H-BLOCK HUNGER STRIKES: 20TH ANNIVERARY

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A LIFE AND DEATH STRUGLE: 
LOOKING BACK ON THE HUNGER STRIKE - Fergus Ó hÍr

Twenty years on from the H-Blocks hunger strike in which ten Republican
prisoners died Fergus Ó hÍr is headmaster of the North's first-ever Irish
language Secondary School Meánscoil Feirste.

But back in 1981 he was at the heart of one of the most significant events
of the hunger strike when he topped the nationalist poll in Belfast City
Council's Dock Ward constituency, taking the Council seat of then West
Belfast MP Gerry Fitt.

The success of Ó hÍr and the other H-Block/Armagh candidates who stood in
elections, both North and South, in that historic year, signalled a sea
change in Irish politics which paved the way for the entry of Sinn Féin
into electoral politics in the North.

This week Fergus Ó hÍr, in the first part of a two-part interview about the
prison protests, talks to Seán Mag Uidhir about the events leading up to
the hunger strike.

This will be the first in a series of interviews with people on very
different sides of the conflict during that watershed year in the history
of the late 20th Century which will be published in the North Belfast News
in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands.

Fergus Ó hÍr first went into politics when he joined the People's Democracy
in 1968 to get involved in the campaign for Civil Rights.

As the Troubles worsened the left-wing PD continued to campaign against
internment and the abuses of Special Powers and Emergency legislation.

But it was in 1975 that Ó hÍr and his colleagues realised that a whole new
era of struggle was beginning with the British government's announcement
that it was to withdraw the political status introduced after a successful
hunger strike by IRA prisoners led by Billy McKee in Crumlin Road jail in
1972.

"At first it seemed to us that people did not realise that this switch in
British policy was going to be so significant and that it had huge
implications for the whole anti-imperialist struggle being waged at the
time.

"The IRA was on ceasefire, internment was being wound down and the British
government announced that prisoners would be entitled to half remission.

"Prisoners' leaders in the Cages of Long Kesh were actually taken on a tour
of the new cell accommodation being built in the H-Blocks in an attempt to
convince them that changes in the system would be in their interest.

"So at first when we organised a petition against the withdrawal of
political status many people seemed to feel that we were crying wolf."

Ó hÍr said that it was only as the first prisoners began to enter Crumlin
Road Gaol following 1 March 1976 into the new prison regime that people
slowly began to wake up to the dangers.

"The decision to deny political status to the prisoners was in effect an
attempt by the British government to criminalise the whole political
struggle.

"And the fact that this new policy ran in tandem with a dramatic increase
in the use of torture in Castlereagh, Gough barracks and other torture
centres in the North the prisons very quickly filled up."

Ó hÍr said that the campaign in support of the prisoners began very slowly
at first.

"It wasn't really until Kieran Nugent was sentenced in September 1976 and
became the first Blanket prisoner that people began to mobilise around the
issue.

"And as the number of prisoners 'on the Blanket' increased Relatives'
Action Committees began to spring up.

"The relatives began to organise protests and for the first time groups of
women attended marches and rallies dressed only in blankets in solidarity
with the prisoners in the H-Blocks and the protesting women prisoners in
Armagh."

In the first year of the Blanket protest Ó hÍr said that the most difficult
thing was getting the message out about just what was happening in the
H-Blocks and Armagh.

"While the word began to spread through the nationalist community we were
having great difficulty getting the message across in the South and
internationally.

"The broadcasting ban in the South, Section 31, made it very difficult to
convince people there about just how bad the conditions were for the
prisoners and about the contradictions in the British government's
position.

"People living in the likes of Kerry for example were almost completely
reliant on RTÉ and the Southern dailies for any information on the North."

Activists realised that a new co-ordinating group was needed to pull
together all those who supported the prisoners. This was made all the more
urgent by the fact that conditions had worsened dramatically in the prisons
with the No Wash protest starting in March '78.

So in August of that year the National H-Block Armagh Committee was set up.

The Committee set out to widen the support base for the prisoners and
decided to campaign for five demands which it believed contained the
elements of the prisoners' demand for political status. No Prison Uniform,
No Prison work, the Right to Free Association, Return of Remission lost on
protest, A visit a week and the right to letters and parcels.

As a member of the National H-Block Armagh Committee Fergus Ó hÍr spent
much of his time travelling all over the country to speak at meetings in
support of the prisoners.

"We set out to get the message across particularly in the South. We went to
local meetings all over the country encouraging people to back the
protestors, organising local meetings, canvassing support from trade
unionists and workers.

"We handed leaflets out to workers at one huge plant in Limerick and over
500 of them walked out to register their support.

"We found that anywhere we got the opportunity to challenge the conspiracy
of silence that the opinion makers had ringed round the issue of the prison
battle that ordinary people were willing to listen.

"Following one meeting in Limerick an old school teacher approached me at
the end of the meeting and asked me were we telling the truth or whether
they were getting the truth through the papers.

"Slowly but surely we felt we were making headway. But we were always
acutely aware that things may not be moving fast enough for the prisoners
who were now into their fifth year on the Blanket and two and a half years
on the No Wash protest."

Ó hÍr said that from the earliest days of the Blanket Protest supporters of
the prisoners knew that many believed that only a hunger strike would bring
the suffering in the H-Blocks and Armagh to an end.

"From the setting up of the National H-Blocks/Armagh Committee we were
getting regular reports at our meetings from the prisons.

"We would hear just what the current situation was on the protests and
about the ongoing brutality.

"But on several occasions the prisoners voiced the opinion that they
believed a hunger strike was the only thing that would bring the whole
issue to a head and to a successful conclusion.

"The feeling on the Committee was that we needed more time to build up
public support for the protesting prisoners and that we needed to build
that support in the South and internationally. But we were always aware
that eventually the whole thing could move to a strike.

"Our line was one of asking the prisoners not to go on hunger strike or at
least not to go yet."

But it came as no surprise to Ó hÍr when the prisoners announced in October
1980 that seven prisoners led by H-Blocks OC Brendan Hughes would go on
hunger strike on 27 October.

"We knew just how bad the conditions the prisoners were living in were.
Cardinal Tómas Ó Fiaich had said they were akin to living in the 'sewers of
Calcutta'.

"The number of protesting prisoners had risen to over 300 but had not grown
much more than that.

"And there was a stalemate developing with Thatcher's government quite
happy to just let the situation drag on in the hope of breaking the
protest.

"Beatings, forced washes and brutal wing shifts had made the prisoners'
situation all the worse. And I think they just came to the conclusion that
they had to up the ante and the only way left to them to do that was to go
on hunger strike.

"We began to prepare for what we knew was going to be a life and death
struggle."

http:// www. irelandclick. com/news

SOURCE - Eric Hayes Patkowski ehp @ irsm.org

 
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