With the rise of Adams' faction in the republican movement in the late 1970s, Morrison succeed Seán Ó Brádaigh as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin. During the 1981 Irish hunger strike, Morrison acted as spokesman for the IRA hunger strikers' leader Bobby Sands, who was elected to the British Parliament on an Anti H-Block platform. According to an intermediary between the IRA leadership and the British government, "Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were the only individuals of sufficient clout to offer the 'persuasion, education and knowledge' to push through any deal" between the strikers and British officials. Blanket protester Richard O'Rawe and others have claimed that Adams, McGuinness and Morrison withheld an offer and subsequent offers from the British which could have ended the hunger strike after the first four deaths, although this is fiercely disputed by Morrison and Sinn Féin.