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

Back Home in Derry

"Back Home in Derry" was originally penned as a poem by Bobby Sands. Sands was the leader of the 1981 Hunger Strikers who died in HM Prison Maze ("Long Kesh") in Kilburn, Northern Ireland. He was imprisoned for the possession of firearms. Sands and the other Hunger Strike prisoners were seeking status as political prisoners, and he and the others went on a hunger strike until that status was recognized. While in prison, Sands was elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. After 66 days of starvation, Sands died. Nine other Hunger Strikers followed suit.

The song itself depicts the way in which many criminals in Ireland were handled by the British in the nineteenth century. Botany Bay -- located in Sydney, Australia -- was a British prison colony for Irish criminals. As depicted in Sands' poem, there were significant hardships on the long trip from the UK to Australia, and many prisoners did not survive the journey. Those that did faced the brutal southern Australia climate.

Bobby Sands' poem was adapted to the music of Gordon Lightfoot's, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."



Back Home in Derry
In 1803 we sailed out to sea
Out from the sweet town of Derry
For Australia bound if we didn't all drown
And the marks of our fetters we carried.

In the rusty iron chains we sighed for our wains
As our good wives we left in sorrow.
As the mainsails unfurled our curses we hurled
On the English and thoughts of tomorrow.

Chorus:
Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.
Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

I cursed them to hell as our bow fought the swell.
Our ship danced like a moth in the firelights.
White horses rode high as the devil passed by
Taking souls to Hades by twilight.

Five weeks out to sea we were now forty-three
Our comrades we buried each morning.
In our own slime we were lost in a time.
Endless night without dawning.

Chorus

Van Dieman's land is a hell for a man
To live out his life in slavery.
When the climate is raw and the gun makes the law.
Neither wind nor rain cares for bravery.

Twenty years have gone by and I've ended me bond
And comrades' ghosts are behind me.
A rebel I came and I'll die the same.
On the cold winds of night you will find me

Chorus