Mr O'Rawe will join more than two dozen community activists, academics, business people and politicians in exploring the priorities for potential constitutional change. Once Sinn Féin had seized control of the movement, they limited its scope to supporting the basic Republican demands, and marginalised the trade unions and socialists. What could have been a genuine solidarity movement against British imperialist oppression was channelled into support for the Provisional IRA. The Irish Republican movement has a long history of hunger strikes and prisoners’ campaigns. In 1917, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood Thomas Ashe died from attempts to force-feed him and break his hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison. Ashe’s funeral was attended by 30,000 people at the dawn of Ireland’s 1916-23 revolutionary period.

Despite Sinn Féin’s apparent ‘turn’ after the hunger strike towards ‘democratic’ methods, and radical leftist posture, it never broke its sectarian line of only appealing to Catholic or Nationalist voters. The new ‘community’ politics paradoxically strengthened sectarianism, as it became institutionalised in the new Stormont Assembly after 1998.

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The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits; After years ‘on the blankets’, the prisoners decided that they would have to escalate their campaign. The idea of a hunger strike was proposed, and initially refused by PIRA and INLA commanders.

This conflict would result in a ‘compromise’ in 1986, with the party resolving to combine the two methods – ‘the ballot and the bullet’. But this was only a stepping stone to the complete acceptance of reformist methods. It would mark the beginning of Sinn Féin’s pursuit of the ‘peace process’ and tacit acceptance of the sectarian state. O’Rawe’s account of the organisation of the hunger strikes displays an unsurprising disconnect between the Army Council on the outside and the inmate leaders. Only a few years earlier, Republican prisoners Michael Gaughan (d.1974) and Frank Stagg (d.1976) had died in English jails while on hunger strike for political status and repatriation to Ireland – the former as a consequence of brutal attempts to force-feed him. It is a considerably dangerous form of protest, and having Volunteers slowly die in prison after years of fighting had the potential to depress the movement rather than inspire it.Sectarian division has only worsened, with frequent hate crimes and riots leading to so-called ‘peace walls’ erected between neighbours. The situation was getting out of control, and the British state stepped-up repression of Republicans to appease Paisley’s ‘No Surrender’ mobs – who were preparing for all-out civil war. The Blanketmen He will bring "some left-leaning republican analysis" to the deliberations but insists there'll be "no dogma". MacEoin, Uinseann (1997), The IRA in the twilight years 1923-1948, Argenta Publications, Dublin, pg 459, ISBN 0951117246

A bond was created all those years ago, both inside and outside the prison, that will never be broken. The blanket protest was part of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners held in the Maze prison (also known as "Long Kesh") in Northern Ireland. The republican prisoners' status as political prisoners, known as Special Category Status, had begun to be phased out in 1976. Among other things, this meant that they would now be required to wear prison uniforms like ordinary convicts. The prisoners refused to accept the administrative designation of ordinary criminals, and refused to wear the prison uniform. West Belfast-based author Richard O'Rawe said it was difficult to disagree with the SDLP's analysis retrospectively because "armed struggle didn't work". Sinn Féin and the PIRA leadership declared victory when the hunger strike was called off in October 1981. The families of the prisoners had asked for it to end, and the British government had secretly offered to partially fulfil their demands. Thatcher had called the hunger strike the Republican movement’s “last card” to play. But what she and the British ruling class really feared was the rising mass movement. Blanketmen is a brave book written by a man who is passionate not just about his “ten dead comrades, who gave their lives for the Republic” but one who cherishes republicanism.

The book saw its author ostracised by mainstream republicans, including many of Mr O'Rawe's former friends and comrades. Don’t remember any UK countries going Bankrupt, standard of living pretty good, uses the pound which is always strong. Many of the leaders of Sinn Féin and the PIRA had drawn the conclusion that the tactics of armed struggle had failed. Instead of encouraging a political reassessment within Republicanism and a return to the revolutionary socialist ideas of James Connolly, these leaders attempted to nudge the movement towards electoralism. Winning the election, Bobby Sands became the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The Tories’ rejoinder was to ban prisoners from standing for parliament. Twenty-six days later, however, Sands died in prison on 5 May. He was 27 years old. The subsequent legend is that after the hunger strike, Gerry Adams led the party and the Provisional IRA down the path of peace, winning a power-sharing government that all the martyrs for Irish freedom can be proud of. The reality is that the Provos were forced to admit that a military campaign against Britain was never going to be victorious, and that the working class were exhausted by the conflict.

Now a successful writer with a number of factual and fictional books under his belt, the self-styled "independent republican", who cut ties with Sinn Féin in 1985, has accepted an invitation to sit on the experts and reference panel of the SDLP's New Ireland Commission. It has been said before that Ireland has too many martyrs. Countless lives have been lost trying to break the chains of imperialism and capitalism, which continue to cause so much pain and anguish. Ireland can have a future free from poverty, exploitation, oppression and sectarianism. But this is only to be found along the path of revolutionary class struggle. Since 1976 some Republican prisoners, furious at being classed as criminals rather than politicals, refused to conform to prison rules, wearing blankets instead of “monkey suits”. Asked if republicans would disapprove of his association with the SDLP, the author said he hoped any criticism would be constructive. Sinn Féin has since turned much of the history of the 1981 hunger strike into a legend, placing itself at the middle of the struggle and airbrushing out the involvement of the IRSP, socialists like Bernadette McAliskey, trade unionists, and others.The strike had ended after a seven-month campaign of cruelty from the British state, allowing ten men to starve to death, by refusing to grant the elementary democratic rights they demanded as prisoners of a political conflict.