Terence MacSwiney, Mayor of Cork, died October, 1920 on hunger strike in Brixton Prison: a political prisoner in the hands of British imperialism.
that he be transferred to a Belfast prison to serve out his sentence.
decision.
Fifty-three ycars ago, in October 1920, Terence MacSwiney, the Republican Lord Mayor of Cork, was allowed to die in Briston prison after seventy-five days on hunger strike. In September 1917 Thomas Ashe died from force-feeding in Mountjoy jail, Dublin The hunger-strikers today are being treated with the cold, ruthless, vindictiveness which British Governments have always reserved for Irish Republicans.
Jenkins' cant about the seriousneas of the crime committed by the Price sisters, and the other Winchester prisoners has been exposed. Gaugban was convicted of robbing a bank of C350, hardly the gravest felony' committed during the Irish strugelo.
The refusal to consider the demands of the prisoners for a transfer to serve their sentences in the North of Ireland has nothing to do with their alleged offences: it is a cold and deliberate political decision not to give an inch to the Republicans.
Jenkins' inflexibility in this matter, can be compared with what happened during the recent Loyalist general strike. While the British Army has been only too willing to engage in any atrocity against the catholic minorily, they were clearly in sympathy with the loyalists, treating them with kid-gloves, even when the whole strategy of British Imperialism over the last two years was being destroyed.
Michael Gaughan, died June, 1974 on hunger strike in Parkhurst Prison: a political prisoner in the hands of British imperialism.
monia, almost certainly as a result of force-feeding. His blood is on the hands of Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, and the entire Labour Government, who refused to meet the simple demand By the time this paper is sold one or more of the other hunger strikers may be dead. The refusal of the Labour Government to save their lives by returning them to Ireland is not a chance who will conquer.
Alism.
WOTE CLASS LOIC The Price sisters, MacSwiney's successors in Brixton Prison. The Labour Government would have them face the same fate, rather than meet their simple demands. The labour movement must take a stand against this vicious decision before it is too late.
But, as Terence MacSwiney said: 'It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most When MacSwiney died, almost the only response in Britain came from John MacLean in Glasgow, who pro duced thousands of leaflets denouncing British imperiaThe failure of the British labour movement to lake up the Irish struggle at that time helped to prevent the complete victory of the national struggle io Ireland. As a consquence the struggle now has to be tought even more bloodily, and the British state has been given the oppor tunity to tune up its Army for future use against the That is why, before it is too late, there must be mass mobilisations in solidarity with the huger strikers" demands for transfer to an Irish prison and a continuing campaign to get the British Army out of Ireland. for 'threshold' cost-of-living pay increases duted to receive the full benefit of threshold cash.
Accordingly, the clerical workers' union, APEX, has launched a national campaign to get threshold coverage for the 80,000 of its 130,000 members who do not have this protection. They are planning a series of ten, rotating one-day stoppuges to cover the entire country. They say that they will not accept any form of partial offer, and will repeat the one-day stop pages again if they don't meet with success the first time round.
Workers at the Wickman: engineering factory in Coventry, on strike for a threshold agreement, have returned to work pending negotiations with management. But militants in the factory say they plan to come out again immediately IN A RUSH to beat the Pay Bourd's deadline for full back-dating, trade unionists across the country are confronting the bosses with demands The Board has ruled that only agreements negotiated before the publication of the next price index-due out in mid-June-can be backif progress is not made in the negotiations, Workers in the British Layland subsidiary, Coventry Climax, have given management seven days notice of strike action, and workers at the Chrysler plant in Baginton are banning mertime to back up demands for a threshold agreement.
The unions in Chrysler's Stoke and Ryton plants in Coventry are pressing for threshold protection in the negotiations for their annual pay review, die at the end of June.
Negotiations continue at the Coventry GEC combine over the demand for a threshold agreement to cover 15,000 manual workers, The unions have rejected a management offer of an agreement with a ceiling of £1.60.