Behind the hunger strike

In 1987, the Communist Party of Ireland wrote an open letter to the Provisional IRA appealing for an immediate ceasefire.

Part of the letter said: "From the sum total of our experience and our knowledge based on Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, we came to the conclusion that armed struggle which does not have popular support among the majority of our oppressed people cannot defeat imperialism and oppression."

This critical analysis developed into a debate with people in the labour movement and republican prisoners in Long Kesh prison through the party's press, Unity and the Irish Socialist. It culminated in the publication of a CPI pamphlet The Armed Struggle.

Why is this relevant today? Because the anniversaries of the Gibraltar Three in March and the anniversary of the deaths of hunger strikers, the first of which was Bobby Sands on May 5 1981, have sparked off renewed support for the IRA military campaign.

Even the Morning Star carried an article recently by John Wight, who described the IRA as "a legitimate national liberation movement" with little or no analysis of what that means or what it meant to those on the left who did not support the military actions and who consider themselves part of the national liberation movement.

He writes with obvious admiration of the men - women are not included - who "spent every waking day engaged in armed struggle against the British state."

Was this the same armed struggle that bombed the Abercorn restaurant and Oxford Street bus station and, as Lance Noakes wrote, was "engaged in bombing and shooting Protestant workers?"

Wight says that "the tenacious and committed struggle for national liberation being waged in the six counties against British rule was a key front to this class war" against Thatcher's Britain. The stark reality is that it did not bring Thatcher's government down.

In Ireland, the class war for Communists and others in the trade union, labour and republican movement involved the very difficult struggle to fight for civil rights, working in the trade union movement for unity of both Protestant and Catholic sections of the working class, trying to win the nationalists from the military campaign and opposition to the violence of loyalist paramilitaries and the British army.

It was a very fine balancing act. It might be seen as reformist in comparison to "the armed struggle," but there is nothing reformist about working on the ground to win workers for unity and we were not in a position where the "national liberation" of Ireland was imminent.

The CPI supported the hunger strikers' demands, but it was made clear to our comrades, Betty Sinclair and others, that the fight for political status and support for the military campaign went hand in hand.

The mass support and the election of Sands to Fermanagh South Tyrone was, in itself, a lesson for Sinn Fein and the IRA. However, it was by no means a unifying factor.

Living on the same estate as Sands, I can speak with some sincerity when I say that the hunger strike split families, communities, nationalists, republicans and the left.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams wrote in his autobiography: "We all knew if they embarked on a second hunger strike we would be entering a period of intense anguish.

"Principally, however, we were opposed to the second hunger strike because we did not believe that it would succeed in moving the British government.

"'Bobby,' I wrote, 'we are tactically, strategically, physically and morally opposed to the hunger strike'."

Adams explains that, at that point in time, Sinn Fein was about to enter a period of political and electoral development. The IRA and the political prisoners were not under the control of the political organisation. This is a crucial issue for any national liberation movement.

Hundreds of messages were sent from all over the world when Sands died. I even received one from the Soviet Union. Many who did not support the IRA military campaign went to the funerals of these young people, being able to differentiate between the brutality of the British government and opposition to the IRA campaign

In the international context, it is easier to show solidarity from afar, but the fight against imperialism is many-sided.

Sands and his comrades paid the ultimate price and, even now, there are those who think that Sinn Fein has sold them down the river with their involvement with the Northern Ireland Assembly.

However, we would do well to remember Sands's own words. "It must be said that an armed people are by no means a sure guarantee to liberation. Our guns may kill our enemies, but, unless we direct them with our policies of a revolutionary people, they will eventually kill ourselves."

Lynda Walker is the national chairwoman of the Communist Party of Ireland and a civil rights, women's rights and trade union activist.

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