[caption id="attachment_66566" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="The H Block and hunger strike memorial in Derry."]
I have been walking the lanes and beaches and mountains of Donegal recharging the batteries after a very busy first half of the year. The weather has been typical for August: dry, warm, with occasional bursts of rain. Great walking weather. It has been a different story on the east coast of the United States. The weather on that side of the Atlantic has been dominating much of the news on this side of the ocean.
A lot of the focus was on New York. I have seen some the media reports dealing with the effects of Hurricane Irene. The deaths and destruction that have followed in its wake have been tragic.
I will be traveling to New York in a few weeks time for annual Clinton Global Initiative which takes place each September. This will be its seventh year. It's an amazing occasion and is a testimony to the vision of President Clinton who held the first CGI in 2005.
Since then the CGI has raised tens of billions of dollars to help alleviate poverty, provide health care, water, sanitation, and jobs to millions of people around the world.
The CGI is about creating partnerships between business leaders, politicians, non-governmental organizations, activists and representatives of charitable foundations, and getting them to make time-specific commitments. It works very well.
I will also be attending and speaking at an event organized by the Irish Echo and the Belfast Media Group to honor Irish America's labor legacy, and, in particular, 50 leading Irish American labor activists and leaders. I'm looking forward to this.
Irish America and the labor movement have played a hugely positive role in Ireland, and in particular during the development and evolution of the peace process. It was also very effective during the years of conflict in raising the case for freedom and independence for Ireland and campaigning against injustice. This was especially true during the hunger strike in 1981.
This month, August, marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the last of the ten hunger strikers to die that year. It is hard to imagine that 30 years have passed. It is a period in our history which those of us who lived through it will never forget. It was a tumultuous time, a sad time, a time in which the courage and self sacrifice of Irish political prisoners caught the imagination of the world, and especially of the Irish diaspora in the USA.
In America, Irish American organizations, politicians, activists and ordinary citizens rallied to the defense of the men and women republican prisoners in the H Blocks and Armagh. Protests were held, the British consulate in New York was picketed, politicians were lobbied, and the cause of uniting Ireland reached a crescendo of activism not seen since the Tan War 60 years earlier.
Two weeks ago, thousands of republicans gathered in Camlough, the home village in South Armagh of Raymond McCreesh, one of the ten to die. It was an opportunity to remember with pride and to celebrate the indomitable spirit and strength of character of these ten men, of the blanket men and the women in Armagh, and of Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, who died on hunger strike in the 1970s in prisons in England.
It was an emotional event set among the beautiful hills of South Armagh, hills that only a few short years ago had witnessed a resilient IRA take on the might of the British army.
The hunger strike was a watershed moment in Irish history. It came at the end of a decade in which the British government had employed every conceivable weapon in its substantial military and political arsenal.
Internment, torture, shoot-to-kill, rubber, plastic and lead bullets, CS and CR gas, curfews and mass arrests, black propaganda, special courts, special laws and an orange judiciary, sectarian attacks and collusion, and the withdrawal of political status for the prisoners in the H Blocks and Armagh women's prison, were all part of a concerted British strategy. So too were its efforts to build political alliances with the SDLP and the Irish government.
The British aim was simple: to protect British interests, and to defeat Irish republicanism and the struggle for Irish unity and independence. Severing the connection between the republican struggle and the people was key and criminalization was a central part of this strategy. Breaking the prisoners was crucial.
But, as was so often the case throughout the centuries, the British and their local allies misjudged the tenacity and resolve of Irish republicans, and in particular of the prisoners.
The hunger strike changed the political landscape in Ireland, and it created the context for the peace process and the political gains that have been made since then.
