O’Rawe began to develop an awful theory. When Bobby Sands ran for his parliamentary seat, the spectacle of a peaceful protester seeking public office engendered popular support for republicanism on a scale that the IRA had never achieved through violence. After Sands died, on 5 May 1981, as many as a hundred thousand people took to the streets. O’Rawe wasn’t privy to the discussions of the Army Council, which made the decision; but he came to believe that Adams had deliberately perpetuated the hunger strike in order to capitalise on the broad-based sympathy and support that it produced. In
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