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.

Apparently the ‘Mountain Climber’ offered: their own clothes, parcels/ visits and letters, unofficial segregation, regular free association and acceptable ‘work’. Communication was difficult; additionally vehement disagreements and strict enforcement of “need to know” contributed to the chaos. In 1920 several hunger strikes (Mountjoy and Cork) were conducted by Irish Republicans demanding political status, resulting in two deaths from starvation. In the 1923 Irish hunger strikes thousands of Irish prisoners went on hunger strikes resulting in several deaths. 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". The youngest to die were Patsy O’Hara (Irish National Liberation Army, ‘INLA’) and Thomas McElwee (Provisional Irish Republican Army, ‘PIRA’), both at the age of 23. Like many others, they had joined the Republican cause so young because they saw no way out of the oppressive sectarian Six County state other than through struggle.The Irish Republican movement has a long history of hunger strikes and prisoners’ campaigns. In 1917, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood Thomas Ashe died from attempts to force-feed him and break his hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison. Ashe’s funeral was attended by 30,000 people at the dawn of Ireland’s 1916-23 revolutionary period. The situation was getting out of control, and the British state stepped-up repression of Republicans to appease Paisley’s ‘No Surrender’ mobs – who were preparing for all-out civil war. The Blanketmen The strike had ended after a seven-month campaign of cruelty from the British state, allowing ten men to starve to death, by refusing to grant the elementary democratic rights they demanded as prisoners of a political conflict.

The IRA did not want to be part of the UK, mainly for nationalistic reasons. I’m guessing lots of money didn’t go there at the time for rebuilding as it was like a war zone in places. 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. So what’s the canadain’s views on N.Ireland today?, the ‘English treating them like men used to treat women’?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.

We need to know about the big issues - the economy, health, the environment. I agree with unionists when they say about the potential to lose the National Health Service in a united Ireland. I'd love to see NHS being part of 32-county Ireland but we need to answer questions about funding beforehand." This reformed partitionist legislature, and many of its features like a ‘Unionist veto’ over laws and mandatory coalition, were staunchly opposed by the 1981 hunger strikers. Now, however, the ‘petition of concern’, power-sharing with the DUP, and an entrenched (but ‘equal’) sectarian divide are hailed as signs of ‘progress’ by Sinn Féin. 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. 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.

Don’t remember any UK countries going Bankrupt, standard of living pretty good, uses the pound which is always strong. 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. When I was first approached and heard the names of those involved, it was like woah, this is something very different that I haven’t seen before," he told The Irish News.. For what? Five rights: not to have to wear prison uniform, not to do prison work, to have free association among themselves, to receive weekly parcels/ visits and unlimited letters and to have their remission returned. The book saw its author ostracised by mainstream republicans, including many of Mr O'Rawe's former friends and comrades.