By Stuart Richardson in Enniskillen, Ireland OWEN CARRON, the anti-H Block/Armagh candidate in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-election on 20 August is optimistic about his chances of success.
will be very tight, but | think we will do it. Our He told Socialist Challenge last week, 'It THE Irish Times France's President Mitterrand after consultation the invitation. hunger strike the present hunger strike crisis. in Belfast in 1978 The judge, to Britain because IRA: an British rule.' Sadly, or, as in the Party. When even all the more disgraceful.
Socialist Challenge recently revealed that seriously considered turning down the invitation to the royal wedding because of Britain's handling of the H Block hunger strikers.
The French government decided that Mitterrand should go to the wedding only with the Irish government, whose President Hillery did decline This is just one indication of the grow ing isolation Margaret Thatcher is facing internationally over the H Block crisis. At the weekend, the new Irish Premier Garret FitzGerald made his strongest criticism so far when, in a television interview he ac cused Thatcher of 'inflexibility' over the FitzGerald was backed up by Catholic Cardinal Tomas O'Fiaich who, commented on a secret meeting he had with Thatcher in July, said, 'I wasn't so terribly impressed either by her knowledge of Irish history or by her interpretation of events that occurred in the past, nor by her understanding of Another international rebuff for Thatcher's refusal to acknowledge the special, political status of the H Block and Armagh prisoners was delivered last Thursday in New York, where a Federal judge ruled that IRA volunteer Desmond Macken could not be extradited to Britain. Macken is wanted for the attempted killing of a British soldier Naomi Reice Buchwald stated that Macken would not be returned This offence was 'political'. The attack on the soldier, added the judge. 'was undoubtedly free from nor sonal motive and substantially linked to the traditional goal of and strategy of the independent Ireland free from the international criticism of Thatcher now being voiced, either publicly French case, through 'diplomatic channels', has still to find an echo in the leadership of the British Labour the bosses' weekly strike (14 Aug), the silence of Michael Foot and his friends in the Labour leadership is 20 August 1981
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magazine The Economist can call for That- cher to make concessions to the hunger