Dungiven hunger striker recalled in Hughes memoir

He felt the North Derry IRA man was a "very, very strong character" and the screws in the H-Blocks expected friction.

That conflict, however, did not materialise and Hughes and McFeely subsequently co-operated to escalate a prison protest that saw the pair refuse food in the first hunger strike of 1980 in which Sinn Fin MLA Raymond McCartney also took part.

Thus claims the late republican in the newly published Voices from the Grave a book compiled by veteran journalist Ed Moloney, which is based on a series of interviews Hughes gave to a researcher for Boston College in 2001 and 2002.

Hughes gave the interviews - recounting details of his career as a leading IRA operator throughout the Troubles - on condition that they remain unpublished until after his death. He died in 2008.

McFeely - now a successful property developer resident in the Republic of Ireland - served 12 years in the Maze for robbing a post office and shooting and wounding an RUC officer during a siege of a house in County Derry.

In the memoir Hughes post-humously recalls the shock of losing political status upon being moved from the republican compounds in Long Kesh to the H-Blocks.

He said he believed he was put in a cell with Tom McFeely because the prison officers felt conflict would erupt between two strong characters.

"He was O/C of that particular block," recalled Hughes. "I believe they put me in that cell because Tom McFeely was a very, very strong character and...I think they expected conflict between myself and Tom. He actually wasn't in there at the time...he was on the boards for hitting one of the screws."

"But after a few days Tom arrived back into his cell and we talked. I had put an appeal against the five-year sentence - for rioting - but after a week - in the H-Blocks - I dropped it," he said of an additional five-year sentence he had received for riotous behaviour following a fracas in the prison.

Hughes said he at first argued for the prisoners to put on their prison uniforms and embark on a prison war from within the system but this found little favour amongst his fellow inmates.

Instead it was agreed Hughes take over as overall H-Block commander working with two O/Cs in H3 and H5 - the blocks at that time on protest.

"That was quite easy...Tom McFeely was O/C of H5 and was quite agreeable to this; in fact he was one of those who asked me to become O/C and Joe Barnes was O/C of H3...The idea was to co-ordinate and to escalate the protest - to get the word out to the outside, to get a propaganda machine going within the prison and find ways of smuggling stuff in.

"When I say 'stuff,' I'm talking about pens, cigarette papers and things to write on. I asked people to start taking visits. Bobby Sands was in the cell next to myself and Tom McFeely," he related in the memoir.

In October 1980 Hughes and McFeely alongside Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon began a hunger strike for political status. It was called off by Hughes after 53 days to save McKenna's life.

Hughes told Boston College the protest was seen as a tool to allow the IRA and Sinn Fin leadership build the republican movement outside the prison.

"I saw the situation in the blocks as a tool to help the leadership on the outside - specifically Gerry - to build up a propaganda machine.

The Army (IRA] leadership needed an issue that would help them organise street protests...to rebuild the Republican movement on the outside.

"I was very concious of that. Myself, Tom (McFeely], Bobby (Sands], who became more and more a central figure, would discuss this aspect with as many people as we could at weekly Mass," he said.