H-Blocks Hunger Strike – the catalyst for extending the struggle

Mary Lou McDonald TD with Michael McCreesh

THE 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strike was the catalyst for Sinn Féin’s electoral success and advancing the republican struggle on an all-Ireland basis, Sinn Féin deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said at the opening of a new exhibition in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library on March 1st on the prison protests.
The event was attended by newly-elected TDs Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald as well a number of former hunger strikers, ex-prisoners and relatives.

Martin McGuinness said the decision to stand hunger strikers for election, including Bobby Sands, who was MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone when he died, had sparked the Republican Movement’s shift into electoral politics.
Now Sinn Féin is gearing itself towards the council and Assembly elections to be held in the Six Counties on May 5th - the anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands.
“The Hunger Strikers and Bobby’s participation, with Kieran Doherty and other Hunger Strikers, in the elections was a seminal moment in the development of Irish republicanism,” Martin McGuinness said.
“From then to now, we have steadily built Irish republicanism on this island, with enormous success in the North.
“It is fair to say there was disappointment in terms of our lack of ability to keep pace with what was happening in the North, in the South of our country. But what has happened over the weekend has been a step-change.
“It has been an enormous, enormous political development in the republicanising of this island.”