Part of an Overall Struggle

The hunger strikers' immediate demands are ones of human rights - the right of 1200 republican prisoners in Northern Ireland jails to be given political status, the right to wear their own clothes, to organise educational activities and to associate with other prisoners.

But it is important that the events surrounding their deaths are not viewed within the narrow horizon of improvements in prisons. We must recognise that the demands for political status of republican prisoners is one aspect of a fight for the rights of all Irish people - for the right to control their own country.

Behind the latest events lie 700 years of British rule and oppression, and nothing short of complete British withdrawal from Northern Ireland will put the country back on the road to solving its problems.

If we are to understand the situation of Ireland today, and the sorts of solutions envisaged by the groups struggling for independence, it is necessary that we examine Ireland's history. All too often we are told through the media that it is purely a religious war, or that the IRA are an isolated bunch of killers.