Anthony McIntyre interviewed Brendan Hughes, former IRA leader in Belfast and OC of republican prisoners throughout much of the Blanket Protest in Long Kesh, for the first issue of Fourthwrite.
Fourthwrite, Issue #1, Spring 2000
Q: After such long term involvement in the republican struggle do you feel a sense of satisfaction at the way things have turned out?
A: No. I do not feel any satisfaction whatsoever. All the questions raised in the course of this struggle have not been answered and the republican struggle has not been concluded. We were na_ve ever to have expected the Brits to get on the boat and go. But the things that we cherished such as a thirty-two county democratic socialist republic are no longer mentioned.
Q: The former republican prisoner Tommy Gorman in the Andersonstown News bewails the absence of radical republicanism and has questioned if it was all worth it. What is your view?
A: Let me answer it this way. When I came out from jail in 1986 having spent more than twelve years there I found work on a building site on the Falls Road. Some of the people I thought I was fighting for were now seeking to exploit me. I recalled my father telling me stories about earlier campaigns when republicans such as Billy McKee came out from jail and being employed by Eastwoods for peanuts. And there I was decades later digging holes for the same peanuts.
Q: But there are many who feel it was worth it.
A: True. But amongst their number are those who have big houses and guaranteed incomes. Of course it was worth it for them. I recall going to the Republican Movement and asking that it highlight the exploitative cowboy builders on the Falls Road who were squeezing the republican poor for profit. The movement censored me and refused to allow me to speak. Once they published a piece that I wrote - or should I say did not write as the thing was so heavily censored as to be totally unrecognisable from the article I actually wrote. Some of the cowboy builders had influence with movement members. Whether true or not, there were many whispers doing the rounds that these members were taking backhanders and so on. In any event this led to a vicious circle in which money created power, which in turn created corruption and then greed for more money. Dozens of ex-prisoners are exploited by these firms. They run the black economy of West Belfast simply to make profit and not out of a sense of helping others.
Q: Is the future bleak?
A: People are demoralised and disillusioned. Many are tired but it would still be possible to pull enough together to first question what has happened and then to try to change things.
Q: But has Sinn Fein not been sucked so far into the system that any salvaging of the republican project must now look a very daunting task?
A: While I am not pushing for any military response, our past has shown that all is never lost. In 1972 we had to break the truce in order to avoid being sucked in. In 1975 the British came at us again. And from prison through the Brownie articles written by Gerry Adams we warned the IRA that it was being sucked in. We broke the British on that but it took hard work. And now they are at it again. And it will be even harder this time. Think of all the lives that could have been saved had we accepted the 1975 truce. That alone would have justified acceptance. We fought on and for what? - what we rejected in 1975
Q: What do you feel when you read that Michael Oatley (formerly of MI6) expresses support for the Sinn Fein leadership, and that David Goodall, who helped negotiate the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985 said recently that it is all going almost exactly according to plan?
A: These are the comments of men supremely confident that they have it all sewn up. What we hammered into each other time after time in jail was that a central part of Brit counter insurgency strategy was to mould leaderships whom they could deal with. So I get so demoralised when I read about this. I look at South Africa and I look at here and I see that the only change has been in appearances. No real change has occurred. A few republicans have slotted themselves into comfortable positions and left the rest of us behind.
Q: Has the nationalist middle class been the real beneficiary of the armed struggle?
A: Well, it has not been republicans - apart from those republicans eager to join that class.
Q: It seems that the social dimension is your real concern regarding republican direction?
A: No. There is much more than that. It has been the futility of it all. From a nationalist perspective alone what we have now we could have had at any time in the last twenty-five years. But even nationalist demands don't seem to matter any more. And in the process we have lost much of our honesty, sincerity and comradeship.
Q: But could it not be argued that this developed because people are war weary?
A: In 1969 we had a naive enthusiasm about what we wanted. Now in 1999 we have no enthusiasm. And it is not because people are war weary - they are politics weary. The same old lies regurgitated week in week out. With the war politics had some substance. Now it has none. The political process has created a class of professional liars and unfortunately it contains many republicans. But I still think that potential exists to bring about something different. And I speak not just about our own community but about the loyalist community also. Ex-prisoners from both and not the politicians can effect some radical change.
Q: Do you sense any radical potential amongst loyalist ex-prisoners?
A: Yes. Very much so. Not only are they much better than the old regime, they have experienced through their own struggle the brutality, hypocrisy and corruption of the regime against which republicans fought for so long.
Q: What are your views on the Good Friday Agreement?
A: What is it? Have we agreed to the British staying in the six counties? If we listen to Francie Molloy that is what republicans have signed up to. The only advantage is that unionism has changed. The landed gentry has been smashed but only because of the war, not the Good Friday Agreement. Overall, the facade has been cleaned up but the bone structure remains the same. The state we set out to smash still exists. Look at the RUC for example.
Q: Do you sense that Sinn Fein is going to settle for something like disband Ronnie Flanagan?
A: Would it really surprise you?
Q: Do you sense that the republican leadership fears or despises democratic republicanism?
A: The response to democratic republicanism has always been pleas to stay within the army line. Even doing this interview with you generates a reluctance within me. The republican leadership has always exploited our loyalty.
Q: What do you say to those people who are unhappy but are pulled the other way by feelings of loyalty?
A: Examine their consciences. Take a good look at what is going on. If they agree - ok. If not then speak out.
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Interview with Joe O'Neill • 24.11.00
In last month's Irish Herald we ran a short piece on "The Irish Republican Writers Group". In this issue, a founding member of the group, Brendan (Darkie) Hughes, airs his views on his Republican philosophy and questions the political direction of the current leadership of Sinn Féin and the Republican movement.
Hughes was one of a small group of Republicans in the Lower Falls (Belfast), who split from the IRA in 1970, to form what was later to be known as the Provisional IRA. In the sometimes violent split within the movement at that time one of the first victims was his cousin, Charlie Hughes, who was shot dead in a gun battle in the Lower Falls by members of the Official IRA.
After almost three years on the run, Hughes was arrested, along with Gerry Adams. They were tortured for over 12 hours in Springfield Road barracks and then Castlereagh before being flown to the cages of Long Kesh. Within 5 months Hughes had escaped from Long Kesh, crossed the border and within 10 days, was back in Belfast with a new identity, to assume command of the Belfast Brigade.
Captured again 6 months later, he was sentenced to 15 years on weapons, explosives and documents charges. Hughes, as Brigade O/C was caught with what the press called a "Doomsday Plan" which was the IRA plan for the defense of the Nationalist community in Belfast.
While O/C Republican prisoners in Long Kesh Hughes was charged in connection with a prison riot and given an additional 5 years. However, at this time, the process of Ulsterization and criminalization had begun and he was taken from court to the infamous H-Blocks. "That morning" said Hughes, "I left Long Kesh, Brendan Hughes, O/C Republican prisoners, recognized as a political prisoner and that afternoon, I was Hughes, 704, in the H-Blocks."
In the H-Blocks Hughes was instrumental in organizing the men on the blanket protest and was elected O/C with Bobby Sands as his adjutant. As the protests by the men escalated, without any movement by prison authorities, or the Thatcher government, to resolve the prisoners demands to end their inhumane treatment, he called for volunteers to join him in a hunger strike. Hughes resigned as O/C, to be replaced by Bobby Sands and was joined by 6 of the 90 men who had volunteered to go on hunger strike. After 53 days without food, with Sean McKenna within hours of death and the others in very serious condition, the strike was called off as the government delivered a document which satisfied the prisoners demands. After the government reneged on their agreement the strike led this time by Bobby Sands commenced with deadly consequences.
In an interview with the Irish Herald, Hughes discussed a wide range of topics on the Irish political landscape.
The Good Friday Agreement.
"The decision was taken from the top down, there were no discussions, there was nothing taking place. What we heard was, 'The Hume/Adams Document' and I am very annoyed at this because, I have spent my whole life in this Republican movement and all of a sudden everyone is talking about 'The Hume Adams Document' and I asked if I could see it . To my knowledge no one has ever seen it. I thought it was a disgrace that John Hume knew where this movement was going I didn't know where it was going. I didn't know anything about 'The Hume Adams Document', what the hell is it? Then, 'The Hume Adams Document', developed into the 'Good Friday Agreement'. What was the Good Friday Agreement all about? All of my life I spent attempting to bring down Stormont, attempting to remove the British from Ireland and all of a sudden, all of that language was gone. We no longer talk about a British declaration of intent to withdraw from this country and we have got to the stage where we were actually fighting to get down to the Stormont, that we just spent 30 years trying to bring down. The loyalty factor eventually burnt out with me, the loyalty factor was no longer there."
Sinn Fein leadership
"Stormont is OK as long as we're in it. What was developing here was a sort of a class thing within the Republican movement. You had the "Armani Suit Brigade" and a lot of these people I had never come across before. I had never spent time in prison with them and their politics drifted away from me, their politics, I didn't drift away from my politics, their politics drifted away from me to a stage where I believed I needed to say something, because these people are running away with my movement. The suffering and everything that we represented was no longer there anymore and these people had it, they were wineing and dinning at Stormont. I believe very shortly, we will be wineing and dinning in Westminster. I believe that they have run away with the politics, the real politics of the Republican movement the Republican struggle and I believe that they have to be resisted. Which I am doing. It wasn't easy for me to go public and criticize all these things that were going on, but I feel a moral responsibility to do so. Even though it puts me on the fringe and I am called a dissident and other names. But I know damn well, that what I am saying, is representative of the ordinary people on the ground.
The Republican Movement
"I believe this Republican movement belongs to the people. I don't believe that people like me should walk away and form another small group to oppose this group. This group is the Republican movement. We have fought, we have gone through an awful lot of struggle and I believe it has been hijacked by a handful of people who have gone in a particular direction that I disagree with. But it is my movement. I don't want to form another movement I want my movement back to what we fought for. I don't believe that it is totally hopeless. I believe it can be won back. If I thought it was hopeless, I would probably leave the country. I believe that I have a moral responsibility and a duty to carry on the struggle. It's not easy, a lot of the people I am talking about are comrades and friends of mine. I wish they could change and turn this thing around and bring it back to the people. Bring the movement back to the people. Not a political party that's running to Stormont, running to Westminster with their Armani suits on and jutting about in their State cars. The same regime that's been oppressing us for so many years, they have become a part of.
Decommissioning
The IRA has been asked to decommission. We were all told that there would be no decommissioning. When you bring a stranger to a dump an IRA dump and point out where that dump is to me that is decommissioning. I certainly would not go near that dump again, so that dump is, by and large, decommissioned. Forget about it. It has been identified yet I am told there will be no decommissioning. To me that is decommissioning. People are telling lies. We are doing everything we were told would not happen. We still hear at some commemorations people getting up on platforms and telling blatant lies. 'The war is not over'. By and large, the war is over. The current joke in the town at the moment is; Q. 'What is the difference between a Sticky (Official IRA) and a Provie (Provisional IRA). A. Twenty years.' The only difference is that the Stickies didn't have to decommission."
The RUC
"What I was beginning to see was the reintroduction of a different type of philosophy the words they were using 'the RUC has to be changed' no longer disbanded."
Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Hunger Strike
"Anyone who is going out to commemorate the Republican struggle should commemorate the people who died in the struggle. It should be about respect and to commemorate the sacrifice that these people made. I believe the party of the working class is entitled to commemorate the working-class people who died. I believe a party of the Middle or Upper-class should not be allowed to capitalize on those people's deaths. Those people died for working-class issues and I believe that the only people who should be allowed to capitalize on that are working-class people who are fighting for working-class issues. I don't believe the leadership of the Republican movement, at present, is fighting for working-class issues, or fighting for the issues that these people died for."
Armed Struggle
"We are sitting in Divis Towers now and there is ? million of equipment on top of this roof, there are armed British troops on top of this roof. As long as there is one British soldier on this roof, I believe that people have a right to oppose that. Unfortunately, the occupation forces are still here and unfortunately, the leadership of the movement that I belonged to have become a part of that, they have become a part of the problem."
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'The Hunger Strikes - 20 years on, where are we now?'
Thursday, 25 January, 2001
ATGWU Hall, Dublin
Transcript, IRWG PUBLIC MEETING
Brendan Hughes • 25 January 2001
After that last speaker I was prepared to walk out, I don't know how I am going to beat that. Listen, we are a bit stuck for time and I could ramble on here for a long time on the jail situation but there is a few important points I want to make.
Briefly I will give a bit of history on where I came from. I was born into a working class background, a socialist background, and became a member of the IRA, and went to jail, escaped from jail, went back into jail, became part of the prison protest. In 1972 there was a truce and the IRA asked for the British to give a declaration of intent to withdraw and that would end the war. Two weeks later it was obvious the British were not coming across with that. The end of 1974/75 another ceasefire was called, this time it was a long drawn out ceasefire and the intentions of the British at that time was to get the IRA involved in a long drawn out ceasefire, and an attempt to normalise the situation, criminalise the situation and to pacify the situation. That basically meant to get the British troops off the street, the RUC back onto the street and put republicans in jail. That they done.
In 1974/75/76 I was in the cages of Long Kesh and soon became O/C in the cages of Long Kesh. In 1978 it was decided that I was no longer a political prisoner and on a morning in January 1978 I was negotiating with the governor and he called me "Mr Hughes" or "O/C". That afternoon I was taken out, brought to the H Blocks of Long Kesh, and stripped, given a blanket and thrown into a cell. That was part of the criminalisation policy that the British government employed at that time. The intention was to turn me into a nice law abiding criminal.
At that time the British believed that they had the struggle beaten - they refused to give a declaration of intent to withdraw, they refused to agree for the Irish people to come to their own conclusions of what sort of democracy, what sort of social democracy, we wanted here. The intentions from the war when I first got involved was to bring about a 32 county democratic SOCIALIST Republic.
By 1980 we had been on the blanket protest for over four years and the brutality that took place there is just so undescribable. I mean we were locked in the cells 24 hours a day, we were starved, we were beaten, we went through the white light torture treatment at night - when the lights was left on. In the winter the heating was turned off, in the summer the heating was turned on. Men were taken out and beaten. They introduced the wing shifts, where a whole series, thirty men at a time - not all at one time, one man at a time, but thirty men on a wing - were taken out individually, beaten and thrown into another wing.
By 1980 we decided on the Hunger Strike, because we needed to end this protest, we needed to bring this to an end. There was so much suffering and so much agony. On the outside what was taking place was that the Republican Movement had rebuilt. This time more politically aware than they were before 1975. On the streets there were mass protest on behalf - there wasn't mass protests actually - not until the Hunger Strikes. The common phrase in the H Blocks at that time was "Does anyone care?", "Does anyone know?". The first Hunger Strike was called and it wasn't long before the world knew, and we called on the world for support, to support our five demands.
The Hunger Strike which I was involved in, myself and Bobby decided - Bobby Sands - we decided to call the Hunger Strike. Tommy was on the Hunger Strike with me. We negotiated what we believed was the settlement of that Hunger Strike.
I don't know if anyone here has any experience of a hunger strike, but it is an agonising, torturous, smelly way to die. I remember the first thought I had the first day I was on hunger strike. I was lying in a shitty cell, on a piece of mattress, on a wet floor, cold, hungry - and I'd been that way for over three years. But the first day I went on hunger strike was the day I looked back at yesterday and thought 'well, that wasn't too bad'. I mean this is the day you start to die. Yesterday I could have lived for a year, two years, three years, I could have stuck it for that length of time. But today is hell, today is the day you die.
When you go on hunger strike, if you have any excess fat on your body, your body will eat it. Once the excess fat is gone, and believe me there wasn't too many fat men in the H Blocks of Long Kesh, it then eats at the muscle and your muscles starts to go. Once all the muscle is gone all that is left is flesh and bone. The body is a fantastic machine, it will keep itself alive. So the next thing to go is the brain. Your body starts to live off your brain, it takes the glucose from your brain. Once that starts that's the critical period. That's when your eyesight starts to go, your smell, all your senses start to go. Then you go into a coma. Then you die. Agonisingly, an agonising death. And an agonising death for a family member, a parent, a mother, to sit and have to watch this. That is the reality of hunger strike.
We believed that we had settled the first Hunger Strike. It turned out that we were betrayed in that settlement and that led to the second Hunger Strike. Now the second Hunger Strike, as you all know, cost ten men their lives. Ten men died on it. The Hunger Strikes ended. Now I don't want to get in too deeply into that, just keep it brief because I think the next few points are the most important points that I am trying to make.
The Hunger Strike is so important to the struggle. It was part of the struggle, part of our struggle to bring about a 32 county democratic socialist Republic. But to be honest with you the day I called the Hunger Strike was the day to end the prison protest. That was the main decision, to end the prison protest, to end the struggle in the jails.
The struggle then went on until the next major development, which was the Hume-Adams document. Now I don't know if any of you have read the Hume-Adams document, but I certainly haven't read it and I've searched for it, looked for it, but I've never come across the Hume-Adams document. If anyone has it would they please give me it, because I have never come across it. The Hume-Adams document went on to the thing we now call the Good Friday Agreement.
Now I went to jail, spent the last thirty years of my life, trying to bring down an unjust, undemocratic, immoral, corrupt, sectarian statelet set up by the British. The Good Friday Agreement has brought about that same state, the thirty year struggle did not end the injustice of that statelet. We still have the RUC. The slogans were on the walls 'Disband the RUC', then it became 'Reform the RUC'. Some time ago they brought a discredited conservative politician here to sort out the policing problem - the 'policing problem'. The new in word, by the way, with the RUC now is 'transist', they are 'transisting". So the next slogan goes on the wall is that the "RUC are transisting", into what I don't know, but they are no longer to be disbanded.
Stormont is still there, but it is a Stormont with Republicans in it. Stormont has not changed. The whole apparatus of the Stormont regime is still there, it is still controlled by the British, it is still unjust, it is still cruel. The RUC is still there. The whole civil service are still there, the same civil servants who controlled the shoot-to-kill policy, who controlled the plastic bullets, who controlled the H Blocks of Long Kesh, who took responsibility for ten men dying. It is all still there. But, saviour of saviours, we have two Sinn Féin ministers there, who happen to close hospitals.
The sad thing about all this is that the British set this up. This is the British answer to the Republican problem in Ireland. It's a British solution, it's not an Irish solution. It's not a solution that we have control of. There are people up there and the British ministers are handing money out. But the whole thing is built on sand. First of all the statelet still exists. Secondly, whenever Tony Blair, or whoever comes after him, decides - or the Unionists decide - to walk out, the Good Friday Agreement is finished. It's all finished. So the whole thing is built on sand. The unfortunate thing about it is that there are people who actually believe that we have a settlement, that we have a settlement to our problem, to your problem, to my problem, to everybody's problem in Ireland. And I don't believe that.
I was in London a few weeks ago. I was asked over by a group of people, the Kurds and the Turkish people, who are in Turkish prisons. Why I was there was they asked Sinn Féin for support. Thirty two people have died, twelve of them hunger strikers in Turkish jails. Sinn Féin's response to these people was "we do not get involved in the internal politics of another country". God help us all. That's what the response was "we do not get involved in the internal politics of another country". To me that is a total betrayal. [applause].
On the Falls Road, the heart of the resistance struggle in Ireland to bring about a socialist republic, we have employers who are paying women £2 an hour, who are paying men £20 a day for working on building sites in all types of weather with no security that they will have a job tomorrow morning. I know men who went in to work for a day and because the people did not like their face they were sacked. They were sacked because the person who was employing did not like their face. These same people are employing a lot of ex-prisoners, a lot of these people done 10, 15, 20 years in prison. These same people, these rogue builders, are now millionaires who own five bars on the Falls Road. These are the same people that built the new Sinn Féin office, with slave labour. The new Sinn Féin office on the Falls Road, a real luxury building; and the local paper, the Andytown News, these same people built that. These are the people who are paying men £20 a day and who are abusing them and sacking them and it's so totally unbelievable and so disgusting, but that's what they are getting away with.
Now it took me a long time within the Republican Movement, if you are in a movement for over thirty years you have a certain amount of loyalty to it. When the Good Friday Agreement was agreed upon I had my doubts, I had my reservations. But I stayed there for a long time, I stayed there for far too long while people like Tommy McKearney and Anthony McIntyre were sticking their necks out. Until I began to see and open my eyes and see what was going on. The best friend I had all my life was Gerry Adams. This isn't anything personal against Gerry Adams, although I have been accused of it, of mounting a personal campaign against Gerry Adams. I am not. Gerry Adams happens to wear an Armani suit, I attack everybody in Sinn Féin who wears Armani suits, because the working class doesn't have them. [applause]
So I joined the Republican Writers Group and began to write. I began to write about the excesses of these rogue builders. I began to write about a old Republican, who I knew all my life, who the IRA and Sinn Féin evicted out of his house, because the British government was offering £50,000 of a grant to Sinn Féin open it as drop-in centre for prisoners. I was an ex-prisoner and I'd have been saying to them "Fuck your fifty thousand, the Republican is more important to me than fifty thousand pounds". [applause]
So really what we are doing, and it wasn't easy for people like us to do this. I mean we have lost so-called friends. I wouldn't say we have lost comrades, because you don't lose a comrade unless he dies, or she dies. We have lost so-called friends because of our actions and, as I say, it is not easy to do what we do. Myself and Anthony travelled all over, we went to meet the families of the hunger strikers from London. We were arrested on the way in and probably will be arrested again. They won't let us in to America. What we are trying to do is cause a debate. We have an alternative to the Good Friday Agreement, we have an alternative to the British settlement in Ireland. We have it, the people have it. It has to be a socialist alternative, it has to be a republican alternative. That's what we are trying to do. We are trying to start a great debate, we have one organised in Belfast next week and I hope to God it is as well attended as this, I somehow doubt it, but I hope it is.
To end I want to thank you all for coming and I really appreciate you listening to me. Thanks very much.
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Former IRA hunger striker Brendan Hughes is angry with his one-time brother-in-arms, most particularly Gerry Adams and the 'Armani suit brigade'
Niall Stanage • Sunday Tribune, 17 December 2000
Brendan Hughes looked out onto the Falls Road. A man sitting in a car opposite the safe house had aroused his suspicions. Hughes asked someone from the area to check him out. When the local approached, the man drove hurriedly off.
Moments later, British troops swarmed through the door, pumped up with adrenaline, shouting, jostling. They were soon exultant. They had captured not just Hughes but two of his senior colleagues in the Belfast IRA. One was Tom Cahill, the other Gerry Adams. It was 1973.
A lot of blood has been spilt since then. The lives of Adams and Hughes have diverged to an even-greater extent, too. For the former, the tortuous grind of the peace process has been enlivened by electoral triumph, White House welcomes, the international respect accorded to a burgeoning statesman.
Brendan Hughes gets by on income support. His last job was as a hod-carrier on a building site. We meet in a flat in Divis Tower. The top floor and roof of the complex are home to the British Army -- its observation post has been there for years and, for all the talk of demilitarisation, the army shows no inclination to abandon it.
Hughes is angry. He believes that the republican movement to which he has devoted his life has drifted from its base, betraying its principles and its working class roots. He referred to those in control as "the Armani suit brigade".
Hughes has only recently begun to voice these criticisms openly in the recent past. "There's an old cliché in the republican movement: 'stay within the army line.' That's what I did, but I was making no progress whatsoever," he said.
Even so, his first public pronouncements were circumspect. Now that has changed. The final straw came when Real IRA man Joseph O'Connor was shot dead in Ballymurphy in October.
"When people get into positions of power, and start enjoying the trappings of power, people like Joe O'Connor get killed in the streets," Hughes commented bluntly.
No paramilitary group has accepted responsibility for the killing, and the security forces have declined to say who they think is to blame. Such a convenient silence doesn't wash with Hughes.
"If that's right, then let's have a bloody inquiry, because it means there's a bunch of men running around Ballymurphy killing people and nobody knows who they are."
So Hughes thinks the Provisional IRA killed O'Connor? "I do, yes. I feel disgusted, I feel hurt, and I feel it's a total contradiction of everything Sinn Féin are saying. Everybody knows who done it."
Hughes went to O'Connor's funeral and helped carry his coffin. In the clannish world of Belfast republicanism, it was seen as an important gesture, though Hughes pointed out that he was expressing his opposition to O'Connor being killed, not support for the Real IRA.
"Why didn't Gerry Adams go to his funeral?" he asked. "He was one of his constituents. Joseph O'Connor was a republican who was shot."
As allegation and counter-allegation flew in the wake of the killing, mainstream republicans mounted pickets on the homes of Anthony McIntyre and Tommy Gorman, two non-aligned dissenters. Hughes was not impressed.
"Anthony McIntyre and Tommy Gorman came out with a totally honest appraisal of the situation and they were picketed. I see paranoia [within] the leadership; anybody who criticises must be condemned, there must be no debate, 'we must not be questioned'. We have something that is almost fascism developing out of this, and that is scary."
Disturbed by the anger he had seen among young Real IRA supporters at O'Connor's funeral, Hughes also realised that a full-blown feud between RIRA and the Provisionals was a possibility. He and veteran Republican Billy McKee offered their services as intermediaries.
Word soon came back from the Provos that Hughes was "not acceptable". It was the most pointed of snubs.
"I have spent 30 years of my life in this struggle," he said. "I know what I wanted 30 years ago, and I don't see anything close to it at the moment. I just see the movement which I spent my life in becoming part of the corrupt, rotten regime which we tried to destroy."
Does he feel betrayed?
"I do, yes."
Anyone close to the current leadership seeking to disparage Brendan Hughes will not have an easy task. Very few members of the IRA have such a dramatic record of activism as the man known as 'The Dark'.
Hughes was approached to join 'the movement' in 1969. He made swift progress through the ranks and was soon one of the senior IRA men in his area. Asked if he was Belfast commander of the IRA, he replied, "So they say," and smiled.
He went on the run in the city in 1970. It was a chaotic time. "On a normal day in the 71-72 period, you would have had a call house [a safe meeting place] and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float [gone out in a car looking for British soldier] in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."
During the same period, Hughes survived an attempt on his life by British soldiers. He still bears a bullet scar on his forearm.
When Hughes arrived in Long Kesh in 1973, after his arrest with Cahill and Adams, he thought his war was over. Instead, he soon escaped, rolled up inside a mattress which was left out as rubbish. The bin lorry which served the camp, unknown to its driver, took Hughes to freedom.
Hughes then became Arthur McAllister, toy salesman. Under this unlikely cover, he travelled around Belfast, meeting other senior republicans and co-ordinating activities.
He knew it couldn't last. It didn't. He was arrested again, convicted of possession of firearms and explosives, and sentenced to 15 years. He was sent back to Long Kesh. The process of criminalisation had now begun: the H-Blocks were opened in 1976. In 1977, following the release of Gerry Adams, Hughes became O/C (officer commanding) of the republican prisoners. When he was moved from the old, POW-style compounds to the new jail, he refused, as others had also done, to don the prison uniform.
The blanket protest gave way to the dirty protest. Still there was no sign of special category status being reinstated. In the autumn of 1980, Hughes decided the only option was hunger strike. On 27 October 1980, he refused food, as did six other prisoners.
"The first day I went on hunger strike, I was still in this shitty cell. But I remember thinking to myself that night, 'the cell doesn't look that bad'. Because that is the day you start to die. After awhile you can actually smell your body wasting away."
By 18 December, negotiations were at a critical point. But Seán McKenna, one of the hunger strikers, was close to death. Believing that the prisoners' demands had been met, Hughes called the strike off. He still holds the view that the prison authorities then sabotaged the agreement.
A second hunger strike started. Ten men died. In the years after their deaths, most of their demands were conceded. Hughes was released from the H-Blocks in 1986, when he once again became active in the republican movement.
The trauma of the period left a deep mark: "I blamed myself for years," Hughes said. "I used to believe that if I had let Seán die, that would have ended it, which would have stopped 10 men dying. During one period I was almost at the point of jumping off a bridge."
Hughes feels that the apparent abandonment of traditional republican objectives by the current leadership casts a shadow over the sacrifices made by him and others: "I don't think it's been worth it," he said. "If someone had told me 20 years ago, you're going to go to jail, you're going to get tortured, you're going to go on hunger strike, you're going to watch loads of men dying to get this......I'd have told them to forget it."
So much for the past. Where does Brendan Hughes think republicanism should go from here? He is unequivocal about the fact that a return to armed struggle is not an option. "The most important thing at the moment is truth. The next most important thing is that people should be allowed free speech. The third objective is to force republicanism to broaden the base of debate," he said.
Hughes tries to keep his disagreements with the current leadership on an ideological level, but it is impossible to expunge personal factors from the equation. If one wanted evidence that the personal really is political, republicanism provides it. It's there in Hughes' own words when he talks of the "major problems" encountered by people trying to come to terms with the suffering they endured (or inflicted) during the conflict.
"There are many people who have gone through this whole struggle and have gone off their heads. Kieran Nugent, one of the first blanket men, finished up with people calling him a water rat, drinking wine at the side of a river. Loads of others have just died off," he said.
There is one note of personal bitterness sounded by Hughes, too. It goes back once again to ties of friendship. It goes back to Gerry Adams. Hughes believes that eventually his old comrade was using him only to further his (Adams') own agenda.
He recalled one period in the 1980s: "I was being trailed all over the country with him at that point. He was building up an electoral base. But I didn't know that. I was just Brendan Hughes, the famous 'Darkie' Hughes who had escaped from jail and who'd been on hunger strike. My reputation was being used."
Adams and Hughes last met about three months ago. It wasn't a pleasant experience: "He was asking me questions about my getting publicity, talking about the 'Armani suit brigade' and so on. And he was saying things about the people I was associating with -- that I had got myself into bad company and I should get myself out of it. It was an attempt to censor me through friendship. But it was so ridiculous! If Gerry had said that to me 20 years ago, I'd have f*cked him a right!"
Yet, for all that, an old black and white photograph still hangs in Hughes' living room. Two men. Long hair in a Long Kesh cage. Big smiles. Arms around each other. Brothers-in-arms. Gerry Adams and Brendan Hughes. "The reason I keep that there is it reminds me what it used to be like," said Hughes. "We were 100% into it. One hundred percent."