Bundoran hunger strike commemoration 2000

Long Kesh 1981 -- Maghaberry 2000
The same struggle for political status

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A large crowd of people and two marching bands took part in the 19th annual H-Block commemoration of the Hunger Strikes by Republican political prisoners in Bundoran on Saturday, August 26.

In particular the Co Donegal rally, held in August every year since 1981, honoured the historic hunger strikes of 1980-81 during which ten Republican prisoners died to secure treatment as political prisoners.

Guests of honour were the hunger strikers relatives, representing the Hursons, O'Hara, Lynch, Devine, McDonnell and Ward families. Apologies were received from the other hunger strike relatives who hoped that the parade would be a success.

St Patrick's Independent Accordion Band, The Tunnel, Portadown marching through Bundoran.

Geraldine Taylor and Sarah Murphy, Belfast and south Armagh Ard Chomhairle members of Republican Sinn Féin, addressed the rally. Josephine Hayden, recently released Republican prisoner from Limerick jail, and Bob Loughman of the Emerald Society Police Band, New York, also spoke.

Former Bundoran Councillor Joe O'Neill, Republican Sinn Féin, chaired the rally at the promenade after the parade from the town's East End, led by relatives of the 1981 hunger strike families and relatives of 1970s hunger strikers Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg and Pat Ward.

Joe O'Neill said that there was a particular focus at this year's commemoration on the continuing struggle for political status by Republican prisoners in Maghaberry jail, outside Belfast.

"Vested interests in the political establishments in Dublin, Stormont and London are trying to hide the sad reality that at present a young Republican prisoner from west Belfast, Tommy Crossan, is on 23-hour punishment lock-up in Maghaberry because he refused to do prison work. This situation cannot be ignored and our speakers are drawing attention to his plight. This is the same struggle that Bobby Sands and his comrades died for."

Tommy Crossan's wife Anne and sister Michelle were on the platform. Michelle spoke briefly and exhorted everyone to support her brother in the campaign for political status. Joe O'Neill called on all those attending, as in previous years, to honour those who died for the freedom of Ireland with dignity and respect.

He called particularly for young nationalists not to join the new-look RUC.

Geraldine Taylor

Geraldine Taylor, Belfast was the first speaker. In her address she said:
"The men whose heroic sacrifice we commemorate today -- those who suffered on the Blanket and Dirty Protests and who still suffer today as a consequence of that struggle -- and those brave men who made the ultimate sacrifice on hunger strike were fighting for public and world-wide recognition that they were political prisoners of war — a legitimate war against an occupying force, a foreign enemy who have no right to play any part in the political or economic life of our country.

"They won that struggle at very great cost indeed but their victory has been nullified and a new struggle for prisoner of war status has begun again in English and Irish jails. In Maghaberry at the moment a young Continuity IRA man spearheads that struggle and he deserves our help and support because the struggle he is engaged in is the same struggle entered in to by the hunger strikers -- a struggle for the recognition of the legitimacy of the Irish people's war to be free of a foreign domination and to expel a foreign foe.

"It is our struggle, our fight for justice that has gone on for generations and which will continue until England desists and retreats forever from our shores and recognises that the Irish people have the right to forge their own destiny.

"This young man who has been in Maghaberry since January 1999 and is refusing to allow the British authorities to treat him as a criminal has been warned recently by the Governor of that prison that each time he appears before him he will lose 28 days remission of his 10-year sentence and he will be denied privileges such as access to shop, phone facilities, letters to relatives and visits, and in the end isolation from all others — 24-hour a day lock-up with only fifteen minutes of exercise on the cell landing. He has informed the Governor that he will not act or be treated as a criminal and has demanded segregation from loyalist and criminal elements in Maghaberry and political status. This has been totally denied and so the protest goes on.

"The prison staff have become aggressive in their treatment of this young man. His life and the lives of his wife and children have been threatened by two infamous loyalist inmates of Maghaberry, namely Fisher and Pastor Peebles. Indeed although the Governor of Maghaberry says he can guarantee his safety in this mixed environment he has already been attacked twice. And he informs us that on one of these occasions Fisher threw scalding water over him. That is the sort of protection he is afforded by the Governor of Her Majesty's prison in Maghaberry. These two men, Fisher and Peebles have also threatened his wife and children's lives and they are living in fear.

"Yet Tommy Crossan informs us that he will continue to demand POW status and refuses to be criminalised.

"This young Volunteer deserves our support and our dead hunger strikers cry out to us and demand that we support him in his struggle for the reinstatement of what they with the sacrifice of their lives won.

"We here would ask you to leave the world in no doubt that this man and indeed all his fellow Republican prisoners have our unswerving support. We would urge you to write letters of support to the press, leave them and the public at large in no doubt that you support the prisoners in their hour of need and even write letters of protest to those erstwhile Republicans who are now British administrators in the Six-County Stormont government. Let them know that the struggle goes on. Let them know that the spirit of the dead hunger strikers still lives in all our hearts and that their treachery changed nothing.

"You could also write in protest to Bertie Ahern. After all, it was he who signed away our rights and recommended to the Irish people that not only should they sign away their right to have the country reunited but that the 26 Counties should be brought under the umbrella of a Council of the British Isles (sic), dominated of course by Britain.

"We may still have patriot leaders but they will not be found in either Leinster House or Stormont, rather will they be found in the jails of England and Ireland, continuing the struggle for Irish freedom and independence. They will never be bought, even with Britain's millions.

"Ireland will always have men and women who refuse to accept British domination and these men and women are deserving of our full and unswerving support and loyalty.

"ÉIRE NUA is the only answer to our country's ills and a complete withdrawal of the British from our shores and our institutions. Support the prisoners in every way possible. They are in the vanguard of the struggle for freedom.

"Long live the Republic!"

Sarah Murphy

Sarah Murphy, South Armagh made particular reference in her speech to the current attempts to inveigle young nationalists into the renamed RUC:

"Republicans, relatives of the hunger strikers, friends from America. Once again we are here to honour and remember ten Irish Volunteers, who in 1981 between the months of May and August, when the flame that lights the independence struggle was burning low, they having fought the enemy in armed struggle on the outside until they were captured, continued the struggle on the inside in terrible conditions of dirt, squalor and torture that we can hardly imagine, and, having given everything else, decided to give their lives, to bring to the attention of the whole world the reality that is British occupation of Ireland. So began the hunger strike to the death. And, after it was over the freedom flame burned brightly again. That is the legacy the hunger strikers left us. To never, ever give up the struggle for freedom no matter what the odds are against us. They died rather than submit to British rule.

"Now it is the year 2000, and the water that flows under the bridge has been muddied to such an extent that the nationalist people can no longer see the situation clearly. Former comrades of the hunger strikers, some of whom shouldered their coffins to the grave, now administer British rule in the Six Occupied Counties, flaunting their new-found wealth as they drive by in their limousines.

"That is a classic example of British colonialism working well. We know all too well how it works. First use some pretext to occupy a country. When the natives resist, buy some off with land and money. If some still resist, intern them in Long Kesh Concentration Camp, let them die on hunger strike, torture them in Palace Barracks, Hollywood, or shoot them dead on the streets of Derry. Bring in the trained murderers of the SAS to deal with the rest.

"If all this does not work, use the Kitson theory. This is simple. If during an occupation you cannot defeat the insurgents then you must absorb them into the system. This is indeed what happened to the Provos. They have become so absorbed into the system that they are indistinguishable from their British masters. They are indeed willing paid traitors. All the time these traitors with the help of the media and the Catholic Church are telling the nationalist people the great lie, to trust them and they will lead them to freedom. Another trick is to use new names to mesmerise the people. The Maze prison for Long Kesh Internment Camp, 'peace process' for British rule, UDR for B Specials, RIR for UDR and the latest PSNI for the new colonial RUC. Is there anyone left who does not believe that when the latest Police Bill passes the British House of Lords, the Provos, allied with the SDLP and the Catholic Church will call on nationalist/Catholic people to join up?

"I want to send a warning especially to the nationalist people. Do not be conned into joining this new RUC. It will be the B Specials under another name. Your job in this British colonial force will be to keep the Six Counties British, to keep those opposed to British rule down, and to spy on your neighbours and report them to the nearest RUC barracks. We are not a nation of informers. Thank God. Down through the years informers in Ireland have been rightly classed as the lowest of low life and have paid the price.

"I appeal to the nationalist women in the Six Counties. Do not let your sons and brothers become embroiled in doing England's dirty work in the new RUC. Remember, the RIC was 80% Catholic and what were they? They were the eyes and ears of the Black-and-Tans, engaged in setting up Republicans for those marauding British thugs. So much for nationalists in the new RUC. However, the Provos have proved they will be well suited to the job. Everything free, new uniforms with new buttons and new caps and guns supplied by the British army same as to the Free Staters after the Treaty. All this and a large pay packet, how will we ever resist it?

"Meanwhile, all this Provo collaboration is taking place against a background of loyalist armed terror and murder. Attacks are taking place daily on nationalist homes, and in one week alone 40 homes of nationalists or mixed relationships were attacked. The people doing the attacking march openly in uniform on the Shankill Road and during the Twelfth of July period were seen on TV brandishing their guns. Nationalists are left defenceless. Guns that might have defended them and were acquired for that purpose as well as other uses are safely stored with an electronic device attached to warn the Brits if they are moved.

The Glens of Antrim Accordion Band on the march.

"The former revolutionaries consented to the weapons being put beyond use and do not care how many nationalists are put out of their homes or even shot. They are intent only on keeping the so-called peace process going as this guarantees their well-paid jobs. This is evident in a statement from Mitchel McLaughlin in a Belfast newspaper in which he called for no loyalist members to be expelled from the Stormont assembly over the attacks because, and I quote, 'it would harm the peace process'.

"He went on to describe the loyalist atrocities as a 'distraction' I wonder if the people who were shot at in their homes or had to leave their homes think it is a 'distraction'. The Housing Executive in Belfast is inundated with people looking for somewhere else to live. We are entitled to ask the question 'when are the nationalist people in the Six Counties going to cop on to the fact that they are being used by these unprincipled mercenary British lackeys'.

"At the same time, there are as well as the loyalist guns and explosives 150,000 'legal' guns in unionist hands. So the unionists have got the veto, they have their new RUC (not disbanded), they have the Six Counties and they have the guns to keep this part of Ireland under British rule for as long as they so wish. No electronic dumps for them. All this with the signed and sealed consent of the Provos in the Stormont Agreement.

"That is the situation today and the odds are certainly against us. But we have our principles intact and we can take heart from the fact that in 1986 we analysed the situation correctly when the Provisionals left the Republican Movement, recognised Leinster House and Stormont and are now willing ministers of the Crown. Moreover, we are not to be confused with an organisation which has been set up lately, half Provo and half Free State, the two halves adding up to 32. We are the rightful inheritors of the United Irishmen, the Fenians, the patriots of the 1916 Rising, and in our own time the hunger strikers, who we commemorate today. History will record our faithfulness to the cause of Irish freedom.

"Republicans must now work unceasingly to alert the nationalist people and to bring them back into the Republican fold from which they have strayed. We have identified the problem. It is the colonial occupation of part of our country by a foreign power. We have identified the solution. It is the withdrawal of this foreign power from our shores forever. Our struggle is for independence and we will settle for nothing less. In ever ygeneration the thirst for freedom at some time becomes unbearable and the struggle intensifies. If it happens in this generation, and soon, so be it. We hope and pray for freedom and justice. We have endured enough."

The crowd listens to the speeches on the promenade at the Bundoran hunger strike commemoration on August 26.
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