'Break Thatcher!' – From An Phoblacht/Republican News, 4 July 1981

THE world knows that there is a war of national liberation in Ireland, the world knows there are persecuted Irish political prisoners being held in the worst jail and only prison camp in Europe, that British royalty has not got the courage or conviction to grace an American city for fear of big protests, the IRA is now receiving widespread support at home and abroad, Britain’s rule in Ireland has been shaken irreversibly.

This has all been brought about by the courageous republican Hunger Strikers, by the four who gave their lives – Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara – and by those brave men who have continued that noble protest for political recognition and an end to criminalisation.

Joe McDonnell, Kieran Doherty, Kevin Lynch, Martin Hurson, Thomas McElwee, Paddy Quinn, Mickey Devine and Laurence McKeown are partaking in a prison protest and Hunger Strike unparallelled in the annals of jail history anywhere, having this week passed its 120th consecutive day.

Criminalisation, regardless of the outcome of the Hunger Strike, is in ruins. The normality which it was supposed to prop up and promote is in tatters, and the country under imperialist domination which was supposed to fade from view is glaringly associated by people worldwide with the peaceful, dignified struggle of our martyred Hunger Strikers, of Irish people versus British occupation, and to the oppressed represents a radiant beacon of hope, resistance and encouragement.

For all these reasons it was, and is, in British Premier Margaret Thatcher’s interests to settle the Hunger Strike, to cut short her losses, and to pursue some other evil course in her impossible crusade – trying to defeat Irish republicanism.

But Britain is blind to reason, deaf to pleas (even from her allies in Ireland) and bereft of imagination. It is this inflexibility which is killing Hunger Strikers and, paradoxically, digging the grave for British rule in Ireland.

As the condition of Joe McDonnell, who succeeded Bobby Sands on Hunger Strike, continues to worsen critically, the only reaction from the Brits was an insulting statement, running to six pages, stating that there will be no political status and no granting of the five demands, and that future unspecified changes in prison reform is conditional upon the Hunger Strikers abandoning their fast.

The prisoners have rejected the British statement as insincere and designed to worsen the situation.

The prisoners stand for Irish freedom more so than new governments or old parties and those who refuse to stand with them in this 12th hour are against the prisoners and against the cause of Irish independence and freedom.