The hunger-strikes of 1981 had generated a "huge shift" in the strategic approach of the republican movement, according to a leading Sinn Fein member. Speaking in Dublin, Mr Jim Gibney said it had "changed fundamentally the republican struggle".
He was addressing the 13th Desmond Greaves Summer School, held each year in memory of the radical journalist and historian. The recently suspended secretary of the ATGWU, Mr Michael O'Reilly, was also scheduled to speak, but the summer school organisers said he had been instructed by his union superiors in Britain not to take part.
Recalling his personal memories of the 1981 events, Mr Gibney said: "Those who died on hunger-strike not only set a new moral frame or context from which everything else derived, they propelled the struggle forward into a new arena: they strengthened the struggle at a time when it was under extreme pressure."
The hunger-strike leader, Bobby Sands, was still an "icon" for the oppressed peoples of the world. The prisoners currently on hunger-strike in Turkish jails had described him as their hero.
The year 1981 had marked a turning-point. "Prior to that year the struggle was very much one-dimensional, i.e. a military contest between the IRA and their supporters on the one hand and the British crown forces and loyalists on the other," Mr Gibney said.
"After that year many other forms of struggle came into both popular and electoral play. In 1981 Bobby Sands won Fermanagh-South Tyrone in a Westminster by-election and Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected as TDs."
He continued: `When the year was over, it was obvious to the leadership of Sinn Fein that an electoral strategy was needed. The prisoners gave the leadership the courage to open up this front. That also meant that a party had to be built.
"It was no longer good enough for Sinn Fein to be a party of protest on the outside. It had to build as an effective party and it had to bring its protest politics into the system. As I speak, that might sound reasonably straightforward and logical. Back then, for republicans, this was a huge shift."
The election of two members to the Dail had shown the need to end the policy of abstentionism, that is, refusing to take seats in Leinster House. "We learnt that you can't stand outside the institutions of State, which the people legitimately recognise, and expect to grow as a party or secure political influence.
"That year we learnt that the struggle was truly national, and the 26 counties was not a tag-on to what was going on in the Six Counties," Mr Gibney said.