A History of Ireland in Song

H Block Hunger Strike

Life springs from death: and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. they think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have forseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

The H Block hunger strikes came as the culmination of protests by Irish political prisoners against being treated as criminals. The strikers were mainly though not exclusively members of the IRA and INLA. The first began in 1980, and was called off at the end of the year without achieving its ends. Tony O'Hara has written a memoir of that strike. The second hunger strike began in March 1981. The specific demands of the strikers were:

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;
The Right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.

During the course of the hunger strike, two of the men, Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew, were elected to the Southern Irish parliament (the so-called Dáil), and one, Bobby Sands, to the British House of Commons. In the by-election which followed Bobby's death, Owen Carron held the seat for the Republican movement after standing on the platform of "Anti-H Block Proxy Political Prisoner". The strike ended on 3rd October 1981, with ten men dead. These ten men, of immortal memory, were:

Bobby Sands MP, 27, 66 days, 5th May, IRA
Francis Hughes, 25, 59 days, 12th May, IRA
Raymond McCreesh, 24, 61 days, 21st May, IRA
Patsy O'Hara, 23, 61 days, 21st May, INLA
Joe McDonnell, 30, 46 days, 8th July, IRA
Martin Hurson, 27, 46 days, 13th July, IRA
Kevin Lynch, 25, 71 days, 1st August, INLA
Kieran Doherty TD, 25, 73 days, 2nd August, IRA
Thomas McElwee, 23, 65 days, 8th August, IRA
Michael Devine, 23, 66 days, 30th August, INLA

The listing gives name, age, time on strike, date of death, and affiliation.

Tim Pat Coogan has summed up the hunger strikes best:

"Although Mrs Thatcher had won the battle of the hunger strikes, she had lost the war... Against the accusations of racketeering, drug-dealing and god-fathering, the IRA could now make the irrefutable point: the Mafia dont starve themselves to death for an ideal." '

—Coogan, The Troubles, Hutchinson 1995

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

The Brits may learn the words at Harrow and Eton, but we know what they mean.

[Home] [A History of Ireland in Song] [Links] [Support] [Contact]