H Block Hunger Strike

A film made on the eve of the 1981 Irish hunger strike which was the culmination of a five-year protest during "the Troubles" by Irish republican prisoners in the North of Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out", the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days. The film includes interviews with former 'blanket men', their relatives, and Tom Hartley. Christy Moore sings and Bernadette McAliskey addresses a Belfast rally in October 1980.(33 minutes 1980)