Seven

Seven was significant number in Irish history. Seven men signed the Proclamation of 1916; all were executed by the British. Perhaps the prisoners had an inkling that this was an endeavor that also had the potential to move Irish history. But at what cost? When the seven men set their course, they only knew that each was prepared to die. The six men who joined Brendan Hughes that day were Tom McFeeley, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, and John Nixon, OC of the INLA prisoners.

The Dark was commanding officer in the Blocks. It was natural that he would take part in the hunger strike. How could he suggest others do what he would not? His friend Bobby Sands took over as OC. Bobby had also volunteer for the hunger strike, but was denied because his leadership was needed to manage and coordinate the campaign in the Blocks and to keep communications links effectively active between the men, the movement outside, and the prison authorities.

The Five Demands

The Republican stated prisoners demands were:

1. The right to wear their own clothing

2. The right not to do prison work

3. Free association with fellow prisoners

4. Full 50% remission of their sentences [remission was taken away from prisoners while "on the blanket"]

5. Normal visits, parcels, education and recreational facilities.

But everyone knew that this added up to one thing: Political Status! Humphrey Atkin's, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [sic], held firmly to "principle" -- no dealing with or concessions to terrorist criminals.

The First Days

Leo Green, one of the men in the first wave of the hunger strike, described what it was like. The day before the strike was to start, October 26, was a Sunday. He recalled how somber everyone was at mass that day, partly because they expected that they seven men would be taken right away out of the H-Blocks and into to prison hospital. He was glad when mass was over. No one knew exactly what to say or how to show their emotions. At 4 PM, screws came to his cell with his last meal: cold pie and a handful of peas.

From then on until the hunger strike was over, the screws brought the striking men hot, heaping plates of delicious food right into the cells.

The assistant governor visited him to describe gratuitously how a man on hunger strikes dies, slowly wasting away. First the fat and muscle tissue go. Then the vital organs are eaten away, the liver, the kidneys, the heart, and the eyes. A man goes blind before the point of no return is reached and he then lapses into a irreversible coma and death. The assistant governor smiled, "You realize that you are going to die?"

The men at least felt that they were now in the final stage and moral was high. Although they knew that their demands would probably not be met until several of their comrades were sacrificed. Perhaps many would die.

In the beginning, the striking men were left in the blocks with the rest of the men. Leo Green remembered how the first ten days were the worst of all in terms of pain. How his back and head ached and hunger was at it worse, but that these feelings slowly went away completely as the body went efficiently about the business of warding off starvation.

After 12 days in the Blanket wings, the seven were taken to the hospital. Leo Green had the uncomfortable thought as he walked down the hall of the hospital wing that he was walking down what could have been called "Death Row".

The men on hunger strike only knew a few of the other men, as each came from a different part of the 6-counties. They became acquainted during mass in H-3. While at mass, they were harassed, necessarily so, by some of the others as to their exact condition: blood pressure, temperature, aches and pains, weight, and so forth. It was important that this information was gotten to those working on their behalf on the outside. Besides, the prisoners were desperate for information about their comrades.

All of this was exacerbated by the fact that there was general ignorance as to the physical and psychological course of a hunger strike.

Mairead Farrell and two comrades join the hunger strike

As the fast progressed, pressure on the British government escalated as three women in Armagh jail joined the hunger strike on 1 December, Mairead Farrell [OC of the women prisoners], Mairead Nugent and Mary Doyle. They had been on the "no-wash" protest since 7 February of 1980. Their protest began when male screws attempted to seize berets and black shirts that the women had fashioned into a type of uniform, which established them as Republican soldiers in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of the prison authorities. Several of the women were severely injured in these raids. They were all locked in their cells 24 hours a day and denied toilet facilities.

The women of Armagh were compelled to take the same course that the men of Long Kesh did; they smeared their feces on their cell walls and refused to slop out. Tim Pat Coogan, who visited Armagh jail during the hunger strike in 1980, recalls that conditions there were at least as bad as Long Kesh, if not worse. He complained that "... a combination of the prison building itself being older and the fact that in addition to faces, the women's menstrual blood was smeared on the walls of cells, which I found particularly nauseating. The women had neither washed, brushed their teeth nor received a change of clothes or underwear for ninety days. Prior to the strike, prisoners had only been allowed one hour outdoor exercise per day; those on dirty protest now lost this hour as punishment."

The decision to bring the women into the hunger strike was not an easy one. It was obvious to all that the Republican women were every bit the equal of the men; some thought they were even more than equal. And no one doubted their desire to participate or right to participate. Nevertheless, there was real concern that from a medical standpoint, that a women's body might not sustain the ordeal of a hunger strike as well as a man's body. If the women started their protest on the 27th of October with the men, what would have happened if women started to die in Armagh before the men reached their crisis point in the Blocks? Right or wrong, the women went on several weeks after the men. If men had died on hunger strike in Long Kesh, then women approaching death in Armagh would be even more compelling. In any case, the men in the Blocks were "shattered" when the women went on hunger strike.

First Negative Effects Noted in the H-Block: 20 Days On

Leo Green described the first really negative physical effects of the hunger strike in Nor Meekly Serve My Time : "Weight loss aside, my physical condition changed little while I was in H-3. Two things which unsettled me stick in my mind, though. First, I became aware of a smell from my body... It was the smell of the body wasting itself, the smell you sometimes sense when paying respect to the dead... The other experience I recall was more unsettling. For three days, sometime around the 20 day mark, I craved food. To fight it, I occupied my mind with memories of past events in my life. But whatever I recalled, my mind found some avenue to return my thoughts to food."

After those three days, food mercifully rarely entered his head for the remainder of the hunger strike. The other men also noticed this "smell of death" about themselves and it didn't seem so bad knowing that the others were experiencing it as well.