My first reaction was one of astonishment. I read the message that Bik McFarland had sent to my cell over and over again in case I had got it wrong. What I was reading was astounding: it seemed that the underlying substance of our demands was being conceded.

It was 8pm on July 5, 1981. Inside the cells in the H-blocks of Long Kesh prison were hundreds of IRA prisoners, my friends and comrades. For over three months some of them had been on hunger strike to achieve political status, and four, including Bobby Sands, had died slow, agonising deaths. I was public relations officer for the prisoners and Brendan “Bik” McFarlane was their commander.

There was a hush of expectation about the wing because Bik had been summoned to a meeting earlier that day in the prison hospital. Now he and I had urgent business to discuss. As usual, this was done in Irish, so that the “screws” — the prison warders — wouldn’t be able to understand us.

I called Bik up to his cell window.

“Well, Rick?” he asked.

“I think there’s enough there, Bikso.”

“I agree. I’ll write to the outside and let them know our thinkin’.”

With these words, the leadership of the republican prisoners in the H-blocks accepted a set of proposals that had been presented to them by an intermediary from the British government — four days before the fifth hunger striker, Joe McDonnell, died.

There was no doubting the authenticity of the offer. The Foreign Office had been in contact with the IRA leadership in an effort to reach agreement. When Bik was summoned to the camp hospital for the visit, waiting for him was none other than the affable Danny Morrison. The republican press officer confirmed the Foreign Office contact’s bona fides, and said our outside leadership was certain he had the endorsement of Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, herself.

This contact, by effortlessly removing a ban on Morrison visiting the prison and getting him in on a Sunday to see our officer commanding, thus implicitly recognising Bik’s authority, had sliced through the procedural morass like a hot knife through butter.

The contact was named “Mountain Climber”. We believed he was an MI5 representative. Certainly his mountaineering skills were about to be be tested to the full.

Gerry Adams was charged by the IRA army council to handle communications with him. In the coded terminology they used, the British were called “the management”, the army council were the “shop stewards” and the prisoners were “the workers”. I didn’t know about this terminology until years later, but when I did, I remembered something my father used to say: “The workers always get shafted.”

Under the terms of the deal being offered, prison uniforms would be abolished and republicans would get their own clothes. Our demands would be met on visits, letters and parcels. There would be effective, although unofficial, segregation of prisoners on political lines. Prison work would be ambiguously defined, to include educational courses and handicrafts. There would be free association throughout weekends and for three hours every weekday. And the government would phrase the deal in conciliatory terms.