MASS HUNGER STRIKES IN MARIAN PRICE TYPE FORCE FEEDING

Marian Price is currently interned without trial in a British Gulag in Occupied Ireland Other internees like Martin Corey are also being interned without trial on concocted secret service hearsay, to justify their ever expanding budgets and try provoke another lucrative money making racket of 40 years of making war on ordinary Irish people.

The hunger strike of Marian Price lasted over 200 days,being force-fed by prison authorities for 167 of them. In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian Price described being force-fed: "Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle. You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer – orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."

Hunger strikes have deep roots in Irish society and in the Irish psyche. Fasting in order to bring attention to an injustice which one felt under his lord, and thus embarrass him into a solution, was a common feature of society in Early Irish society and this tactic was fully incorporated into the Brehon legal system. The tradition is ultimately most likely part of the still older Indo-European tradition of which the Irish were part.[8]

The tactic was used by Irish republicans from 1917 and, subsequently, during the Anglo-Irish War, in the 1920s. Early use of hunger strikes by republicans had been countered by the British with force-feeding, which culminated in 1917 in the death of Thomas Ashe in Mountjoy Prison.

In October 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Two other Cork IRA men, Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, also died on hunger strike in this protest along with Monaghan native,Conor McElvaney who lasted 79 days before death. TheGuinness Book of Records lists the world record in hunger strike (without forced feeding) as 94 days, which was set from August 11 to November 12, 1920 by John and Peter Crowley, Thomas Donovan, Michael Burke, Michael O’Reilly, Christopher Upton, John Power, Joseph Kenny and Seán Hennessy at the prison of Cork. Arthur Griffith called off the strikes after the deaths of MacSwiney, Murphy and Fitzgerald.

After the end of the Irish Civil War in October 1923, up to 8000 IRA prisoners went on hunger strike to protest their continued detention by the Irish Free State (a total of over 12,000 republicans had been interned by May 1923). Two men, Denny Barry and Andrew O’Sullivan, died on the strike. The strike, however, was called off before any more deaths occurred. The Free State subsequently released the women republican prisoners. Most of the male Republicans were not released until the following year.

Under the de Valera Fianna Fáil government three hunger strikers died in the Republic of Ireland in the 1940s. They wereSean McCaughey, Tony d’Arcy and Sean (Jack) McNeela. Hundreds of others carried out shorter hunger strikes during the deValera years with no sympathy from the Government.

The tactic was revived by the Provisional IRA in the early 1970s, when several republicans such as Sean MacStiofainsuccessfully used hunger strikes to get themselves released from custody without charge in the Republic of Ireland. Michael Gaughan died after being force-fed in a British prison in 1974.Frank Stagg, an IRA member being held in a British jail, died after a 62-day hunger strike in 1976 which he began as a campaign to be repatriated to Ireland.

Irish hunger strike of 1981

Main article: 1981 Irish hunger strike

In 1980, seven Republican prisoners in the Maze Prisonlaunched a hunger strike as a protest against the revocation by the British government of a prisoner-of-war-like Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. The strike, led by Brendan Hughes, was called off before any deaths, when Britain seemed to offer to concede their demands; however, the British then reneged on the details of the agreement. The prisoners then called another hunger strike the following year. This time, instead of many prisoners striking at the same time, the hunger strikers started fasting one after the other in order to maximise publicity over the fate of each one.

Bobby Sands was the first of ten Irish republican paramilitaryprisoners to die during a hunger strike in 1981. There was widespread support for the hunger strikers from Irish republicans and the broader nationalist community on both sides of the Irish border. Some of the hunger strikers were elected to both the Irish and British parliaments by an electorate who wished to register their support for the hunger strikers. The ten men survived without food for 46 to 73 days,[9] taking only water and salt. After the deaths of the men and severe public disorder, the British government granted partial concessions to the prisoners, and the strike was called off. 

This article appeared in Campaign for a United Ireland

One Island – One Nation

POXYMORON PEACE PROCESS NON DUE PROCESS

The British Tories who have reneged on most details of the Irish Peace Process have also ignored calls by the partly Unionist, Alliance party in their own Parliament, on British Tory policies of internment without trial in British occupied Ireland.

Sinn Fein leaders have consistently stated that the Tories since their election have detached from the Peace Process a diplomatic description of the Tories, reneging on British commitments made in the Belfast Agreement, to end the latest episode of forty years of war by the British in Ireland. They still however, as part of the one party regime in Stormont administer internment without trial, post peace process.

Commitments were signed by the previous Labour Government in Britain, to try to bring peace in Ireland, have been reneged on.. The Tory government since their election have destroyed practically all of the Agreement and tried to provoke another war with re-introducing internment without trial which was the spark, that created the previous forty years of war on the Irish people. 

Because of commitments made to their their financial election sponsors, of the British industrial  arms complex, to promote arms sales, their return to war in British Occupied Ireland, is the perfect shop window to the world, particularly on their BBC world service news reports, of British evolving armaments of repression and British state terrorism, being used in their counter insurgency test laboratory of  British Occupied Ireland.

The political internment without trial, of the iconic 59 year old, FORMER Irish resistance fighterS Marian Price and veterans like Martin Corey an old age pensioner, long retired from politics, is the most perfect way possible according to aTory Think Tank, to re-start the British war on ireland.

" INTERNMENT – Indefinte detention without charge or trial – is not confined to Ireland. Virtually all countries, from the most overtly totalitarian to the most 'liberal' social democracies have on their statute books repressive laws to be used in any 'emergency' – that is when the ruling regime is threatened from below. In Ireland, however, that 'emergency' has been going on for almost 100 years.

This book is only concerned with internment in Ireland, North and south, from 1916 to the present day. The author shows how internment has been used as a political weapon, how it has succeeded in the past and how in the long run it has been a majot factor in the downfall of Stormont, the parliament of Northern Ireland.

But most of all this is the story of the internees, working-class men and women who have suffered and, in some cases, died for their beliefs. They are neither heroes nor villains, although many have shown great bravery and heroism and some have been guilty of cowardice. In this book they tell for the first time what it is reallly like to be interned. They are not well-known public figures, politicians or publicists. They are ordinary men and women who have suffered for their ideals an dwho remind the readers that the 'knock on the door' could be heard by them too. For those peace-loving citizens who unreservedly support the forces of 'law and order' this book reminds them of the old caveat: Quis custodes custodiet? Who will guard the guards?

Parts of this book, particulary those dealing with torture and brutality, do not make pleasant reading. But then we do not live in pleasant times.

LINK:

‘Internment’ by John McGuffin (1973)

The Knock on the Door

In many a time, in many a land,
With many a gun in many a hand,
They came by the night, they came by the day,
They came with their guns to take us away,
With their knock on the door, knock on the door,
Here they come to take one more.

Look over the oceans, look over the lands,
Look over the leaders with blood on their hands,
And open your eyes and see what they do,
When they knock over there friend, they're knocking for you,
With their knock on the door, knock on the door,
Here they come to take one more.

'They can jail the revolutionary
but not the revolution'
— CHE GUEVARA.