H-BLOCK

 

H-BLOCK/Various artists

no date, HB LP001

H-Block was the other name given to the ''Her Majesty's Prison Maze'' (previously Long Kesh Detention Centre) by prisonners and the Catholic population in Northern Ireland. There many militants and fighters for a unified Ireland spent years in awful conditions. One of the most famous of these IRA members or sympathizers was Bobby Sands who died after a long hunger strike in 1981. But the resistance inside that prison had started 5 years earlier when prisoners refused to wear the prison garment because they considered themselves as political prisoners and not as criminals. So they has only blankets to put on them; one of the songs talks about it. Then there was a hygiene strike among the female and male prisoners etc... until the hunger strike.
Although the official position of the Republic of Ireland was not to interfere in British internal affairs a good part of the Irish people in the south gave help with money during the hunger strike. Some Irish artists felt concerned by the situation in the H-Block and Donal Lunny and Christie Moore produced this tape/album to give all royalties to the Relative Action Committee in order to help the prisoners' families.
Two poems written by prisoners and smuggled out of the jail are read with another poem by Brian Ua Baoill.  C. Moore composed a song and D. Lunny plays bouzouki with Matt Molloy and the duet Tony Linnane and Noel Hill. The slow air on the uilleann pipes is played by Dan O'Dowd. Matt Molloy's musical contribution is quite strong and moving.

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