From the archives: News reports and analysis by Ed Moloney and Dick Walsh from October 3rd and October 5th, 1981 and the prisoners’ own statement
Hunger Strikes
Read more about the 1981 Long Kesh/Maze hunger strikes resulting in the deaths of 10 men: Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee & Michael Devine.
Films that ignore women don’t just create a skewed version of the past. They are symptomatic of a persistent exclusion of women’s voices from culture and from society itself
Archives and memories don’t tell the full story. That is why material things, the ‘stuff’ of imprisonment, are an important but often unconsidered source
Hunger strikes ended 35 years ago today but legacy lives on in ‘twilight zone between history and memory’. Academics behind this Irish Times series reflect on lessons learned
Despite his reputation as a firebrand nationalist, Haughey broadly endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s policies and opposed the strikers’ ‘five demands’ - until he left office
Denounced by right-wing press and politicians as ‘IRA’s best friend’, BBC had to walk a fine line between reporting events and being seen as a vehicle for IRA propaganda
The hunger strikes divided the Catholic Church along national lines, with the Irish hierarchy taking a markedly different approach to their English counterparts
Home to 10,000 prisoners over 30 years, the 347-acre site was earmarked for a €381m investment but political division over how to handle its heritage has led to stalemate
The questionable ethics of force feeding were highlighted by death of Thomas Ashe in 1917 and again by treatment of Price sisters and Michael Gaughan’s death in 1974
The legacy of the strikes has become a potent weapon in the battle over the Irish republican movement’s past but also over its current and future trajectory
The prison protests had a mixed effect on loyalist paramilitaries, driving some towards politics and galvanising others into an even greater killing spree
The British press presented the strikes as a publicity stunt or propaganda rather than a political protest, showed little sympathy and focused on threat of violence in England
Throughout the Troubles a wide range of craftwork was manufactured by prisoners, much of which remains today as powerful material reminders of its time
‘Someone should write a poem of the tribulations of a hunger-striker. I would like to, but how could I finish it,’ wrote Bobby Sands. A Chilean dissident took up his challenge
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