February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By John Kelly
The 1981 hunger strikes that ended with the deaths of 10 men were so outlandish as to be almost ludicrous. Even after 20 years it is still difficult to contemplate the extent of the resistance Long Kesh prisoners mounted against a recalcitrant and obdurate British government led by Margaret Thatcher.
The strike made the world sit up and take notice. There are now streets named after Bobby Sands in the most unlikely places throughout the world. Few could understand the motivation of prisoners who lived only in blankets and then orchestrated what became known as the "dirty protest," smearing their cells with their own excrement.
Those who lived relatively mundane lives throughout that period retain vivid recollections, especially with the death of Sands, an idealist and intellectual.
Throughout Ireland people gathered spontaneously to recite the Rosary. There was little else they could do. It was a serious, unrehearsed protest. Black flags in memory of those who died flew from telegraph poles in almost every village and street.
Unlike the violent, ultimately self-defeating confrontations that took place in the wake of Bloody Sunday, especially the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin, the quiet protests throughout Ireland were steely and more determined.
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Ultimately, the legacy left by the hunger strikers, those who died and the many that lived, has had a greater impact, especially in the political sense.
The blanket protest, the dirty protest and finally the fatal hunger strikes changed the entire scenario involving Dublin, London and Belfast. The people too seemed to accept from then on that the situation could not continue as it was.
The strikes proved to be effective as a weapon. Removed from the glare of publicity, the British government finally acquiesced to sustained pressure. Republican prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes. In effect, they were treated once more as political prisoners.
The longer-term effects ran more deeply. To a great extent, the Long Kesh protests were responsible for forging a greater political consciousness within the republican movement.
Sands was not just a prisoner. He was also a member of the British Parliament, directly elected on foot of the lengthy prison campaign. In fact, his election was a big part of the protest itself, fought by the ordinary nationalist people of Northern Ireland.
The British had to take note of the new reality. Members of the republican movement were not a mindless bunch of dangerous fanatics intent on armed mayhem. They were politically united on most fronts. And they constituted a significant numerical minority that insisted on equal rights.
Margaret Thatcher and her government finally faced the necessity of constitutional change with the signing of the Hillsborough Agreement.
In turn, this also led to the growing politicization of the Provisional IRA. More young people joined Sinn Fein for purely political reasons.
While it would probably be an exaggeration to claim that the hunger strikes alone were responsible for this, there is no doubt that they speeded up the process to a great extent.
And that led to the ending of the Provisional IRA campaign with the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
Effectively the hunger strike deaths mobilized public opinion into support for political change, rather than a military victory, which, in any case, was impossible to achieve.
The hunger strikers, all young men who were never prepared to accept the status quo in Northern Ireland and were opposed to the British labeling their resistance as criminal rather than political, took their fight to the very end.
It was an agonizing, tortured resistance. All who have endured a hunger strike and emerged lucky to live will tell you how it eats the body, affecting every organ in the most painful of ways.
The hunger strike also inflicted great hardship on the men’s families. Their parents could only watch and wait as their children wasted to death.
Yet the prisoners remained intractable because they were convinced beyond question that they were right. There was no way that they would allow the British to criminalize them.
Most did so with the support of their families, who appreciated that there was nothing they could do to stop them. The hardship, the pain and the joint determination united the hunger strikers as never before.
The hurt for the parents of those who died never went away. Twenty years later it remains to be seen and heard.
Was it all worth it?
Would people like Sands now agree that the IRA was right to lay down its arms?
While these are questions that can’t be answered, the bravery displayed by the men in Long Kesh converted a sizable number of people who were firmly opposed to IRA violence to the political cause of Sinn Fein.
It also convinced many former obdurate political enemies, especially in Britain, that Irish republicanism and the will to unite the island of Ireland had to be recognized. That desire will also have to be conceded somewhere into the future, especially in view of the statistical fact that the religious demography of Northern Ireland is changing irrevocably.
One of the greatest gains by Sinn Fein has been the final recognition by the British government that it has no vital strategic interest in continuing to govern Northern Ireland and that its future status will be determined purely by the wishes of its people.
Many external circumstances, especially the growing strength of the European Union, have contributed to this admission.
However, the final, great sacrifice of the "Blanket Men" did much to hasten it, especially through the politicization that followed.
One of the great hunger strikers the indomitable Donegal writer Peadar O’Donnell. Although he had endured a 60-day-plus hunger strike that almost ended with his death, O’Donnell was convinced in his later life that it was not an effective weapon.
It is now 20 years since the coffins rolled out of Long Kesh. Would he have taken the same view if he had lived to review the events of the time?
As terrible and final as the hunger strikes were, they advanced the course of republican history in Ireland. If only because of that, the men who died will always be remembered with pride as well as sorrow.