With the benefit of hindsight, Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams noted that Britain's policy of ‘criminalization’ – which is what republicans called it – ‘struck at the heart of the republican struggle, and did so at a time when it was politically weak’. Up to that point, the Movement had made much of the de facto ‘prisoner-of-war’ or ‘political status’ granted to its members. Now, however, republicans argued that ‘British propaganda … [was] attempt[ing] to establish that the military and political struggle that had been going on … in the [North] had ceased to exist, and that the British were only faced with the conspiracy of a few criminals’.

Although ‘[t]he significance of the removal of political status did not sink in for the broader community for several years’, Irish republicans vowed to resist ‘criminalization’. In early January 1976, it was noted in an issue of An Phoblacht that ‘Irish political prisoners, North, South and in England are determined to make it a year of intense struggle for basic human rights. Attempts by Merlyn Rees to remove Political Status from Northern Prisoners of War will be met with stiff opposition inside and outside the jails.’ However, one could argue that the Movement's focus at the time – at least in terms of prison issues – was everywhere but the North given the ongoing prison crises in Britain.