The H-Block Song
by Francie Brolly
I am a proud young Irishman, In Ulster's hills my life began;
A happy boy through green fields ran; I kept God's and Man's laws.
But when my age was barely ten, My country's wrongs were told again.
By tens of thousands marching men and my heart stirred to the cause.
Chorus:
So I'll wear no convict's uniform
Nor meekly serve my time
That Britain might brand lreland 's fight
Eight hundred years of crime.
I learned of centuries of strife, of cruel laws, injustice rife;
I saw now in my own young life the fruits of foreign sway:
Protestors threatened, tortured, maimed, divisions nurtured, passions flamed,
Outrage provoked, right's cause defamed; that is the conqueror's way.
Chorus
Descended from proud Connacht clan, Concannon served cruel Britain's plan;
Man's inhumanity to man had spawned a trusty slave.
No strangers are these bolts and locks, no new design these dark H-Blocks,
Black Cromwell lives while Mason stalks; the bully taunts the brave.
Chorus
Does Britain need a thousand years of protest, riot, death and tears,
Or will this past decade of fears of eighty decades spell
An end to Ireland' s agony, new hope for human dignity;
And will the last obscenity be this grim H-Block cell?
Chorus
