After forty two days on hunger strike, Martin Hurson was barely alive. The other men lasted about sixty days or longer. So when news leaked out of the Kesh that Martin was doing badly, it came as a big shock to the family; they had hoped that some settlement over the next month or so would save his life. It was a life worth saving.

The ICJP reacted with anger at Joe McDonnell's death, for the first time lashing out at the British in the media for "clawing back" on concessions and promises made to them. One even broke down in tears before a French television crew. The British reaction? They blew it off, both the death and the criticism. Alison, the Brit prison minister, said he was told McDonnell's condition wasn't critical. The NIO refused comment: "ministers are not interested in engaging in public exchanges with the commission." Garret FitzGerald urged the Brits to reengage with the ICJP, but the Commission was in fact done.

Bik, sitting in his prison cell, wrote a "comm" to Gerry Adams about the prisoners attitude towards the ICJP: "No one will be talking to them unless I am present and then it will only be to tell them to skit OK... If we can render them ineffective now, then we leave the way clear for a direct approach without all the ballsing about... Our softly softly approach with them has left the impression that we were taking their proposals as a settlement. I'm sorry now I didn't tell them to get stuffed."

The US Unsafe for "the Princess"

Alison was dispatched to America to counter the growing effects of Irish-American supporters. In NYC, there was a continual picket set up by Noraid and other H-Block supporters at the British Consulate which made life miserable for Brit bureaucrats going to and fro work through a beehive of abuse. One complained, "When I go to work I am called a bastard and a murderer and a liar and again when I leave." These scenes were duplicated throughout the country.

Even more notable was the fact that Princess Margaret had a scheduled visit to the US canceled on security grounds. A leading Washington politician complained, "It's the first time a member of the Royal Family as been afraid to visit a friendly country"

Alison hit the US media referring to the hunger strike as "the Irish terrorist suicide", similar to the Japanese Kamikaze pilots: "We have another week or fortnight before the next suicide takes place and we hope we might be able to make a bit of progress in that period."

His tour wasn't a success. To even the average American, that kind of rhetoric only exposed Brit elitism and attitudes against Irish people generally.

Martin Hurson

Martin Hurson was a strong country man with a great sense of humor and a friendly, optimistic personality who never lost his boyish good looks. He was well liked in the Kesh because he was always very positive and at 24, although he was in prison since he was 19 and on the blanket as soon as he was convicted, he was in the rude good health of a country boy from Tyrone. He had strong family support and a fiancé, Bernadette Donnelly, who loved him. Bernadette had no idea Martin was an IRA volunteer. She was stunned when she found out he was arrested.

The Hursons had all grown up on the farm on a hill near the small East Tyrone town of Cappagh. There were nine of them in a three bedroom farm house. When Martin was a boy, there was no electricity or running water. Since the Ulster plantation days when the Brits sent in Protestant settlers to replace the native Irish, the Catholics were driven from the good low farmland into the hills where nothing but chickens, pigs and a few scattered cattle could be raised. But it was a wonderfully close community: neighbors took care of neighbors like family; sisters and brothers of one family married sisters and brothers of another; uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters were raised almost communally so that the families could make a living on the sparse land. Everyone was poor, but nobody starved. People were happy enough.

Until the British army, RUC and UDR invaded their countryside.

Secretly, an IRA Volunteer

Martin was a very religious young man. He enjoyed a good time, was a brave soldier and determined republican, and was obviously attracted to the opposite sex, but he was equally devoted to St Martin de Porres, a Peruvian Dominican brother who devoted his life to taking care of African slaves. Once as a boy he "saved" his brother-in-law's calf, which was so sick the vet gave up on it, by getting down on his knees and praying to St Martin while rubbing his hand over the animal. The next day, the lamb was lambing around in the yard, as good as new. Martin was eleven. Another time he prayed to St. Martin over a car that died. Yes, it turned over at the first try in the morning.

Martin was also a sensitive youngster, who was devoted to his mother. When she became terminally ill with a brain hemorrhage, Martin began showing signs of psychological disorientation. In fact, he lost his memory totally from the day his mother died until the day, several days later, when the tractor he was on tipped over and he was thrown into a ditch. His memory instantly returned as a result of the fall.

In 1968, he witnessed a civil rights march in Dungannon where nationalist were batoned off the streets by the RUC. The Brit army, RUC and UDR were constantly harassing the Hurson family, along with every other nationalist family in the area with young men, but Martin was seemingly oblivious. At least on the outside.

Martin had a lot going for him as an IRA volunteer. He was a good natured "farm boy" and not considered likely to be involved by crown forces in the area. And, he was always on the road, going to work, doing odd jobs and traveling three or four times a week to see his girl friend Bernadette in Pomeroy. He had plenty of excuses for being on the road at night. Moreover, to the family he was off to see Bernadette, to Bernadette he was off home. Often he was an operating IRA soldier against British forces in his country. To this day, people who knew him refuse to believe he was an IRA volunteer. He was an active volunteer for 18 months before anyone found out. Then, on the 11th of November 1976, he was taken from his bed at his father's house at 6 AM under the Emergency Provisions Act and hauled off to Omagh RUC barracks in connection with a number of shootings and bombings in and around Cappagh. That's when Bernadette and the family knew for the first time.

Mason's regime: A bad time to be a suspect

It was a bad time to be an IRA suspect. Roy Mason, the new Brit direct ruler of the Six Counties, had just initiated a brutal crackdown on the IRA which included, under the auspices of Kenneth Newman, the new head of the RUC, beating and torture of suspects to obtain forced confessions. Martin received awful beatings while in custody: hair was pulled out of his head; he was punched in the stomach and all over his body, kicked in the testicles, and his head banged against a wall. Martin signed a statement under duress.

Bernadette was stunned to hear of his arrest. When she visited him in jail, he saw the condition he was in from the assaults. He sent her a hand crafted jewelry box from the Kesh while on remand and she visited him as often as she could. They were in love as much as ever and she was more than willing to wait form him. Bernadette and Martin became engaged, over a prison table in the visitor's room in Long Kesh in March of 1979 with a screw looking on.

Despite claiming that his statement was beaten out of him, which couldn't be denied considering the physical evidence that Martin carried on his body, a judge sentenced him to 20 years for possession of land mines and conspiracy, among other charges.

The case was so controversial because of the beatings, that it wasn't settled until June 1980 after several appeals and re-trials. The conviction held, naturally.

Martin volunteered and went on hunger strike on 29 May 1981. Bik put him on, even though he didn't know him personally, because Bobby Sands had recommended him as a good man who wouldn't break. That was good enough for Bik.

Martin's Horrible Suffering, Then Peace

It was Sunday 12 July, not a good day for Catholics in the north under the best of circumstances. Brendan and Francie, Martin's brothers, were attending H-Blocks rallies, when they received word from a friendly priest that they should go to the Kesh immediately. Brendan raced to get to Martin, taking Bernadette McAliskey and Martin's fiancé Bernadette, with him. Martin's father John, sister Rosaleen, and brother-in-law Paddy McElvogue beat them there. They were shocked with what they saw. Martin didn't respond to their greetings. Rosaleen shouted out their names three times before Martin at last responded, whispering their names.

They were called out to a waiting room while a doctor saw Martin. He told them that Martin had permanent brain damage and that he would be "a cabbage" even if they intervened immediately. The family stayed with him until they could take seeing him in pain no longer. Brendan arrived as the others were on their way out, but without either of the Bernadettes, who had been denied entrance to the Kesh. It was particularly hard for Bernadette Donnelly, who was never to she her beloved Martin in life again.

Brendan went in to see Martin alone. He was swinging his arms from side to side ripping at his own flesh, his head going back on forth in obvious agony. Inhuman sounds came from inside his throat; his eyes rolled.

Brendan sat at Martin's bedside, holding his hands so Martin couldn't scratch at or punch at his face. He couldn't be controlled, sweat poured from his face. Brendan couldn't stand the constant and terrible moaning coming from from deep within his brother, like silent screams. He was too weak to scream. This went on for several hours.

At around 2 AM on the 13th of July, Fr. Murphy came to give Martin the last sacraments. Martin was able to give a nod to the priest. Just before the anointing, he was at his worst: wild-eyed, screaming the terrible muted screams, sweating profusely, and flailing about. Then, like a miracle, he became absolutely at peace.

All that Brendan could do now was wait for his younger brother to die an Irish martyr's death in Her Majesty's hell hole of Long Kesh.

At 4 AM Martin Hurson's life just ebbed away. There was no second wind. Orangemen prepared in their dreams for a merry "12th of July", shoes shinned, umbrellas wound tightly like walking sticks, bowler hats and sashes on the dresser. The 12th being on the Sabbath, Monday the 13th of July was the big day.

Martin's body would journey home to the hills of Tyrone as loyalists celebrated across the north a double-header: the Battle of the Boyne and another Hunger Striker dead.