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Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-block Hunger Strike

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On Thursday afternoon of December 18th, as the condition of hunger-striker Sean McKenna rapidly deteriorated, the British minister in charge of the Six Counties, Direct Ruler Humphrey Atkins, suddenly and without public explanation postponed a statement he had been due to make to the British parliament and ensured that it was delivered to the seven hunger strikers in the prison hospital along with a 34-page document entitled Regimes in Northern Ireland Prisons, Prisoners day to day life with special emphasis on Maze. Its ironic that the Republicans were blaming Maggie Thatcher, but it was her government who had offered a solution that was acceptable to the IRA prison leadership and would have saved six of their colleagues, but it was Gerry Adams who thought the Brits could be squeezed to give a little more and declined the deal. I found myself frequently changing the story … maybe a character was too weak or too strong, or a particular story line wasn’t structurally right.

I was a member of the RUC during the hunger strikes, I performed duty at six of the funerals throughout Northern Ireland. Not long after his funeral, I set about keeping my pledge to Gerry and, three years later, my book on his life, In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story, was published to critical acclaim.Fleming was rearrested in May 1918 and refused to wear prison uniforms which resulted in him being left naked and locked in his cell and (because he destroyed his cell) was restrained with a straight jacket. On 4 February the prisoners issued a statement saying that the British government had failed to resolve the crisis and declared their intention of "hunger striking once more". The second is O'Rawe placing you in his mind both in real time and with the benefit of hindsight as a defining era in the history of the troubles played out.

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. A very interesting and valuable first hand account, sadly made difficult to listen to due to the bizarre narration. In January 1975, a British commission (The Gardiner Commission) made a number of important recommendations. The nearest approach to it that I have seen was the spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. But to read this story as an adult and having outlived some of these men it's a mixture of pride for what they did for their country but sadness that didn't leave to see peace and also what they could have achieved had they not died. One of the "Blanketmen," he took part in the dirty protests that led to the hunger strikes of the early 1980s. The author tells his story with wry humour starting with how he ended up inside after a bodged up bank robbery for the IRA. The blanket protest began on 14 September 1976 when newly convicted prisoner Kieran Nugent refused to wear prison uniform.

The prison administration tried to force the men to unconditionally end their protest but at a further meeting between all the H-Block O/Cs on January 11th it was decided to attempt in a step-by-step process the de-escalation of the protests in a principled fashion. The narration is often confusing because of unannounced time leaps and inconsistent usage of people's names and nicknames. The existence of thousands of prisoners, interned and sentenced under a regime which recognised them as political prisoners, coupled with the popular support for the armed struggle, forced the British government, after some earlier political and military miscalculations, to instigate a number of classical counterinsurgency measures. The 1981 Irish hunger strike began on 1 March when Bobby Sands refused food, and by the time the strike ended on 3 October, ten men, including Sands, had starved to death. Brutal account of both the prison officers abuse but also brutally honest about the failings of IRA leadership on the outside.By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. An arbitrary date, March 1st, was set and the British declared that anyone arrested after that date would not be treated as political prisoners and would serve their sentences in new cellular accommodation. As further demonstration of our selflessness and the justness of our cause a number of comrades, beginning today with Bobby Sands will hunger strike to the death unless the British government abandons its criminalisation policy and meets our demand for political status.

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