Political Status was the right won in blood by the deaths of ten Hunger Strikers in 1981, a right cherished by all Irish Republican prisoners. The 1998 Stormont Treaty revoked these rights, ushering in renewed crisis and struggle behind the prison walls, as in last summers' protracted dirty protests at Maghaberry jail in Antrim. Republicans are now held up to 23 hours a day in solitary confinement and are strip searched up to 40 times a day. Their families are criminalized at visits and are routinely refused the right to a visit on the whim of a dog, who decides if one gets a visit or not. The POWs are denied the right to free association and are forced to share landings with criminals, drug dealers, and up until recently, loyalist paramilitaries. These conditions are now recognized to be worse than those that preceeded the 1981 Hunger Strikes.

RESTORE POLITICAL STATUS NOW!!! NO MORE HUNGER STRIKES!!!

Joe McDonnell was one of ten men to die of starvation in 1981 for the right for all Irish Republican prisoners to Political Status. Joe took Bobby Sands' place on the protest after Bobby died.
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Joe McDonnell
by Brian Warfield

O me name is Joe McDonnell
from Belfast town I came
That city I will never see again
For in the town of Belfast
I spent many happy days
I love that town in oh so many ways

For it's there I spent my childhood
and found for me a wife
I then set out to make for her a life
But all my young ambitions
met with bitterness and hate
I soon found myself inside a prison gate

>>Chorus:
And you dare to call me a terrorist
while you looked down your gun
When I think of all the deeds that you had done
You had plundered many nations divided many lands
You had terrorised their peoples you ruled with an iron hand.
And you brought this reign of terror to my land

Through those many months internment
In the Maidstone and the Maze
I thought about my land throughout those days
Why my country was divided,
why I was now in jail
Imprisoned without crime or without trial

And though I love my country
I am not a bitter man
I've seen cruelty and injustice at first hand
So then one fateful morning
I shook bold freedom's hand
For right or wrong I'd try to free my land

<>

Then one cold October morning
trapped in a lion's den
I found myself in prison once again
I was committed to the H-blocks
for fourteen years or more
On the Blanket the conditions they were poor

Then a hunger strike we did commence
for the dignity of man
But it seemed to me that no one gave a damn
But now, I'm a saddened man
I've watched my comrades die
If only people cared or wondered why

<>

May God shine on you Bobby Sands
for the courage you have shown
May your glory and your fame be widely known
And brave Francis Hughes and Ray McCreesh
who died unselfishly
And Patsy O Hara and the next in line is me

And those who lie behind me
may your courage be the same
And I pray to God our lifes were not in vain
Ah but sad and bitter
was the year of 1981
For everything I've lost and nothing's won.

>>repeat Chorus:
And you dare to call me a terrorist
while you looked down your gun
When I think of all the deeds that you had done
You had plundered many nations divided many lands
You had terrorised their peoples you ruled with an iron hand.
And you brought this reign