To the death – New hunger strike (From An Phoblacht/Republican News, 7 February 1981)

H-BLOCK/ARMAGH ACTION Committees throughout Ireland, in America, in Europe and Australia have just three weeks left before a second major hunger strike by protesting republican prisoners commences in British jails in the occupied North.

This period should be used to resume any lost contact with those trade unions influential individuals, cultural bodies or other organisations who showed genuine concern during the last Hunger Strike, and to seek out fresh support from other untapped quarters.

The decision of the prisoners to hunger strike “to the death if necessary”, commencing 1 March was announced on Thursday 5 February in an agreed statement issued by the Blanket men and the protesting women prisoners in Armagh Jail. They said they had given the Brits “every available opportunity” to resolve the issue but that hurdles had been continually and deliberately placed in their way.

Last month, 20 Blanket men were chosen to pilot through a scheme in the H-Blocks which would possibly have settled the dispute over clothing but this attempt floundered when the Long Kesh prison administration accepted clothes from relatives but then refused to hand them over to the prisoners unless they wore prisoner issue clothing first.

In response to this, men in clean, furnished cells smashed up the cell furniture in a fit of frustration and exasperation. Most of those involved were subsequently assaulted by prison warders and after this final deterioration it was widely and accurately predicted that a hunger strike announcement would be made.

No details of the number or composition of prisoners that will hunger strike – whether they will begin on the same day or in a phased process, have been revealed as yet, but it is almost certain that those involved will be familiar with the lessons and weaknesses of the last Hunger Strike — the psychological isolation tactics used by the British, the exposure of the prisoners to pessimistic news bulletins, and the false hopes that settlement was close at hand.

Although on the last day of the Hunger Strike, Thursday 18 December, the British supplied a document that was new to the Hunger Strikers, and supplied the men with a statement direct ruler Atkins had been due to make but which he had suddenly postponed, the outcome of that day provided an illusive ‘victory’.

The next Hunger Strikers will obviously be suspicious, to the point of rejection, of another such move but, having said that the Brits are in the mood, or ever were in the mood, to grant the prisoners their just demands short of a death or deaths.

The next Hunger Strikers will be more convinced than ever that death will be the price of political status, if not the price of challenging the Brits in this issues.