1981 Irish Hunger Strike

The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike was a campaign by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland for the British government to grant them political status. It was a seminal event in modern Irish history. It radicalised nationalist politics, and was the midwife to Sinn Féin as a serious political force, which ultimately led to it overtaking the SDLP as the main nationalist party in Northern Ireland.

First Hunger Strike

IRA and INLA prisoners (the first was Ciarán Nugent) began the blanket protest in which prisoners would refuse to wear prison uniform and either went naked or fashioned garments from prison blankets. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e. empty their chamber pots) this escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners not granted political status refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. These protests aimed to re-establish their privileges by securing what were known as the Five Demands, viz.:

Related Topics:
IRA - INLA - Blanket protest - 1978 - Dirty protest

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• The Right not to wear a prison uniform;
• The Right not to do prison work;
• The Right of free association with other prisoners;
• The Right to organize their own educational and recreational facilities;
• The Right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.

Initially, this protest did not attract a great deal of attention, and even the IRA regarded it as a side-issue compared to their armed struggle. It began to attract attention when the Tomas O Fiach, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh visited the prison and condemned the conditions there. In 1979 Bernadette McAliskey (the former MP) stood in the election for the European parliament on a platform of support for the blanketmen, and won a respectable 5.9% of the vote across Northern Ireland, even though Sinn Féin had called for a boycott of this election. Shortly after this, the broad based Smash H-Block Campaign was formed, on a platform of support for the Five Demands, with McAliskey as its main spokesperson.

Related Topics:
IRA - Tomas O Fiach - Roman Catholic - Archbishop of Armagh - 1979 - Bernadette McAliskey - European parliament

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The period leading up to the hunger strike saw a campaign of assassination carried out by both sides. The IRA shot and killed a number of prison officers, and unionist paramilitaries shot and killed a number of activists in the Smash H-Block Campaign, and badly injured McAliskey and her husband in an attempt on their lives.

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In October 1980, seven Republican prisoners in HM Prison Long Kesh began a hunger strike. After a few weeks they were followed by three prisoners in Armagh Women's Prison, and then a short-lived hunger strike by several dozen more prisoners in Long Kesh. A number of loyalist prisoners also started their own hunger strike after a few weeks, but they were accused of opportunism, attempting to win concessions on the backs of republicans without risking death or serious damage to their health. (No unionists or Armagh women took part in the 1981 hunger strike.) In a war of nerves between the IRA leadership and the British government, with one prisoner close to death, the British government appeared to concede the prisoners' right to wear their own clothes. The strike was called off in December before any prisoners died.

Related Topics:
1980 - HM Prison - Long Kesh - Armagh Women's Prison - Long Kesh - Loyalist

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