Hi Mick:
Thanks for the kind thoughts. I would point out, However, that the world DID take serrious note of the hungerstrike, and they revitalized understanding of the nature of British occupation of our country. In New York, tens of thousands marched in the largest protests of English treatment of Irish POWs, In many nations, France included, streets were named for Bobby Sands. The pope, though the Catholic Church did not often support Irish civil rights) sent a cross to Bobby Sands, (and Patsy O Hara) and declared that those who died on hunger strike, contrary to the statements of English bishops, did not committ suiside.
Without the hunger strike, there would not have been a network of support which benefited cases like that of Vol. Joseph Doherty, who, though winning every case against extradition to England, and all decisions against deportment until losing by one vote in the Supreme Court, focused more attention on the ilegalities of British occupation and methods of inforcing that occupation, even having a street named after him in New York, something we should remain thankful to Mayor David Dinkins for ever... (I should say we should also thank Ray Russell, a city council aid who taught me how to take a joke I made and make it a reality, so that now the federal jail in New York is on Joseph Doherty corner!) The short lesson, something like the film It Is a Wonderful Life, is that the reprocussions of what ten brave young men did, resounds beyond those years, and even though a generation will have to someday face their ancestors and explain why they sold out centuries of struggle by an act of cowardice in removing the Irish constitutional recognition of their sacrifices, because of those many sacrifices, one day Ireland will be a whole nation as sure as, in the words of Dr. M. L. King, the arch of justice bends inevitably towards justice.
Speed the day
Larry