Post by cruororism on Oct 17, 2003 14:39:53 GMT
One of the most traumatic episodes in the recent history of Northern Ireland is the 1981 hunger strike. Jailed members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army began the protest after they were stripped of their special status as political prisoners. But it soon turned into a battle of wills with the new British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. And when the leader of the hunger strikers, Bobby Sands, died, it brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war.
In Northern Ireland, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Even though for the British government, the IRA was just a terrorist organisation, its members were given special privileges ever since the early 1970s.
But that special status was withdrawn in 1976, and the prisoners began a series of protests against the humiliation of having to wear prison uniform, the badge of criminalisation.
On Hunger Strike
They sat in their cells wrapped in just a prison blanket, they even smeared their own faeces on the walls, but nothing worked. Jackie McMullan - one of the surviving hunger strikers - remembers that by 1981, he and the other prisoners were desperate.
"When you're in prison your options are extremely limited. We were naked, locked up in cells twenty-four hours a day. There was always a body of opinion within the jail who felt that the only way the situation could be resolved would be through hunger strike."
And so the prisoners decided to go ahead - first one and then, after a few weeks, another. The man who put his name at the top of the list was the charismatic Bobby Sands.
Contrary to what is often believed, the IRA and its political wing Sinn Fein were unenthusiastic at first. In the eyes of the British and of Northern Ireland's pro-British Protestant Unionists, the hunger strike was an attempt to destabilise Northern Ireland.
Bobby Sands, MP
Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher - who had become Britain's first woman prime-minister in 1979 - made it very clear she wasn't going to give in to the prisoners' demands...no matter how modest they were. Things took a bizarre turn when Bobby Sands was put forward for election to a seat in the British parliament. It was meant to be a gesture of protest drawing attention to the prisoners and their struggle. But the unbelievable happened, and Bobby Sands the hunger striker and convicted IRA man became the right honourable Bobby Sands, MP.
The failure of Bobby Sands' election to change Mrs Thatcher's mind was a serious blow to Jackie McMullan and the other prisoners. Sands had gone on hunger strike on March the first; on May the fifth he had been without food for a full sixty-six days. Jackie McMullan vividly remembers that day.
"It was perhaps around four o'clock, five o'clock, when I heard … a prisoner, a comrade in the neighbouring cell tapping the wall and telling me that Bobby had died...there was a very sombre solemn atmosphere throughout the jail."
Catholic Demonstrations
Brian Feeney, a historian and columnist for the Irish News daily, recalls that "The place erupted. It was incredible. And for days there were burning barricades, riots, plastic bullets. Then there was his funeral, which was an enormous procession. About a hundred-thousand people…a massive thrall of people."
The sheer size of the funeral indicated the potential within the republican movement to mobilise Catholic people in Ireland and turn the hunger strike into a broad popular movement. Looking back, it's clear that that potential was never fully realised. Monsignor Denis Faul, a prison chaplain at the time, says the hunger strike lost support because after Sands' death, the IRA began to use it for its own, propaganda purposes.
The Prison Chaplain Intervenes
After the first four prisoners died, it was father Paul who took steps that led to the end of the hunger strike. He called the relatives together in a hotel and they all agreed to stop the hunger strike. "Then, we went and saw Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. I said: go in and order them off. They are all in the IRA, give them the order. They've got to obey an order! But eh...Adams knew that the man that stopped the hunger strike would commit political suicide. So he didn't stop it. They wanted a scapegoat. I was the scapegoat."
But despite the prisoners' anger and indignation about father Faul's intervention, there was a growing awareness that time was running out and the hunger strike ended in October 1981.
At the end of the day it seemed neither side had won. The IRA prisoners never did wear prison uniform; in fact, all five of their demands were granted. But only after they had - in the eyes of the British - given in first by coming off the hunger strike.
