Conditions in the protesting wings continued to deteriorate through 1979 and 1980. In October 1980 the Northern Ireland prison officials had granted all prisoners the right to wear prison-issue civilian clothing, but other than that it made few moves to rectify the situation or grant the prisoners' five demands. (1) The Republican prisoners perceived the prison "concession" as the replacement of one uniform by another, and they did not accept that their demands had been taken seriously.

As a result, the prisoners decided (without input from outside IRA officials) to escalate the prison protests by calling for a series of hunger strikes. An announcement came from the prisoners on 10 October that a hunger strike would begin on the 27th. A portion of that statement read:

WE, the Republican Prisoners of War in the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, demand, as of right, political recognition and that we be accorded the status of political prisoners. We claim this right as captured combatants in the continuing struggle for national liberation and self-determination.

We refute most strongly the tag of 'criminal' with which the British have attempted to label us and our struggle, and we point to the divisive partitionist institutions of the six counties as the sole criminal aspect of the current struggle....

We declare that political status is ours of right and we declare that from Monday 27th October, 1980 a hunger strike by a number of men representing H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5 will commence. (2)

There were to be seven hunger strikers in 1980: Tom McFeeley, Brendan Hughes (until then, the OC for protesting prisoners), Raymond McCartney, Leo Green, John Nixon, Tommy McKearney and Sean McKenna. The men in the H-Blocks were joined on 1 December 1980 by Mairead Farrell, Mairead Nugent and Mary Doyle, all prisoners in Armagh. In order to achieve their demands, the three women said: "We are prepared to fast to the death, if necessary, but our love for justice and our country will live for ever." (3)

The announcement of the hunger strike did not convince Margaret Thatcher, who had taken office as Prime Minister in May 1979, that Special Category Status should be reinstated. In fact, from the moment she took office she refused to give the IRA prisoners any concessions whatsoever. As she remarked in 1981,

There is no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence. We will not compromise on this. There will be no political status. (4)

Thatcher's intransigence may have been a result of the deaths of Airey Neave on 30 March 1979, and Lord Mountbatten a few months later on 27 August. Neave, a close friend of Thatcher and the man who was slated to become the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, was killed by a car bomb planted by the INLA in the parking lot of the House of Commons. Mountbatten was killed by the IRA while on a pleasure cruise in County Sligo. Even though he had not been involved in any of the issues surrounding Northern Ireland politics, Mountbatten was targeted because he had a long, and perhaps even heroic, service record and he was a member of the British Royal Family. For the same reasons, his murder horrified the British people. Such acts of terrorism by the IRA and INLA put enormous public and political pressure on Thatcher, requiring her to take a hard line on the Irish Republicans. (5)

Unlike previous Governments which had acknowledged, although not condoned, the reasons behind IRA violence, Thatcher did not budge from the British ideal of criminalization. On 20 November 1980, Thatcher made the following comment in the House of Commons: "There can be no political justification for murder or any other crimes. The British Government will never concede political status to the hunger strikers or to any other person convicted of criminal offences in the Province."(6) Elaborating on the comments she made in the House of Commons, Thatcher made the following comments in a BBC radio interview on 26 November 1980:

Those hunger strikers have gone on hunger strike because they want political status. I have said, and I will continue to say--and will continue to hold firm--there is no such thing as political murder.

I cannot interfere with the hunger strike; we do not force feed. If those people continue with the hunger strike it will have no effect whatsoever. It will just take their own lives for which I will be profoundly sorry because I think it is a ridiculous thing to do, that it is a ridiculous way to try to go about it.

Before the hunger strike started we had a look at the rules affecting all prisoners in Northern Ireland and we decided that instead of wearing prison uniforms they could, in fact, have an issue of civilian-type clothes chosen by the Northern Ireland authority. That happens in a number of other countries.

Having said that, I thought we got ourselves into a really good position and there will be, and can be, no concessions.(7)

Interestingly, Michael Allison, the British minister responsible for the prisons in Northern Ireland, was a little more willing to look into possible solutions to the crisis. As he said in November 1980:

We will not make any concessions to blackmail and, if they [the prisoners] are fighting for a great issue of principles as they see it, political status, then they are banging their heads against a brick wall....

But if they are, in a muddled way, saying 'We want better conditions,' well, that's a different story. (8)

Allison interpreted the protests and hunger strikes as complaints over conditions more than a desire for special treatment, and his interpretation helped the British government explain that the concessions which were offered later were actually simple improvements in prison conditions.

Thatcher and her Tory government were not the only ones to condemn the IRA and to call for no concessions. Gerry Fitt, a Member of Parliament and former leader of the SDLP, remarked in the House of Commons in November 1980 that giving the prisoners political status would be telling other IRA supporters "Pull that trigger--set off that bomb." According to the Irish Press, Fitt believed that giving the IRA prisoners political status would encourage other people to commit acts of violence. (9)

The British did not give any concessions to the IRA other than a half-hearted attempt to resolve the prison uniform issue. As a result, the hunger strike continued, lasting until December 1980 when several men, particularly McKenna, were close to death. In an attempt to resolve the protest before anyone died, the National H-Block Committee requested a meeting with Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins on 5 December 1980, but Atkins rejected their request. According to a Northern Ireland Office spokesman, Atkins was "not going to speak to people whose only axe to grind is political status." As the spokesman explained, this would include "H-Block campaigners, Provisional Sinn Fein and the prisoners themselves."(10)

At this time Michael Allison was also seeking an end to the strike by attempting to reason with the protesting prisoners. He hinted on 9 December 1980 that the hunger strikers were waging a useless campaign against the government, and he tried to explain that the British were unable to give the prisoners all they demanded. He said he wondered

...if they [the prisoners] appreciate how impossible it is for the Government to concede the full amount of what they are asking, because it would mean, in effect, handing over the prison to the prisoners... turning it into a kind of holiday camp.(11)

Then, on 10 December Allison was conciliatory. He tried to make the protesters believe that things were not as bad as they believed.

What we want to draw to the prisoners' attention is how very much better the opportunities are here for free association, own clothing, work, recreation and remission of sentence than in practically any other prison in other parts of the U. K. and probably Europe. (12)

It appears from Allison's comments that he was not willing to admit publicly the significance of the prisoners' demands for status. For Allison, men and women were starving themselves for a few extra visits and privileges--things which could not be granted easily, but in his mind were not worth the effort. Unlike Thatcher, who refused even to allow negotiations because of their symbolic nature, Allison wanted to dismiss the need for such talks altogether by convincing the prisoners that they already had most of what they wanted.

The hunger strike ended in December without any deaths. Sinn Fein spokesman Danny Morrison said in the Irish Press that an agreement between the prisoners and the British was finalized on 18 December 1980.

We are satisfied that the implementation of these proposals meets the requirements of our five basic demands. Republican prisoners will not be wearing any form of prison uniform and will not be participating in any form of penal work.(13)

The prisoners called off the hunger strike because they claimed that they had received an advance copy of a statement Atkins was going to give to the House of Commons on the 19th, as well as a copy of a document entitled "Regimes in Northern Ireland Prisons: Prisoners' day-to-day life with special emphasis on The Maze and Armagh." Because they believed a settlement had been of