Irish Pows Launch Strike

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In a days' time-on October 27-republican prisoners of war in the 'H' Blocks of Long Kesh prison in the North of Ireland will go on hunger strike "to the bitter climax of death if necessary".

This desperate action flows from the prisoners four year struggle for the restoration of political status.

This was stripped from them in 1976 by the Labour governlican militants as porting repubtaking up arms against British imperialist oppression.

Though arrested by special forces, subjected to especially savage interrogation procedures, kept for months on end on special remand (as an undeclared form of internment), arraigned before special, no-jury courts, and sentenced to jail in the very special horror of Long Kesh, the British imperialists insist that these men (and the women prisoners of Armagh Jail) are simply common "criminals"

At present there are some 450 republican prisoners in Long Kesh. Many of them hav have been engaged for as much as four years in the courageous "blanket' protest, in which they have refused to wear prison clothing or do prison work-and have been forced to remain clar only in a blanket in freezing, filthy cells.

Appeal

For years the prisoners have appealed to the British labour movement for support to their Yet almost unanimously the trade union and Labour leaders who so, readily join protests against atrocities in Chile, South Africa and other distant parts have remained deaf and blind to the barbarism of their own ruling class in nearby Ireland.

Driven to desperation, the prisoners have now embarked on what could rapidly prove a final show of defiance and plea for help.

If any of the hunger strikers Cont'd page 2, col 5