sentences:  Thatcher recognised that Soviet hegemony was vulnerable in Poland and offered public support for Lech Wałęsa and his Solidarity labour union, in close co-operation with the United States and Pope John Paul II (a long-time leader of Polish Catholicism).In May 1980, one day before Thatcher was due to meet the Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to discuss Northern Ireland, she announced in Parliament that "the future of the constitutional affairs of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, this government, this parliament, ".In 1981, a number of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison (also known in Northern Ireland as "Long Kesh", its previous official name) went on hunger strike to regain the status of political prisoners, which had been revoked five years earlier under the preceding Labour government.