HUNGER STRIKE THREATENS
BRITISH INTRANSIGENCE and inflexibility on the H-Block/Armagh prison crisis threatens to bring about the renewal of a hunger strike for political status by republican prisoners.
Today all supporters of the prisoners, particularly campaign activists, are once more being urged to go on the offensive, because of British inaction since the ending of the hunger strike during the week before Christmas.
Immediately following the ending of the jail fasts, hopes were extremely high that the prisoners' protests - now in their fifth year - were finally being resolved.
Belfast republican Bobby Sands - publicly identified as the commanding officer of all republican prisoners on the blanket in the H-Blocks - was given freedom to liaise and meet with each of the blanket blocks' OCs and the hunger strikers in the prison hospital and it was with him that the jail governor, Stanley Hilditch, dealt directly, thus conferring recognition on the republican command structure.
But as the public spotlight on the prisons began to fade, the British were already reneging on the settlement and failed to make an expected gesture to the prisoners before Christmas.
The British now hope to capitalise on any confusion in the present situation, and to demoralise the prisoners by denying them the settlement that their hunger strike had won.
The intransigence for which Britain was condemned by the European Commission on Human Rights not only remains but has been intensified. The British are dismissing the widespread expressions of concern now being voiced, and are ignoring - at their future peril - the warning bells now being sounded by republican prisoners in the H-Blocks and Armagh Jail.
If it were not for the strength and determination of the republican prisoners then the British would have grounds for hoping that through confusion and demoralisation they could defeat the courageous prison struggle.
The courage of the prisoners and their refusal to bend the knee to British imperialism is the first strength of a renewed protest campaign, and is encouraged by the second strength, a campaign of mass mobilisation throughout Ireland and abroad.
Phoblacht, 10 January 1981
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