Top Issue 1-2024

20 May 2021 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

The impact of the hunger strike in Britain

“I just knew it was all so wrong. And I couldn’t believe how little people cared.” 

Such is my Mum’s usual refrain when asked about her own memories of the H-Block hunger strikes. As a first year nursing student, she struggled to understand how those around her weren’t as outraged as she was that an elected MP was dying on hunger-strike for five basic demands. Or indeed, that they weren’t as appalled when, once the deaths started, republican prisoners were still putting themselves forward to join the hunger-strike and replace fallen comrades. The whole situation just felt surreal.

As the daughter of Irish emigrants to Britain, she felt compelled to write to Owen Carron – who had been Bobby Sands’ election agent before becoming the successor MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone – to share her disbelief, sympathy, and support for the prisoners’ demands. She felt a need to somehow convey that there were, in fact, people in Britain following what was happening. That there were people who did care.

Hunger Strike 40th ann logo

This sense of disbelief and helplessness towards what was unfolding in 1981 is a familiar sentiment related by those who lived through that historic year. Perhaps, it was an emotional response that was further compounded for those living outside of Ireland. To find oneself in Britain, America or Australia and removed from Ireland during such a pivotal chapter of Irish history was difficult. To feel like a spectator watching from the side-lines.

However, despite the distance, Irish republicans and other progressive allies in Britain mobilised to demonstrate their solidarity for the hunger strikers and other protesting prisoners in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and Armagh Women’s Gaol.

When the hunger strike commenced on 1st March 1981, with Bobby Sands refusing food, London was under a temporary total ban on all street marches, introduced by the Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw. This initial hurdle stymied a lot of the early momentum of the Anti H-Block/Armagh campaign in the capital. The first break-through public meeting on the hunger strike took place in Kilburn Square on Saturday 7 March and was hosted by Sinn Féin in Britain.

A notable early high-profile propaganda coup for the campaign took place on 29 March at the inaugural ‘London Marathon’. Largely remembered today for the image of two winning athletes crossing the finishing line together holding hands (America’s Dick Beardsley and Norway’s Inge Simonsen). What is often not recalled is that both men were initially overtaken towards the finish-line by two late entries, on behalf of the ‘Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign’, who between them held aloft a banner reading: “Victory to the Irish Hunger Strikers”. In full view of the world’s media glare.

On Friday, 10 April, following the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, a packed Sinn Féin public meeting was held in London’s Conway Hall, addressed by Mary McDermott of Belfast Sinn Féin, whose son Seán had been killed on active service in 1976. 

The following day, 11 April, a street meeting organised by Sinn Féin in Brixton attracted considerable interest and attendance. The increased police presence in the area - a consequence of mounting local tensions between Brixton’s black community and the police - resulted in the manhandling of many demonstrators off the streets and several arrests. That same day saw the outbreak of the so-called ‘Brixton Riots’.

As the weeks progressed, further meetings, pickets, and marches took place throughout Britain in support of the hunger strikers.

In Oxford, a local ‘Ireland Solidarity Group’ unfurled a large banner reading “Save Bobby Sands MP” over the local Carfax Tower landmark. The annual conference of the National Council for Civil Liberties, although rejecting a direct motion in support of political status, endorsed a motion approximating to the five demands for all prisoners. In the north of England, a Leeds Hunger-Strike Committee held a public meeting on 15 April.

Over Easter 1981, the Troops Out Movement organised 24 hour fasts in support of the hunger strike. One group took up a position on the steps of Westminster Cathedral, a second group at an Easter Fair in Finsbury Park, and the third group, after being removed from Brixton Town Hall by police, relocated to the steps of Westminster Abbey.

On Easter Sunday, Sinn Féin in Britain held its annual Easter Commemoration in London, with a parade procession from Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park to Kilburn Square. Several hundred took part in the march, including two bands which had travelled down from Glasgow. The Commemoration was addressed by Eddie Caughey of Sinn Féin’s POW Department in Britain and Seán Crowe. 

A London H-Block/Armagh Committee protest march took place on 26 April, despite a renewed 28 day ban on all processions in the city. This contravention resulted in a street melee as police used their vehicles and commandeered buses to block oncoming marchers on the Kilburn High Road. Hundreds chanted “Bobby Sands MP” as they attempted to break the police cordon. In the event, forty were arrested in resultant scuffles and an impromptu sit down was held outside Brondesbury railway station. 

Hunger Strike 40th ann logo

Also on Sunday 26 April, three IRA prisoners managed to reach the outside roof of Wormwood Scrubs and stage an overnight rooftop protest in support of the hunger strikers, much to the embarrassment of prison authorities. While, on 4 May, on the eve of Bobby Sands’ death, five IRA prisoners made it onto the roof of Long Lartin Prison, carrying banners in support of Sands and plastic sheeting to shelter from the rain, in a similarly well planned protest.

In Birmingham, a week after the death of Bobby Sands, a memorial vigil was held in the Sparkhill area on 12 May. The following day, the headquarters of the AUEW in Birmingham was occupied and the annual general meeting of the Birmingham Labour Party was picketed.

On 16 and 18 May, hunger strike rallies were organised to coincide with the continuing ‘People’s March for Jobs’, an unemployment march from the North West of England to London, as it passed through Smethwick and Birmingham respectively.

In Manchester, it was reported that vigils of up to 100 people were held following the death of each hunger-striker. On 18 May, eight protestors occupied the Aer Lingus offices on London’s Regent Street.On Wednesday, 27 May, campaigners again met and leafletted the ‘People’s March for Jobs’ with Anti H-Block flyers as it finally reached London. While, on Sunday 31 May, in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, hunger strike campaigners took to the stage and raised the prisoners’ plight at a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Merthyr Rising.

A key highlight of the hunger-strike protests was a large scale demonstration organised by the Labour Committee on Ireland in Mansfield, in the English Midlands, on 4 July. Mansfield was deliberately selected as it was the constituency of the Labour Party MP, and spokesperson on the North, Don Concannon.

On May Day 1981, Concannon had been dispatched to the North, for a hurried visit with Bobby Sands on his deathbed to tell him that the British Labour Party would be supporting the British Government and opposing political status. A former Coldstream Guards lance-corporal, Concannon had previously served as a Junior Minister in the NIO and had helped oversee the withdrawal of special category status in March 1976. 

Owen Carron later told reporters that Bobby Sands had not been asked if he wished to see Concannon, Carron relayed that, “Bobby put it to Concannon that he [Bobby] was involved in a political struggle, Concannon agreed. Bobby then asked him why he did not support the five demands. Concannon replied that the five demands equalled political status. He gave Concannon a dirty look and Concannon left.”

The visit was widely condemned as a callous and offensive publicity stunt. It earned Concannon the animosity of many, and the July Mansfield demonstration began with a picket of his constituency clinic. In total, approximately 600 members of Labour Party branches, local trade union groups, and hunger strike committees marched through the town centre of Mansfield. On their route, they were met with a sizeable National Front counter-demonstration, reportedly chanting “Paisley is our leader; Maggie Thatcher is our Queen.”

Protests, mobilisations, and pickets continued throughout the summer. On 23 August, Sinn Féin held a series of simultaneous parallel pickets at prisons holding Republican prisoners, including Wakefield, Durham, Leicester, Parkhurst, and Albany.

The hunger strike solidarity campaigning in Britain did have the effect of chipping away at the so-called bipartisan approach within Westminster. The change was nothing seismic, but it did mark an initial chink in the armour of conventional wisdom and political consensus on the so-called ‘Irish Question’.

On 8 April, a little over a month into the hunger strike, an ad-hoc ‘Don’t let the Irish Prisoners Die’ Committee was launched in Westminster. At their inaugural meeting, British Labour MP Ernie Roberts announced that 14 fellow Labour MPs had signed an appeal seeking “an imaginative breakthrough” on the hunger strike. Among them Frank Allaun, Patrick Duffy, Willie McKelvey, Stanley Newens, Christopher Price, Ernie Ross, Dennis Skinner, and Clive Soley. 27 lawyers were also listed among the Committee’s first signatories.

Another breakthrough for the campaign arrived in May with Ken Livingstone’s election to leadership of the Greater London Council. The new GLC leader was a firm supporter of the Anti H-Block/Armagh campaign and, on 21 July, hosted Alice McElwee, the mother of Thomas McElwee – then on his 44th day of hunger strike, at County Hall. Speaking to the Standard, Livingstone said “The H-Block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file.”

On 29 July, Livingstone sponsored an eight-person token 48 hour fast and black flag demonstration on the steps of County Hall. The protest was timed to coincide with the British Royal wedding taking place on the same day. As Livingstone observed, “I can’t think of a more appalling contrast between this wedding beanfeast and what is happening in Ireland.” As the wedding procession passed Waterloo station that evening, one thousand black balloons were released over London from the nearby County Hall.

The British Labour Party’s Deputy Leadership contest, over the summer of 1981, also provided an opportunity to bring the prison protest to the attention of the British labour movement.

Tony Benn, the left’s candidate for Deputy Leader, was clear in setting out his stall in support of a just resolution to the hunger strike and prison protest and for the withdrawal of British Troops. In a BBC radio interview on 12 May, Benn stated that, “Britain’s military presence in Northern Ireland is a major part of the problem. We have got to find a way of allowing a solution to be found in Ireland itself.” In the interview Tony Benn called Partition “a crime against the Irish people” and suggested that British troops be withdrawn and replaced by UN peace-keeping forces. These remarks, particularly given the British Labour Party leader Michael Foot’s close alignment to Thatcher’s handling the hunger strike, drew the ire of Benn’s shadow cabinet colleagues.

However, it wasn’t just the Labour-left that began questioning Britain’s role in Ireland. Speaking at a conference of the Labour Party in Wales on 30 May, the right-wing Labour MP for Pontypool, Leo Abse, openly criticised Britain’s “swashbuckling” role in Ireland and suggested, “We must prevent Northern Ireland becoming our Vietnam. We must make it clear that a future Labour Government is prepared to get troops out of Ireland.” The following morning, in an interview with RTÉ Radio, he stood over his remarks, reiterating, “The fact is that more and more we have to accept that Ulster is our last colony and the process of decolonisation has to go on.”

The Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, came under particular focus from grassroot-Labour activists and Anti H-Block/Armagh Campaigners. His effusive support for the Thatcher Government’s handling of the situation was clearly demonstrated in the Commons when, following the death of Bobby Sands, he argued that any measures approaching political status would “aid to the recruitment of terrorists.”


HS Britain 2

Foot’s home in Hampstead was repeatedly picketed throughout the hunger strike. On 17 May, he dismissed those protesting outside and told them that Gerry Fitt ably represented the nationalist people of the North of Ireland, an analysis which became highly questionable only three days later, when Fitt lost his seat in Belfast City Council at the local elections. Ultimately, Fitt would be unseated as MP for West Belfast in the 1983 Westminster election by Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams. 

By the end of July, ten backbench Labour MPs alongside the Plaid Cymru MP Dafydd Thomas, who moved the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election writ, handed in a letter to Number Ten, Downing Street, calling on the British Government to immediately abolish prison clothing and work and to “show flexibility over the other points at issue.”

In mid-September, 91 prisoners’ relatives travelled to London for a series of public meetings and engagements. On 26 September, a march organised by Sinn Féin due to take place in Luton was banned following threats of a counter-demonstration by the neo-Nazi ‘British Movement’. Instead, a rally was held in a local park, addressed by Sinn Féin’s Eddie Caughey and hunger strike relatives Malachy McCreesh, Maurice McMullan, and Nora McElwee.

Meanwhile, an Anti H-Block/Armagh march planned for the same day in Glasgow was also banned by a special order targeting marches relating to Ireland. Scottish loyalists in Glasgow, who were then marching every Saturday to protest the recently proposed Papal visit Britain for the following year, were not subject to the same ban.

At the Labour Party’s 80th Annual Conference, held at Brighton from 27 September to 2 October, there were an extraordinary 53 motions on Ireland. The mood of many attending was well captured when Don Concannon was met with loud boos and hisses from party activists as he took to the conference stage.

The newly elected MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, Owen Carron, was in attendance for much of the debate on Ireland. Afterwards, he told waiting reporters that what he heard had been entirely from a pro-British perspective and while talk of working-class unity was admirable, “until we remove the border, we will never have working-class unity or socialist politics”. Carron also expressed his disappointment that the trade union block votes had been used to defeat many of the tabled motions on Ireland.

HS Britain 3

On the Tuesday of conference, Carron addressed a packed conference ‘fringe meeting’ on Ireland where he received two standing ovations. There was also prolonged applause for a statement from protesting republican prisoners within the H-blocks.

In the minds of many, 1981 was indelibly marked by memories of leafleting, postering, canvassing, marching, picketing, occupying, and disrupting.

Motions supporting the hunger strikers and their demands were passed throughout the summer by various organisations and bodies; constituency Labour Parties, student unions, Trades Councils, socialist groups, foreign solidarity networks, and other activist-led bodies.

A new generation of activists were politicised, both amongst the Irish community in Britain and within the wider British left. 

As it happens, on 21 April 1982, Owen Carron replied to the letter that my Mum had sent him the previous year. He offered her his thanks for her support and solidarity. Also included in the envelope a booklet of ‘The Writings of Bobby Sands’. 

Hunger Strike 40th ann logo

In his reply, the Fermanagh & South Tyrone MP reassured her:

“For those of us over here closely involved in the struggle, it is very uplifting to hear from someone like yourself who has become aware of what is happening in Ireland. It is good to know that people of Irish descent like yourself are proud to identify with the struggle for a free Ireland and have not forgotten their kith and kin who are fighting for their rights and liberty in the North of Ireland. Last year was a particularly sad year in Irish history. It was very sad for us who were close to the hunger-strikers and who saw them suffer and die and we must bring about what they died for – a free united Ireland.”

It is a letter that today hangs framed in the Sinn Féin London Office. For it carries a message that is still relevant. Four decades on. I read over it often myself. For inspiration and motivation. 

Because, while times and tactics have changed – and thankfully so - the struggle remains the same. The work carries on and, 40 years on, it falls on us today to bring about what those ten brave hunger strikers died for - a free united Ireland. 

Joe Dwyer is the Sinn Féin Political Organiser for Britain

GUE-NGL-new-Jan-2106

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland