Remembering 1981 – ‘Thatcher’s Madness’

THE British Government’s strategy in attempting to defeat the H-Block Hunger Strike and continue with criminalisation has been aimed at sickening the republican prisoners and their supporters, the nationalist 

community, with a seemingly endless procession of coffins from the H-Blocks, and to sicken the people with pain and anguish and suffering so that they press the Hunger Strikers to give up.

Never at any other moment in the last 12 years have we witnessed a darker period than these last few months, when the sacrifices of the dead Hunger Strikers have failed to immediately break British intransigence and secure the prisoners’ five demands.

But neither the Hunger Strikers nor the nationalist people have indicated that their resolve to continue has diminished, or that they have been bowed by the brute force of the force of the Brits and RUC against them on the streets.

So, clearly, British intransigence has not paid off for the British. Their intransigence, on the other hand, has radically altered and undermined the stability of their rule in Ireland, and added to the alienation felt by nationalist people in the North.

The H-Block issue has so overlapped into political life in the South that it changed one Leinster House Government and may do so again.

Last Tuesday’s raising of the issue with US President Reagan in Washington by the Free State Ambassador, Seán Donlon, was a desperate attempt by the Free State Premier Garret FitzGerald to be rescued from the madness of British Premier Thatcher after she had chewed up and spat out the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace.

Despite the snub to himself and the Irish Catholic Primate, Cardinal Ó Fiaich — both of whom had requested the British to deal directly with the prisoners — FitzGerald has studiously avoided taking really effective action such as recalling his ambassador to London, and expelling the British Ambassador from Dublin.

He could have also sought out dissenting opinion within British political circles and through his ambassadors mounted an international offensive against the British Government. Instead, FitzGerald’s attempts to press Thatcher into resolving the crisis are so limited that, to date, they amount to mere nuisances which she can absorb.

Nevertheless, by now Thatcher must be getting the message: the Hunger Strike has not been broken. Pat McGeown took up the late Joe McDonnell’s position and Matt Devlin has replaced the late Martin Hurson on Hunger Strike.

This week, Kieran Doherty TD and Kevin Lynch have entered the critical phase of their fast. If only because FitzGerald fears a by-election in the event of Kieran Doherty’s death, it is in his interest to see the Hunger Strike ended.