Thoughts on Hunger Strikes

Extract

As I write this a number of Catholic nationalists are on hunger-strike in protest against the operation of the courts and prisons by what they see as a repressive regime which discriminates against Catholics, which was set up by and is now supported by the armed might of another country. There are twenty six of these hunger-strikers and all of them are Polish. Very understandably, the British media which have been giving a good deal of space and time to Polish anti-government protest have not had much to say about this. Nor, indeed, have those clerical super-patriots who have felt impelled to comment on the smaller hunger-strike taking place in Ireland. For the most part these comments have shown a triumph of class-solidarity and national feeling over the free play of reason that must be most gratifying to any marxist. St Thomas says that the eye can see and distinguish any colour because it is itself colourless: if we have rose-tinted spectacles the rose-tints of the world are indistinguishable from white. Some of these clergymen seem equipped with mental spectacles through which the operations of the security forces, the interrogation centres, the courts and prisons of Northern Ireland become indistinguishable from pure white; they are indignant to find that the rest of the world sees in them more of the colour of blood.

These remarks should suffice to alert the reader to the tints he must look out for in my own mental spectacles. It is a great function of debate and argument to clean each other’s glasses, that is why hard thinking has to be a communal affair and why argument, even apart from the courtesies of debate, is itself an act of fraternal charity.