At a press conference held on 13 October 1980, the chairman of the National H-Block Committee ‘said that every effort would be made to make the hunger strike unnecessary’. Indeed, until now this had been the raison d'être of the Committee. Still, the group's press statement admitted that many H-Block activists thought that, ‘sooner or later, the prisoners would be forced to embark on a hunger strike’. The Committee now pledged its unconditional support for the prisoners and used this opportunity to announce details of the various anti-H-Block actions planned for the coming weeks.

While the mainstream media tended to give short shrift to the statements issued by the National H-Block Committee, quite a bit of attention was paid to a statement released by the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP). This group, which had been set up by the Irish Catholic Bishop's Conference in the late 1960s, had sent a report to the Northern Ireland Secretary of State weeks earlier but had received no response other than a formal acknowledgement. Given the imminent hunger strike, the ICJP decided to go public with its views.