TO THE DEATH
New hunger Strike
H-BLOCK/ARMAGH ACTION Committees throughout Ireland, in America,
in Europe and Australia have just three weeks left before a
second major hunger strike by protesting republican prisoners
commences in British jails in the occupied North.
This period should be used to resume any lost contact with those,
trade unions influential individuals, cultural bodies or other
organisations who showed genuine concern during the last hunger
strike, and to seek out fresh support from other untapped
quarters.
The decision of the prisoners to hunger strike `to the death if
necessary', commencing 1 March was announced this Thursday, 5
February, in an agreed statement issued by the blanket men and
the protesting women prisoners in Armagh Jail. They said they had
given the Brits `every available opportunity' to resolve the
issue, but that hurdles had been continually and deliberately
palced in their way.
Last month, 20 blanket men were chosen to pilot through a scheme
in the H-Blocks which would possibly have settled the dispute
over clothing but this attempt floundered when the Long Kesh
prison administration accepted clothes from relatives, but then
refused to hand them over to the prisoners unless they wore
prisoner issue clothing first.
In response to this, men in clean, furnished cells smashed up the
cell furniture in a fit of frustration and exasperation. Most of
those involved were subsequently assaulted by prison warders, and
after this final deterioration it was widely, accurately
predicted that a hunger strike anouncement would be made.
No details of the number or composition of prisoners that will
hunger strike , whether they will begin on the same day or in a
phased process, have been revealed as yet, bt it is almost
certain that those involved will be familiar with the lessons and
weaknesses of the last huger strike - the psychological isolation
tactics used by the British, the exposure of the prisoners to
pessimistic news bulletins and the false hopes that settlement
was close at hand.
Although on the last day of the hunger strike, Thursday 18
December, the British supplied a document, new to the hunger
strikers, and supplied the men with a statement direct ruler
Atkins had been dueto make but which he had suddenly postponed,
the outcome of that day provided an illusive `victory'.
The next hunger strikers will obviously be suspicious, to the
point of rejection, of another such move, but having said that
the Brits are in the mood, or ever were in the mood, to grant the
prisoners their just demands short of a death or deaths.
The next hunger strikers will be more convinced than ever that
death will be the price of political status, if not just the
price of challenging the Brits in this issues.
Phoblacht, 7 February 1981.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)