Chicago Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee

28th Anniversary of the 1981 H-Block Hunger Strike
June 6th, 2009 - Chicago, IL

Photos
Chairman's address
Video of Ray Collins's Speech

The Chicago cumann of the Irish Freedom Committee and the Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America joined together for the second time since 2005 under the banner of the Chicago Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee (CHSCC), to host the June 6th commemoration. Event attendees came from across the United States from as far as Washington State, Missouri, Minnesota, downstate Illinois and New York.

In his leading address, CHSCC Chairman Colm Mistéil affirmed, “We see, as the hunger strikers saw, unity as the way forward. Inside the H-Blocks of Long Kesh seven volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, and three of the Irish National Liberation Army starved to death and gave their lives for their comrades.”

He furthered,: “Now is the time for Republicans to unite together to make the next phase of the struggle the last one”.

Colm observed that the struggle remains the same today as in 1981. “There are others who would like to think the war is over and there is now peace in the North of Ireland. The brave actions of the Real IRA and Continuity IRA of early March have shown the words of Pádraig Pearse ring true, “Ireland unfree, shall never be at peace.” While there is a one British soldier on Irish soil, and while one Irish worker is exploited by his capitalist oppressor, the war for the Irish Workers’ Republic will continue.”

Colm Mistéil concluded, “We in the Chicago Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee join with our Republican comrades back home in demanding that Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, and Bik McFarlane come clean and give us the truth once and for all.”

A copy of Richard O’Rawe’s recent book “Blanketmen”, which exposes the previously untold dealings by leadership outside and inside the prison during the hunger strike, was prominently displayed at a stage table and offered as a raffle prize. O’Rawe’s explosive book provides evidence that the outside provisional leadership rejected an offer of concessions made by the British government, which was accepted by the prison leadership, that could have eneded the hunger strike, and prevented six of the men’s deaths. This devastating evidence is now the centerpiece of discussion in Ireland, where the provisional leadership continues to deny the eyewitness accounts of former blanketmen and hunger strikers.

Belfast singer-songwriter and lifelong republican socialist activist Ray Collins came to the event from Brooklyn to perform as musical guest and guest speaker; to movingly recall his personal experiences and activist involvement during the Hunger Strike. Throughout the hunger strikes and dirty protest at Long Kesh and Armagh women’s prison, Ray visited the POWs and toured with guitar in hand across Europe and Britain to raise awareness on the horrors inside the prisons.

Ray spoke for over 30 minutes, often laying down his speech to speak from the heart. He described the abysmal conditions both inside and outside Long Kesh, where a gerrymandered police state was ruled under the point of a British gun. His first hand accounts of the loyalist mob attacks in the late 1960’s described how his next door neighbor was shot dead at his family doorstep. He provided the historical backdrop of the introduction of Internment on 1971, and the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of Irish republicans without trial. He brought the audience through nearly 20 years of British-backed oppression, state violence, torture and murder; to the blanket and dirty protest at Long Kesh.

Ray asked, “Why would young men in the prime of life embark on slow protracted and agonizing death on hunger strike?” He went on to explain what life was like growing up in the North of Ireland; “in the 1950’s the hunger strikers were born in a divided Ireland, an Ireland that had been partitioned by the British in 1921; a state established by the British government and protected by British troops and British guns.” He described the murder of his young neighbor and member of the Republican Youth Movment, Na Fianna Éireann, Gerald McAuley.

In an honest and genuinely moving tribute, Ray Collins spoke of his friendship and closeness to the Devine and O’Hara families. Many in the audience were visibly moved as he described Mrs. O’Hara being forced to endure her beloved son’s death alone, as prison guards kept her husband at the gate as Patsy neared death. With straightforward clarity, Ray addressed the cover-up now storming over the deal made by outside leadership that could have prevented six deaths at Long Kesh, so that a political agenda could be pushed forward. “The families of the hunger strikers”, he said, “deserve to know the truth.”

He brought the continuing military occupation of Ireland full circle, stating, “To this day, despite the Good Friday Agreement, the British government retains a standing army of between eight to ten-thousand regular British troops garrisoned throughout Northern Ireland.”

Ray went on to quote Gerard Murray’s recent address at the Irish Republican Socialist Party’s Hunger Strike commemoration in Derry on May 24th, 2009: “We need a new political system that caters for the needs of the poor, we need to marry the national and social aspects of the struggle and unite them in one common struggle. James Connolly’s brand of socialism comrades is the way forward. He attempted to build that movement before the Easter Rising of 1916 and it is up to us, his followers in the 21st century, to continue his work and continue to build a movement of the working class - for the working class.” He ended with a quote from James Connolly, “If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”

The audience was asked to remember the nearly 100 Irish republican POWs suffering the same conditions today as in the Maze prison, who now fight for the same Political Status ten hunger strikers died for in 1981. Information on POW campaigns and birthday cards for the prisoners circulated the room during the event. Merchandise on sale, and a raffle for POW-made crafts, provided funds to be directly donated to families of today’s POWs.