Irish prisoners chose death over surrender

Twenty-five years ago, 10 Irish freedom fighters died in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, a campaign launched to regain basic human rights for political prisoners held by the British government.

Bobby Sands

The events that led to the hunger strike began in 1976, when the British government ended its policy of giving Special Category Status to Irish prisoners of war in Northern Ireland. Special Category status for Irish political prisoners meant they were treated as prisoners of war: they had not been required to wear prison uniforms or do prison labor.

Ending this special status was intended to break the discipline and organization of the political prisoners. It was part of an ongoing strategy to criminalize the resistance to British occupation.

In response, Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners began the “blanket pro test” in which prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and either went naked or made clothing from their blankets.

These protests aimed to re-establish their status as political prisoners by securing the “Five Demands”:

* the right not to wear a prison uniform;

* the right not to do prison work;

* the right of free association with other prisoners;

* the right to organize their own educational and recreational facilities; and

* the right to one visit, one letter and
one parcel per week.

In October 1980, the first hunger strike began. Women and men in three different prisons participated. After two months, with one prisoner close to death, the British government appeared to concede the prisoners’ right to wear their own clothes. The strike was called off in December, before any prisoners died.

After a few weeks it became clear that British government officials had no intention of meeting the prisoners’ demands and had simply been bluffing in order to end the hunger strike. On March 1, 1981, a new hunger strike began.

Bobby Sands—an officer in the IRA imprisoned in Long Kesh—was the first to refuse food.

The hunger strikers knew that they were likely to die, because British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had publicly rejected any compromise.

Sands said, “They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.”

Sands was a long-time freedom fighter, having first been jailed at age 17 for his IRA activities. He spent all but six months of the rest of his life—a decade—in prison where he read widely, particularly the political writings of Franz Fanon and Che Guevara.

Shortly after the beginning of the strike, the independent Irish republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone died. (To be a republican in Ireland means wanting Northern Ireland to be part of the Irish republic, not Britain.) Sands was nominated to run for the seat, and was elected to the House of Commons on April 9, 1981. He won 30,492 votes, defeating pro-British Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West, who got 29,046.

Three weeks later, Sands died from starvation in the prison hospital. The announcement of his death prompted several days of outrage in the streets of Northern Ireland.

At the funeral procession, more than 100,000 people marched behind Bobby Sands’ coffin. A lone piper marched at the lead, playing a song made popular by supporters of the hunger strikes: “I’ll wear no convict’s uniform, nor meekly serve my time, that Britain may call Ireland’s fight 800 years of crime.”

Over the summer, nine more hunger strikers also died. They were Francis Hughes, Patsy O’Hara, Raymond McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine.

In late summer, the hunger strike began to break as Catholic clergy succeeded in convincing families of prisoners who had lost consciousness to give consent to the prison authorities to feed them intravenously. After this happened with a number of prisoners, the IRA and INLA called off the hunger strike, then at 217 days, on Oct. 3, 1981.

The hunger strike inspired an upsurge of resistance against British occupation and a revitalization of IRA activity, which gained many new recruits.

The success of Bobby Sands’ campaign for Parliament, combined with that of pro-hunger-strike candidates, inspired the “armalite and ballot box” strategy, where the Sinn Féin party participated in elections throughout Ireland while the IRA continued armed resistance against the British army and right-wing paramilitary forces.

The deaths of the 10 hunger strike martyrs drew worldwide condemnation of Bri tain. Resistance movements all over the globe drew inspiration from their struggle.

On Robben Island, Nelson Mandela led a group of prisoners on a hunger strike that was directly inspired by Bobby Sands. Among other issues, they demanded that their young children be able to visit them. After six days, Mandela successfully negotiated an agreement with the prison authorities.

In Cuba, Fidel Castro said of the hunger strikers, “Tyrants shake in the presence of men who are able to die for their ideals, after 60 days of hunger strike.”

In June of 1981, a group of Palestinian prisoners in Nafha prison sent a letter to the families of the hunger strikers that read, in part, “We, revolutionaries of the Palestinian people who are under the terrorist rule of Zionism, write you this letter from the desert prison of Nafha. We extend our salutes and solidarity with you in the confrontation against the oppressive terrorist rule enforced upon the Irish people by the British ruling elite….

“We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom. From here in Nafha prison where savage snakes and desert sands penetrate our cells, from here under the yoke of Zionist occupation, we stand alongside you. From behind our cell bars, we support you, your people and your revolutionaries who have chosen to confront death. … Our people in Palestine and in the Zionist prisons are struggling as your people are struggling against the British monopolies, and we will both continue until victory.”

The example of Bobby Sands and the other heroes of the hunger strike continues to inspire resistance today. In Iran, whose people know well the brutality of U.S. and British intervention, the government has renamed the street in front of the British Embassy, formerly called Winston Churchill Street, after Bobby Sands. The Embassy moved its front door around the corner so that its letterhead would avoid bearing his name.