In the early hours of May 5, 1981 Bobby Sands, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, member of the British Parliament for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and anti-imperialist fighter, died on hunger-strike.
On May 12 his comrade Francis Hughes, previously wounded and denied adequate medical care by the British army after his arrest, also died on hunger-strike. Three more prisoners in the H-Blocks of Britain’s Long Kesh prison in the North of Ireland, are following their example.
These prisoners have made clear that they wish to be treated as political prisoners. They have been convicted under special legislation, tried in special non-jury Diplock courts, with special rules of evidence. In over 80 percent of cases the only “evidence” was the “voluntary confession” of the prisoners themselves.
Reports of Amnesty International, the British government’s own Bennett report, and other independent investigations have confirmed the allegations of the prisoners that these incriminating confessions were in most instances extracted through torture. To be subjected to this special treatment a suspected person need only, in the words of the British government’s own legislation, be suspected of “terrorism,” which is defined as “violence for political ends.”
The most important demands of the prisoners are to wear their own clothing rather than a prison uniform, not to do prison work, and to be allowed to associate freely with their fellow political prisoners.
The British government, which granted these rights to prisoners before March 1976, now maintains there are no political prisoners, only criminals. They have claimed that the republican prisoners represent only a tiny minority with little support among the Catholic minority living in the six-county statelet of Northern Ireland ruled directly by Britain.
This argument was never anything more than a crude maneuver to hide the political reasons why the predominantly Catholic population in all of Ireland is denied its elementary democratic right to national unity and independence from Britain. Its dishonesty was exposed when Bobby Sands won over 30,000 votes in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election and was elected a member of the British Parliament.
The response of the British government to this mass expression of support for the elementary demands of the prisoners was to prepare to June 15, 1981 forcibly crush even further the Catholic population, and to ignore the massive protests around the world against British policies. The British government revealed much more clearly than before its contempt for the political views of the Irish people.
The Thatcher government's policy of deliberately provoking and crushing the republican population of Ireland has been aided by supporters of imperialism in both Britain and Ireland. The official leadership of the British Labour Party, in a shameful declaration by party leader Michael Foot and Irish spokesperson Don Concannon, uncritically endorsed Thatcher's policy.
In the North of Ireland the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leadership refused to solidarize with the just demands of Sands, Hughes and the other political prisoners.
In the South the Fianna Fail government has refused to support the prisoners and has cooperated and negotiated with Thatcher on repression against the republican resistance in the North.
The Catholic church hierarchies of Britain and Ireland, particularly through Cardinal Hume and Bishop Daly, have publicly urged the prisoners to end their struggle and therefore to capitulate to British imperialism.
Against this reactionary alliance defending the British occupation of the North of Ireland, an immense movement of resistance has developed. The hunger-strike of Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, and the republican prisoners became in the eyes of the Irish masses, and their allies the world over, a symbol of the struggle against the arrogance, cynicism, and cruelty of British policy in Ireland.
One hundred thousand people attended Bobby Sands’s funeral in Belfast, the largest possible anti-imperialist demonstration that could take place in the North of Ireland as the Catholic population there only numbers about 500,000.
In the South of Ireland Bobby Sands’s death was followed by street demonstrations and a number of strikes. The massive support of the oppressed Irish people for the just demands of the prisoners forced the SDLP, against the wishes of the party leaders, not to stand a candidate against Bobby Sands in Fermanagh. In the South of Ireland open criticism of Prime Minister Haughey’s collaboration with the British government has mounted and the main opposition parties have been silenced after first openly backing Thatcher. Outside [reland, Britain’s policy has even been subject to criticism by some bourgeois forces, particularly in the United States.
But despite this immense opposition, the British government is stepping up its repressive policy. It has mobilized all its armed forces in Ireland and developed a whole apparatus of repression, selective assassination, and “counterinsurgency” which today is being openly used. In this situation the role of urgent and massive international support for the struggle of the political prisoners in the North of Ireland plays a decisive role. The anti-imperialist movement in Ireland is united within the H- Block/Armagh campaign. It knows that enlisting support from the masses in the South of Ireland is decisive. But its greatest aid is the international solidarity which both directly weakens and threatens Thatcher and reveals to the Irish people they are not alone in their struggle against British imperialism and those who support it. The demonstrations and protests in many countries, and actions such as in Iran where a street has been renamed after Bobby Sands, are the greatest support possible for the Irish people and are direct blows against British imperialism. There has been a blockade of British ships in the U.S. organized by the longshoremen’s union. In Britain the Scottish Trades Union Congress has supported the prisoners’ demands. The Fourth International salutes with the greatest respect the courage and heroism of Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, and their comrades. It totally condemns the centuries-long British occupation of Ireland and unconditionally solidarizes with the struggle against it. It appeals for the most rapid and largest possible actions in every country against the policy of the British government and in support of the demands of the republican political prisoners in the North of Ireland. Long live the memory of Bobby Sands and Francis Hughes—martyrs of the struggle to free Ireland from British imperialism! The British government must grant at once and without conditions the demands of the republican political prisoners in the North of Ireland! British troops and British imperialism out of Ireland!