What were the short and long term effects of the hunger-strikes in Northern Ireland?

However, the protest was not having sufficient impact, with a newspaper report of 1978 commenting that “Public support is minimal”. Prisoners then began what Northern Ireland Secretary Roy Mason called “a brilliant stroke” by launching a ‘no wash’ protest. One prisoner wrote “The pressure was on for movement. So we decided to escalate the protest and embark on the no wash protest. On hearing this, morale rose again.” This protest soon escalated to become the ‘dirty protest’. Inmates refused to leave their cells or empty chamber pots and wiped the walls with “excrement and menstrual blood”. After visiting the prison the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich described the conditions as similar “to the plight of people living in sewer-pipes in the slums of Calcutta”.

        In the face of a lack of response from the Government to this escalation the republican prisoners began hunger-striking in October 1980. The tactic had a “chequered but revered place in republican history”. Irish republican Terence MacSwiney died after a 74-day hunger-strike while in jail for delivering a ‘seditious’ speech in 1920; five nationalist MPs staged a 48-hour hunger-strike in Downing Street during October 1971 in response to the introduction of internment; prisoners had also staged a hunger-strike in 1972 to demand ‘special category status’ and in February 1976 Frank Stagg, demanding political status, died in an English jail after a 72-day hunger strike.

The first of the H-block hunger-strikes began in October 1980 in support of demands for the return of special category status and involved seven prisoners.  The Northern Ireland Office indicated to republicans that concessions would be made on issues of clothing and prison work requirements if the strike was called off. However Margaret Thatcher, the newly elected Conservative Prime Minister, said that “I want this to be utterly clear – the government will never concede political status to the hunger-strikers or to any others convicted of criminal offences.” The strike ended in “confusion” after 53 days with one prisoner critically ill. The inmates “had not won their demands”.

         A second hunger-strike began on 1 March 1981. It was a phased exercise, where IRA leader Bobby Sands was the first to refuse food and was joined two weeks after that by another prisoner and by another every week thereafter. During the hunger-strike 27-year-old Sands became the only nationalist candidate for the 1981 by-election for the seat of Fermanagh-South Tyrone, which he won narrowly. This victory was what McKittrick and McVea described as one of the “key events in the development of Sinn Fein as an electoral force”. Despite this electoral victory, on 28 April 1981 the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins stated that “if Mr Sands persisted in his wish to commit suicide that was his choice”. Sands starved to death in May 1981, followed by three fellow hunger strikers later that month, two more in July and four in August.

         The strike was called off on 3 October 1981 following “intense mediation by senior Catholic churchmen” and prisoners’ families after a total of 10 men had starved themselves to death. The most significant death was Sands’. By his death on 5 May he “instantly” became “one of republicanism’s most revered martyrs”. In Ireland his death “generated a huge wave of emotion and anger among republicans and nationalists” and his funeral was attended by approximately 100 000 people.

        The months following the death of Sands’ were “particularly grim and destabilising”. The death toll rose from 86 killed in 1980 to 117 killed in 1981 as sectarian street disturbances amplified. “Radicalised recruits flocked to the IRA and Sinn Fein”, paving the way for further violence. Gerry Adams wrote later, “Physically, emotionally and spiritually, the hunger strike was intensely draining; yet we derived immense new energy, commitment and direction from the extraordinary period during which our ten comrades slowly and painfully sacrificed their lives”. The community had become highly polarised as the old community divisions had “a new rawness”.

        The IRA leadership was “opposed to and frustrated by the tactics of the strikers” as they felt the strike “represented a serious diversion of resources of all kinds from their main campaign of violence, and feared another damaging and divisive failure”. Adams told prisoners: ‘We are tactically, strategically, physically and morally opposed to a hunger-strike’. Despite the recommendations of the outside IRA leadership the hunger-strikers continued in their protest. The Dublin Government “practically begged” the Thatcher administration for concessions for the hunger-strikers.

        ‘Special category status’ was not reintroduced after the death of the hunger-strikers, although their other main demands were “quietly implemented”. T. G. Fraser writes that the protestors had “changed the face of Northern Ireland politics in a way its originators could scarcely have imagined”. Despite their failure to achieve ‘special category status’ they had won political status in the eyes of the world. Thatcher’s hard line in dealing with the issue brought international criticism “from both Europe and North America”. This international attention increased political pressure for changes in Northern Ireland. It assisted the rise of the Sinn Fein as a major political force and the helped lead to the Thatcher administration’s negotiations with Ireland to create the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.

The hunger-strikes constituted a political “watershed” according to McKittrick and McVea as they “transformed” the republican Sinn Fein into a political force in Northern Ireland. It established itself as the fourth largest party in the four elections between 1982 and 1985 and gathered 40 per cent of the Nationalist vote. Gerry Adams’ election to Westminster in 1983 attracted much publicity and “confirmed” the growing attraction of the Sinn Fein. Many saw the road to a republic via the combined forces of IRA violence and Sinn Fein political activity. This gave the Thatcher administration a “greater incentive to do something in the province” to combat the political power of the Sinn Fein.

As the popularity and publicity of Sinn Fein grew, IRA campaign of violence continued. In October 1981 there was a nail-bomb attack on the Chelsea barracks in London; a bomb in which the Commandant General of the Royal Marines lost a leg and a bomb which killed another man. A Unionist MP, Robert Bradford was murdered. This wave of violence led to the reintroduction of 600 British soldiers into Northern Ireland and security policy changes, including ‘shoot-to-kill’, supergrasses and the creation of the E4A.

The tactics of the hunger-strikes led to a significant shift in the Anglo-Irish relationship. James Prior described Thatcher as “a natural sympathiser with the Unionists”. Despite this, she attempted to develop a closer Anglo-Irish relationship to solve the troubles and conceded that “the long years of Unionist rule were associated with discrimination against Catholics”. The relationship deteriorated when Taoiseach Charles Haughey misrepresented her position on a united Ireland – this was never an option for Thatcher. As the hunger-strikes evolved during 1981, differences with Haughey became even sharper and Thatcher looked for another political approach. She despatched James Prior to Belfast where he devised the rolling devolution scheme. This involved an elected assembly to which powers would be transferred “as and when the parties reached a certain level of agreement”. The plan was heavily criticised and received little support.  Thatcher instructed Prior to “tone down the modest Irish dimension he had envisaged”. This led to the SDLP and the Sinn Fein refusing to sit at the new assembly, leaving it nationalist-free and thus pointless.

In 1983 Taoiseach FitzGerald introduced the nationalist New Ireland Forum which produced a report in 1984 that reproached Britain for its hardline security policy and suggested three options for political development in Northern Ireland. They were a united Ireland, a federal Ireland or joint London-Dublin authority. Unionists strongly rejected the options, as too did Thatcher, which was taken badly among nationalists and jeopardised her hopes for improved London-Dublin relations. Acknowledging this, she then attempted to make amends with FitzGerald – what McKittrick and McVea called a “crucial moment” in the improvement of Anglo-Irish relations. Negotiations began between the two during which the IRA made an assassination attempt on Thatcher’s life at the Conservative Party annual conference which killed an MP and three attendees.

Despite the shock waves caused by the bomb “careful Anglo-Irish negotiation kept inching painstakingly forward”  until eventually the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed by Thatcher and FitzGerald in Hillsborough on 15 November 1985. The agreement contained thirteen articles which laid out the positions of both London and Dublin in Northern Ireland. Key points included the provision that the status of the Province could only change with the consent of the majority of the people in Northern Ireland and the establishment of an intergovernmental conference to discuss policy issues and promote a devolved government for Northern Ireland. Most importantly the agreement demonstrated “a commitment to reform in Northern Ireland and an acknowledgement that reform necessitated an input from the south”. The agreement received an angry reaction from unionists angry at what they saw as a British sell-out, resulting in a violent but ineffective campaign by loyalists and “stimulated recruiting into the UVF and UDA”.

McKittrick and McVea describe the consequences of the hunger-strikes as a political “watershed”; the BBC/PBS production Endgame believes they “opened up the road to endgame in Northern Ireland”; Caroline Kennedy-Pipe writes that they were a “defining moment” that led to a “political breakthrough” and T. G. Fraser agrees explaining that they “opened up new prospects” for Northern Ireland. The hunger-strikes were hugely significant. Despite being opposed by the IRA leadership outside prison, they immediately dramatically shifted perceptions of the republicans in Northern Ireland. By adopting the tactics of passive resistance they created an international climate of public sympathy that forced attention on the underlying causes of the conflict. This also led to the rise of the Sinn Fein as a political force and thus increased pressure on Britain to address the fundamental causes of the troubles and negotiate the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. McKittrick, David & McVea, David, Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of Conflict in Northern Ireland, New Amsterdam Books, Chicago, 2002
2. Fraser, T. G., Ireland in Conflict, Routledge, London, 2000
3. Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland, Longman, London, 1998
4. Wright, J. & Rea, T., Ireland: A Divided Island, Oxford University Press, 1998, p 54-55
5. McAleavy, T., Conflict in Ireland, Collins Education, 3rd ed., 2003. p 78-79
6. Modern Irish Lives: Dictionary of 20th-century Biography, McRedmond, Louis (ed.), Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1996
7. Irelands OWN: History Terence MacSwiney (1897 – 1920). DM Gould. (n.d.) Retrieved on 12/06/04 from the World Wide Web: .
8. CAIN Web Service: A Chronology of the Conflict – 1981. Compiled by Martin Melaugh. (n.d.) Retrieved on 12/06/04 from the World Wide Web: .
9. Irish Northern Aid Online: Irish Hunger Strikes 1980 & ’81. The Irish People. (2001) Retrieved on 12/06/04 from the World Wide Web: .
10. Irish Freedom Committee POW Department: What is political Status? (n.d.) Retrieved on 11/06/04 from the World Wide Web: .

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