to Bernadette for forty years, has three grown-up children, and still lives in west Belfast. They were refused from the beginning of their sentences all exercise facilities, reading or writing material, and access to radio or newspapers.Having met Richard and interviewed him he is absolutely genuine about life on the inside and how iRA leadership could have prevented some of the hunger strikers deaths. This criminalisation attempt was part of the overall effort to project the resistance struggle as a criminal conspiracy and ran parallel with a propaganda thrust which saw the use of such terminology as ‘paramilitaries, Godfather, mafia’ etc, etc, by British government spokespersons. Two days later, the incoming Northern Ireland Secretary, James Prior, announced a number of changes in prison policy, including that from then on all paramilitary prisoners would be allowed to wear their own clothes at all times.

But no so in Ireland where its traditional racist attitude blinds its judgement to reason and persuasion. The prisoner was taken away to solitary confinement, and news spread across the wing that the prisoner had been badly beaten. Fleming went on several long hunger strikes and finally was granted political prisoner status and transferred to Mountjoy Prison. We give people around the world the opportunity to contribute to the circular economy, earn money and protect the planet, by trading their unwanted books and media. There was considerable public outrage over the earlier death (by forced feeding) of Thomas Ashe and Fleming was released in November 1917.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The nearest approach to it that I have seen was the spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta. Having said that, the book could have been written better as there were genuine sparks of emotional and quite beautiful prose around their deaths but most of it read almost like a history textbook.

Though tempted to give up several times, I continued to the end as the subject matter was fascinating.He said: “Having spent the whole of Sunday in the prison, I was shocked at the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3,4 and 5 where over 300 prisoners were incarcerated. Fleming was rearrested in May 1918 and refused to wear prison uniforms which resulted in him being left naked and locked in his cell and (because he destroyed his cell) was restrained with a straight jacket. It became clear very quickly that these men had been backed into a corner and had no option but to see it through.