BY JOHN SMITH
SHEFFIELD, England - Supporters of the fight for Irish
self-determination are planning rallies and public meetings
calling for the release of Irish political prisoners the
first weekend in May. In Belfast, London, New York, and many
other cities and towns, activities will be commemorating one
important chapter in the decades-long struggle of the Irish
people against British imperialist occupation and division of
their country.
May 5 marks the 14th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands. Sands was a hunger striker in the H-Block of Long Kesh, now Maze Prison, in Northern Ireland, when he died at 27. Between May and August 1981, nine other young Irishmen -Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Tom McElwee, and Micky Devine - fasted to death, culminating five years of resistance to the London government's decision to withdraw political status from Irish republican prisoners.
The hunger strike inspired a mass, all-Ireland protest movement and solidarity actions around the world in support of the prisoners' fight for dignity. The protesters demanded the restoration of their rights to:
One hundred thousand people attended Sands's funeral in Belfast - the population of Northern Ireland is 1.5 million - and 150,000 joined demonstrations in towns and cities across southern Ireland. Tens of thousands more marched in cities across Europe, North America, and Australia. Political prisoners in El Salvador, South Africa, and elsewhere commemorated the death of this freedom fighter. The Iranian government renamed the street running past the British Embassy in Tehran after him.
Irish republican prisoners had won political status following a hunger strike in 1972. This occurred in the context of ongoing resistance in working-class neighborhoods across Northern Ireland to anti-Catholic discrimination and repression by the British forces that occupied Northern Ireland beginning in 1969.
In 1976, the United Kingdom's Labour Party government announced that Irish republican prisoners convicted after March of that year would henceforth be treated as common criminals. They would lose the right to wear civilian clothes and refuse prison work, while their rights to receive letters and visits would be sharply curtailed.
London's aim was to criminalize the republican struggle. To this end the authorities set up the non-jury "Diplock" courts, where the identity of accusers is kept secret and where evidence is often disclosed only to the judge. Thousands of republican activists, along with working-class youth victimized simply for being Irish, were convicted on the basis of evidence presented in secret, or confessions beaten out of them in torture sessions. The courts were denounced by the European Court of Human Rights and Amnesty International.
Republican prisoners refused to wear the prison uniforms, so they were left completely naked save for a blanket. By 1980, around 400 young men and women were "on the blanket."
London responds with brutality
The British state responded with a campaign of brutality
and provocation carried out by the prison wardens.
Seven prisoners went on the first hunger strike, which lasted 53 days from Oct. 27, 1980, to Dec. 18, 1980. It was halted when the recently elected Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher promised major concessions. As soon as the prisoners ended the hunger strike, the Thatcher government backtracked. It was clear London hoped to demobilize the fast- growing protest movement in solidarity with the protesters.
Prison wardens continued to brutalize and humiliate the prisoners. As a January 1980 statement smuggled out of H- Block concluded, "No matter what the British administration is saying publicly, a major attempt to finally break us, to break our spirit and resolve is now being made. We have come this far and there is no going back."
On March 1, 1981, the hunger strike resumed with Sands the first to refuse food. Five weeks into his hunger strike, Sands was elected as a member of the British Parliament for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, receiving 30,492 votes. The depth of support among working people in the Irish Republic was indicated by the large votes received by republican prisoners standing in the June 1981 elections to the Dail, the Irish parliament. Two were elected.
During the blanket protest, family members of the prisoners took the initiative to set up Relatives Action Committees (RACs) in communities across the North of Ireland. On Feb. 16, 1978, the Coalisland RAC organized a 10,000- strong demonstration and later that year convened a national conference, out of which emerged the National H-Block/Armagh Committee. (H-Block and Armagh are the names of the men's and women's prisons.) This became a highly effective movement comprising more than 400 local groups and uniting a broad range of anti-imperialist organizations and individuals around the prisoners' demands.
Throughout the period of the hunger strike meetings, marches, and other protest activities dominated politics in Northern Ireland.
Labour-Conservative agreement
During this struggle, the leadership of both the Labour
Party and the Trade Union Congress remained solidly behind
the Thatcher government. Four days before Sands's death,
Labour Party spokesman on Northern Ireland Don Concannon
visited the young prisoner to personally inform him of
Labour's support for the government on the whole issue.
The Irish fighters won the respect and solidarity of many workers in Britain, however, and sparked real debate on Ireland within the labor movement. The 1981 Labour Party conference was compelled to come out in support of eventual unification of Ireland.
The hunger strike lasted until October 1981, and continued to receive international solidarity, including a 10,000- strong demonstration outside the British Embassy in Paris August 27.
Cuban president Fidel Castro voiced the appreciation of revolutionary fighters around the world for the prisoners' struggle in a September 1981 speech. "In my opinion, Irish patriots are writing one of the most heroic chapters in human history," Castro said. "They have earned the respect and admiration of the world, and likewise they deserve its support. Ten of them have already died in the most moving gesture of sacrifice, selflessness, and courage one could ever imagine. Humanity should feel ashamed that this terrible crime is committed before its very eyes.- It is high time for the world community to put an end to this repulsive atrocity through denunciation and pressure!"
The same can be said today, as another generation demands
"Free all the political prisoners," and "Self-determination
for Ireland."
Front page (for this issue) |
Home |
Text-version home