Brendan Hughes’s family was there and Brendan was honoured on the night as he was the OC on the first blanket; Kieran Nugent’s family was there too, Kieran was the first blanketman. The former prisoner says he agreed to join the project because it was a "breath of fresh air" and represented a plurality of opinion. After years ‘on the blankets’, the prisoners decided that they would have to escalate their campaign. The idea of a hunger strike was proposed, and initially refused by PIRA and INLA commanders. In relation to linking up with a party that was historically critical of the IRA, Mr O'Rawe said he believed the "SDLP were right and demonstrably so". Winning the election, Bobby Sands became the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The Tories’ rejoinder was to ban prisoners from standing for parliament. Twenty-six days later, however, Sands died in prison on 5 May. He was 27 years old.

Wilson’s policy meant the re-introduction of criminalisation: new Republican convicts would be classified as ‘ordinary decent criminals’ and not as political prisoners. They would have to wear a prison uniform, do prison work, and have the ‘privileges’ of education and visitation curtailed. The prisoners carried a tremendous authority and symbolism for the Republican struggle, however, and their determination to fight could not be so easily sidelined. The Irish Republican Socialist Movement was also split over whether to prioritise mass political struggle or force of arms. The ten hunger strikers got their medals presented first. Nine families were there, Bobby Sands’ family asked Colm Scullion to accept the medal for Bobby and he will pass it on as Colm had shared a cell with Bobby. After the death of a second hunger striker, Francis Hughes, on 12 May, a crowd of 8,000 people stormed and burned the British Embassy in Dublin. Two hunger strikers were elected to the Dáil Éireann in June, causing a hung parliament. The relationship between the British and Southern Irish Governments reportedly deteriorated to new lows as Thatcher refused to relent.Frustrated by stasis, O’Rawe and his comrades, including officer commanding, Brendan Hughes or ‘The Dark”, and public-relations officer, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, instituted a ‘no-wash’ protest. Forty years after the hunger strike ended, the idea that reform through Stormont can achieve an end to sectarianism, genuine equality and improved living conditions for the working class – much less a 32 county socialist republic – has been completely shattered. In mid June 1943 a form of blanket protest was carried out by Irish Republican prisoners in Crumlin Road Jail when 22 prisoners went on a "strip strike' for political status. Each morning every article (except a towel) was removed from each cell and the prisoners were left to sit on the floor until night time when the bedding was returned. [2] The 67-year-old's 2005 book Blanketmen led to schism in the republican movement over its claim the IRA leadership overruled a deal to end the 1981 hunger strike that prisoners had agreed to because it was politically advantageous. Despite Sinn Féin’s apparent ‘turn’ after the hunger strike towards ‘democratic’ methods, and radical leftist posture, it never broke its sectarian line of only appealing to Catholic or Nationalist voters. The new ‘community’ politics paradoxically strengthened sectarianism, as it became institutionalised in the new Stormont Assembly after 1998.

I don't get involved in political parties and I'm very much my own man but this initiative appealed to me because there was no prearranged agenda and no predetermined outcome." The blanket protest was part of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners held in the Maze prison (also known as "Long Kesh") in Northern Ireland. The republican prisoners' status as political prisoners, known as Special Category Status, had begun to be phased out in 1976. Among other things, this meant that they would now be required to wear prison uniforms like ordinary convicts. The prisoners refused to accept the administrative designation of ordinary criminals, and refused to wear the prison uniform. O’Rawe claims that he and ‘Bik’, as the senior IRA officers inside the jail, and the only two who ‘needed to know’, accepted these terms, although ‘Bik’ McFarlane has always refuted this. Across the sectarian divide the working class had an honest desire for peace. This does not mean it was ‘neutral’ in the conflict or passive, but tired of tit-for-tat sectarian bombings and killings that led nowhere. Only a genuine Marxist revolutionary tendency could have explained the way forward then, as now. Contrary to the militarists’ policy, however, were leaders in Sinn Féin who wanted the end of the policy of abstention (refusing to take seats in British or partitionist legislatures) and give the party more focus on winning elections.

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West Belfast-based author Richard O'Rawe said it was difficult to disagree with the SDLP's analysis retrospectively because "armed struggle didn't work". Once Sinn Féin had seized control of the movement, they limited its scope to supporting the basic Republican demands, and marginalised the trade unions and socialists. What could have been a genuine solidarity movement against British imperialist oppression was channelled into support for the Provisional IRA. There were mass protests in solidarity with the hunger strikers in several countries – from America to Europe to Asia. Thousands marched in Milan and Paris. The International Longshoremen’s Association trade union in New York City boycotted unloading British ships for 24 hours. A march of thousands burned a blood-stained effigy of Thatcher on the British Embassy’s doorstep. He will bring "some left-leaning republican analysis" to the deliberations but insists there'll be "no dogma".

IRA man Seán McCaughey died on hunger strike (11 May 1946) in Portlaoise Prison. McCaughey was demanding political status, refusing to wear prison clothes and was kept naked (except for a blanket) in solitary confinement for nearly five years. [3] During the 20th century a total of 22 Irish Republicans died on hunger strike while demanding political status - see Groups who have conducted hunger strikes in List of hunger strikes. The Official IRA line is that Gerry Adams and his colleagues had been awaiting a second, better, but undelivered, offer from the ‘Mountain Climber’. Only a few years earlier, Republican prisoners Michael Gaughan (d.1974) and Frank Stagg (d.1976) had died in English jails while on hunger strike for political status and repatriation to Ireland – the former as a consequence of brutal attempts to force-feed him. It is a considerably dangerous form of protest, and having Volunteers slowly die in prison after years of fighting had the potential to depress the movement rather than inspire it. This conflict would result in a ‘compromise’ in 1986, with the party resolving to combine the two methods – ‘the ballot and the bullet’. But this was only a stepping stone to the complete acceptance of reformist methods. It would mark the beginning of Sinn Féin’s pursuit of the ‘peace process’ and tacit acceptance of the sectarian state.

The leaders of Sinn Féin were not wrong to drop the abstentionist policy in the wake of the 1981 hunger strike. But rather than the mass movement being used as a mere launchpad for electoral success, the new platform provided by seats at Westminster and the Dáil ought to have been used to spread, enhance, and radicalise the mass movement. One by one, eight more men would die after Sands and Hughes: five more members of the PIRA and three from the INLA. Their hunger strikes lasted from forty-six to seventy-three days; the oldest to die was only 29. Legacy Asked if republicans would disapprove of his association with the SDLP, the author said he hoped any criticism would be constructive. Sectarian division has only worsened, with frequent hate crimes and riots leading to so-called ‘peace walls’ erected between neighbours.

Blanketmen is a brave book written by a man who is passionate not just about his “ten dead comrades, who gave their lives for the Republic” but one who cherishes republicanism. At the time, the British establishment was reeling from the collapse of the Sunningdale Agreement, forced by the reactionary ‘general strike’ called by militant loyalists. They demanded a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’ and no power-sharing with nationalists, rejecting the terms brokered by the British government. The promised ‘peace dividend’ of the Good Friday Agreement has not materialised, as the North of Ireland continues to be economically stagnant, with record poverty and deprivation. The Assembly collapses whenever there is a political crisis or the parties renege on their commitments. Don’t remember any UK countries going Bankrupt, standard of living pretty good, uses the pound which is always strong.

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As we reported last week, the reunion was organised by local man Séamus Kearney who, with the help of four other former blanketmen, had been working on the get-together for a year. Our 82-year-old mother Peggy was able to meet comrades of Patsy for the first time and to sit again with the families of the other hunger strikers. But the amazing thing about it was that party politics was left outside and we all became united again, albeit for those few hours. Much of the Irish left found it difficult to connect with the anger surrounding the hunger strikes. They tended to view support for the hunger strike as support for the PIRA and reactionary sectarian violence, and rejected the idea that the movement could have broad working-class support beyond Northern Catholics. It has been said before that Ireland has too many martyrs. Countless lives have been lost trying to break the chains of imperialism and capitalism, which continue to cause so much pain and anguish. Ireland can have a future free from poverty, exploitation, oppression and sectarianism. But this is only to be found along the path of revolutionary class struggle. There were Republican hunger strikes in British prisons and internment camps throughout the War of Independence and after, when control was passed over to the Free State. The youngest hunger striker ever, May Zambra, joined a 1923 hunger strike at 17 years old. Due to the Civil War, some anti-Treaty prisoners were not released until 1932, and many found themselves interned again during the Second World War.