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30 September 2011

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H-Blocks Hunger Strike Ends

OCTOBER

James and Susan McCreesh at their son Raymond’s graveside

THE 1981 Hunger Strike came to an end after 217 days on the 3rd October. The momentum of the Hunger Strike had been slowed as a number of men either reulctantly left the strike or were taken off by their families. In the last week of September 1981, Bernard Fox and Liam McCloskey ended their fast.
Following these events, the republican prisoners issued a statement in which they said they had been “robbed of the hunger strike as an effective protest weapon principally because of the succesive campaigns waged against our distressed relatives by the Catholic Hierarchy, aided and abetted by the Irish establishment (the SDLP and Free State political parties) which took no effective action against the British Government and did everything to encourage feelings of hopelessness among our kith and kin.
“The success of the campaign meant that the British Government could remain intransigent as the crucial political pressure which flows from the threat of death or actual death of Hunger Strikers was subsiding, not increasing.”
The prisoners reaffirmed their opposition to criminalisation and said that the sacrifice of their ten dead comrades in the face of British intransigence has “given us international political recognition and has made the cause of Irish freedom an international issue. It has increased support at home and abroad for Irish resistance and has shown that the oppressed nationalist people and the political prisoners are one.”
Commenting on the scarifices of the Hunger Strikers, Gerry Adams said: “The heroism of the ten H-Block martyrs, the courage of the men and women protesting prisoners, the stupidity of the British Government and the principled response of the nationalist people to the prisoners’ plight has had a deep and permanent effect on nationalist politics in Ireland. 1981 - the year of the Hunger Strike - is no mere temporary setback for British policies in Ireland. Nationally and internationally, its effects will be felt as the struggle for Irish independence progresses in the months and years ahead.”
Following the ending of the Hunger Strike, British Secretary of State James Prior announced a number of concessions to the prisoners. The UDA (whose prisoners would also benefit from the reforms) claimed that the British had capitulated to the IRA. Included in these concessions was the right of republican prisoners to wear their own clothes and association was expanded. However, prisoners were only to regain half of their remission lost as a result of the protest.
While some in the British media claimed victory for the authorities and Margaret Thatcher, the reality was far different. Britain had isolated itself internationally through its intransigence, its Irish policies were in tatters and Irish republicanism had been strengthened. The hunger strikes also highlighted the road of electoral politics to Sinn Féin as another area of struggle. On Wednesday 30th October 1981, James McCreesh, the father of Hunger Striker Raymond McCreesh, humiliated the SDLP in a by-election victory for a local government seat in south Armagh.
As a result of the bravery of the Hunger Strikers, political support for Irish republicanism reached new heights while British rule in Ireland was significantly destabilised.
As Bobby Sands wrote in his prison diary on the first day of his Hunger Strike:
“I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.”

 

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