Hunger

Some of the most inspiring campaigners are young people , who can see the world with a much clearer focus , whose experience of injustice, cruelty or risk is experienced with vividness and a sense of urgency which perhaps us ‘grey’ campaigners sometimes miss.

It is often the young who are on the frontline of campaigning - coming up with  great ideas and they  also have the time and energy to turn these ideas into action.

But extreme times sometimes call for what can be extreme measures and sometimes tragic results. One of the difficulties  campaigners experience is knowing  how long the road they need to walk is, when you feel passionately about the need to change see now, can be very difficult not to want and need immediate results.

It must be a bitter experience for those who started campaigning about climate change in the 60’s to see powerful people take notice only now - a terrible case of ‘too little too late’. A friend of mine who worked for Greenpeace told me that environmental organisations had an unusually high incidence of suicide and sometimes  overwhelming despair - is that because of the terrible frustration of not being heard?

The hunger for independence and freedom has led many activists to take extreme measures - who can ever forget the monks who burnt themselves to death in protest against the long cruel war in Vietnam. The ten men who starved themselves to death in Northern Ireland in the 80’s

Steve McQueen’s brilliant film Hunger explores these deep and complex issues, in a way which draws us in, without trying to answer or comment on the political or historical backdrop to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

He portrays with depth, compassion and humanity the state of mind which can lead to a healthy young man, Bobby Sands who loves his family and football, to starve himself to death, he paints a vivid picture of the claustrophobic and desperate context in which both the prisoners and the warders are trapped and shows that both are victims and perpetrators. He draws a complex and multidimensional portrait of their common humanity and how this is destroyed by the conflict which divides them.

The film is set in the early 80’s, truly desperate times in Northern Ireland. It reminds us that change can come, but it is a long hard road. It reminds us all that the cost of change can be very painful, that we need to keep our eyes on the prize. Many, many people worked so hard, for so long, to achieve peace in Ireland and despite recent events, that peace is now  owned by the  people of  Ireland – the pain of death, loss and violence no longer dominate their daily lives.