You Stand Accused of Murder

I'm on the theme of the Hunger Strike, so I'm going to go with it. As stated in my post for Back Home in Derry, Irish prisoners in HM Prison Maze staged a Hunger Strike in 1981 demanding political prisoner status from the British government, then headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The British government had previously revoked the "Special Category Status" for paramilitary prisoners in 1976, instead treating them as general prisoners. The prisoners retaliated with a Hunger Strike. In total, ten men died during the strike before it was called off.

The Hunger Strikers' demands were five-fold:
1) The right not to wear a prison uniform
2) The right not to do prison work
3) The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits
4) The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week
5) Full restoration of remission lost through the protest

Several tribute songs have been written for the men who died during the Hunger Strike. Below is Andy Craig's, "You Stand Accused of Murder," a poignant indictment of Prime Minister Thatcher.



You Stand Accused of Murder
The mists of time will honour this, the year of ‘81
When ten brave gallant Irishmen, a hunger-strike begun,
You might as well have shot them like the men of Easter week,
You knew they wouldn’t bend their knee, you knew they wouldn’t break

Chorus:
You stand accused of murder their blood is on your hands,
Of Francis Hughes, Ray McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands,
Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Thomas McElwee,
Mickey Divine, Patsy O’Hara and Keiron Doherty.

Time will never sanctify the reasons why,
In prison cells, in lonely hells our hunger-strikers died
Show me an English man who’d starve until he died,
But Irishmen have done it with honour and with pride.

Chorus

800 years is far too long the time has come to leave,
You’ve butchered and you’ve plundered, you’ve murdered and deceived,
But we promise we will never give up our human rights
To defend the men of ’81 in their final lonely fight.

Chorus