The hunger strike was not about politics. It was about arrest without warrent, trial without jury, torture in the jails, a system which - found there was war enough to have a "shoot to kill policy", but did not extend the rights of the Geneva convention to prisoners of war, while at the same time not extending the least internationaly respected rights of civil prisoners.
Any one who denies that the British government treated this as a war should think of the image of an SAS soldier, standing, foot on the cheast of a wounded, unarmed, young woman, Mariad Ferrel, (excuse the spelling) in Gibralter, and emptying his full magazine into her face. I am often haunted by the thought of what those young men may have been in days to come, as so many of Irelands leadership started in the same way they did.
Condiditons in the prison where such that the hunger strike was a necessity, and one undertook by couragous young men, who undertook the risk and reality of death in order to improve conditions for their comrads. I believe that is what commemoration must focus on.
all the best
Larry